Messages

136

Suggestions / Re: More info on recent games

« on: July 26, 2012, 08:24:26 am »

if i'd let the server do a full screenshot on server 5 or 8 it will stop responding for 2 minutes, creating a 500 MB png file while all players lose connection -> bad idea 

about savegame: should be doable. we already have a mechanism where every !admin request automatically creates a savegame (admins can later see the list of all savegames created this way and use them for review). so doing a savegame on game end (one second before all companies are reset) shouldn't be much effort. offering it for download on the website shouldn't be a problem either, though we'd need a limit for how long we keep the files, disk space is not infinite 

showing the statistics you have mentioned definitely will be possible but needs preparations. right now we don't save the long-term data that could be used to make a graph with a time X axis. but we can do this and i think it would be cool to show e.g. the full company value graph on the website.

what can be done solely on website without preparations is to show some hard numbers that were valid at the end of the game: the number of vehicles (per type), number of stations (per type), and the performance rating. but for the website part Myhorta has to comment on it.

p.s.: you can show more than the last 10 games, just click the "LAST 10" link in brackets to see your full list.

137

Complaints / Re: Points system in general

« on: July 25, 2012, 10:25:43 pm »

have you seen my above explanations? as i have pointed out scoring is much about efficiency. and yes, we all know that the newer trains are more efficient. so you're right about your observations, that's just a logical consequence.

i could counter that in the algorithm by making it so that a later start date gets you some penalty. but you should keep in mind: the longer the game is running already the lower the chance a player will still start a company and join the game. it's a general problem with OpenTTD that servers are often getting empty at the end, because they don't attract any more players. so lowering the score for them would even be an additional penalty.

it is of absolutely no use if a player joining late would know "oh well, if i had started earlier i would get an advantage". he is here to play NOW and he cannot travel back in time anyway. the question is only whether he is attracted to still join this advanced game (maybe even completely without winning chances) and fill the server for some more competition or he leaves again. an extra score penalty for him is the wrong thing here.

also you can't rely on situations as you had them before: you can join and be afk most of the time but another player who is playing more actively might come and win the game when you only reached 40%. no winner bonus for you and only 40% - gone is your theory about making big scores the lazy way all the time.

138

Complaints / Re: Points system in general

« on: July 25, 2012, 09:26:53 pm »

just wanted to start investigating but Myhorta was faster, good 

i don't see that he played with batt, both games were only with 1 member. but the ratio of vehicles to the time you needed to win is the important factor here, because taking "only a bit longer" with "significantly less material" means more efficiency and efficiency is what gets you better scores.

imagine there would be a noob plastering the map with 2000 stations that are working really bad while you are placing only 200 but with a very good design. you both make the same income. if we weren't looking for efficiency that would mean the noob would get a 10 times better score than you. he was "working harder", right? not being lazy.
but that's not what it is about. we care for results, not how much you were sweating on the way to the result 

139

Introduction / Re: Cossack

« on: July 25, 2012, 07:59:19 pm »

good introduction, was fun to read. i also wouldn't have expected you to be so young but well, in OpenTTD world we're all the same anyway, right?   

140

Introduction / Re: Geert

« on: July 25, 2012, 07:57:01 pm »

thanks for the explanation. learning something every day... 

141

Introduction / Re: Geert

« on: July 25, 2012, 01:02:30 pm »

given the fact that "leiden" in german means "pain" i hope your city is not as painful to its inhabitants as it sounds.
what else? ah yeah: postmen are cool 

142

Complaints / Re: Points system in general

« on: July 25, 2012, 12:53:44 pm »

as you might imagine the score system works with mathematical formulas. it's a bit hard to tell why the algorithm didn't find a specific game as "impressive" as you, basically because it does not know a term such as "impressive" 

but let's be serious. what i will do is look at the exact values that were used to calculate the score for both games (later when i got access to the database) and compare them. then i might be able to explain the scoring in these two cases and maybe use this knowledge to improve the formula.

i will report my findings here.

143

Introduction / Re: geo.ro

« on: July 23, 2012, 07:04:04 pm »

now here's one admin that really does the job with her heart, being infinitely patient with players, always in a good mood and always trying to help wherever possible. many admin things (especially the technical parts) were new to you but you're a quick learner, curious and wanting to know everything. thanks for being here and dedicating your time to our n-ice little community 

144

Introduction / Re: ST2

« on: July 23, 2012, 06:59:21 pm »

cmon dude, we all know you never sleep. your 3 cycles of the day are: 1. work 2. pub 3. playing OpenTTD or patching the client.
where 2. and 3. aren't mutually exclusive ;-)

so you can keep telling that lie and pretend you were sleeping as everyone else but nobody believes you 

145

General Chat / Re: My favorite n-ice OpenTTD server is...

« on: July 23, 2012, 06:54:38 pm »

eh, i just love them all 

146

Introduction / YorVeX

« on: July 22, 2012, 11:37:53 pm »

Hey guys, this is YorVeX. I am the head admin and also the programmer of the extra features you can enjoy on our servers (community login, goal system and scores, vote system, company protection and so on...). Living in Germany and having a quite demanding real life job I try to put as much free time as I can into this n(-)ice community. Fun fact: I have written the most part of the code for OpenTTD features while sitting on a train with my laptop

I hope you enjoy your time on our servers.

147

Suggestions / Before you make suggestions...

« on: July 22, 2012, 11:30:54 pm »

...that usually can be summed up with "make everything wider, higher, bigger!" you should be aware that server resources are limited. If it was possible we would have made only 4096x4096 servers with a limit of 5000 for all types of vehicles and 2000 companies. Well, you guessed it already: it isn't.
The current server settings are already taking the resources we got into account. So please refrain from such suggestions or at least keep the big picture in mind. If you really need to suggest an increase of something on one server, also say what other server should have resource usage decreased in return so the overall balance stays the same.

That said, all other suggestions are welcome and will be discussed, us admins often talk about possible changes ourselves and we're open to new ideas any time.