Pub team evener

[Troll King]

I didn't misread your statement, I failed to see the logic behind it. Why on earth would you compare the two?

I compared the two because you said that four people could leave the small teams. I made the comparison because the same thing can happen now. I think the 12-4 was a typo, now that I look back at it, and I think I meant 12-8.

And about incoming players. Let's say x is the probability of at least one player entering the arena in the time slice. With more pubs, that x is lower, meaning people don't enter as fast, so even though with less people, you'd need less people to balance the teams, less people will come in, because there is more pubs they can go to.

That's only if we reduce the arena sizes by a significant portion. Reducing arena caps to just 30 would mean 1 new arena for every 5 pubs. So instead of a 1 in 5 chance of a new player entering a particular arena, it's now 1 in 6, only a drop of 4%. That's not enough for this scenario to be much of a factor. I'm not asking for arena sizes of 20 or anything, but 30, still a reasonable number that any negative effects would be minimal.

Of course 20v15 is better than 10v6. With 10v6, let's say they both teams have a terr and a shark, making it 8v4 for the other ships. (And if they don't have shark or terr, they're screwed anyways.) I'd say the percents are pretty good for approximating the power balance, because it basically tells you how many ships you have to kill to keep it even. As in, if it's 8v4 for fighters, you have to kill 2 ships for your every death. And if it's 18v13, the number is 1.38. Of course sharks and terrs kill some but not that much.

That would be only if everyone in the teams are basing. You forget that a large number will be spawnkilling. And let me ask you this: which would you think is more condusive to make people want to go spawnkilling instead of bassing, when there's 5 enemy ships out there for you to hunt, or when there's 15? Fewer ships out there mean fewer targets for spawnkilling. That itself is another factor that works in basing's favour; it makes the alternative less appealing. As for your scenario of using percents to know how many you need to kill in order to get the flag, I certainly don't keep a running tab of how many kills I need. It's not the number of kills that will help you base, it's the type of kills. I don't go in thinking "if I get a 2:1 ratio out of this, I'll get the flag for sure!"

And that balancing thing I already went though, more pubs, less people coming to the arena, meaning they actually might not balance faster.

And by the numbers, I've shown that they balance faster with smaller sizes. You're still relying on that 4%. That's insignificant; even if we start seeing 10 FULL pub arenas at the current 36 cap, then the odds are only 8% worse.

Yea, but it got changed. I don't know why, but I guess they had some idea behind it. I wouldn't blame pub size caps for the state of the pubs either. And have you ever noticed how so many people always think "Oh the good old days, things were better then." And I'm not talking just about subspace here.

From the math alone, moving it from 30 to 36 brings in 0.5-0.7 more levis per arena. Thank you for pointing out that it wasn't "one whole levi" as I stated, but if you're averaging 0.5 to 0.7 more levis per arena, then you get one whole levi more often than not. Unless you start seeing half a levi flying around out there. That 0.5 to 0.7 alone already hurts basing.

I'd say basing without a terr isn't basing. I'd also say that if the other freq has a shark and the other doesn't, it isn't basing.

You're right. It isn't basing. It's pub. Getting a pub bot to even out the teams won't get this done either. In fact, if one team has too many people who want to terr or shark, a bot might actually make it harder for them to switch to the other team to even things out.

[Sarien]

Ok, this is going to be really stupid, I know. But this analogy occured to me last night, and it really properly demonstrates the effect of what TK is talking about I think.
Ok in slide 1:

This dot represents all pubs if they were being used 100% for basing. Yellow is in a sense "pub basing."

The red in this shows outside influences on basing games in public arenas. Whether it's leviathans, having uneven teams to the point of one sided games, what have you. If it disrupts a basing game, it's illustrated by red. (Note the bit of pure yellow that could be pure pubs in this scenario).
The thickness of the paint shown is like the population of the arenas.
And if you drew a putty knife over it, to thin the population down and and spread it out some, you get:

You see, you get more of a choice of everything. More pure red annoying crap, a lot more of the mixed orange where it could be going either way, and even some more solid yellow. Why? Because you're spreading out everything. The good games and bad, so you have more choice. The good players and the bad, just think of it like smaller classrooms in school. Better instruction. Hehe

Btw I also did this to show off Art Rage. An awesome and free app that has a more realistic painting/drawing feel to it, like the noticable thickness of that paint. http://www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html

[Kuukunen]

I compared the two because you said that four people could leave the small teams. I made the comparison because the same thing can happen now. I think the 12-4 was a typo, now that I look back at it, and I think I meant 12-8.

That indeed would make more sense. I think 12v8 is a lot better than 10v6 though.

That's only if we reduce the arena sizes by a significant portion. Reducing arena caps to just 30 would mean 1 new arena for every 5 pubs. So instead of a 1 in 5 chance of a new player entering a particular arena, it's now 1 in 6, only a drop of 4%. That's not enough for this scenario to be much of a factor. I'm not asking for arena sizes of 20 or anything, but 30, still a reasonable number that any negative effects would be minimal.

The drop is quite minimal, but the changes in actual team sizes aren't that big either, so the drop actually means something, but you are right in that I didn't think through completely.

That would be only if everyone in the teams are basing.

Yes, but as we're talking about providing everyone who want the possibility to base, we might as well consider the "team" being the people who do base. The other people are just there messing up the numbers.

You forget that a large number will be spawnkilling. And let me ask you this: which would you think is more condusive to make people want to go spawnkilling instead of bassing, when there's 5 enemy ships out there for you to hunt, or when there's 15? Fewer ships out there mean fewer targets for spawnkilling. That itself is another factor that works in basing's favour; it makes the alternative less appealing.

Imho, it doesn't work that way, I think it works more in the opposite direction, you must also consider the other side of the coin: if there isn't enough people basing (or there isn't a terr because he's in that extra pub.) the guy who wanted to base, might as well go to spawnkilling due to lack of people willing to base.

As for your scenario of using percents to know how many you need to kill in order to get the flag, I certainly don't keep a running tab of how many kills I need. It's not the number of kills that will help you base, it's the type of kills. I don't go in thinking "if I get a 2:1 ratio out of this, I'll get the flag for sure!"

Of course people don't THINK that way. All I'm saying is this: There's two terrs in flag room, 4 spids attach to the other and 2 spids attach to the other. The 2 spids only kill one spid each which leaves 2 spids attacking the terr who's unguarded, so if the teams are that unbalanced the 2 spids basically go 2:1 to keep it fair.

And by the numbers, I've shown that they balance faster with smaller sizes. You're still relying on that 4%. That's insignificant; even if we start seeing 10 FULL pub arenas at the current 36 cap, then the odds are only 8% worse.

As I already said, they do balance faster, but not as fast as you might think, but you also have to remember the original math I did. With larger teams, the probability for the teams to get so unbalanced in the first place is a lot lower. So practically the teams don't even have to balance that fast, because they stay in balance better.

From the math alone, moving it from 30 to 36 brings in 0.5-0.7 more levis per arena. Thank you for pointing out that it wasn't "one whole levi" as I stated, but if you're averaging 0.5 to 0.7 more levis per arena, then you get one whole levi more often than not. Unless you start seeing half a levi flying around out there. That 0.5 to 0.7 alone already hurts basing.

It was just you used "one lev less!" as a kicker, when the actual number was about half of it. :P
Actually, now that I think it wasn't an "actual number" of any kind. You just said "3 or 4 levis", which is a number you thought up. I don't think the average is that much. I just checked and the three non pure pubs had 7 levs put together. So I think the "one levi less!" thing really doesn't hold.

Besides, those people who don't play in pure pubs apparently "accept lev as a natural part of tw food chain". I don't know, but that's what people tell me. I think there should be more pure pubs anyways. And as I said, if there's no pure pub, I don't pub.

You're right. It isn't basing. It's pub. Getting a pub bot to even out the teams won't get this done either. In fact, if one team has too many people who want to terr or shark, a bot might actually make it harder for them to switch to the other team to even things out.

Well as I said, I didn't like the idea of the bot either. The thing I'm criticizing now is reducing the population cap and nothing more.

*sigh* so many quotes, sorry.

Anyways... You're talking about unbalanced teams all the time, are you sure that's the real problem? I think the real problem is that in the non-timed pubs there isn't enough people people to get decent basing going.

Well, as a side note, imho decent basing in those arenas is pretty much impossible anyways because of the levs. And it's not like "there's less levs if there's more arenas, so less chances of getting bombed". If there's a good base game going on in pub, it's usually just one or maybe even two arenas, and the levs/lts that really DO know what they're doing and are capable of making basing impossible will jump to the arena with most active base.

[Kuukunen]

Sarien, the problem with using analogies in making a point is that finding a good enough analogy is never going to happen. We're discussing here the effects of making arenas smaller. I think it would make pub basing worse everywhere. And even if it DID work and spread out the bad basing, just as many people are still going to suffer from it.

[Troll King]

I'm just about to head out, but I wanted to respond to this part before I forget it:

As I already said, they do balance faster, but not as fast as you might think, but you also have to remember the original math I did. With larger teams, the probability for the teams to get so unbalanced in the first place is a lot lower. So practically the teams don't even have to balance that fast, because they stay in balance better.

Your original math compared a loss of 4 people from a 10 ship team to a loss of 8 people on a 20 ship freq, hardly an equal comparison. Under your original math, there's a combined 25.5% chance that either 1 or none of your team of 10 will leave. There's also a combined 4.7% that either 1 or none of your team will leave if you have a 20-ship team. They don't stay in balance longer at all. Even if you use a more realistic figure and look at a team with a size of 12 people, under your formula, there's just an 18.5% chance of either 1 or none leave.

[Kuukunen]

Your original math compared a loss of 4 people from a 10 ship team to a loss of 8 people on a 20 ship freq, hardly an equal comparison. Under your original math, there's a combined 25.5% chance that either 1 or none of your team of 10 will leave. There's also a combined 4.7% that either 1 or none of your team will leave if you have a 20-ship team. They don't stay in balance longer at all. Even if you use a more realistic figure and look at a team with a size of 12 people, under your formula, there's just an 18.5% chance of either 1 or none leave.

You still don't believe more people means more balance? Well let's do it by the simple way. Think about 4v4, that turning into 4v2 wouldn't be unheard of, but think about what odds would it be for 100v100 turning into 100v50? (Or so) Think for a while which would be in balance better, 4v4 or 100v100?

I'll do a bit more math on that later.

[Troll King]

And MY point is that we're looking at changing it from 15 vs 15 to something like 12 vs 12. Sure you can compare 4 on 2 versus 100 vs 50, but I'm not asking for any huge extreme change. 100 vs 100 isn't even a close comparison to make because the situation changes at such high numbers. You're looking at extreme situations and I'm looking at likely situations with a much smaller variation. I don't get why there's so much objection to my idea. I'm not asking for arena sizes of 20 from 36, but just from 36 to 30. That's hardly enough for the (dubious) negative affects people suggest.

The other thing you're overlooking, which is odd because I keep saying that it's my main concern, is the competibility of uneven teams, and when the teams are smaller, uneven team sizes becomes less of a problem. If you really want to compare 4 vs 2 to 100 vs 50, then let me ask you: which situation would you rather be in, the team of 2 or the team of 50? When you have smaller teams and the numbers get uneven, it's not that bad of a problem. When you have large teams and the numbers get uneven, it's harder for the smaller team to compete. Sure it's going to be uneven sometimes. If you really want to go on to prove how likely it will be to become uneven, go ahead; it doesn't affect the reason I'm suggesting smaller teams. My point is that even if they are uneven, you still have a better shot if both teams are small.

[Kuukunen]

The promised math. I calculated the probability for 10v10 to get unbalanced by 3 or more. This is 5.9%.
20v20 to get unbalanced by 6 or more is 0.42%.
20v20 to get unbalanced by 5 or more is 1.8%
And the grande finale: 20v20 to get unbalanced by 4 or more is about 6.3%
I won't post the math here, because there was loads of copypasting and it's quite big, but you can check it from: http://koti.mbnet.fi/kuukunen/teams.txt

And even you can't claim 20v16 is worse than 10v7.

Comparing 20v20 and 10v10 is close enough to the team sizes we're talking about here, but the gap is a bit bigger so the numbers would be more demonstrative. The overall genre is imho very clear: bigger teams equals more balance.

Yes, in real life, people aren't mathematical creatures, but I have enough faith in statistics you can do some kind of comparison on things like these.

[Kuukunen]

If you really want to compare 4 vs 2 to 100 vs 50, then let me ask you: which situation would you rather be in, the team of 2 or the team of 50?

I'd say that if the map was sized properly, it wouldn't matter.

[Troll King]

You know what, I just realized the flaw in the math. All of it depends on people leaving at the exact same moment, that's how you can keep using the 20 for the combination calculations. All of those represent what happens if X people leave all at once.

[Kuukunen]

Of course, you're free to code your own simulator, which will accurately take care of everything, but as I'm doing this manually, I have to make few simplifications here and there. As I said, that was approximation for people leaving after one game of timed pub, or something. You can also thinking of it as "people who leave in 10 minutes".

[Theif of Time]

Nice fingerprints Sarien.
I really can't be bothered with any of this anymore... I need to take a break and sort out some things IRL. If someone submits a TWPS for decreasing pub sizes count me in on signing it: theif of time (thrace_chaos@hotmail.com
)

so long...

[Asmodeus]

Like a few have already mentioned. Bring it up to TWPS. Talk to a few staffers about it, get their signatures, it'll be looked at by Upper staff and possibly passed. ---> TWPS <--- is the way to go.