Sudden Death Alternative

[prab]

Heres an idea for sudden death. A lot of servers have been doing rampage (I hate rampage.), and almost all have SD at a certain point. There should be another option that does the following.

The default spawn time per egg/telenode is 10 seconds. Once SD is started each spawn timer would increase by 1 seconds each time a person/alien spawns from it. At the begining this would have little effect, but after 20 people die it could take as long as 30 seconds to spawn. As a result the team would probably start making more spawns, but that would take points away from defense and ultimately lead to their demise.
There would need to be something in place so that if I decon one spawn, then make another, the delay would not be "reset". A possibility would be to spread the latency added by SD to all other spawns when one is destroyed/deconed.

Does this sound feasible? Anybody see any flaws? I want to hear peoples reaction.

[Henners]

That may not actually be a bad idea. It may need some tweaking for the time increases, but I wouldnt mind seeing this as an alternative SD system

[Mispeled]

That's a very cool idea. It might not work very well in small games, but for 20+ servers it would be a great system.

[Plague Bringer]

Unless you cap the spawn time at 20, it's not going to work well. I have a hard enough time waiting for 3 seconds when I'm flooding. Besides, I dont want to wait for two minutes to respawn on |SST|.

[prab]

I don't think there should be a cap. The idea of sudden death is to end the game. It the delay is set low enough (1 second) it will take a while to get excessive. For example if a team has 3 spawns it would take 30 deaths for all the spawns to have a 20 second delay. This could also be tweaked to increase the delay added by a percent instead of a static value.

[TRaK]

This sounds like an interesting idea. However, the sheer amount of feeders and noobs on big servers would make this system really annoying after a while. Not everybody is patient enough to wait more than 2 minutes to spawn.

My guess is a lot of people will just leave the server rather than wait that long, especially the less experienced players who die more often. I can also see this advantaging humans a bit. As a general rule, a naked human can usually hide behind turrets and shoot at attacking aliens to get his creds up. However, a dretch has to attack, usually fighting against bsuits or helmets, to get more evo.

This is an interesting idea, and I'd be interested in seeing it in practice, but I have my doubts.

[kozak6]

Yeah, aliens to tend to die a bit more, and particularly the dretches.

[Henners]

Remember - the game should always be balanced for the good players, and let the effects cascade down. To balance for poor players leads to imbalance at a high level of play.

As for the time delays as I said it would probably need to be tweaked by a trial and error system to see whats effective

[blood2.0]

i have another idea for sudden death mabe that all sutures die except for eggs/tellinodes and busrers and hives so the bases are easy to kill

[player1]

I like your idea, but I agree that on big servers it would take even longer to respawn. It would seem like forever, at the end of a fevered game. I had another idea regarding SD, tell me what you think of this:

If the total elapsed time were over one hour, and it was SD, and had been SD for at least ten minutes, the second extendtime/reducetime vote would initiate a PowerUpGrade mode. During this phase, destroyed enemy structures would convey benefits to the first player to grab a token or icon. Aliens would get PowerUps, Humans would get UpGrades. The PowerUps would be like Strength, Speed and Endurance (Alien hormones kicking in from evolutionary programming). The UpGrades would be weapon modifiers or health or armor boosts (Human reverse-engineering of Alien technology, via nanites or cybersymbiotic enhancement - becoming the enemy). "Let he who would fight monsters beware, lest he become one."

PowerUpGrades

Human Structures: Turrets, Teslas, Telenodes
Alien PowerUps: Strength, Speed, Endurance

Alien Structures: Acid Tube, Barricade, Eggs
Human UpGrades: loadout based

see here for some ideas:
http://tremulous.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4036

(By my second post the idea had coalesced. Risujyn also offered a very incisive critique - thankfully, by PM. I've made some changes, notably the Alien PowerUps, and not having glowing balls of light for the icons or tokens.)

also, now I'd say lose the icon or token
banners announce who got what PowerUp or UpGrade
first player who runs over destroyed structure gets PowerUp or UpGrade
(yes, through acid splash and turret slag)
Humans can't use PowerUps (only affect melee attacks)
Aliens can't use UpGrades (only affect equipment/ordnance)

SD play-modifier only
alternative to timelimit, endless votecalls, Rampage (I've got nothing against Rampage, I just like variety)

[blood2.0]

i have another idea for sudden death mabe that all sutures die except for eggs/tellinodes and busrers and hives so the bases are easy to kill

whoops i ment everything dies exsept for arms and bosters

[blood2.0]

i have another idea this came to me in a dream.  how about all stuctures exsept for boosers arms and spons if they are shot they die and cant be rebult.  for example a turet would die with one hit from a drench same with the overmind and reactor exsept that they can be rebult unlike any other stuture

[Plague Bringer]

So basically everything does about 500 damage? (I think max buildable hitpoints is 450-460 with the reactor?)

[erisco]

SD is obnoxious for humans.

Aliens are disabled with the destruction of the OM. Humans, on the other hand, are disabled by the destruction of the armory or the rec. 1:2. The armory, let me note, is a lot weaker than the reactor.

[janev]

SD is obnoxious for humans.

Aliens are disabled with the destruction of the OM. Humans, on the other hand, are disabled by the destruction of the armory or the rec. 1:2. The armory, let me note, is a lot weaker than the reactor.

The main reason the game takes until sudden death is humans camping... Sudden death is meant to be a tie breaker

[erisco]

Sometimes it is a tie breaker, but often, from what I have seen, humans are at a huge disadvantage during SD. In matter of fact I know from playing aliens you are specifically waiting for SD... humans rely heavily on buildings whilst aliens not so much.

[player1]

Sometimes it is a tie breaker, but often, from what I have seen, humans are at a huge disadvantage during SD. In matter of fact I know from playing aliens you are specifically waiting for SD... humans rely heavily on buildings whilst aliens not so much.

+1
Ask yourself this question, how do I vote, when Sudden Death votes come up? As Alien, F1. As Human, F2. I think that about explains it.

[Stof]

The main reason the game takes until sudden death is humans camping... Sudden death is meant to be a tie breaker

Well, as a suggestion we could simply replace the current SD by a simple "Aliens Wins" message. It would be faster and in the long run, much less frustrating, even for the humans!

[player1]

The main reason the game takes until sudden death is humans camping... Sudden death is meant to be a tie breaker

Well, as a suggestion we could simply replace the current SD by a simple "Aliens Wins" message. It would be faster and in the long run, much less frustrating, even for the humans!

Do you think rewarding players for destroying enemy structures would help to get the campers out of camp (and off on a quest)? The Humans could get ammo and health out of base, as well as a really cool weapon which would make them less scared of getting dretched. The Aliens would get some reward for waiting an hour for the ability to destroy turrets. Can I use your above quote as a ringing endorsement of the PowerUpGrades idea?