Philosophy: To create an ideal playing enviroment that stimulates teamplay, constantly shifting roles, and discourages camping. By continually decreasing the number of points each player can obtain, a new element of strategy is introduced, forcing teamplay upon the players. The team will have to formulate its strategy around the idea of variable roles, making it a necessity for each player to take a turn at attack, defence, and midfield. Since only captures count, sniping and stationery play is discouraged, but not eliminated. While it may prove to be useful to the team, the sniper will eventually have to attempt to capture the flag if they want to maximise the team's points. I estimate a game will be finished within 15 captures, though 10 is reachable. The lowered timelimit assures that games will be quite short regardless of server activity. Parameters and explanations:

Fraglimit: 200 frags; 2/3*300
Timelimit: 13.333 minutes; 2/3*20

Mirror damage: g_mirrordamage 0.333; the player inflicts 1/3 damage on himself for shooting a teammate. This is applied in order to discourage weapon spamming, senseless shooting, and highly inaccurate shooting.

Scoring: Only captures, flag returns, and suicides count, setting g_ctf_win_mode to 3, in other words.

On to the actual scoring, flag returns and suicides will remain constant, 3 points and -1 point respectively. Caps will lose 1/5 of their point value each time a single player caps. For example, the first cap Player 1 makes is worth the full 20 points. Caps 2 and 3 are worth 16 and 13 points respectively: 4/5*20=16; 4/5*16=12,8; 4/5*12,8=10,24. After 3 or so hypothetical caps by Player 1, Player 2 steps in to attack. Player 2's first personal cap, although the fourth capture in the team, will be worth 20 points.

After talking to Doku, he said that the coding of an additional cvar, g_ctf_flagscore_capture_reduction, may have to take place. I talked about one cvar with multiple instances, where the number of instances=the max players on a server. Basically, g_ctf_flagscore_capture_reduction would set the point value for 1 cap at 20 and count each subsequent cap as 4/5 of the previous value. So points per cap=4/5(4/5(...(20))), or 4/5 of 4/5 of ... of 20, 20 being the point value for the first cap.

(19:17:56) Doku-Work: so if you make it as simple as apple pie, then it would more likely be accepted
(19:20:49) Doku-Work: the most I think you could get is a reduction percentage value

In other words, the cap value is reduced by 20% for each new cap by a particular player, with the decimal point values being rounded up. Caps per player are already tracked and shown on the new scoreboard, so it's simply a matter of awarding 20% less points for each cap ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS, while using 20 points as a 'base' to reduce from. And here's some final elucidation:

(19:34:13) Doku-Work: when you first mentioned the idea, I thought you meant that each player would have to cap once before the original capper can cap again
(19:34:21) Doku-Work: lol
(19:34:28) Mute_Print: that would be impractical :3
(19:34:43) Doku-Work: yeah, your idea gives the team an option
(19:35:05) Doku-Work: they could rotate for more points, or they could stick with 1 or 2 good cappers for more caps and fewer points
(19:35:31) Doku-Work: if the score is close, then they might opt for the faster cappers just going for 10 pts
(19:35:45) Mute_Print: I was thinking of that 'jump-in reading' exercise that I did in middle school :3
(19:36:13) Mute_Print: where it was loosely organised and people took over once a passage was finished
(19:36:15) Doku-Work: hehe
(19:36:37) Mute_Print: of course, teamwork would be forced if a team hopes to win

Yet another such CTF topic. It's crawling of them. Why not just stick to one, preferably the sticky in the 'Gameplay' category.

Mute Print wrote:In other words, the cap value is reduced by 20% for each new cap by a particular player, with the decimal point values being rounded up. Caps per player are already tracked and shown on the new scoreboard, so it's simply a matter of awarding 20% less points for each cap ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS, while using 20 points as a 'base' to reduce from.

In other words, you're trying to force teamwork by punishing those who know how to flag run... instead of giving positive incentives to reward other aspects of team play. This system provides no incentive to play defense. If you're saying points don't matter though, then the flag cappers won't care, thinking "whatever, all my flag caps are the reason we won"

It's not a nice idea but I think your negative incentive is too bias towards good players and you lack positive incentives.

To understand the dimensions further, check out this screenshot


To me, torus should not be in second place, his cap to return ratio is worse than [pur3]'s, who also has done a lot more for the team per the fc kills and returns column. Rewarding less points to torus for those caps would bring him lower on the scoreboard but it ignores essential elements of team play that should rather being making [pur3] rise.

Perhaps for all this team work mumbo jumbo its a good idea to put in a few Q3: Team Arena styled points. Such as flag carrier defense/capture assist.

The suggestion may be fine, but not this way. Maybe points for a capture by the same player SHOULD decrease, but not in a geometric series, please.

Why not? Simple.

First cap = 20 points
Second cap = 20*0.8 points
Third cap = 20*0.8*0.8 points
n-th cap: 20*(0.8)^(n-1) points
Caps 1 to n together: 20*(1 - (0.8^n)) / (1 - 0.8) = 100*(1 - 0.8^n) points

So a single player cannot cap for more than 100 points!

Better use a series that does decrease, but whose sum still diverges. E.g. 5 points for a capture + a bonus that's 15 points for the first cap, and decreasing after each cap (but ALWAYS at least 5 points!).

[-z-] wrote:To me, torus should not be in second place, his cap to return ratio is worse than [pur3]'s, who also has done a lot more for the team per the fc kills and returns column. Rewarding less points to torus for those caps would bring him lower on the scoreboard but it ignores essential elements of team play that should rather being making [pur3] rise.

ai's suggestion to not give all return points to the returner, but ALSO punish the one who lost the flag when it is returned, would fix this.

Assuming returns == pickups - caps, torus gave the enemy 45 points by losing the flag. Now if you make the scoring take that into account, torus would have had only 26 points!

Better would be maybe giving only 3 points to the returner, but also taking 3 points off the one who lost the flag.

If ONLY caps count, one could even go so far and subtract whole 5 points when you lose the flag and someone else returns it, AND give the returner 5 points. But in points-based scoring, this would put too much bias on defending.

divVerent wrote:Better use a series that does decrease, but whose sum still diverges. E.g. 5 points for a capture + a bonus that's 15 points for the first cap, and decreasing after each cap (but ALWAYS at least 5 points!).

Perhaps that would be a better -- and easier way -- to count scores. I had completely overlooked the potential for, say, 10 caps by one player; I had assumed no player would cap more than 4 or 5 times if they want to win the game.

[-z-] wrote:In other words, you're trying to force teamwork by punishing those who know how to flag run... instead of giving positive incentives to reward other aspects of team play. This system provides no incentive to play defense. If you're saying points don't matter though, then the flag cappers won't care, thinking "whatever, all my flag caps are the reason we won"

It's not a nice idea but I think your negative incentive is too bias towards good players and you lack positive incentives.

Yes, a lot of emphasis is placed on caps, an idea brought to me from playing a few games on Phoenix. What I proposed was a way to force a variety of cappers by reducing the cap value per cap on an individual basis. After someone has capped a good amount, it is assumed that a team that wants to win the game will replace Super Capper 1 with another player, allowing Super Capper 1 to 'fall back' and defend.

Camping, sniping, and static defence all have their advantages regardless of whether the player's kills count or not. The high mirrordamage value is set to discourage the stuff that happens on hydronex; that awful rocket, electro ball, and crylink spamming that turns 'defence' into nothing more than a huge cluster-fuck.

In caps-only system, I wouldn't care if I would be left with -10 if I could cap 6 flags and bring victory to my team.

Div, do you have an official verdict on whether or not this will be implemented with your change applied?

You guys are cruel :'(

Probably not, but you can make it as a mod. If you want, I'll make a diff for you that you can apply on your server. But it sounds like nothing good for the official code base.

That's fine.