Pub: FreeSpirit

[Rab]

Yeah I don't even read it anymore either falco, you're basically typing essays to yourself.

[Rab]

Graphs are working now.

TW-PubSystem> BaseTerr FR BONUS  [################### ] 92%   +$917
TW-PubSystem> BaseTerr FR BONUS  [################    ] 79%   +$792
TW-PubSystem> BaseTerr FR BONUS  [###############     ] 71%   +$708
TW-PubSystem> BaseTerr FR BONUS  [##########          ] 46%   +$458
TW-PubSystem> BaseTerr FR BONUS  [###                 ] 13%   +$125

[Lupin]

Nifty!

[Rab]

Someone found another way of dealing with this. lol

[BOUNTY] FreeSpirit now has a $200,000 bounty. To view, type:  :tw-p:!listbty
[BOUNTY HUNTER]  Sailor V awarded $200,000 for killing FreeSpirit!

[BOUNTY] FreeSpirit now has a $100,000 bounty. To view, type:  :tw-p:!listbty
[BOUNTY HUNTER]  Sailor V awarded $100,000 for killing FreeSpirit!

[BOUNTY] FreeSpirit now has a $100,000 bounty. To view, type:  :tw-p:!listbty
[BOUNTY] FreeSpirit now has a $400,000 bounty. To view, type:  :tw-p:!listbty
[BOUNTY HUNTER]  o\/o awarded $500,000 for killing FreeSpirit!

[FLAG] INCONCEIVABLE!!: FreeSpirit claims flag for Freq 1 with just 3 seconds left!
[BOUNTY] FreeSpirit now has a $100,000 bounty. To view, type:  :tw-p:!listbty
[BOUNTY] FreeSpirit now has a $200,000 bounty. To view, type:  :tw-p:!listbty
[FLAG] INCONCEIVABLE!!: FreeSpirit claims flag for Freq 1 with just 3 seconds left!
[BOUNTY HUNTER]  FEAR! awarded $500,000 for killing FreeSpirit!

[Falconeer]

Btw i was playing with freespirit today and while we held the flag for the full time to begin the count down to a win, he was not in the base as a terr but just flying around outside waiting for us to lose the flag so he could portal. I noticed that this wasn't too big of a deal when i bought ?buy baseterr, and then our whole team could attach in base and defend the flag about as reliably as it would be had freespirit been inside.

We did lose the flag however, so i guess the only downside is that we don't get the bursts that would come from having an actual terr in base. As well a baseterr can get pinned down if enemy is actually inside. In this scenario we attached to base terr defended entrance, died and re-attached with enemy still being outside (and it worked for awhile).

Anyway maybe portal lasts too long? In DSB our portals only last 70 seconds. Trench wars portals are at 240...

So i suggest maybe dropping portal to 70-90 seconds. Up to you, i don't have a preference really. Just throwing some ideas out there.

[Rab]

Actually not a bad idea for portals in pub to be shorter.
Defo should be shorter than a base round so you can't get warped into fr at the start, lay a port, immediately fly outside, and that port lasts until the round ends.

Most terrs won't mind because there's easily enough greens to keep a portal up most of the time.

Could be considered a small LT nerf, but they tend to just warp into spawn anyway rather than use a portal.

[Materix]

Who else came here for Rab's jokes about Falconeer?

[qan]

I read your ?message about that as well, Falconeer. Will check Discord soon. Just so many messages to take care of from so many different places... Incredibly, I'm enough of a sucker to have a major role in another volunteer project in addition to SS...


The port time sounds like something that could improve quality of life here without adversely affecting the other aspects of the game. Good idea.

I'm trying to think of meaningful uses to our long port times. It seems like mostly it was arbitrarily chosen a long time ago, and then never changed because everyone had grown accustomed to it, and for the most part it didn't affect the game negatively.

There are a few instances where long port times can lead to interesting gameplay, such as laying a port as the enemy takes the FR, and then retreating via a side tube to port back in for a surprise attack. But shortening this time would only mean that Terrs would need to execute the move sooner, and would not eliminate it as a strategy entirey.

Two questions:
- Are there any situations we haven't considered in which a long port time might be used?
- How much shorter does the time need to be in order to prevent the behavior that's taking down the quality of play? For example, if it's shorter than the shortest flag timer (90 seconds), is this enough? How much shorter than that does it need to be? It takes about 3 seconds at best to lay a port at the start of the round, and generally the scheme involves warping in at the last 3 or so seconds. But it could still be pulled off with 10 seconds remaining ... or really, any amount of time remaining, though it just becomes less annoying the longer it is before a round win. This would also assume the enemy team holds the flag for the full time. 80 seconds might work, though delaying when you lay your port at the start of the round would let you get around this a bit. In the end, the tactic is still going to be viable in some situations.

[Rab]

Further discussion of port time:

The long port time is part of the terr's utility role in tw, as opposed to other zones where ports are used offensively. The long time makes it easier for the terr to escape a sticky situation because there's a very good chance they'll have a port up. It also considers the chance of greening a portal, the density of greens, the density of dead players, green sharing.

The entire environment of the zone has changed since that decision was made. And now the portal is being abused offensively, that's a problem because of the flag game automation, portal greens are abundant because other green types were removed, the map has changed several times, etc. So it's perfectly reasonable to be adjusting the port time to be more suitable for today's TW.

The "80s and delaying port placement a bit" thing doesn't pan out because you have to lay the port on the flag for the trick to work, and to be claiming the flag from the enemy they have to have claimed the flag within the portal duration. So I think 80s is a good choice, and should be implemented, at least for a test period so we can see how it works out. I also think 80s is a good choice because it's the longest possible time that achieves "being within a round length and avoiding the last minute flag claim reward" and so we should choose it over any shorter value because we're trying to fix an issue with minimal impact.

It's also important to consider multiple flag claims within the portal time. 240s outlasts the flag changing hands a load of times. Usually the flag does change hands a couple of times at least. Any additional change of flag ownership would require an 80s portal to be re-placed to achieve the last second flag capture.


A different way of looking at this based on the supply of portals:
I think this is basically such a soft-touch that it's ineffective, but it's interesting so I'll leave it here.

A terr may pull of the lame port trick once, but how easily they can pull it off a second time is also part of the problem.

There's a balance aspect to this in relation to player count. The smaller number of players the harder it is to stop FreeSpirit pulling off his trick, also this means there are less dead players and therefore less portal greens, it would be nice if this means the chance of having a portal greened within the portal length was unlikely, so even if the trick was pulled off once, it couldn't immediatly be pulled off a second time. At higher population times, there'd be more greens, but also the higher players would have a better chance of killing FreeSpirit, so having a chance of greening a portal within the portal time could be more likely. The issue in all this is that while FreeSpirit does collect greens from dead players while he's in base, when he's not in base he mostly flies around the edges of spawn to get a portal ready so that when he uses his port he can immediately lay another and repeat this an infinite number of times. Note that why he's flying around spawn he's still getting greens his team collects in base.

Green-based solutions:
- Stop greens producing portals, so a terr got one only.
- If spawned greens could not produce portals but death greens did (dunno if that's possible) then it would force the greening to occur where players mostly die (in base).
- Remove greens from the spawn area entirely. With players being warped into base the spawn is pretty empty, so collecting those greens is too safe. If greens could only be obtained from dead players that lets the supply of portals vary by population better, and forces FreeSpirit to green in less-safe areas or rely on team greening only.
- Allow the team to share greens but only from nearby team members (i.e. those in base). I doubt that's possible, I think it's either self-collected greens only, or greens shared from the entire team.
- Stop greens from producing portals but prize terrs with greens at a specified interval (e.g. 2x portal length).

[Falconeer]

I read your ?message about that as well, Falconeer. Will check Discord soon. Just so many messages to take care of from so many different places... Incredibly, I'm enough of a sucker to have a major role in another volunteer project in addition to SS...


The port time sounds like something that could improve quality of life here without adversely affecting the other aspects of the game. Good idea.

I'm trying to think of meaningful uses to our long port times. It seems like mostly it was arbitrarily chosen a long time ago, and then never changed because everyone had grown accustomed to it, and for the most part it didn't affect the game negatively.

There are a few instances where long port times can lead to interesting gameplay, such as laying a port as the enemy takes the FR, and then retreating via a side tube to port back in for a surprise attack. But shortening this time would only mean that Terrs would need to execute the move sooner, and would not eliminate it as a strategy entirey.

Two questions:
- Are there any situations we haven't considered in which a long port time might be used?
- How much shorter does the time need to be in order to prevent the behavior that's taking down the quality of play? For example, if it's shorter than the shortest flag timer (90 seconds), is this enough? How much shorter than that does it need to be? It takes about 3 seconds at best to lay a port at the start of the round, and generally the scheme involves warping in at the last 3 or so seconds. But it could still be pulled off with 10 seconds remaining ... or really, any amount of time remaining, though it just becomes less annoying the longer it is before a round win. This would also assume the enemy team holds the flag for the full time. 80 seconds might work, though delaying when you lay your port at the start of the round would let you get around this a bit. In the end, the tactic is still going to be viable in some situations.

My two cents on this are as follows. As a terrier your main objective is really to stay alive so your team can attach and defend you while they take the base (maybe you can have side objectives, but they would be secondary). Portals assist you in this objective because if you are anchoring and about to die you can portal away, or similarly if you are anchoring in the tower you can port to the flag or inside the base as an offensive anchor. The question is do you need 240 second portal timers or not?

When you play terrier how often have you utilized the portal at 240 seconds? I would argue, rarely. I think in heated base battles everyone ports way sooner, and when they utilize the full 240 seconds its because the base was empty for most of that time, or their team controlled the base. That being said 90 seconds is a long time still in the heat of battle, where sometimes people die 5-10 times in that time-frame. Terriers with 90 second port times would be placing a port when it was more necessary and danger was imminent.

And yeah whether you go with 80-90 makes little difference to me, i agree it shouldn't be less than 80 seconds. And what i can contribute is that in DSB 70 seconds feels like forever. I've maybe 1 times out 50 run out of a portal and couldn't use it. Even when i'm playing defensively the portal comes in handy, and lasts long enough to escape danger (though at 70 seconds sometimes it's close).

i would suggest try 90 seconds first and if it needs to be adjusted to 80 you can always do that after, heck even 120 seconds would improve on the 240 and require terrier to enter base more often.

With freespirit now that you mention greens rab, i know why he was flying outside greening. He was getting another portal. Maybe remove portal grabs from greens entirely. I didn't think trench wars was EG? lol i thought we get new specials and a shiny new ship every time we die, like DSB. Greening for attaches is okay, but it makes little sense to have greens so far from base, so our terrier is outside touching 20 greens to get a new port.

BTW i think you can make it so greens with portals are only dropped by players killed. And greens spawning outside don't give portals. But maybe that's only on AS3?

[Rab]

Well I'm watching FreeSpirit wreck basing for everyone in pub as usual.
So back to this thread...
It's time to make another change.
Let's go with 80s portal and see how that works out.

Also need clarity on what control we actually have over greens, to determine which of the options I mentioned can actually be done.

[SpookedOne]

What about scaling the flag claim time based on number of friendlies in FR instead of total player's in arena? Single ships that make it to FR for claim will take longer then those with a team in FR.

[Gila Monster]

nerds

[Gila Monster]

Anyone not basing on freq 0 or freq 1 should be spec'd after 30 seconds. People who don't want to base should go to private frequency.

[qan]

Trying out the 80s portal time to see how it plays.


Regarding questions about greens, it's possible to remove portals from the green pool and to have greens not appear in spawn, but the others aren't possible (for example having only death greens provide ports).

Both of those changes would be a pretty radical departure from traditional TW, though.