Potentially Major Flaw in Stage Credits

[KillerWhale]

After long-time suspicion and finally some testing, I've discovered what could be a potentially serious bug in GPP's stage credit system.

The stage credits for a kill are only counted for the person who got the killing blow.

Per example, say Meisseli shot a granger 9 times with a rifle, and I got the final shot on it.
The team would only gain 24 credits for that kill, instead of the 240 that the granger would have been worth if Meisseli were on her own.

Is this an intentional function, or is it an oversight?

I personally do not see this as being intentionally implemented, as it is a disincentive to teamwork.
The more people you work with, the less it is worth to your team.
 

[Menace13]

D: You didn't mention that I was the granger

But yeah, this is a pretty big bug if it isn't intentional, as it somewhat makes teamwork a BAD thing. Less teamwork = faster stage up, assuming the individuals are pretty good.

[CorSair]

Well, I always thought there was something funny in staging. And now, THIS confirms my long odd suspicion in stage counter. (btw thanks Whales )
I always wondered, why the hell we don't get enough creds for next stage, especially in humans. Even as I killed adv. dragoons worth of for next stage, I managed to lower counter roughly 100 creds.

Ehh... someone else got similar thoughts?

[David]

If this is right, then this is going to be fun.

Fixing this will speed up stage ups, a lot more for humans than aliens.

Phase 7 here we come!

[SlackerLinux]

yes this is really going to screw balance when fixed lets just ignore it

[Celestial_Rage]

You could always just increase the credits required for humans to get s2/3.

[Meisseli]

I see the future of Tremulous...

...to include two more phases!

[Lecavalier]

I'm not sure about this, but I think it's the same if a turret ks you. I can recall countless games where the human team was 200-300 credits away from s2 and just praying for those credits to  come, but they don't. Even though rants are suicide rushing, feeding the humans lots of credits, they never get s2 and lose because of it. This could also be because of what was mentioned in the original post. Regardless, it's very frustrating and can ruin an otherwise fun game

[Conzul]

Yeah this'll rewrite the balance sheet. It might not effect aliens because they either get the kill or they don't, but for humans, they'll stage up so fast that it'll prove what I was saying about alien kill values all along (esp dretch).
Had to get that out.

[Norfenstein]

Thanks for taking the time to figure this out whales. This will indeed warrant another phase, but I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that it won't have much of an impact (other than long games not taking forever to get through the stages). And if it does require a change I suspect that a coarse adjustment to the values for one team or the other will be all it takes to fix it. But those are just predictions; no one can say for sure.

they'll stage up so fast that it'll prove what I was saying about alien kill values all along (esp dretch).
Had to get that out.

I don't follow your logic; if it does change anything significantly we'll just adjust values until the balance is back to where it was. Are you predicting it won't be that simple?

[Conzul]

if it does change anything significantly we'll just adjust values until the balance is back to where it was. Are you predicting it won't be that simple?

No, I was making the somewhat redundant remark about what would happen if the error was fixed without recalculating values for aliens.
    Dretch, for example. In the beginning of the game (especially on pubs) dretches are killed mostly by combined rifle fire. This means that usually (if whales is right) each dretch kill only contributes half or so of what it should towards stage advancement, and humans already get to s2 pretty quickly. Just imagine how fast that would happen if each human got the full 180cr/dretch toward advancement. It's sort of proof that for an alien class that always dies alot and can't hurt structures, the dretch's value is too high.
    But I'm talking before seeing, so this is speculation.

[F50]

Actually quite the opposite, dretches are likely to be 1-shotted quite a bit with mass drivers.

[Norfenstein]

and humans already get to s2 pretty quickly.

Neither team currently stages up significantly faster than the other. And I think people are underestimating how much aliens work together to get kills compared to how much humans do. That and remembering the wildly inaccurate predictions people had for the effects unlagged and friendly fire were going to have on the balance are the reasons for my conservative prediction.

[jez]

Wow. Yeah, kudos for figuring that out, this does mix things up somewhat.

Conzul, I'd say that the vast majority of my dretch deaths are from a single person's fire. True, this will affect balance, but its not going to be by a factor of two for the dretch. I'm just speculating as well of course.

Perhaps up the stage requirements a bit too. I don't want them getting any closer together after this is sorted.

[KillerWhale]

I'm surprised that everyone is saying this will tip the balance in favour of the human team; the first thing that came to my mind was all of the kills where dretches get one bite and keep the aliens from getting the frag for that kill.

The stage up requirements are going to need to be well over doubled though, in my opinion.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I actually like playing the lower stages.

[freezway]

eh, s2 is my fav, adv. goon/mara take more skill than rant, and s1 aliens have annotingly low health.

[Lakitu7]

This was confirmed, and the fix was committed today (thanks Rezyn). Be on the lookout for the new phase. Thanks for telling us about this.

[Lakitu7]

http://tremulous.net/forum/index.php?topic=14690.0