Alien frag sharing

[Timbo]

So this should work now. It works as follows:

1. Player dies
2. Check if there are any other players that damaged the above player sufficiently to be awarded kills with no contest. For example, with a player worth 3 frags, doing greater than 2/3rds of the damage guarantees the damaging client gets 2 frags.
3. If there are frags remaining to be claimed award each to the top remaining clients.

[Norfenstein]

Is there no way to award partial frags in direct proportion to how much damage a player does? Rounding up to whole frags for every kill favors high classes that do more damage and makes it harder for lower classes to earn frags by assisting stronger teammates. And it's not uncommon when aliens are at a tech disadvantage to have one high class on a team full of soldiers fighting a bevy of humans with battlesuits.

[Timbo]

Frags aren't rounded up, they're rounded down. In other words you're only guaranteed the full value of a human if you cause all the damage. The characters that do not cause enough damage to warrant receiving a frag are selected based on whether or not they did the most damage to a character. So partial frags are awarded, but they are rounded up.

[Norfenstein]

What I'm saying is, a player that does a little damage to 50 players might never be rewarded for helping with those kills. If someone joins late in the game and is the only low class around, all he can really do is take potshots at enemies while his teammates actually make the kills. If you and another soldier both do 30 damage to a human worth one frag, then a chimera comes by and does 40 damage, he gets all the credit. In reality this probably won't be that significant but unless I'm misunderstanding how it works it seems to favor stronger classes.

[Timbo]

I understand your point, but what it entails is using a floating point number for the aliens' frags. I don't like this for a couple of reasons. Firstly you will get the situation where you score damage from a kill but your frag counter will not increment, even though you have gained a (partial) kill. Secondly it's basically the same as what the humans do. I like the fact that the teams in Trem are really very different, whilst the game is (almost ) balanced.

Besides these though, doing this doesn't actually change how frags are distributed in relation to damage. After a number of player deaths it averages out quite quickly. For example, three aliens killing the same human collaboratively three times. (This is idealised for the sake of argument). With an integral approach each client gets a frag each. With a floating point approach each client gets a third of a frag each three times... it ends up the same.

Of course I might be misunderstanding -- maybe you want lower classes to actively be awarded more frags, so it's easier to become a higher class than it is to maintain being a high class?

[Norfenstein]

Well I think a frag/credit system should favor weaker classes if it favors any at all, but this system isn't unreasonable. And I hadn't thought of the benefit of immediately getting (whole) frags after kills somewhere on a team over having those same frags spread out and not actually being usuable right away. The only thing I was really concerned about is those situations when aliens have all but one player stuck with classes considerably weaker than what all the humans have; If partial frags are rounded up to whoever did the most damage, that one high class can't do much to help his teammates upgrade. Now if aliens could give away frags to their teammates then you could have the best of both systems. I'm not sure how it'd affect the balance, but it'd be a further departure from the human system and it'd give aliens an opportunity to use teamwork. Just something to consider.

[Tyler]

how about a persentage system? the damaged you delt based on you class. Here: if a soldier does 50 dmg and a high classs does 50dmg, the lower class would get the reward. becasue a low class alien takes a while to do 50 dmg, but a high class aliens takes less time on 50 dmg, so the lower class gets the point. A soldier does 60% dmg and the next class up does 40% dmg. lets say thats even based on the class. then the person who got the kill gets the point. Get what I'm saying? probally not