Tremulous Forum
General => General Discussion => Topic started by: tjw on August 21, 2006, 04:57:15 pm
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Aliens have a clear advantage once Sudden Death starts. This is due to the fact that they only need to kill armouries to revert a human team back to Stage1 since they cannot rebuild an armoury during Sudden Death. Aliens on the other hand are free to rebuild their Overmind (at least currently). Now here are some solutions:
1) Don't allow buildings with 0 build points to be built in sudden death (r1trem does this?)
2) Make armoury cost 0 bp, but limit the number allowed (1 or 2?).
I'm an advocate of #2. I like Sudden Death being not-so-sudden since I find the end game to be the most entertaining part of the match, especially in close games.
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Maybe change the SD rules to only prevent building turret and spawns. It should be enouth to cause the game to end soon while still providing both teams with the same offensive and healing capabilities.
After all, humans cannot regen like aliens and thus killing the medistation would also be a big blow for them. The armory and the medistation are so weak that building a ton of them wouldn't be of much help.
Thus I would chose none of the above choices :)
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As i told you yesterday in sst, i like the idea of adjusting what can be built, and putting an overall limit, like you did with only 1 armory. It would be cool if we could get cvars for all of this added to g_admin, say:
- g_amrorybps
- g_armorynumb
- g_medistatbps
- g_medistatnumb
- g_telebps
- g_telenumb
- g_dccbps
- g_dccnumb
- g_boosterbps]*]g_boosternumb
- g_eggbps
- g_eggnumb
Are the only ones that would be needed.
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As i told you yesterday in sst, i like the idea of adjusting what can be built, and putting an overall limit, like you did with only 1 armory. It would be cool if we could get cvars for all of this added to g_admin, say: - g_amrorybps
- g_armorynumb
- g_medistatbps
- g_medistatnumb
- g_telebps
- g_telenumb
- g_dccbps
- g_dccnumb
- g_boosterbps]*]g_boosternumb
- g_eggbps
- g_eggnumb
Are the only ones that would be needed.
This change could not be a cvar easily since the client needs to know the number of build points each buildable costs.
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You have a point..
Maybe connecting the armory to the generator.. perhaps it can't be destroyed while the generator (defense computer maybe?) is up... maybe like a forcefield kind of thing. Aliens can't evolve when the OM is down, but when its up they can from anywhere. I think linking them would be more close to what the aliens have and keep it balanced because you still have to buy an armory, and it can still be destroyed.
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If you want to limit the buildings, you could go for a BP reduction algorithm : each time a turret is killed/deconstructed, you lose the corresponding BP, but not if the amory is killed. Should be simple enouth to implement once you decide which buildings are "impossible to replace" in SD.
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Oh i m used to db@ servers (the only servers where i get a decent ping) and i didnt know they used a special SD. I m used to 0 build point SD and it works pretty well.
It always favors the team who is already winning but cant pass through the ennemy defenses because they rebuild too fast.
But i guess this also depends on how long your SD lasts. This setting is useful for 5 min SD. Its hard to resist, but if teams aren t too unbalanced you can manage to barely escape your doom during the 5 min. If your SD is longer, this setting will probably ends the game faster.
Can someone tells me what are the default settings for SD in Trem ?
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What about this:
When a building is destroyed while it's sd, you will have half of the bps back, this would generate a mission to aliens, rape the base without giving humans enought bps to build armoury, new turrets or tele & repeater set.
It's just a suggestion, but might be funny ;)
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Can someone tells me what are the default settings for SD in Trem ?
//after 55 minutes, all build points are removed
set g_suddenDeathTime 55
//after 60 minutes, the game will end as a draw
set timelimit 60
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If you want to limit the buildings, you could go for a BP reduction algorithm : each time a turret is killed/deconstructed, you lose the corresponding BP, but not if the amory is killed. Should be simple enouth to implement once you decide which buildings are "impossible to replace" in SD.
Except you KNOW some builders are going to try to build another turret instead of an armoury with the precious last 10 build points :)
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Well, maybe deconstructing turrets should give back the BP to the team but then you might need something to prevent the humans from deconstructing a turret just before aliens kill them.
Except from that, it's just something else human builders have to learn :)
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Or you could just make the OM not-rebuildable.
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Or you could just make the OM not-rebuildable.
No, its good that you can rebuild it..
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Doesn't matter too much, Humans are still at a disavantage even when SD means no building at all. OM down only means aliens have to avoid dieing. Armory down means no more chaingun, no more shootgun and riflemen have to die to get more ammo.
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Maybe change the SD rules to only prevent building turret and spawns. It should be enouth to cause the game to end soon while still providing both teams with the same offensive and healing capabilities.
After all, humans cannot regen like aliens and thus killing the medistation would also be a big blow for them. The armory and the medistation are so weak that building a ton of them wouldn't be of much help.
This makes the most sense. I really hate only being allowed one armoury since it makes moving more difficult and ties humans to their bases even more than they already are (even though, yea, no one actually tries making forward human bases it's still nice to be able to). Plus losing medistations is almost as crippling as losing armouries.
Sudden death should just disallow rebuilding of spawns and defensive structures (defense computer may or may not qualify, all alien structures except booster, spawns, and om would qualify) so the goal becomes knocking down defensive structures until you can get to the enemy spawns. You could also lower build points to the total cost of armouries, medistations, boosters, and maybe defense computers present at the onset of sudden death to simplify allowing those structures to be rebuilt instead of just saying you get one of each of these.
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Sudden death should just disallow rebuilding of spawns and defensive structures (defense computer may or may not qualify, all alien structures except booster, spawns, and om would qualify)
You don't think aliens should be able to rebuild OM?
I like the idea of just limiting SD building to non-defensive, non-spawn structures.
TBH I don't think Hovel should be allowed to be rebuilt (or Repeaters either) since they can act as barricades.
Ideally it should probably just be Reactor, Overmind, Medi, and Armoury that can be built in SD since those are the structures that maintain player upgrades.
Implementing this in a non-hacky way is the hard part. Perhaps if build points weren't actually removed in Sudden Death, but instead you just get an error whenever you try to build something other than one of those structures. Like:
"Only buildings essential for survival can be constructed during Sudden Death"
Of course, this would probably also have to have a check to make sure you could only construct one of those structures if there wasn't one already or you would wind up with 10 armories.
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The only thing needed to make it even is remove the ability for the om to be rebuilt.
Currently a mara can kamikaze the human base and take out the arm and end any hope humans can of winning but if a human kamikazes the overmind....it just gets rebuilt.
Once the om can no longer be rebuilt it's a balanced playing field, the key structure which allows the powerful units/weapons to exist can be permanently removed.
As for reactor rebuilding...one has to really ask: how many times does the reactor go down and the humans manage to survive to see it rebuilt? One in twenty games maybe if that?
And yeah r1trem does remove ANY building after sd and it works quite well. Aliens have to protect the om as much as humans have to protect their armory.
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Sudden death should just disallow rebuilding of spawns and defensive structures (defense computer may or may not qualify, all alien structures except booster, spawns, and om would qualify)
You don't think aliens should be able to rebuild OM?
Yeah, for all purposes, OM does not qualify as a defensive structure and it is the equivalent of the armory. So if humans can replace reactor and armory, aliens *should* be able to replace the OM.
Not sure if the Defense Comp does apply though. I would suspect that if that one was easy to kill and vital to the base ( lot's of tesla ), humans wouldn't have lasted until SD anyway so it shouldn't matter too much that you can rebuild it.
The only thing needed to make it even is remove the ability for the om to be rebuilt.
Currently a mara can kamikaze the human base and take out the arm and end any hope humans can of winning but if a human kamikazes the overmind....it just gets rebuilt.
I played on servers which prevent any build during SD, it still favors aliens greatly. Armory is far easier to kamikaze run than the OM. At alien stage 3, the only reason the human armory and defense comp aren't killed instantly is that the Tyrant/Adv Goon will probably suicide in the operation and the building would be replaced in a matter of seconds. In SD aliens wouldn't think twice before kamikazing a Tyrant on the armory.
PS : I don't think having ten armories is such a problem in SD. As I said, they would die very very quickly once all the turrets are down. I guess it's something we'll have to test so having a cvar to toggle that behaviour in the next version could be a good idea if we go for that SD behaviour.
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Ideally it should probably just be Reactor, Overmind, Medi, and Armoury that can be built in SD since those are the structures that maintain player upgrades.
That's what I meant, plus booster since it is/will become an important upgrader (booster, eggs, and overminds I don't consider "defensive structures", but we don't want eggs rebuildable). Still not sure about the DC.
Implementing this in a non-hacky way is the hard part. Perhaps if build points weren't actually removed in Sudden Death, but instead you just get an error whenever you try to build something other than one of those structures. Like:
"Only buildings essential for survival can be constructed during Sudden Death"
Of course, this would probably also have to have a check to make sure you could only construct one of those structures if there wasn't one already or you would wind up with 10 armories.
That's why I suggested cutting build points down to the amount that would cover existing rebuildable structures (plus explicitly disabling the building of other structures so those points couldn't be misused). That way you wouldn't have 10 armouries (maybe two meds instead of the med+armoury you started with, but that's not a problem) unless you built them all before SD started... which would be pretty stupid because those turrets you can't rebuild in SD are pretty important. This way the game would never have to dictate how many of each structure can be built.
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I think I approve the rebuilding of the armory for SD. Sounds good.
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I agree. One of the best ways to balance SD is to either allow armories to continue to be built, or make it so the OM cannot be rebuilt.
DComps I see as being a 50-50 option. Good builders will NOT stupidly make their entire base tesla-only, but a good base would need it. Check out my Karith map in the "Good base location" thread about how I built my test-karith base - (Although I should get new pictures of version 2 and 3) for a breakup.
Currently, SD is, IMO, one of the biggest reasons why Aliens win a hell load of SD's. All the aliens need to do is kamikaze the armory/dcomp, and the humans can all /quit and "gg". Humans? Have to survive tyrants (We usually already hit S3 by then) adv. goons, and a base that won't die because the OM keeps respawning. =\
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And if you're going to make it so armories can be rebuilt, then you have to make them give evos for being taken down. Human suicides on OM, gets credits, and OM can be rebuilt. Alien suicides on armory, no credit return, and arm can be rebuilt.
But I still think no more OM rebuilding is fair and simple enough if you want to balance it out.
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And if you're going to make it so armories can be rebuilt, then you have to make them give evos for being taken down. Human suicides on OM, gets credits, and OM can be rebuilt. Alien suicides on armory, no credit return, and arm can be rebuilt.
But I still think no more OM rebuilding is fair and simple enough if you want to balance it out.
the difference is that armories have very little hp, and as a result, any alien that has 2 points to spare can take it out if the humans aren't careful, and any alien with 4 points to spare can take it out pretty much any time they can get LoS on it without stepping into turret range , the reactor and om require much more for a suicide run to be successful.
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Aliens have a major advantage in the game regardless. If the aliens can get stage 3, they will almost always be able to even the game out. On the other hand, if it's s2 humans vs. s3 aliens, they don't (and never will) have a chance. Allowing armouries to be rebuilt would make the human SD more even to alien SD, but I think it takes away any likelihood of a lucky alien win.
So I have some ideas for sudden death that would make things interesting to say the least.
My first idea was to make sudden death more sudden and to really give anyone (even a rifleman with no armor) the chance to end the game. And that is simply that once sudden death rolls around, all defensive structures (turrets, teslas, acid tubes, trappers) stop working. Spawns cannot be rebuilt.
This would mean that a team trapped in its base will always lose when sudden death comes around. But if anyone can escape, they can end the game (if dretches can attack buildings).
As a side effect, I think that it encourages hiding. So when the timelimit comes around, and if there is a team that cannot respawn (but the other team can), the team the can respawn wins. Otherwise it is a tie. (A lone armorless rifleman could tie the game, but not get the humans a win if they can't kill off the aliens.)
My second idea was fairly simple: limit the number of respawns allowed during sudden death (default 3?). Don't mess with the build points or anything like that. That way, I think that a human team that is doing well during the beginning of the game can't lose in 20 seconds when a couple tyrants maul their base. But at the same time, it encourages spawn camping during sudden death, makes SD less fun for newbies, and makes it even harder to get to the next stage. (To prevent people from reconnecting to get 3 more respawns, don't allow spectators to join during SD.)
I don't know if either of these would work at all. I just think they might be interesting. (And they make "sudden death" more like its name.)
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Are you kiding ? Did you play Trem in SD more than a couple games ?
The point of the changes for SD is to make it more balanced because for now, it favors Aliens greatly. And if the OM cannot be rebuilt either, it still favors the Aliens. And if you shutdown the defensive structures, it means the humans will die very very shortly while they still have to hunt for the hidden eggs ! Your suggestion will only make SD even more unbalanced that it is.
Besides, the defensive structures will go down soon enouth in SD.
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Are you kiding ? Did you play Trem in SD more than a couple games ?
No, yes
The point of the changes for SD is to make it more balanced because for now, it favors Aliens greatly. And if the OM cannot be rebuilt either, it still favors the Aliens.
Judging by your next sentences, this was addressed to me. However, I have no idea how it related to what I said.
And if you shutdown the defensive structures, it means the humans will die very very shortly while they still have to hunt for the hidden eggs !
Only if the humans are already losing or coward up in their base during sudden death. The idea to which you are referring would prevent the humans from doing that.
I recall reading that egg hunts is being addressed. On some maps, if the aliens just build eggs and no other structures, they will either tie or win. This is not an issue with my ideas, but with the ability to hide eggs anywhere.
Your suggestion will only make SD even more unbalanced that it is.
By giving the lowest classes a chance (albeit small) of getting their team a tie?
Besides, the defensive structures will go down soon enouth in SD.
So you agree that at least one of my ideas might have some merit.
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You have GOT to be smoking crack to make all the defenses get turned off. Have you SEEN good alien hiding places? ;)
I thought armories were like every other building, they give an evo point for wiping it.
The problem as I realized is that: OM's have a huge amount more HP then an armory (since it also doubles as the alien's "reactor") and is therefore much harder to take down (I'm not saying it's impossiblem painsaws FTW) compared to an armory.
But maybe this gets balanced out by build times - OM's take about 40 seconds to build, armories around 30. That 10 seconds could be the defining factor. Could. And if somehow, the armory/OM is taken down AGAIN while being built, that usually spells game over for the team anyway, so factoring in the build timers is negligible.
Thoughts?
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And if you shutdown the defensive structures, it means the humans will die very very shortly while they still have to hunt for the hidden eggs !
Only if the humans are already losing or coward up in their base during sudden death. The idea to which you are referring would prevent the humans from doing that.
Even a very strong human team will get wiped out shortly after SD starts if you shut down the turrets. Doing that is in no way balancing the SD, it is making it even more unfair for humans. You might as well make it so that SD self destructs all the human buildings it would be the same.
Did you try the alien turrets agaisnt a stage 3 human team ? They are next to useless compared to the human turrets, yet the game is considered more or less balanced. Shutting down the turrets will hurt the humans FAR MORE than the aliens.
I recall reading that egg hunts is being addressed. On some maps, if the aliens just build eggs and no other structures, they will either tie or win. This is not an issue with my ideas, but with the ability to hide eggs anywhere.
I do not make suggestions based on whatifs about the next version.
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Even a very strong human team will get wiped out shortly after SD starts if you shut down the turrets.
Have you ever been part of a strong human team? It consistently keeps pressure on the aliens and effectively forces them to play defensively. If a team in its offense depends heavily on defensive structures, it is a very bad team.
Did you try the alien turrets agaisnt a stage 3 human team ?
Properly positioned acid tubes in good bases are more effective than the average turret. Furthermore, just because a human can get a bsuit (assuming he can), doesn't mean he will.
I do not make suggestions based on whatifs about the next version.
Are you saying that egg hunts are an essential part of the game that should not be changed? I think the game you are looking for is hide and seek.
The purpose of communicating ideas is to improve on good parts and fix bad parts. You are welcome to dislike my ideas. You are also welcome to try improving upon them.
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Ideally it should probably just be Reactor, Overmind, Medi, and Armoury that can be built in SD since those are the structures that maintain player upgrades.
If you want the Human Medi in, please also allow the Alien Booster.
Currently I have SD completely disabled on Aliens' Wrath because of this Armory Problem.
Any change you decide on will be good. I prefer to limit building to non-defensive and non-spawn structures, lowering the buildpoints available and zero the cost of currently built defensive and spawn structures. I'd give humans 18 buildpoints and only allow them to build Armory and Medi, Aliens with 12 could build Booster.
On the other hand, you should get the same result, if you could pass the hovel-attribute (no cost, only one allowed) onto the Armory, Medi and Booster once SD has started and keep the current zero buildpoints situation...?
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Have you ever been part of a strong human team? It consistently keeps pressure on the aliens and effectively forces them to play defensively. If a team in its offense depends heavily on defensive structures, it is a very bad team.
No matter how good your human team is, it takes only one 2 evo point Mara sneaking behind their back and killing the armory to end it. In fact, your suggestion would mean that as soon as SD hits, a good part of the humans that were pressuring the aliens should ASAP get back to defend the base or lose the game.
Properly positioned acid tubes in good bases are more effective than the average turret. Furthermore, just because a human can get a bsuit (assuming he can), doesn't mean he will.
Funny, I thought that properly positioned acid tubes were either too far to make enouth damage or to close to the ground to avoid grenades. And if you find the sweet middle spot between those two, it means all acid tubes are regrouped in a small zone ( the sweet spot is after all very small ) and then, a single charged luci blast will annihilate them all. That is, in 95% of the alien base locations of course.
Alien turrets are just a speedbump in the way of a good stage 3 human team. On the other hand, human turrets are vital.
Are you saying that egg hunts are an essential part of the game that should not be changed? I think the game you are looking for is hide and seek.
No, egg hunts are annoying and a bad part of the game in my opinion. What I am saying is that until there are some rather official announcement about such change or until the next version is out to be tested, I cannot make any suggestion based on such supposed change.
The purpose of communicating ideas is to improve on good parts and fix bad parts. You are welcome to dislike my ideas. You are also welcome to try improving upon them.
That's what I'm doing : pointing out to you how unbalanced SD will be once you make your changes and suggesting not to do it.
Also, about the part where you reduce the BP in SD, just make sure it doesn't make the team go into negative BP or else they'll have to remove all turrets to replace the armory.
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I'm with TJW on this one.
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That's what I'm doing : pointing out to you how unbalanced SD will be once you make your changes and suggesting not to do it.
What you are doing is responding to selected segments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denying_the_antecedent) from my post, which explain why my ideas might not be as bad as you think they are, and you disregard facts I pointed out; common argumentative tactics of a defensive individual.
If you were actually interested in being constructive, you could have responded to my post (if you felt the need) in one or two sentences: "I don't think that disabling defenses during sudden death would help the problem [because ...]."
You instead started your response by implying I am incompetent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority): "Are you kiding ? Did you play Trem in SD more than a couple games ?"
You then reiterated the underlying purpose of the thread, implying I am too stupid to recognize it. You continued with some unrelated opinions and drew the conclusion (presumably from the opinions) that my ideas are without merit.
Finally, you discredited your entire post by providing contradictory information and implying that one of my ideas wouldn't make a difference anyway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance). (Something cannot unbalance things and not make a difference at same time.)
Your other posts replied to select pieces of my responses and implicitly relied on the accuracy of your conclusion to support that conclusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question). You also suggest that supportive hear-say is irrelevant because it is not currently applicable (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition).
Any proposed solution has to be tested before being rejected or accepted. That is the whole purpose of this thread. Drawing conclusions based solely on seemingly logical deduction may not be sufficient (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization). I can think of positives and potential negatives for many of the ideas, but any little thing can have a large impact (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope). (And I decided to discuss relatively large "things" 8).)
I intentionally did not suggest either of my ideas because I do not have sufficient evidense to support whether they are good or not. I stated that they would be interesting, as I think they would be (and perhaps useful information can be found from testing them). I don't have any expectation of either being used. But maybe my ideas will be useful in some way. (How could my ideas go wrong? Can these apply in other ideas? Do we need to take them into account? Would some aspect of one of my ideas be desirable?)
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Oh well, back to the original point for me I guess :
Shuting down turrets sure helps the SD end faster but I don't see any argument why it would make SD more balanced. Once again, the point here is to make SD balanced, not to make is shorter.
On the contrary, if the turrets shutdown at SD I'm sure a single alien marauder without any buildings left could take down the human base ( armory first, reactor second ) and kill the defenseless humans one after the other once they run out of ammo. This in my opinion would be a major imbalance in favor of aliens in SD which is exactly the oposite of what we are trying to do here.
So, before we go on a version with ( once again, IMHO ) such a broken feature, maybe you could give some arguments as to why it will "fix SD" before.
On a side note, I'm sure it'll be dead easy to implement though. Since the game already supports shuting down turrets with the reactor/overmind is down, it's probably easy to add a small condition testing also if we are in SD.
Also, I didn't talk about the limited respanw because I didn't have much opinion on such feature. Very hard to make a guess as to what will be the effects in the game. Still, I think it favors aliens : good Tyrant players do not die often and a human player without armory needs to die to get ammo and fight, aliens ( dretches ) do not. And last, I think it'll cause even more camping during the SD since dieing means losing the game.
PS : don't you feel like an Alien player that likes it's SD advantage pitched against an Human player that fights to get more balance out of that part of the game? I sure do in the end :) Your post opening starts with
[qoute]Allowing armouries to be rebuilt would make the human SD more even to alien SD, but I think it takes away any likelihood of a lucky alien win.[/quote]
It spells rather clearly that you do not want to balance that part of the game ;) Probably what have sent me of with the agresive reply.
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I feel the need to throw away my 2 pennies.
First off, egg hunts are a good thing. The whole point of being an alien is alien behaviour. Aliens do not need bases nor defenses. Spreading eggs is a valid tactic and tubes are there to soften up hummies, not to kill them. Fact of the matter is, alien builders need to stop building "alien bases" as if they were hummies.
As far as SD goes, kill SD! It makes absolutly no sense. If a strong team keeps attacking the enemy base yet can't make it thru due to fast rebuilding and intelegent defenses, the other team deserves a tie.
If you play on normal servers (12 slot, lets say), SD is not an issue since most games will end well before SD is hit.
IMHO, the best way to balance SD is to do away with it.
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That's why I suggested cutting build points down to the amount that would cover existing rebuildable structures (plus explicitly disabling the building of other structures so those points couldn't be misused). That way you wouldn't have 10 armouries (maybe two meds instead of the med+armoury you started with, but that's not a problem) unless you built them all before SD started... which would be pretty stupid because those turrets you can't rebuild in SD are pretty important. This way the game would never have to dictate how many of each structure can be built.
I've hacked up your suggestion.
Currently the buildings which can be rebuilt in SD are Reactor, Repeater, Armoury, Medistation, Overmind, and Booster. I've left Hovel and DefComp off the list for now, but I'm not sure about them.
I'm currently testing it on trem.tjw.org to see how it plays.
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I was thinking, and it seems that the reason sudden death isn't even is due to the differences between humans and aliens more than anything. Aliens only need an overmind and spawns, but humans need a reactor, spawns, an armoury, and a medistation. If any of those are gone, the humans are crippled.
Also, an alien can run away to heal (if it's clever it can even ambush it's would-be pursuers by its lonesome), but a human who's already used his medkit and is low on ammo can run back to base, heal, and reload; die trying; or take as many aliens with him. (A good tyrant may respawn very infrequently, but a good human doesn't have that luxury.)
Trying to quantifiably even out sudden death, while perhaps a bit better, still does not approach the real problem with sudden death. Short of crippling the aliens in SD, I don't think it can truly be evened out. (I guess that's a vote for nixing SD.)
If sudden death won't be even anyway, can we make it really fun and crazy?
Hehe. During sudden death, newly spawns humans have a 1/100 chance of spawning as a :tyrant: :eek:
Oops, that :turret: was really an :overmind: :o
Hey, my lucifer cannon is firing blaster shots!
Can you say "hitscan :dragoon:s"?
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I've hacked up your suggestion.
Currently the buildings which can be rebuilt in SD are Reactor, Repeater, Armoury, Medistation, Overmind, and Booster. I've left Hovel and DefComp off the list for now, but I'm not sure about them.
I'm currently testing it on trem.tjw.org to see how it plays.
I thought of a small problem with that solution : what if the armory gets killed just before SD and before humans can rebuild it. Will they still get the BP to replace it after SD starts ? I hope so :)
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As far as SD goes, kill SD! It makes absolutly no sense. If a strong team keeps attacking the enemy base yet can't make it thru due to fast rebuilding and intelegent defenses, the other team deserves a tie.
If you play on normal servers (12 slot, lets say), SD is not an issue since most games will end well before SD is hit.
IMHO, the best way to balance SD is to do away with it.
As for killing SD, I don't think so. You make it sound as if it is an exceptional thing to do ( be on the defensive for the whole match and survive until the last minute ). My experience differs quite a lot, especialy on ATCS. That map deserves to steal a famous Quake 3 map name : "Camping grounds". The original human base location is so strong that aliens have little chance of breaking it, even in SD ( if SD lasts only 5 minutes and they don't have the points to sacrifice enouth Adv Goons ). If an human team decides to go for the stalemate, they WILL last until SD if their builder is halfway competent. It is an easy thing to do.
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I've hacked up your suggestion.
Currently the buildings which can be rebuilt in SD are Reactor, Repeater, Armoury, Medistation, Overmind, and Booster. I've left Hovel and DefComp off the list for now, but I'm not sure about them.
I'm currently testing it on trem.tjw.org to see how it plays.
I thought of a small problem with that solution : what if the armory gets killed just before SD and before humans can rebuild it. Will they still get the BP to replace it after SD starts ? I hope so :)
No they wouldn't get points for it. That sounds like a legitimate alien strategy.
The armoury doesn't need to be built though, as long as it's building at the time sudden death starts, it counts for points.
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As far as SD goes, kill SD!
Any server operator can already kill SD by setting g_suddenDeathTime to 0. This is about changing the behaviour of the feature for those who use it.
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No they wouldn't get points for it. That sounds like a legitimate alien strategy.
The armoury doesn't need to be built though, as long as it's building at the time sudden death starts, it counts for points.
Fair enouth. I don't think it'll matter too much anyway.
Still, I would have loved to see a base composed entirely of armories :)
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Stof,
ATCS is the easiest map for aliens, when it comes to killing the reactor; regardles how good defenses are. In s2, build up 9 evo + adv mara, jump reactor and munch. If/once you die, rinse and repeat. That gives you 4 adv maras to kill it.
On topic
Prevent alien regeneration if the OM is not present during SD. This should even it out. This makes the OM = Med, armo and reactor.
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tjw, you are on the right track.
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That's why I suggested cutting build points down to the amount that would cover existing rebuildable structures (plus explicitly disabling the building of other structures so those points couldn't be misused). That way you wouldn't have 10 armouries (maybe two meds instead of the med+armoury you started with, but that's not a problem) unless you built them all before SD started... which would be pretty stupid because those turrets you can't rebuild in SD are pretty important. This way the game would never have to dictate how many of each structure can be built.
I've hacked up your suggestion.
Currently the buildings which can be rebuilt in SD are Reactor, Repeater, Armoury, Medistation, Overmind, and Booster. I've left Hovel and DefComp off the list for now, but I'm not sure about them.
I'm currently testing it on trem.tjw.org to see how it plays.
SD should mean "dont expect to rebuild deffences you are on your own use your evo/credits to evolve/buy stuff"
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Stof: SD still favors aliens greatly mostly because on such servers usually humans have failed to get off their asses and actually attack. Playing primarily on AKKA there have been DOZENS of games where I will suicide run the OM by myself because the team is sat behind their turrets....I either run out of creds or aliens wise up and keep a tyrant on guard which kills everything in short order if there's no 'fly space'.
So rather than force the human team to get organized, get some skill and actually work to not only survive but also attack it's easier to allow the rebuilding of half the base shit....
Now don't get me wrong, yeah a mara or goon or tyrant can just dive in and suicide themselves on a human building, but considering how pathetic alien defenses can be on normal bp servers what prevents humans from using the exact same tactic?
Not a damn thing beyond skill and intelligence.
Here's another thought: if things remain buildible how about disabling builders? Beyond those that exist at the time of sd disable the option to spawn as granger or with a ckit/buy a ckit from armory.
See sudden death is where key decisive attacks SHOULD be the end of the game. Where yes if you wipe out the om it's out for good and aliens can't evolve. Yes the aliens can wipe out the armory and make it unable for humans to get better weapons. It's the period in which you end a game.
By allowing majority of things to continue to be built...what's the point of sd to begin with? As another suggested just disable sd and let the game timelimit all the time :)
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Here's another thought: if things remain buildible how about disabling builders? Beyond those that exist at the time of sd disable the option to spawn as granger or with a ckit/buy a ckit from armory.
Would be fine for aliens, but humans have to repair their own stuff :).
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I think Phreak's idea on preventing regeneration is fantastic. Is it easy to do though?
I'll be sure to head over to TJW's more often right these few days to test out SD (if it even gets that far :P)
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Stof,
ATCS is the easiest map for aliens, when it comes to killing the reactor; regardles how good defenses are. In s2, build up 9 evo + adv mara, jump reactor and munch. If/once you die, rinse and repeat. That gives you 4 adv maras to kill it.
On topic
Prevent alien regeneration if the OM is not present during SD. This should even it out. This makes the OM = Med, armo and reactor.
I doubt you'll be able to pull that out against a human that knows where to place turrets.
Stof: SD still favors aliens greatly mostly because on such servers usually humans have failed to get off their asses and actually attack.
I'm not the one to contradict you here. I'm mostly concerned about the fact that a human team that actually attacks but doesn't manage to kill of the aliens are at a disavantage during SD. All that because humans are more or less doomed if they lose the armory and the medistation at that point. Think of the poor humans returning from a successful run against the alien base in SD only to find those vital buildings missing because even a weak basi can kill an armory in a very short time.
PS : if endless egghunts are part of the game and a valid tactic for aliens, then human camping until SD and storming the aliens with a few Luci is also a valid tactic ;)
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Agreed Stof.
Only problem is that most normal games, camping hummies lose.
As far as the Reactor kill on ATCS, while I don't want to get too off topic, only way to succesfully prevent that is to move reac slightly forward.
Simply placing turrets well doesnt help much if I still have 9 evo after the turret kills me.
You should watch me do it sometime ;)
As far as my suggestion regarding alien regeneration goes, it seems to be right on as far as balancing goes without messing with build points and buildable structures in SD.
I'm just afraid that it might shift SD in favor of hummies.
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Stof: if a basi can get near your bases most important team associated building and kill it before itself gets obliterated: the team deserves to lose. I mean honestly think on that situation you just presented, if the human base is well placed and there's a ckit (or 2) on duty to repair damage there's NO EXCUSE for allowing a lone basilisk to kill humans weapon shop.
Yes if a group of maras throw themselves into human base and kill the armory there's not much you can do but that's suppose to be the way things work, a well co-ordinated attack force with an objective in mind should reap the rewards of their assault. BEcause to be honest, usually the second the DC goes down the rest of the alien team pours in. Regardless if you could rebuild half this stuff humans simply lack the mobility of alien base placement.
In the end the only thing that really needs changing is making the om stay dead and getting humans to improve, skill wise. Both base building and how to assault an alien base need serious work alot of the time.
Again consider: When aliens need to move the om you have at least 3 people offering to help defend/decon/rebuild. Humans....you're lucky if one other person goes builder...and unlucky if that builder decides to build in a 'cool' new spot forcing you to fix what he/she has screwed up.
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How long does it take to kill an armory as an alien ( time from first attack to the last attack ) :
- 4.8s for a Basilisk
- 4.0s for an Adv Basilisk
- 3.0s for a Marauder
- 2.4s for an Adv Marauder
- 2.1s for a Dragoon
- 1.8s for an Adv Dragoon ( 2s using 3 barbs )
- 1.5s for a Tyrant
By comparison, here is the time it takes for a blaster to kill the various aliens :
- 5.4s for a Basilisk
- ( do I really need to continue ? )
I hope you've packed that famous akimbo blaster with your ckit :D
Edit : time to kill Basilisk was wrong
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After some thought and arguments from the others here, I'm leaning to say the Dcomp should NOT be rebuildable in SD now, but we keep the armory and medistat.
Aliens OM can be rebuilt, but they lose regeneration? How would that sound? That would mean that the aliens would become slightly less kamikaze in SD, but also push both sides to start picking up teh pressure (Humans because now they KNOW the guy won't run away and return in 5 seconds fully healed, Aliens because they KNOW they need to get those things down and get it down NOW)
Thoughts?
PS: Phreak: How the heck does that ATCS base work? I need pics man :P
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yeah med stops functioning but aliens regen health regardless of OM
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Most games I've played that have reached sudden death, the game has ended as a result of one player's activities. Many aliens won't start risking their precious evolution points until the defense computer and/or reactor are down. Many human teams win only because 1 player actually attacked (instead of those half-assed "Look at me, I'm not camping! Okay, let's go back to base now" attacks) and ended the game before sudden death.
I think that the real problems with sudden death now are that the aliens at large are too frightened to lose their preciously earned (throwing themselves at turrets until they get lucky kills?) evolution points to seriously attack and the humans at large are too frightened to lose their preciously earned (spamming at their turrets until they get lucky kills?) credits to seriously attack. When sudden death comes around, the aliens and humans are still frightened, but the aliens a little less so. The result is often the aliens camping around the human base and the humans camping inside it.
The reason I thought of disabling base defenses is because aliens like that are typically not the best players. On ATCS I have seen unarmoured humans run through a horde of tyrants without taking any damage, and getto the alien base just to die from an acid tube. I figure that if that human can manage to get past a bunch of tyrants actively trying to kill it, it deserves the win. (At the same time, if the humans let themselves be trapped in their base, they deserve a loss.)
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I think that the real problems with sudden death now are that the aliens at large are too frightened to lose their preciously earned (throwing themselves at turrets until they get lucky kills?) evolution points to seriously attack and the humans at large are too frightened to lose their preciously earned (spamming at their turrets until they get lucky kills?) credits to seriously attack.
I agree completly with you about the main camping cause ! But my solution would be to make it so that you do not lose your equipment anymore when dieing :) But that's not the only reason. You see, I'm a rather agressive player and I tend to get very often out of cash :oops:
I say, we should remove as much features that get in the way of agressive play ! But that is for a different topic.
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But my solution would be to make it so that you do not lose your equipment anymore when dieing :) But that's not the only reason. You see, I'm a rather agressive player and I tend to get very often out of cash :oops:
Wow...
This is an interesting idea.. it is annoying to go out on a limb and get killed when you bought a ton of stuff and have to try to earn those points back and get it all again before the armory is destroyed in SD, but a bunch of humans with B-suits and luci/chainguns that can't loose that in SD would crush the aliens.. it would be pretty unbalanced it would seem.. They'd all just save until SD.
This might be a neat mod though.. that would be a good way to test if that is actually what would happen.
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a bunch of humans with B-suits and luci/chainguns that can't loose that in SD would crush the aliens.. it would be pretty unbalanced it would seem.. They'd all just save until SD.
Or a tyrant would just keep attacking. If there's no repercussions for attacking, then everyone will keep attacking. It might be interesting, but it will definitely emphasize differences in skill.
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What if the armory gets killed just before SD and before humans can rebuild it. Will they still get the BP to replace it after SD starts ?
No they wouldn't get points for it. That sounds like a legitimate alien strategy.
What is the reason for this? Because they had no armory (building) at 54:59, they are not allowed to build one at 59:59 ? Because they had an armory at 55:00, they can build an armory at 59:59 ? :O
Is the same rule applying to Reactor, Repeater, Medistation, Overmind and Booster?
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Well, it obviously wouldn't apply to the Overmind, Reactor, and Repeater -- as those already cost 0 bp to construct, so are rebuildable during SD. However, the medistation and booster wouldn't be buildable if the building points were not occupied when SD started.
Question, though. As not having played on tjw's lately, I haven't seen this new system in action. How does it keep turrets from being rebuilt?
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Question, though. As not having played on tjw's lately, I haven't seen this new system in action. How does it keep turrets from being rebuilt?
Turrets cost points, the other stuff doesn't, but the other stuff has limits as to how many can be built.
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Question, though. As not having played on tjw's lately, I haven't seen this new system in action. How does it keep turrets from being rebuilt?
When SD starts it counts up all build points the team has tied up in "rebuildable" buildings and uses that number as the total number of build points for that team for the remainder of the match. During SD, building any building that is not flagged "rebuildable" is explicitly denied.
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Since I made the change on my server, here are the Sudden Death wins:
Aliens 13
Humans 5
Draw 7
For the rest of August prior to the change it was:
Aliens 124
Humans 61
Draw 61
Not too promising so far :(
However, in the games I've played, the change seems to help humans substantially. Perhaps there is not enough data yet or not everyone is aware that they can rebuild in SD yet?
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Thinking about that, I don't think statistics will help us "find and fix" the SD imbalance. After all that was said, it is hard to argue that SD happens much more often when humans camp and are in a losing situation anyway.
If you really want to test the SD balance, it'll have to happen in situations where humans aren't already losing. Something like setting the SD time at 10-15 minutes might give us a better insight into the situation :)
As it is now, we'll probably have to wait until experienced players test the new setting to see if SD feels more balanced.
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Thinking about that, I don't think statistics will help us "find and fix" the SD imbalance. After all that was said, it is hard to argue that SD happens much more often when humans camp and are in a losing situation anyway.
If you really want to test the SD balance, it'll have to happen in situations where humans aren't already losing. Something like setting the SD time at 10-15 minutes might give us a better insight into the situation :)
As it is now, we'll probably have to wait until experienced players test the new setting to see if SD feels more balanced.
Sudden Death starts early (30 mins) and lasts 15 mins. As a result, a good percentage of games end while in Sudden Death mode on this server (about 40%).
The wins this month that occurred prior to Sudden Death are much more evenly split:
Aliens 224
Humans 161
I know there are a lot of factors here and that armoury building isn't the only thing governing the SD win statistic, I was only pointing out that since the change there has been NO improvment in it.
I'll run with this until I can collect more data. If there really is no SD balance improvment, I'll also try disallowing booster reconstruction and allowing defcomp reconstruction to see what effect those have, if any.
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Mmmm, too bad I have a bad ping on your server :/
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Ok, I've played just one game on your server, and the game lasted until SD too :) Ping was a killer though, those mara players need to be taught a lesson the next time I've got a better ping and a shotgun :o Played until SD as human and lost.
Anyway, on that game, strangely enouth, I think it was the high BP that made the difference in favor of aliens. High BP with a long SD time doesn't change a single thing for humans. Their base is still well defended but the aliens will still eat the turrets one after the other. On the other hand, the game is balanced for weak alien bases usualy and let me tell you that the huge amount of acid tubes around there wasn't what you would consider a weak base :/
In the end, the high BP greatly strengthens the alien base and makes the most common human tactic useless : you just cannot rush past the acid tubes and strike at the eggs and OM like that :/
On a normal BP server, the human base would have fallen much faster, but the nearly undefend alien base would have been killed even faster.
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I wanted to see what difference it would make from the alien point of view but had to leave before sudden death :-? I don't think we would have made it to SD anyway; the human team was much better (but I don't think they were expecting psycho dretches :P). The server's full now so I'll have to try back later.
What is the reason for this? Because they had no armory (building) at 54:59, they are not allowed to build one at 59:59 ? Because they had an armory at 55:00, they can build an armory at 59:59 ?
For the same reason you don't like it, I do. It encourages attacking right before sudden death.
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Bah Stof, be a builder like me then :P
I walked in to watch a final moments game of S3 tyrants wiping a Karith map (wtf they didn't move base... oh gods) and observed - No one was building (maybe they were too busy panicking)
But yes, maybe putting the BP back to "normal" levels might help with the testing some. I'm used to a 100 or so BP game on most servers which is tight, cramped and tiny. So that could see some workouts.
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Well most of the games balance came for default build points but that's only part of the problem. As mentioned before, many humans simply have no clue how to attack.
Unless they can rush in and sneak behind the OM the average human player is clueless how to take down excessive alien d, both structural and player based.
Take for example SST....the average human player I've noticed on that server has two modes:
a) Sit back and shoot. Generally hurting everyone that's in the other category. More often than not I feel like turning around and killing these morons to prevent from being further shot in the ass while trying to dodge the 101 goons.
b) Rush ahead, with +attack pressed. Generally this works ok, humans ahve to play aggressive. But alot of ssts humans tend to completely ignore ambush tactics and fall for the same ambush 5+ times in a row.
You'd probably notice improvements to the balance scores if the experienced players didn't primarily go alien 3/4 of the games they play. I mean honestly while many experienced players do on occassion go human, it's more in the rate of one game against the half dozen they play as alien. Much like gloom, alines in trem seem to exhibit more frequently teamwork and the ability to work in a semi organized group.
Unless vets go humans...the analogy of chicken with its head cut off is an apt description. And there's no sd changes that will adjust for the fact there's simply a lack of skill and teamwork being used.
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I'll agree with Xiane this time.
We simply won't be able to figure out the H vs A balance untill we have evenly skilled players on both sides.
This is starting to look better every day on small, semi-pro servers such as Killaz and sometimes on AKKA.
Let's hope this trend continues so we can really figure out the true balance issues, rather then concern ourselfes with the skill balance issues.
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Well I think the point is this (never saw someone rebuilding the OM in SD): Aliens rush humans down right after SD starts. But sometimes I see some humans rushing OM down when SD starts, and the the aliens loose. It's all, because most of the humans camp. If they dont camp all the time, they can even win SD.
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Can you rebuild OM on #db and tremulous.info servers? I was under the assumption that you can't but I might be mistaken.
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exactly, this is the first time I hear about rebuilding OM after SD ... I personally have seen whooping ONE game with OM rebuild, and that was after SD was voted.
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If Aliens can't rebuilt the OM, how can a group of dretches take down an Turret cluster?
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Why should a group of dretches be able to take down a turret cluster? :roll:
Anyway, if SD kicks in on the DB/trem.info servers that usually means there's a stalemate with both teams s3. No rebuildable OM means it's a win-all/lose-all situation and basically the team with the smartest tactics (no, suicide runs aren't really that smart) in those 5-10mins wins. It basically adds the thrill back to a (by then) usually rather boring game, and that's a good thing. Ever had both teams rush the other base, destroying each others spawns? Simply priceless. You'll have some of the most intense 5mins ahead... ;)
That said, I am curious as to how tjw's "fixes" work out. Sounds like a reasonable alternative.
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Can we have some updated stats with your changes, tjw? I played on your server a few more times but none of the games went to SD.
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From what I've been seeing playing on his server on and off, humans can actually get back in the game at SD with the ability to rebuild armories. It isn't the "waiting for the end" session that it usually devolves into
That said..... stats are nicer :P
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There is simply no "SD-Problem".
Sudden death means, the game ends soon. And it's the job of the aliens then, to destroy human's armory, or the humans job, to destroy overmind. Because then, the opposite team suddently dies.
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There is simply no "SD-Problem".
Sudden death means, the game ends soon. And it's the job of the aliens then, to destroy human's armory, or the humans job, to destroy overmind. Because then, the opposite team suddently dies.
the sd problem is that the side doing the dying is almost always the humans. i have seen games that turned into egghunts, but aliens won in the end because of sd, which makes absolutely no sense.
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There is simply no "SD-Problem".
Sudden death means, the game ends soon. And it's the job of the aliens then, to destroy human's armory, or the humans job, to destroy overmind. Because then, the opposite team suddently dies.
the sd problem is that the side doing the dying is almost always the humans. i have seen games that turned into egghunts, but aliens won in the end because of sd, which makes absolutely no sense.
It makes sense. Because mostly humans start camping when SD begings. Ergo they don't kill overmind ;)
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Why should a group of dretches be able to take down a turret cluster? :roll:
Anyway, if SD kicks in on the DB/trem.info servers that usually means there's a stalemate with both teams s3. No rebuildable OM means it's a win-all/lose-all situation and basically the team with the smartest tactics (no, suicide runs aren't really that smart) in those 5-10mins wins. It basically adds the thrill back to a (by then) usually rather boring game, and that's a good thing. Ever had both teams rush the other base, destroying each others spawns? Simply priceless. You'll have some of the most intense 5mins ahead... ;)
That said, I am curious as to how tjw's "fixes" work out. Sounds like a reasonable alternative.
My points is that if OM isn't rebuildable, there is no way for Aliens to get through turrets, a base defense. With no Armory, Humans have at least a chance to get in the base.
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without an armory humans have as much chance of surviving alien base as aliens do of surviving human base without an om.
See temple this is the point being made sd is the time in which either you win or you lose. if your main evolution/weapon building is destroyed go figure you should lose/have next to no chance of winning (save a miracle)
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I like the idea of a 0bp armoury that can be rebuilt.
Also, the reason why humans always lose in sd is because it only goes on to sd when the human team is already losing. Alien defenses are weak and easy to destroy, so humans don't need sd in order to take them out.
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without an armory humans have as much chance of surviving alien base as aliens do of surviving human base without an om.
See temple this is the point being made sd is the time in which either you win or you lose. if your main evolution/weapon building is destroyed go figure you should lose/have next to no chance of winning (save a miracle)
What you are missing the whole base defense issue.
Any human with a machine can get into an Alien base. Take 2 and its easier.
A dretch can barely get past and maybe down a turret. But a Telsa generator or Reactor could easily kill a dretch.
Looking at this from worst case scenario in SD with no OM, its Machine guns verses Dretches, basically S1 all over again EXCEPT Aliens get only dretches and humans only get machine guns. The only reason why S1 is balaaced for Aliens is because of the OM and higher classes.
To balance SD, not allowing Aliens to earn Evolution points makes more sense then not being able to build the OM. That way Aliens have a limited amount of evolutions, like humans have limited ammo post SD. Not being able to rebuild the OM is a basically a reward and easy mode for Humans for camping or 45 minutes (or whatever time frame).
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It is stupid to balance SD by removing the players offensive abilities! If you want the game to end quick, you must remove their defensives abilities instead. Else lies the infinite deadlock from hell.
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Humans can pick weapons back up with 10% ammo, and alien dretches can reinfest their corpses at 10% HP? I think I like that idea. Any thoughts?
What if you allowed for destruction of items? A bsuit and luci are on the floor of my base and I'm a dragoon- quick! Destroy them completely before he comes back! Then they explode to signify their destruction?
Whatever you do, more people need to use skype. That always makes games awesome. You may have encountered a server where nobody really chats, but it drags on and on and on... That's may be what's happening.
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Sudden death is like capital punishment for campers- people don't think it's fair to them when it happens, but the point is that it will happen, not that it does- think about it. On SD servers, there needs to be a warning- Sudden Death in 15 minutes- go kick butt or die! Sudden death in 10 minutes- own or be owned! Sudden death in 5 minutes- you get the idea. Sudden death voting, well, here's my take.
I get 6 skype users together and invade an empty atcs server with a decent ping. We agree ahead of time that at 2 am, the game must wrap up. At that point, the vote will be near unanimous. Thing is, I don't know how to call a sudden death vote, after searching through all these faq's and forum postings, using google(vote "sudden death" site:tremulous.net).
So please tell me how to call that vote, and, well, use skype. Naturally, it runs on all platforms.
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./callvote [enter]
read all available votes.
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I am not really liking sudden death at all.
With two reasonably skilled teams, SD is often a tactic. Teams often wait until SD to start that rush.
Its mosttimes the team that camped 5 minutes before SD to accumulate enough evo/credits that wins (human camping in their base, aliens camping around human base).
I have seen it often, giving a good skilled and teamplay able human team, a simple 6 bsuits with lucy attack on alien base in SD finishes the game (giving a server with standard bp). You just have to make sure that you have the credits to buy these items just before SD. Only a human team that does not attack in the beginning of SD is a loosing human team.
So statistics are only useful when you count in what tactic was used
What the statistics are for not skilled teams or teams that us wrong tactics I think should be ignored.
But since SD can become a tactic, it changes the game for those last 5/10/15 minutes before SD. Usually its a bore, cause both teams are just trying to save up on credits/evo for that SD rush. Most experienced players will stop taking risks before SD.
My suggestion for making SD more usefull, is not improving game play in SD so much (free armoury), but to make it such that it is unattractive to wait for SD.
Maybe a random or killcount based autokick of players every 20 seconds :D
My 2c.
edit: wah, i think i am starting to like that autokick in SD idea
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My only gripe about SD is when 2 teams hit S3 and they killwhore for the next 15-20 minutes instead of really attacking.
The OM and Armory should have the same building rules. Either they both can be built or both not.
There should be some time-based automatic SD when both teams hit S3, like in the next 5 or so minutes.
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Sudden death should have an extra bit to balance it out... Mabye humans can rebuild turrets or something, but aliens can still rebuild OM.
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Sudden death should have an extra bit to balance it out... Mabye humans can rebuild turrets or something, but aliens can still rebuild OM.
I guess you havent heard of g_suddendeathmode. It is a thing by TJW that is rarely used now as it never made svn and TJW's patch was for svn 755 or so, but depending on what it was set to it allowed no building whatsoever, normal building, and building of any non-defense buildable. In that last mode the arm, med, dc, reac, repeater, booster, and om could be rebuilt if killed. (Om, reac, and repeater, I think, already could be) For some reason, I think that the hovel was unrebuildable.
The only server I know of that actually uses this any more is Fragify.com.