Basic Rules of Engagement

I figured I'd put some ideas down as to the "Rules of Engagement". keep in mind they are in no real order..I'm just putting them down as they come to me.

- If a player goes linkdead during a tournament match, then that match is considered a "Draw". (this is to keep some players from getting "free" victories).

(ok.. we'll try this from another angle... in this case, if a player goes linkdead habitually, then we have them penalized)

-- I'm not sure how doable it is, thinking about it, in that we don't know about a link death until about 30 seconds (maybe longer) after it happens. If we don't know the connection is dead, it will appear the suit is just standing there (or running in a straight line, or something) on the server and other client machine, dependent on how prediction is done. In any event, people probably blow the crap out of it while it is doing the lag dance before LD is determined.

Do we wait to award the match until after we're certain participants are all still connected? What if it is a two on two match, do we declare it a draw and end the match -- or do we play it out?

I'm not sure, I need to think it out some and I'm mostly spent at the moment. I'm not saying "no we can't do it this way," I'm just saying I think that its something that needs to be thought about.

(Eiji) Ok.. all things being equal, I just wanted to see if we should have some plan to deal with this situation... since we know that lag is a problem in almost every online game... I thought we should at least put down some ideas to deal with it, since I figure that no matter how much bandwidth you have in your internet link, we probably will never be able to get rid of lag completely.

- For a player base to be attackable... a certian percentage of the owner-association need to be on to defend it.... only THEN will the base be attackable. (this is Dave's idea, and I think we should run with it...)

-- thinking about this some more, the base (mines, etc.) probably should not operate without people being at specific stations within the base. These can be minigames or just places to have to be for the base to function. To prevent people from just putting alts there and going AFK, the base becomes attackable when the necessary stations for it to be operating are manned. Once the base attack scenario has been initiated, the stations no longer have to be manned for it to continue to be attacked (but its other operations stop when a station isn't manned -- for example, if the mining station is not manned, then all mining stops).

Again, thats just a thought, but I think that makes more sense than "you have 5 people online, so you can be attacked." It also means that bases have to be manned periodically (opening them to attack) to see any benefit out of them.

(Eiji) I see your point in this case... I had thought of making mines automated to some degree originally... but this DOES seem like a better idea... (added in: I had thought that we might make things like mines and some forms of base defenses be slightly automated, but they would not function nearly as well compared to them being acutally "manned")

We also might want to look at making these stations mini-games, and having public (lower grade potentially) stations for those not in clans. Reasoning...

When you're waiting on your friends to show up to play, inbetween episodes or series, etc. and taking a break, its something you could do "different" from the main game.

In GW, TR, CoH/CoV, etc. attacks are consentual also. That is, both parties must agree to the "war" before it can take place. That is soemthing else that we might consider -- the big thing is, I think it would be better to reward folks for doing stuff than for them just buying a building and paying maintence up on it.

(Eiji) heh... with both sides having to agree to a war.. that kind of sounds like the "batchall" used by the Clanners in Battletech.. but I think thats not a bad idea.. in the original concept of this game, I did leave in a provision for "battle pistes" to be use to settle disputes between player clans by the method of single combat..so this should be something we should run with... just not use the idea word-for-word.

If we went with the faction stuff I posted under economic ideas, the bases are a "mass." If the players want to retain their "mass," then they have to defend it. An opposing faction could generate missions for similarly manned, similarly powerful PA's to attack opposing bases. This would also open the way for "public" bases, with "public" stations that could be subject to NPC or PC attack and have to be defended. That could make for interesting game play...

(Dave)