Get paid for defending, intercepting, escorting etc

[Bajsefar]

Hi, I read Googles' topic about teamwork theories.
http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?topic=8915.0

I had another idea, so i made this topic.

Theory 1: Leader system

This would be a team-voting system to allow a leader for each team to be chosen. There would be an addition to the /callteamvote command to allow the designation of a leader for each team. Upon passing, the vote would simply set a flag to that player as the *leader*, this player would have the following abilities...

1. !denybuild - Disallow any bad builders from messing up base and such.
2. !designate - Allow a player to protect his buildings from being deconned by other teammates.
3. !probation - This would slightly damage a player every 30 seconds when they are not near a creep/repeater or overmind/reactor. This command would also be able to disable these effects, this can be used for noob feeders that just don't get *please stay in base*.

And maybe other types of modification...possibly give double score for killing the leader?

This gave me an idea for a feature that might encourage teamwork in a sensible way.
Imagine if you had a sort of dedicated leader, with the ability to give team members jobs and pay for having them done.

Say that all credit/evo income is taxed for a set amount, something that wouldn't be too much, but that would give the team a sort of universal income. (could be turned off or adjusted as a server- side option)

The dedicated leader had the ability to sign people up to jobs, and pay them for doing it.
Basically, he could queue a job for a set player, and if that player was sucsessful, the dedicated leader could pay that team member for a set amount of credits.
or he could give players regular duties, such as guarding the base or harassing the enemy.
He should also be able to set coordinates for players, maybe mark a spot that will show up on other player's radar. Maybe as a green dot or something. (even if they didn't have a radar, this would show.)

This might give the humans some tactical advantage, as their radar has a z level as well..

Players should not have to undertake the dedicated leader's quests, but they would get paid for doing them.

Maybe the dedicated leader (or maybe he should be called administrator) should have some surveilance ability, such as a log over what buildings/ enemy players fellow team members have destroyed, or location surveillance, so that the administrator/dedicated leader would be aware if a player he was paying to guard the base actually was guarding the base.

Additional ideas:

-Multiple administrators for bigger games. (are they able to see the jobs their fellow administrators have scheduled?)

-Give custom jobs: (type name of job, like: "scout out and inform me of the location, size and setup of the enemy base" or "intercept humans mid- map, keep them distracted so that they don't reach our base."

-Give group jobs: "Andy, Bitch and noobplayer 56 guard base for 50 credits/minute each"

-Wealthy pig tax: if your credits counted over 1500 (+-) 50% of your income went to tax.

TL DR.
A dedicated leader or "administrator" that would be able to give his teammates missions or duties and pay them with creds/evos. To encourage teamwork, not enforce it.
A nice way to handle player resources.

[kevlarman]

this sounds a lot like /share, which tends to screw up balance by circumventing the credit limit. it would also be really annoying to get 9/10ths of a frag when you kill a human at the start of a game.

[danmal]

With 1.2 isn't it possible to get 9/10 of a frag anyway? Plus I've never really seen share screwing up the balance of a game and I play on servers with share both enabled and disabled.

[kevlarman]

With 1.2 isn't it possible to get 9/10 of a frag anyway? Plus I've never really seen share screwing up the balance of a game and I play on servers with share both enabled and disabled.

possible != it always happens. share favors aliens heavily since humans want their credits spread out and that happens naturally if they work together (i would much rather have to deal with one chainsuit than 3 larmor/helmet/shotguns), but aliens want frags concentrated on their best players (at least at the point of the game where headshots are instant kills and it's easy to turn 3 frags into a full stage lead).

[Bajsefar]

With 1.2 isn't it possible to get 9/10 of a frag anyway? Plus I've never really seen share screwing up the balance of a game and I play on servers with share both enabled and disabled.

possible != it always happens. share favors aliens heavily since humans want their credits spread out and that happens naturally if they work together (i would much rather have to deal with one chainsuit than 3 larmor/helmet/shotguns), but aliens want frags concentrated on their best players (at least at the point of the game where headshots are instant kills and it's easy to turn 3 frags into a full stage lead).

It would, however be the dedicated leader/administrator's task to reward his teammates for tasks they complete, which encourages the team to try winning instead of just camping, while share and donate is usually just used for charity.

I agree about the max cred thing, maybe the team tax box should have a maximum as well?
I wasn't intending it to be very big, in terms of how much the administrator can give, more like a small carrot if you actually dare to go attack the aliens, or you get encouraged to go in and take down some turrets instead of just lurking in hallways, waiting for nakeds.

[Jack Bauer]

I think that it would be nice if: Say someone has 9 evos or 2000 credits. Obviously they cant get anymore, so when they get more kills, their evos/ credits should go to other team members. Does that sound like a good idea?

[kevlarman]

I think that it would be nice if: Say someone has 9 evos or 2000 credits. Obviously they cant get anymore, so when they get more kills, their evos/ credits should go to other team members. Does that sound like a good idea?

no, for the same reason share is a bad idea.

[Bajsefar]

You still ignore the get-your-teammates-out-doing-useful-stuff-instead-of-scratching-their-balls-in-base part.

But I forfeit.

[gimhael]

What ? You mean that's not useful ?

[Demolution]

Not when you're doing it with the barrel of your weapon.

[zybork]

Sorry, Bajsefar, but: this is a bad idea of yours, for there is a much bigger reward for escorting/repairing/doing something useful, this would be:

winning the match.

A newb you tell to stay in base will stay in base, a noob won't, if you cry "HELP REPAIR REACTOR!" and nobody helps, well, the rc will go down, and the team will lose. On the alien side, if you keep yelling "base under attack" or "incoming", and people prefer to sit outside human base and wait for the campers to come out instead of supporting the base, no eggs may be left when they want to spawn again.

It is my experience that you will never be able to persuade people not to be stupid, this is on golden rule of the universe, and it does not only apply to Tremulous, btw), so the only thing you can do is to talk to people ("don't go out without a helmet!", "small aliens please wallwalk!", "RTFM, YOU GODDAMN NOOB!"), and in certain really bad cases callvote-kick 'em.

In my opinion, no tax- or other system whatsoever will ever be able to educate people to senseable playing.

[Bajsefar]

Maybe not, but do we not have rewards/punishment for desirable/undesirable ways to act? Because if you are rewarded for soemthing, that is more tempting, and if you are punished for something else, that thing is to the contrary less tempting.

It does indeed work this way in most human societies, and humans are the ones playing Tremulous, so the same rules should apply to these similar human brains that you are interacting with in tremulous, as the ones which are more or less tried and true through thousands of years of civilization.

Idiots, or people who know no better excists in human society as well as Tremulous. Why should not the same system work in tremulous, please tell me!

Sure there are admins for enforcing or encouraging desirable behaviour, but that is only for the most big stuff, like banning tkers or deconners, not many admins place bans or kicks for bad playing.

Also, in society, good behaviour is encouraged through jobs and education, you get rewarded for doing something for the society as a whole, and when you are doing something good for society, it is hard for you to at the same time do something bad for society. It is, for example not possible to camp your base and attack the other base at the same time.. In most cases this would require you to be at two places at the same time.

So yeah, TLDR:
Basic rules of human society should work in Tremulous, because the people playing Tremulous are, well, they're people.
Even if they are nerds.

This is why Zybork is partially wrong.

My idea might very well be flawed, but I believe I am onto something, you know, you can actually learn from how things are done other places.

If this worked, it might even make you people stop complaining about campers, and complaing about your wages instead.

Also, Kevlarman. The credit limit problem is pretty petty, it's nothing else than a technical limitation or problem, and you haven't really posted any other arguments than that.
I truly believe some kind of controlled reward/punishment system could prove to be a way to change the Tremulous Experience into something better, for everyone.
Make Tremulous a more civilized place, know what I mean?

[danmal]

Sorry, Bajsefar, but: this is a bad idea of yours, for there is a much bigger reward for escorting/repairing/doing something useful, this would be:

winning the match.

Tragedy of the commons. While it's in the best interests of the group (and eventually yourself) for someone to repair it's not in your own best interest. If you notice that your base defences are weak and grab a conkit to repair them then your own score will suffer. Everyones else score will continue to increase while your own stays exactly the same. If instead you continue to attack/camp/killwhore then your score will increase until the aliens finally overwhelm your own defenses. While this is a bad outcome at no point in that game was there a time when it was personally advantageous for you to repair your base.

having someone who assigns tasks and rewards people for successful completion of said tasks would go a long way to helping to prevent this problem.

[attack1]

Sorry, Bajsefar, but: this is a bad idea of yours, for there is a much bigger reward for escorting/repairing/doing something useful, this would be:

winning the match.

Tragedy of the commons. While it's in the best interests of the group (and eventually yourself) for someone to repair it's not in your own best interest. If you notice that your base defences are weak and grab a conkit to repair them then your own score will suffer. Everyones else score will continue to increase while your own stays exactly the same. If instead you continue to attack/camp/killwhore then your score will increase until the aliens finally overwhelm your own defenses. While this is a bad outcome at no point in that game was there a time when it was personally advantageous for you to repair your base.

having someone who assigns tasks and rewards people for successful completion of said tasks would go a long way to helping to prevent this problem.

WHY SPLIT THESE STATES WHEN THEY COULD BE ONLY ONE?!!!!

[zybork]

having someone who assigns tasks and rewards people for successful completion of said tasks would go a long way to helping to prevent this problem.

Share comes in quite handy at some times... If I am out attacking (rare enough, for the most time ppl are just killwhoring with no sense of defense or building), I tend to share to the defenders/builders, if I am on defence duty and make a lot of kills of already damaged aliens, I share to the attackers to replenish their means of attacking. Killwhores usually don't share, campers usually don't get shared to.

[Bajsefar]

Last night, I was playing some games of tremulous.
I was being quite bossy and assigning people to tasks.
less than half the time, they would listen, but sometimes i got some poeple with me for some sucsessful raids/ made some people stay in base for defense.
Our base was seldom undefended, and we managed to slip past the aliens with painsaws and grenades by taking quick stabs at their base, each time from a different direction.
We won quite a lot, even though the teams were random.

Imagine if someone with a bit of tactical skill had some power, who said organization is bad?

This is the difference between an easily defeated, rag tag band of barbarians and a successfully organized party, that actually wins because it tries to..

Share comes in quite handy at some times... If I am out attacking (rare enough, for the most time ppl are just killwhoring with no sense of defense or building), I tend to share to the defenders/builders, if I am on defence duty and make a lot of kills of already damaged aliens, I share to the attackers to replenish their means of attacking. Killwhores usually don't share, campers usually don't get shared to.

Everyone does not have the ability of realizing that helping your team is helping yourself, like you do.

[Confess]

Actually, I think this is a pretty cool idea. At the moment, the admins have those commands, and while one may rebuttal "add more/better admins", sometimes the admins don't always do the job/do the job the way the players want it done. So, if we add a "leader" that is 'elected', perhaps it could help balance the game. However, it could also be terms for abuse...

I'm all for it, and think it should be given a shot. If Old SST was still around, I would put it on there.

Confess