I see this as an option. Obviously combing through the logs would be a tiresome job for a sysop. Can this be scripted server side?

In most sports, you go into overtime to break a tie, or in the event of racing, they move on to high speed cameras or timing to check it down to the hundredths of a second to determine a winner.

I bet this could be done even for the tourney you just finished, as long as the final game data hasn't been nuked. Might be an interesting exercise, even if the outcome isn't officially changed. A way to learn and adapt for future tournaments, perhaps.

That's true, RP, but even in sports where the games don't end in ties, team records often do. When that happens, they look at various stats for a tie-breaker in order to decide things like play-offs eligibility, and in some cases, even declare a winner of a division/conference or whatever. But not always. Like I said, in college basketball, you can have co-conference champs, and both get a trophy. It can work either way. I don't think either is inherently bad.

Only difference being in BasketBall the teams did not meet in the middle of the floor and just say it was to much, so can we both have a trophy. They played with all they could and if that is how it worked out then that's what there are tie breakers in place for or even a co-champ award based on scoring.

If you would have bothered to read the game logs after your team was eliminated, you would see where several deaths occurred and 2 more players were eliminated by deaths. Almost everyone on both corps were down to thier final death before elimination, and the planets were Level 6 with plenty of gas. So if either corp attempted an invasion, they would have lost because of elimination by death. You can't put an 8 death limit in a game and expect that game to end in anything but a stalemate. It was a miracle we were able to put your corp out by deaths and still have anything to hold off Kraaken with. You want Elite? Think about an Elite edit and settings next time.

I definitely agree with the idea that two competitors can shake hands and call it a draw. If both teams are willing to share the victory because they both recognize that they can't win outright, then who can complain? Not every player/team has the understanding or discipline to make that call, and I'm sure many would end up forcing the issue and lose rather than accept a draw.

If either team thought they had any chance of winning it outright, they'd have gone for it. Nobody prefers a draw. I know when I'm playing chess, it's often a struggle to assess my position and decide when to keep playing and when to offer a draw. In a way it's like poker, trying to assess your hand and the hand of your opponent. Maybe the enemy is much weaker than you know, and you offer a draw and they eagerly accept. That's the interesting thing about it. But once both sides agree it's a draw, you have two winners by mutual agreement.

I'd say if this was a league where you kept track of points for wins, the teams would split those points. But in terms of simple bragging rights, I really think you have two winners.

Well said JP!! An exprience sysop would have put a "game end date" on the tournament, and a method to determine a win off stats like kills/deaths so on. TheRev is one of the only good sysops around still that ran great tournaments for that reason!

There is precedence for joint winners, going back to the second BOTE. The Moderator, Budweiser, got fed up with the game occupying his nodes and shut it down with more or less no notice.

Team Miller Party Board (essentially Badhouse IIRC) and Eclipse (SG and I were on that team), the only corps left standing, agreed to call it a tie after he stopped the game.

We had been almost stalemated for some time even in the chess meaning of the word, back and forth invading each others bubbles.

I wouldn't blame gameops who fail to account for the possibility of stalemates. Those who do really have to go above and beyond, because the game just doesn't support it well at all. I'm surprised there isn't a standard script out there for ranking players after a tournament as a tie-breaker.

Therein lies the rub- Do you start counting the number of deaths towards the tiebreaker? If so, that might limit teams willing to moth to invade another corp.
It's just like chess- you can offer your opponent a draw, but they have to accept or you keep playing. Eventually someone will win/lose on time or position.
It seems to me like they saw it was pointless to continue and so agreed on a draw.

While it is almost a must to put an end date and winning scenario in place, however, as JP said it is also difficult to come up with a points system that can't be manipulated by the teams in the game. If you give points for upgraded planets, everyone will build planets and won't invade. (Turtle). If you take away points for deaths, everyone will avoid invasions and situations where they might get killed or podded. (Stalemate) The only way you can really determine a winner that does promote aggressive game play is by awarding points for kills/pods and promoting agressive play. Points could be given away for captured high level planets, but that can also be manipulated to an extent the way the game is currently set up.

There is but it was written for MBBS and I doubt it would work TWGS. Essentially, it assigned values to assets, based on the Stardock prices, with added in valuations on Citadel levels. It was configurable. here it is.

The readme will explain the rationale, I dont think the exe will function.

Oh, I totally forgot about those early apps. I looked over one of these at one point and thought it might be a good blueprint for providing some additional metrics to score games by. It may be the same tool you're talking about, but there was one for TWv2:

http://wiki.classictw.com/index.php?tit ... :TW_Winner