I agree on some of the points, the bug that lifted players from the citadel was a known bug and fixed in the current release. I can't say if it was data corruption or not but I would say there were a few strange things happening. Plus I never used the words B.O.T.E. in my original post. I might have eluded to it based on it was the last tournament in play.

I honestly am only looking for possible answers to fix a potential problem in the future. It would suck to see every tournament end in a stalemate.

Yet we are. 2 teams decided to split the game rather than try to win. So GZ wins one on points (turtle style) and splits one tradehuggy style. One wonders if GZ can actually win a game outright. (ie kill the other team) Looking forward the the ICE 2012 results. Will it be more tradehugginess?

H

In Chess, a win is 1 point, but a draw/stalemate is half point each.

I personally consider a tie to be two winners. When the KU basketball team ties for 1st place in the Big 12 conference, nobody ever remembers that they shared that title with Texas. Kansas is credited with having won the Big 12 for 7 straight seasons, the second longest conference title winning streak behind UCLA (11), but nobody cares that they shared three of those titles with Texas. In many cases, a tie is a win for both sides. Not saying it has to be seen that way in TW, but saying "tied for first place" still means "first place". I personally was one of four people who were valedictorians in my high school because we all had the same GPA. But I just put valedictorian on my resume. Not "one of four valedictorians". I earned that right.

I think the proper designation is co-champs. Not co-losers or co-drawers.

It happened twice to Zep and KB, and both times they sent the screen caps, never showed them lifting, and also it even showed zep trying to land once he gets the attack message, and he is clearly at cid, and planet prompt while trying!I have never been attacked while at the Cit. prompt nor have seen I seen it except where the games data was currupted, A tell, tell sign is when your gridding around you scan a sector and is says its a one way but really it isnt! Or you will see that one of the adj sectors is the same sector you are in, and when you do a holoscan you see yourself and planet in the adj. sector!!! Happened many times in that game!!

Somethings we dont agree with each other, but this one we do!!

I'll just put it out there, that to me, a draw only = twice the runner ups. Especially in a tournament situation. Otherwise you're just promoting two or three teams to turtle up, and say they were winners. If you truly want to win, you need to step up to elite status and push the envelope. Some days you might win, some days you may loose, but you have the satisfaction of having tried.



I have no way to look into the files and see if they were corrupt. JP's much better at that sort of thing. I do know that this game had far fewer interruptions than previous hosted tournaments. There was once due to the ISP, and another due to power. I’ll yield that the ungraceful shutdown from the loss of power could have corrupted data, but no other games complained, and what could I have done? Start over?
As far as the edits, I'll say it again, and again, and again. I opened up discussions for edits for a month prior to the actual game running. Any changes would have been considered as long as they were in keeping with the tradition of the tournament. Kraaken requested a change in corp size, which was accommodated. But no other changes were suggested to me. We ran the same edit as the 2010 tournament with a change to corp size, and turned off alias use.

This can also be caused on your local machine. I've seen it happen.

1) TWX using the incorrect or corrupt DB
2) loaded up and linked to a TWXSync server on the wrong DB

I don't know if it's possible to reach a consensus on whether a draw means you have multiple winners, or if it means nobody has bragging rights. But I do think that there is strong motivation to find ways to make the games less drawish. The changes to tournament "death count" hopefully will do that. But there could be other ways to guarantee that there's a single winner, even if the game doesn't end in one team standing. For example, if the game had more relevant stats, then a tournament could be given a definite end-date at which time the winner is based on points rather than "last man standing".

I'd really like to see some more interesting victory conditions for tournaments. The game was designed to favor the defensive position. Scripting and advanced tactics have changed that balance somewhat, but stalemates are going to happen unless we add some options to eliminate them. You never see a draw in a "king of the hill" type game, for example, and turtling isn't an option in that kind of game. So there are many ways we could improve TW tournaments. And then this question of stalemates would be moot.

The only problem is if everyone knows the tie breaker or the scoring system they play that direction instead of out right trying to win. I forget what tourney it was but it came down to how many of the other teams planets were capped. So corps were capping SDT planets that had no citadels on them and upgrading them to get the points.

It's TW's and there will always be someone looking for a loopholes instead of a clear cut victory.

I don’t remember if it’s been suggested or not before, but a death limit in conjunction with a limited number of days to play in tournament mode might be beneficial.

But like T0yman suggested, if you put it out that after 45 days the game ends, and it’s based on points, they simply play the points. I’m open to suggestions on some way to make the game less turtleish.

Only way I see around this also doesn’t seem reasonable. That is to bring back the long games. Nobody these days wants to put months into a game. They all want fast cit’s etc. In a long game you have to play the points, and take a chance that the game will last till the timer runs out, or you can play to win before the timer expires.

Sure, but as with any game, with a few refinements you can come up with some decent, balanced tournament modes. I'd like the gameops to have enough control to create their own game modes and victory conditions, then they can refine them as they see fit without having to rely on me to do it.

For sure! I agree. I'm just trying to think outside the box myself to figure out what it would take to promote the battles, and what I might need the game to support to make the desired outcome possible.
I love that you're here supporting the game, but aways try to think to the future when your other adventures keep you away from the upgrades.

Yeah, I can't believe I've had this much time to devote to it lately. Things just worked out that way. The main project I'm working on in my "day job" is an educational game, and it pays the bills, but it's not really that exciting. TW is a great outlet for my creative energy.

Before long, there will be projects that I'll want to devote my full attention to, and TW will drop back on (but not entirely off of) my priority list.

I agree with you John. A tie is the same as having two winners.

It would be a pretty easy statistic to determine a winner in a tournament after a designated ending date that would avoid a stalemate.
A way to tally kills for each player. Quasar cannnos, mines, offensive figs, debris, blind warps, etc... None of that should matter. Keep it simple, the only things that should count as kill points are:

1) Ship to ship kill/pod
2) Trader(s) on a planet when someone blows it.

Only 1 check. The enemy player destroyed/podded can't be yourself or anyone on your current corp.

This type point tally will encourage invasions and killing therefor promoting an actual winner for that game.
All a low death limit does is discourage invasions and promote stalemates.