WYRDYSM GAMES

I thought I'd create a thread for people to discuss tournaments and rules in general as opposed to specific ones with their own idiosyncrasies.

Feel free to post any ideas you might have regarding tournaments that could be run in the future, demand that someone run one, argue about whether fleet tournaments are better than single ships, big vs small, and so forth. Feel free also to refine point systems, engage in heated debate about whether aegis should be allowed and if so exactly how, and the price of point defence.

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I'll kick off with an idea I have for a tourney which I desperately want to run, but have no time to do so because of exams.

The Mothership Tournament
This tournament consists of two shipbuilding periods. In contrast to the AtM tournaments, teams of eight collectively build their own 800 point Mothership in the first period, and then submit the resultant design to the organiser. The organiser then posts pictures of these designs publicly, beginning the second design period in which individual team-members each create a 100 point escort ship for their Mothership.
The tournament itself sees battle with the 800pt Motherships along with their 100pt escorts duking it out against each other, probably in some sort of Swiss matching system.

I don't suppose any charitable soul would be willing to start something like this up?

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heh, one thing I found is that if someone's gonna do another mothership tourney, crank up the cost of lancets... either that or build a protective shield of aegis's

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Speed caps make frigates no fun at all.

Also:

Assault of the Motherships
A team of 3 players each build a 300 point ship and they fight through three different scenarios:

Border Defenses
Fleet Ambush
Planetary Defense Ship

Any ship destroyed in one of the scenarios does not progress onto the next. [/u]

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Don’t worry it has airbags.

You can do that or make a team limit of the number of lancets allowed (or whatever item you are trying to control or limit so that it is not overpowering).

Lancets pwn motherships, regardless of aegis, unless its completely ringed with it, which is no fun.
However, you could buff the weapon HP so that the lancets do nothing.

Someone should try that, but not tell anyone :twisted:

A tournament with custom weaponry, of course.

Maybe force weapons to have a max average DPS of X.

But then people might make beamers which deal 20 thousand damage, but have a cooldown of a few years...

Well, I'm wondering if I should start a tournament to destroy the Thanatos (or the successor, if I build one). 8 people can pick any mass-produced Dark Orion in my thread to attack it. Although with that, they'll probably all use the Aegis module.

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Orion Industries Shipyard
Wyrmtech Industries Shipyard

I think I have a solution (well, perhaps merely an idea) to the apparent lack of projectile weaponry and prevalence of beam weapons that seems to be developing in some tournaments, whilst also solving issues related to aegis rules and lancets at the same time.

As well as a small increase in point defence pricing, how about the unlimited use of Aegis? However, Aegised sections are limited to 50HP, and can't have anything mounted on them. They are of course still restricted to sections per aegis limits, as well as a hefty price.

With a bit of testing, I think this solution works quite well. What it means is that beam-only ships can't touch a ship with 360 Aegis but that even if you add a bunch of flak a ship with a bunch of Gat Blasters can still take you down.

A variation on this is that you can have multiple generators target a single section, each of which allowing 50HP (so that a section targeted by three generators would have 150HP). Hopefully point limits and section limits would be sufficient to prohibit too much abuse of this.

A quick think about point defence pricing also leads me to believe that a scaling price might be appropriate. The first PD of a type you buy costs you 1 point, then the next 2, then the next 3 and so on. Therefore, if you wanted 4 flak, you'd have to pay a total of 10 points. 4 flak and 2 point beams? 13 points. You want to stop all projectiles with 8 flak cannons? That'll be 36 points please.
This should encourage lots of different types of PD whilst also putting a practical limit on how much you can afford.

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It's because flak are superior PD in tournaments.

allowing aegis to be used like deflectors, but setting the HP's of aegised sections to 50 is a brilliant idea. It creates an impervious defense against beamers while still making the section destroyable by as little as 3 shots from a blaster. I also like the idea that aegised sections can only be buffed by having more than one aegis targetted to the same section. I don't know if that will cause problems with the game, but if not it looks like a great alternative to no aegis at all.

I like your version of the incrementing point cost addition to the PD cmdprompts ruleset.

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Game physics fail.

Come on people, another mothership tourney? What are you, dead?

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tl;dr-ers will be shot on sight.
BSF Wiki
"I have measured your 'fun', and science has quantitatively rated it a three." ~Lord Tim (Data Realms Fan Forums)

Tooling around, this is the sort of ship that could be built (I haven't totted up the point totals on this thing - I just threw it together in 5 minutes, but you get the idea of what I mean).



http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... stest2.shp

EDIT:



Hence the variation on the theme, which I believe gives it an interesting twist. Don't be fooled by the name Mothership, the tourney's a different beast entirely.

Besides which, the format is obviously popular enough to warrant another iteration.

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Beamers aren't that good. The only reason you see them so much is that we've had about 3 seperate fleet tournements. Beamers are great in fleet tournements. They are even better in low HP tournements.

Fleet tourneys show how devastating a good firing solution on a unshielded section is. Beams become prefered because your ships won't be staring at the front deflectored section of a ship all day long and become a guarenteed hit. Combine that with low HP and beams become monsterous. Only a combination of ablative + lots of deflectors can stop them or ships with high speed.

In single combat, however, beams usually can't hit a vunerable area or fire frequently enough to do any decent amount of damage. You have to become creative with weapons.

The main point I guess I'm trying to communicate is that there are a variety of factors that factor into defacto beam dominance. The most important one is the ability to move to fire on an unprotected section. With projectiles, this isn't an issue. The only way you can achieve a similar effect is to hit a ship from two different directions with projectiles to punch past PD. With beams, if a ship can get a firing solution on an undeflectored section with the deflectors already set, then its almost a guarenteed section kill.

I've been wanting to propose a Aegis sort of thing that you've proposed for a while so tournements can have them. My idea was for any section with an Aegis shield to have its total health set to 10% of what it was. I like your idea of multi-aegis to increase the aegis cap. The only thing now is that is it worth the same as a deflector or still more? What about lancets?

However, I don't think that they are the solution to mass beams. The easiest way to achieve balancing beams is for fleet tournements to set them one point higher(assuming 100 point) and make section HP average to higher.

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Don’t worry it has airbags.

With BSF being a fleet game, I think we will be seeing quite a few fleet tournaments of one kind or another. They're more interesting and challenging than "create a hulking dreadnought" tournaments, IMO. You're right to point out that beam weapons are better in fleets, at least to a degree. So really, beamers are here to stay.

I don't believe it's all that useful to simply increase HP values, however. That does nothing other than draw fights out for longer, turning them into battles of attrition and promoting the ability to sit in front of the enemy for longer - soaking up their firepower with deflectors, nanos and high HP rather than trying to dodge their shots.

I believe the aegis solution is far more elegant anyway. It solves a lot of issues with Lancet-laden ships stripping their opponents before the match starts. Further, it completely removes the whole issue of "how much can we allow people to cover with Aegis, is this legal, is that legal, where's my protractor?". The only issue is, as you correctly point out, how useful Aegis is, exactly, and what it's worth compared to other options of shielding (presuming we wish to give people as many viable options as possible to promote variation).

That said of course, developing tournament rules is an ongoing process at which we can only experiment. Perhaps running two tournaments, each addressing the issue in a different manner, will demonstrate which is the better solution.

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Oh yes, it will make lancets so much more balanced. That's the primary reason I wanted it. Aegis for super ablative armor is just a nice side effect.

The reason I harped on HP levels was that in the 3rd Custom the point scheme favored ablative armor over increasing section HP. Though I don't agree it was a bad decision because it led to some interesting ideas and dramatic fighting. Beams blow the hell out of ablative armor with low HP. I was mostly advocating for the normal HP increases, or reasonable HP increases instead of almost completely uneconomical ones.

Personally, I think that Aegis should be per 2 sections and about the same as Deflectors.

Actually your seashell ships from 3rd Custom can actually beat my fleet about 40-50% of the time. They are the only ones I've seen that are able to beat them on a regular basis.

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Don’t worry it has airbags.