The Leviathan

[roxxkatt]

?go newlev

[Steep]

Atm you can !buy purepub for 100k or something like that, i suggest the default would be purepub, and players can !buy lt-pub for, say, 20k pubbux?

[qan]

Atm you can !buy purepub for 100k or something like that, i suggest the default would be purepub, and players can !buy lt-pub for, say, 20k pubbux?

I'm guessing no !buy solution would be enjoyed by the majority of the population, but, we could also restrict the ship so that every life you have to pay $X when you respawn, or pay some amount to enable Levi for you specifically for the next 30m, hour, something like that.

Prefer a solution that doesn't preference those with spacedollars, though. The !buy purepub option I placed in as part of a move toward larger-ticket items, to give people something more to spend their money on ... And it gives a sort of "final retaliation" against Levis. Not meant to actually be all that useful. It's only for 30 minutes, too.

[but...why...per...]

^levi tax lol

[bkgmjo]

Unfortunately we haven't been recording such data, so we can't run these queries

That's what I thought. Basically there is no information other than personal impressions of specific times of when they played. Nothing in the long run. I have seen pubs die when the LT left and all hunters got bored many times. But I do not get the idea of changing the game due to single experiences in specific situations.

Time Killer: Heya. I hear you've got some LT decisions to make? Is it possible to make it so that Sharks cannot attach to Terriers when a Leviathan is attached? And only one Leviathan per Terrier? LT helpers (Sharks) are the main problem in my opinion.

^^ Very good point in my opinion

Whoa carful, limit a ships abilities because when people work in a team the team is stronger than the single ships?

Before the L2 adjustment I thought to myself "I'm going to hop in a Leviathan, green up, attach to an LT and RUIN the pub game going on.", and I did exactly that with ease.

I will not deny some people think this way, but this is not limited to one ship. People hop into jav to tk turrets and basers, play "dumb shark" to annoy their team, antiwarp people just to mess with them or are like "hah, ill just abuse the built in cheat and buy the kill of a roofer so he/she will be annoyed and leave".

Maybe you look at things from a limited perspective. I'll try to give you another:
I've been playing here and on other zones since the 90's, I've seen zones, events, players, settings and staff come and go. I tried TWD, ?go base, ?go elim as alternatives to pub and found they are extremely boring to me due to the limited number of options. Gameplay in ?go base and TWD base matches usually is limited to sitting in the same 50x50 pixels in the always same ship with no change at all. Gameplay in ?go elim and TWD wb/jav/spid matches even limit the options down to a single ship. There might be players who enjoy this, but I don't. I am a pubber on TW and always stayed one for the fun and variety I can have in pub but not in events. Sadly some keeps getting taken away (gray):

Mines at entrance? Quickly change to a repel ship then back and cause carnage.
Enemy too barricaded and my team of inexperienced players not able to get into fr? Hop into a Lev and show them the worth of monotonous cram in a pub.
Enemy LT bombing my team? Hunt them down into pieces(separate ships).
Need to weaken enemy? Get into a LT and blast 'em.
Need to surprise enemy a little? Get a whole freq of terrs and burst like crazy, spam a few decoys, make yourself unkillable with 10 sharks until enemy can react, cloak them.
Lots of LTs circling around their prey in base! Now all hell is starting in fr and the freq which can deal with the explosions everywhere better wins.
Enemy coming to base in spider swarms? Let's see how they like L3 bombs from fr.
Teams unbalanced? Alright, I'll hop to the other freq and keep the fun going.
Hm, got my group of pals around, why not make a priv freq and hold fr against the swarms of the pub freqs?
Oh an experienced LT! That one could be fun to hunt, or to guard.
Feeling like some non-basing? Get into a Terr or Lev and combine speed with brute force, get a [ship x]Turret, challenge people to duels around the safes, sit on roof and see what comes.
Need a break? Can always sit in safe or spec for a bit or be idle floating in space to type and nobody will threaten to ban you from a squad, they won't tell you to be there at time x and play vs. enemy y. All up to you.

Well I barely play Lev or Terr although I do at times, but as you can see the things that make the game interesting to me often involve levs and levterrs as they used to be and frankly, why would I even want to play a game when there is nothing that keeps me interested? If those suggested changes for lev come I will for sure be gone from this game, just like pretty much every old pubber. My chats totally dried out from about 60+ people to like 20, today I'm lucky if I ever see anyone anymore. Those people did not leave due to time, they left when mootland(ph), fiS and now you messed around with the game they learned to love just because some TWD-playing staff member comes with the idea that pub should be the same since this must be the best setting as it is a league, the glorious elite of players( ,not). They also keep coming with it being a fact that LTs ruin the game. What I see is simple: the zone which has the LT survived, while others did not.

Also, since pub squads with all their great tactics died when the mootlandish pub changes came LT is the most advanced form of teaming in the whole game with people driving, dodging, shooting, bombing, mining, guarding, repelling, scouting, sacrificing, escorting, greening, meathshielding and communicating and it takes quite some experience (or a built in cheat of buying a kill on roof) to counter a LT of experienced players working in a harmonic team. Now your plan: scrap this, we don't need this, we can live with a boring "all in one 100x100px spot shooting the same 10x10px spot. Makes me shake my head, sorry.

[Wazzaaa.nl]

Thanks guys.


Options under the Sun:

#1. Pure Pub: For example, every Friday from 6pm to midnight, Saturday noon to 6pm, Sunday through Thursday unrestricted. (or something along those lines)

#2. No Attach: I don't like this idea, I don't think anyone does. 99.9999% chance we don't do this..) <--bad idea..

#3. Population Limit: Disable the Leviathan when population is under 10-15 (or so) active in-game, playing, players.

#4. Basing Levi: Instead of making small adjustments to make Levi a better basing ship - we might as well go with this plan 100% and implement a true basing Levi in the absence of LT'ing. <--likely the best option currently on the table in this bad situation..

Sigh.. best option rly!?
I'm mad tired of all these adjustments to the levi, i cant even count how many times it has changed lately.. and another basing ship?
Pff no thanks i like how pub is various in ships.. thats why its pub and not twd.
Even if you guys will implement this 'basing levi' ppl will complain they'll want their LT back.
Then we'll be back in this neverending circle of making changes in the levi to compensate.

I think option 1 is the best to have pure base during peek hours/days and non-base during the other hours.
This right here is the perfect balance

[Shaddowknight]

If doing pure pub, it should be split in time 50/50. Alternate based on days. This would allow people who can only log on certain times of day to be able to have both, instead of being locked into a certain one.

[qan]

If doing pure pub, it should be split in time 50/50. Alternate based on days. This would allow people who can only log on certain times of day to be able to have both, instead of being locked into a certain one.

Or alternate every 2.5 hours (or other odd amount of time that would cycle when Levis were enabled, so that each day it would be a different time). This is assuming an old L3 Levi, though possibly without its bag of tricks. The tricks (reps, ports, rockets) allow any Levi to get to safe and get greened rather rapidly. In years past, they may not have been as adept at this process, but I think perhaps why LTs are able to be so destructive, even with L2, is because they have their system down extremely well.

Perhaps just make it more difficult to work that system ... demand more of the LT team, so that their skills are pushed to the brink -- but still allow the great reward of a POP of an L3 bomb. Great risk and great reward. That's always been the appeal of the Levi. Grind, grind, grind your spawns ... then get lucky and have a nice ride. Meanwhile anyone who is able can get a nice cash bonus for killing you. (Increase bonus slightly?)

I remember when the blocks were placed outside the base holes to prevent LTs from doing those long shots where you start out at the ring, rush forward and pop open the base. We might use this to help inform modern strategy. We could still use map elements to prevent LTs from being as effective.

My personal preference, after having thought about it a bit, is: L3 Levi with no toys, !buy restrictions for Terrs that have been carrying a Levi in the last 60 seconds, and (though it pains me to say it, as it's a settings change, even if not very noticeable) a slightly increased fire delay between bombs. And no pure pub.

[KrynetiX]

____ ___ __ _

So, let's say the plan is to restore L3's and default Leviathan settings. Here's a list of restrictions that might happen:

#1. Assign times to force pure pub, and have the schedule managed via bot.

#2. Force pure pub when population dips below a certain level, with a 5-minute warning to LTs.

#3. Strip them down to their core ... no repels, no portal, no rocket.

#4. Allow no LT to !buy after the Levi attaches to the Terr and the Terr isn't in base (they have to !buy in safe still)/allow no Levi to !buy, period. Include a minute or so of delay time, so Terrs can't detach their Levi and then !buy. This would force them to move through spawn to green ports, risking their necks.

#5. !buy L3, which lasts a certain amount of time, certain number of shots, etc. Might have a minimum bounty requirement, too.

#6. Make !buy roofturret more affordable and with a small time delay between purchases. If people would like to base without distraction, they can enable that and have at least some of the problem handled. Could also have !buy roofturret left/right/etc., which would spawn a turret to the left or right of roof, to try to catch LTs by surprise.
____ ___ __ _

Secret weapons just in case L3 Leviathan + non-ship-settings adjustments above don't effectively protect basing games:

#7. Increase bomb and bullet fire delay. What if a Levi could fire a bomb only once every X seconds, and that firing also kept them from firing anything else?

#8. Increase bomb fire cost to very close to full energy.

#9. Increase gun fire cost.

#10. Increase afterburner cost (already very high, but you could make it essentially a key no Levi would want to touch).

#11. Reduce recharge. Of course, recharge is already punishing enough.

#12. Reduce maximum energy (could honestly make it so 1 spider bullet kills a Levi, if we wanted; adjust recharge and bomb/bullet fire cost accordingly).
____ ___ __ _

Numbered so that if anyone notices anything here that would cause potential problems they can easily point out which restriction they're referring to.

We should have every possibility on the table and carefully choose which to implement. I'd love to restore the classic Leviathan (L3, the works).

Can anyone think of any more?

[Shaddowknight]

#1 approve
#2 appove x10
#3 seems quite a bit harsh. take all but the repels away if anything (repels are annoying from them, but if it's the only thing they got, I think it's fine)
#4 fine IMO, but mostly indifferent on it.
#5 seems fair if they don't get L3 back by default
#6 As effective as roofturret is for helping keep LT's at bay, it also makes roofing in any other ship impossible. If you make it more affordable and less delay time between !buying, it should last less time. Also having more than 1 spot it could possibly sit would be helpful as well, as lt's on roof can sit in certain spots in the asteroid belt and just ignore the bot'sbullets firing into asteroids nearby.
#7 Not sure it's needed. There should be better ways to hit LT's more than lone levis.
#8 I would be okay with it being raised, but not sure putting it that high is needed.
#9 Their bullets are not the problem, it's one of the few things lone levis have to defend themselves properly. (it's pretty easy to keep out of their bomb line of fire if you are actually trying to)
#10 Not needed at all.
#11 Also not needed
#12 Also seems unneeded, there are better ways to help on the issue.


Some additional ideas:
#S1 Make feeding kills to levis to help gain attach bounty illegal. (more work for staff, but not a settings change, and will greatly reduce the lt's ability to form unless they want to risk getting warned/speclocked)
#S2 Drastically raise attach bounty needed for levis (combined with above, something like 25 or the current 30 would be fine), and restore a good deal of their old settings, maybe keep L2 bomb though. Levis by themselves were never really a problem, it was ALWAYS the LT.
#S3 Completely remove Levi team green sharing (small effect, but makes greening naturally more difficult (moreso when combined with #S1)
#S4 Give terrs more of a Turret Thrust/Speed Penalty (not ideal, but will hit LT's more than levis, but splash damage on baseterrs running into base with players attached; not sure how big of a deal that is since terr's can kick turrets off, and it doesn't happen that often in larger basing games with multiple terrs per team)

[bkgmjo]

Lets say those restrictions happen, there are some things that might happen:

#1. Assign times to force pure pub, and have the schedule managed via bot.

a. People will get online expecting a game and get something else and leave right away. (just like it happened when mootland had pubs changed constantly)
b. Staff will constantly be bugged about the times and gets into endless discussions.
c. Since "pure" is a pretty confusing description for "heavy restriction", more player confusion is caused.
d. So-called "pure pub" involves no private freqs. Players who like those are driven away, too.
e. You will be known as the person who killed TW.

#2. Force pure pub when population dips below a certain level, with a 5-minute warning to LTs.

a. The low population becomes a zero population.
b. The normal population becomes a low population.
c. Players from certain regions will permanently be banned from some play styles, way to go to get player count up.
d. You will be known as the person who killed TW.

#3. Strip them down to their core ... no repels, no portal, no rocket.

a. People will not play lev anymore.
b. People will not play LT anymore.
c. All players who liked playing or hunting levs will leave.
d. You will be known as the person who killed TW.

#4. Allow no LT to !buy after the Levi attaches to the Terr and the Terr isn't in base (they have to !buy in safe still)/allow no Levi to !buy, period. Include a minute or so of delay time, so Terrs can't detach their Levi and then !buy. This would force them to move through spawn to green ports, risking their necks.

a. Nothing will change, most LTs left do exactly that today already and have done so since they existed. Terrs shipchange to refresh if you haven't noticed.
b. Discussions will go on and things keep getting changed back and forth.

#5. !buy L3, which lasts a certain amount of time, certain number of shots, etc. Might have a minimum bounty requirement, too.

a. The same thing that happened the last two times this was attempted happened. It was reverted quickly for a reason.

#6. Make !buy roofturret more affordable and with a small time delay between purchases. If people would like to base without distraction, they can enable that and have at least some of the problem handled. Could also have !buy roofturret left/right/etc., which would spawn a turret to the left or right of roof, to try to catch LTs by surprise.

a. Even more players get pissed by some *** on staff thinking adding a "!buy kill" as cheat for people who want to annoy others is a good idea to improve the game.
b. I will be pushed to tell people how to kill bot server to prevent staff abuse in form of replacing players with bots.

#7. Increase bomb and bullet fire delay. What if a Levi could fire a bomb only once every X seconds, and that firing also kept them from firing anything else?

a. People will not play lev anymore.
b. People will not play LT anymore.
c. All players who liked playing or hunting levs will leave.
d. You will be known as the person who killed TW.

#8. Increase bomb fire cost to very close to full energy.

a. People will barely play lev anymore.
b. People will barely play LT anymore.
c. Most players who liked playing or hunting levs will leave.
d. You will be known as the person who almost killed TW.

#9. Increase gun fire cost.

a. Since a lot of people complain about levs bombs nobody would understand why.

#10. Increase afterburner cost (already very high, but you could make it essentially a key no Levi would want to touch).

a. The endless spamming of "Remove levs afterburners, they got away from me again!!!" in pub would finally stop.

#11. Reduce recharge. Of course, recharge is already punishing enough.

a. People will barely play lev anymore.
b. People will barely play LT anymore.
c. Most players who liked playing or hunting levs will leave.
d. You will be known as the person who almost killed TW.

#12. Reduce maximum energy (could honestly make it so 1 spider bullet kills a Levi, if we wanted; adjust recharge and bomb/bullet fire cost accordingly).

a. People will barely play lev anymore.
b. People will barely play LT anymore.
c. Most players who liked playing or hunting levs will leave.
d. You will be known as the person who almost killed TW.
e. Since this is still subgame1 on a server nobody really has access to I am curious as to how you will do this without affecting other ships.

See Kryn I think you are doing good work but it seems this lev thing is bringing you on some kind of crusade. There is absolutely nothing anyone could show to me or you or anyone that would prove levs or LTs ever ruined anything while at the same time you just have to look at population stats to see what major changes do to the game. The only changes that actually added something to the game were those that gave the players more options like the timed pub or new ships or ship sizes(ya those were some time ago) or even the !fruit. A few of those adding options which at the same time would protect the flagroom in pub and spice up the game(I assume this is what you are actually trying to do, correct me if I am wrong) would be:

A. Use the tiles you can fire through but not fly through (for defense on roof) or the other way round to prevent the ever-annoying weasels from roof stealing flag while leaving the firing holes open.

B. Add more defense tower style things on top of base where it makes sense to fire out, but not in. Basics explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_fort

C. Add extra bounty whenever a LT reaches a certain number of kills. Will be like the GTA cops for the LT when they have to dodge more and more PLAYERS, not bots. This would actually involve players, while limiting stuff removes them.

D. Place constantly respawning(not bought) turretbots which do not fire themselves but serve as positions outside of base the flag-owning freq can attach to and fire from, but not use as shortcuts to places when unattaching. Somewhat like this with a terr inside:

# # # #      #      ## #  ## ##
           # TT#     TT#  # TT#
#  TT #    # TT#    #TT     TT
   TT        #      # ##  #   #
#     #                   ## ##

# # # #

Would involve players again, instead of replacing them with automatism.

E. Make the asteroids move so people cannot line up by them. Yes this is possible: make them doors that keep going on and off like the annoying christmas decorations. Can have the whole ring orbit the center of map that way like a 4-framed .gif.

F. A little weird idea but might work to make basing more interesting: Once a priv reaches a certain amount of players and has enough cash offer the option to challenge the rest of pub to basing duel after the current game finishes where they are warped into base and the rest of pub on two freqs has to capture base in 3 mins or so. If they win their wager of say like 1k-10k bux per player on that priv gets doubled and returned to them, if not all players on the freq that touched flag first get the privs wager cash shared.

G. Bring back the bi-weekly "Basing weekend". Was always successful, no idea why it was scrapped.

H. Add to those pub events like different themes and settings like they happened a long time ago. (examples: inverted controls on april fools(just 180° rotated gfx and weapon angle), medieval theme with lev=catapult terr=wagon wb=knight... and castle style walls, brickday where everyone gets bricks on respawn, mix ship settings (shark=terr), quakeday (quad damage), minetime (every ship gets a mine and rep, shark+lev double max), decoyday, SVS day, retro maps, demo day (only the first 4 ships like in the demo version) and and and, lots of events possible in pub, even more than back in the day with all the bots we have now)

I. Get the achievement system in place.

J. More bounty+items for round wins based on time.

K. Give out no-tk bonuses to bomber ships in base.

L. Give out stay-on-same-freq-for-x-mins bonuses independent from round wins. Could prevent some freqhopping to winner freq.

M. Add buyable walls in form of doors that block the side entrances/roof holes or even add an extra wall on roof/sides of base 4 tiles away from the normal one.

N. Add a sign like the Round End things that came recently which shows if a LT is around or a weasel close to base.

O. Use the donation cash to have new sounds done which alert or inform the players of stuff. (LT alert, Win imminent, Last Terr left freq, GOGOGO!, cheap !buy sounds like "team fall back" or "cloaker!", ...)

P. Add a bowl faceoff: make a ring of asteroids like the pub duel rings of pretty small size (50 tiles or so) with a door in the middle. Warp all players on pub freqs in there before next game starts (each freq one side). Open door after countdown. The players surviving (can be more if on same freq) get a bonus like one thor for each round of the next game or their freq starts the first round of the next game in fr, while the loser freq starts in mid. Make it optional so people who don't want to participate don't have to.

Q. Give the option of building an own house in pub for 1 Million bux (or more or less based on size since fiS says a park bank would be enough for her as long as the WB fits). Make an entrance to the "city" from asteroid belt.

R. Add a gallows with enough ropes where you can hang cheaters and teamkillers instead of speclocking them (deprize everything, keep giving shield).

S. Place the best players(by ships and basing awards, probably also richest, most buys and so on) for the last month as a list somewhere on the map.

T. Place portals on the sides of map that directly lead to elim/base/twd/duel/currently hosted event. I know ?go is easier but that might make the subarenas more prominent to new players.

U. Add a second currency called something like basebux you only get from actively basing which allow you to buy certain items which cannot be bought by normal spacebux or enable you to buy things outside of safes while others have to go there to buy.

V. Add a league system to the pub dueling which resets every month to not make it too complex.

W. Add more Mini-Games to the bots like !fruit (I am working on some atm)

X. Add fancy duel options with custom setup of greens or permaprize like reps and bursts.

Y. Enable 2 vs 1 duels and similar.

Z. Allow betting on which freq wins round.

[. Allow people to buy ground on the map and let them plant tools from their ship there which they can harvest for fancy greens or bux if they cared well for them every day. (I know this is weird but we might run into a billion new players like the facebook farming games :P Just imagine how they'd care for a thor tree if they could harvest a thor once a day)

\. Add a ball with no use just for the funk. (Just read this somewhere on forums)

]. Place a wormhole in lower spawn again so people can play orbiter.

^. Place a new player circle somewhere to which staff or trusted players can warp newbies to show them basics.

_. Make a few arenas (# and not #) which have all alternatives of base for players to practice.

`. Allow a !nogreenspam which makes the bots shut off.

Ok, ran out of ASCII signs before the small letters start. Hope this list gives you a few options on what can be done without removing features(and players) from the game to make it more interesting or push it more into directions you think are better. Some ideas are by fiS, some stolen from older suggestions on forums and some not so serious. Still I think it would be much better to add things than remove stuff which showed successful for almost two decades. Also, people love the rulers who give them presents way more than those who take their toys. What you are attempting to do here is burn rome to make it more pretty.

[Shaddowknight]

I like ideas G-N.
O is easy enough to do, we just need to find "the voice".
S is something thats been tested in elim and worked well, so Id like to also see it improved upon and used elsewhere.
I like the idea of T, but with some of these options I feel a new pubsystem bot would be needed (the hotspot warps and pub games like fruit).
V is basically combining ?go duel with pubdueling, and I feel it could be done decently well.
W is something everyone would like to see.
X would be nice, but low priority.
I dont like[ at all, ] and / are good.
_ Already exists pretty much.
^ and ` seem kinda meh. ^ has been planned in some way for months just bever got off the ground.
Bunch of good ideas in here IMO. Ill see about talking to kryn and others to see if we cant get moving on some of the easier ones, and get a plan for some of the more complex ones.

[bkgmjo]

Heh, not saying put in all of those, just some alternatives to removing stuff and not all of them are dead serious and some will need someone who is really dedicated and motivated to put them in.

[Zeebu]

if i play pub, i do my best to spawn levs until they shipchange. once they manage to attach to a terrier i leave pub.

i am killing tw.

[Drosophila]

A major theme of this thread is considering changes to the levi that would make it more balanced as compared to other ships in pub. In a series of earlier posts, I had analyzed the win loss ratio of the levi and the seven other ships. The purpose of this was to develop a quantitative means to evaluate the relative strengths of the ships. One criticism is that this was based on the top 100 players sorted by total number of wins. Here, I have repeated my analysis of the win / loss ratio for the eight ships, but now for the nine different categories that can be used to sort players on the public stats web page. The main finding is that regardless of how the data are collected, the levi has a significantly higher win loss ratio than any of the other ships.

The strength of the levi is of course widely recognized. What I am providing here is a quantitative means to assess ship balance. I also realize that numerical analysis is not the end all be all solution to ship balance. For example the shark is an excellent and well balanced ship (with a low win loss ratio). Rather what I am providing is a tool that may be of some use in evaluating ship changes.

=======
In more detail, the public statistics were download at 3_4_14 at 1 pm EST. This is the day before the reset that occurs every two weeks. In a previous analysis, I had only analyzed the win loss ratio for players sorted on wins. This was criticized as being a biased analysis that was focused on the most active / best players. To address this issue, on the public stats website, I listed the top 100 players for each ship sorted on all of the possible categories. These include: wins, name, rating, average, squad, losses, flag points, kill points and total points. In total 7200 win / loss ratios (i.e. 100 players x 8 ships x 9 categories) were calculated.

For some of the categories, the TW-Bot was included in the warbird stats. This was removed. In addition, in some categories there were players who had either zero kills or zero losses. These data were removed. The first reason is that it is not possible to average infinity. The second is that people sometimes launch a ship, die once or twice, never get a kill and don't play that ship again. In the statistical analysis below, the n value for wb and levi are shown.

Very broadly the categories can be divided into two groups, one that is biased toward more active players: wins, losses, flag points, kill points and total points.
And a group that is a more random sampling of the population: name, rating, average and squad. Looking across all the groups in the figure below, the data are very consistent.

Of these categories, total points seems to me like the best measurement of total activity (as it reflects both the number of kills and the amount of time spent in pub) and name seems like the most random sampling of the population. (Though I'm open to other ideas here).

As an example, I provide the numbers for the ships based on sorting the players by total points and by name.

Total Points	Ship	win/loss ratio average	sd	n	95%ci
	wb	1.14	0.35	99	0.07
	jav	0.99	0.41	100	0.08
	spi	1.17	0.46	100	0.09
	levi	2.87	2.14	100	0.43
	terr	1.24	0.52	100	0.10
	wea	0.74	0.33	100	0.06
	lanc	1.20	0.48	100	0.09
	shark	0.65	0.24	100	0.05

Sorted by name	Ship	win / loss ratio average	sd	n	95%ci
	wb	1.05	1.00	88	0.21
	jav	0.97	0.48	83	0.11
	spi	1.06	0.55	88	0.12
	levi	2.22	2.12	84	0.46
	terr	1.02	0.76	85	0.16
	wea	0.79	0.48	75	0.11
	lanc	1.10	0.64	93	0.13
	shark	0.63	0.35	77	0.08

Looking over the numbers, the patterns are very similar.

From an earlier post, it was pointed out that the most active players were likely to have a better win loss ratio than would be reflected in a random sampling of the population. Previously, the way I addressed this was to examine the slope of the win / loss ratio, sorted on total number of wins for the 100 players with the most wins. In that analysis, I found no correlation between the win/loss ratio and the total number of wins. Thus, I concluded that 'activity' is not correlated with the win loss ratio. Here we see that there is a strong trend for the top 100 players with the highest total points, to have a win loss ratio that is greater than the more random sampling based on player name. In a two tailed t-test for each ship between the categories, indeed the average win loss ratio of the levi is significantly less (p=0.04) based on the sorting using name. Likewise this is true for terr (p=0.02). This indicates that the win loss ratio tends to be higher for more active players than for a more random sampling of the population.

On a related note, I have done a systematic analysis of the relative activity (total wins) of the players. It turns out that the top 11% of the players account for 50% of the total kills. The next 11% account for 25% of the total kills, and so on (this is an exponential distribution similar to radioactive decay). Thus a small group of the most active players have a very large impact on the 'pub experience'. In these terms, sorting the players by total wins or total points provides a better reflection of the players that make the largest contribution to pub.

One potential caveat with this data is that the levi was under two different ship settings. The old one for a week and the new one for a week. While this could have potentially changed the win loss ratio, there is no significant differences between the win loss ratio from this score reset period over the last two weeks and the one before it. From this it appears that if there was a change in the win loss ratio during the last score reset it was not dramatic. Consistent with this, the 95% ci was even slightly smaller for this reset.

		w/l ratio	95%ci
last reset	levi	3.31	0.52
this reset	levi	2.99	0.43

It would have been interesting to look at the effect of changing the settings on the levi more closely. One way to do this would be to time ship changes to score resets. Or to force a score rest. I can see problems with both approaches.

In less quantitative terms my take on the problem is:
A. Winning is fun.
B. Winning is easier if you have an advantage.
C. The levi has an advantage.
D. The levi is fun.

The problem is that reducing the power of the levi will make it less fun for some people.

The issue of the levi in pub is widely recognized, hence this tread. What this provides is a quantitative means to assess ship balance. As mentioned above, this is just one piece of the puzzle to consider.


Best,
Drosophila

PS. some might argue that the better win loss ratio of the levi is because the pilots are better. To test this go through the list of levi pilots and look at their win loss ratio on the levi and the other ships.

PPS. This analysis was largely motivated by the comments of Eph and But…why…per… My sincere (and not at all sarcastic) thanks. I agree that for this to be a useful tool it needs to be developed with rigor. And yes Eph, BTW you were right.