Re: Marine Extra Man Plugin Discussion

**Kerostasis** · 06-25-2006, 04:39 PM

I don't know if this is official policy or not, but here's what I've started doing (since reading this discussion)...

When the voice spam starts, I take the next non-life-or-death moment to check the screen for text that says things like "TG Lost is joining the game". If no one's joining, I ask someone to switch. If someone is joining, I wait ~15 seconds to let the new player join and fix the teams. But if its taking any longer than that, I'll ask someone to switch anyway (or switch myself, depending).

But I don't think this needs to be written into the plugin. If we can agree that this a good policy, then we can just let the regs and SMs know about it, and ask them not to bug people to switch over voice com until after ~15 seconds or so.

**Irish Pirate** · 06-26-2006, 12:08 AM

Originally Posted by Slurgi

In a game yesterday afternoon, I was forced to switch teams and was our 'hive' gorge. This can really hurt a team.

At times it can help a team as much as it can hurt.

I find in most games that are relatively full (and you are talking about games with 15+ people) there are usually two or three people with 50+ res around hive dropping time.

If the team pays attention when the person switches they can assign someone else to drop the hive, and it can potentially bump other people into range of being able to take some of that res handling responsibility.

Lets do some math! Thats always fun!.

In a game that has 8 alien players and the teams become unbalanced, if you have 44 or more res you will be bumping other people up to 50 res when you leave the team. 44/7 = 6.3, any other person who has saved thier res will instantly be at 50. (this isn't counting rfk, since you are last on the team we can probably assume the next person who is saving has 2 more res from a kill, really turning this more into a 40+ res thing)

In a game with 8 alien players and you leave when you have 50 res, you are giving whoever does drop the hive enough res to get an mc or rt along with it. 50/7 = 7.1, 3 res short, but they will have it down before you know it if they actually babysit the hive. You will also be letting all those aliens who dropped rts get into 30 res lerk range (thier resflow would be the 50 you have -25 for gorge and rt, +7 res from you = 32) or a good chamber rt combo for the new hive. (35 res)

I think people tend to forget we actually have something in place that is supposed to take care of the alien disconnection. Be glad you get res when someone leaves it could just as easily be that you lose it all. It might not be perfect, but every time I hear people say something like that or something about how bad it is if a fade leaves the team I want to yell at them about all the problems that had to be solved so thats the only thing they have to worry about.

Things might get better but in this regard I wouldn't count on it.

**Yoshi MCF** · 06-26-2006, 12:27 AM

Just because somebody is in last place doesn't mean they should switch. If the person in last is in the middle of doing something extremely important, the team as a whole should pick someone else to go over (possibly looking at the other people towards the bottom of the list).

**Irish Pirate** · 06-26-2006, 12:59 AM

Originally Posted by Yoshi MCF

Just because somebody is in last place doesn't mean they should switch. If the person in last is in the middle of doing something extremely important, the team as a whole should pick someone else to go over (possibly looking at the other people towards the bottom of the list).

This is true, I almost edited my post to say it, but the team can decide to choose someone else.

In the secnario I was addressing, the person who was saving for the hive was being "forced" to switch. This places him either at the bottom of the list or as someone the team selected to leave. I figured it would save time by making the assumption he was at the bottom of the list, since there was probably at least one skulk who dropped an rt and wasn't going to do anything for a while if the team was going to make such a decision.

If the team decides they need you to drop the hive, it has to be decided quickly who is going to switch. Just as the rules say, it doesn't matter who switches as long as it happens fast.

**TheAdj`** · 06-28-2006, 06:10 PM

In case no one noticed it the plugin has already been altered. It looks like it doesn't say anything for the first few seconds, then [Unbalanced Teams] appears, then the next message is the full message with voice spam. I've already noticed a significant drop in the annoyance factor I feel when the plugin starts chirping away, so I appreciate it.

**Wyzcrak** · 06-28-2006, 06:53 PM

I started to post about the change here, but I wanted to observe its behavior some before doing so. There were reports, right after I made the change, that it wasn't firing when teams became imbalanced. I think it was just the timing change, and I think the plugin is functioning per my modified design.

Feel free to offer any feedback.

**Irish Pirate** · 06-29-2006, 02:13 AM

I noticed, and I think it works well enough. I seem to notice the text about 50% of the time, and hear the voice the other 50%. I'm fairly certain no team unbalance has evaded my detection (I don't know what the timers are for both text and voice, but I'll assume it all happens in an acceptable amount of time)

**Iceberg** · 08-09-2006, 02:33 AM

Idea:

Teams get unbalanced. Someone on the opposing team types /teams in all talk. The opposing team gets 1 minute before the last player on the team gets automatically switched if the teams are still unbalanced.

This gives the other team time to decide who will switch, and check to see if someone connected and will join instead.

OR

Give the guy in RR 20 seconds to join a team once he connects when a game is in session.

**Pokerface** · 08-09-2006, 03:08 AM

More thought is being tacked on to the imbalance idea in the admin forum at present, as we are reflecting on how the state of the server has progressed since the implementation of this plugin.

More to come.

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