FIRST TOURNAMENT (BETA)

[SgtZdog]

I just noticed that round three end date is only seven days away and since we (I) just got underway, completing this longer battle may be a challenge. I hope the powers that be will consider extending this battle.

No extension, but this won't be the norm once tournament play is fully released. I wanted the tournament to be done quickly enough that I would have time to fix things before we released 2.1.4. As such I set the rounds to a definitely too short 9 days for this tournament. In the future I'll probably go with 14 days.

(Note, there is no set release date for 2.1.4, but I didn't want PBEM++ stuff to be the reason it got delayed.)

[Niedowidek_slith]

Nice to hear. I think it would be perfect if we had at least as many days for every round as there is command cycles (plus 2 or 3 days in reserve). That way I could login once a day and be confident I will finish the round in time. Convenient for those of us who have full time job.

Signed by:
Secretary of Association of Older Gamers

[Galahad78]

I would like also to float another idea on this matter: would it be possible, at least in the initial rounds, to match players with similar time zones? That way it could be possible to swap, perhaps, a couple of turns at more confortable times for both players. On previous matches I've found myself playing turns at 0700 hrs local before heading to work, to not let my opponent down the whole day

Of course, I do not know if this info is available from all players, and perhaps technically the complexity far outweigths the advantages, so feel free to discard the idea

[SgtZdog]

Yeah, it's a weird balance of making the rounds long enough to complete, but not so long that players lose focus and stop participating.

Regarding initial round based on physical location, I don't think so, because I don't believe Matrix collects that info about users (certainly I don't recall giving them my address when creating my account here). But also future tournaments will probably be ranked, so that your first round seeding is based on how well you've done previously anyway.

[DukeBannon]

But also future tournaments will probably be ranked, so that your first round seeding is based on how well you've done previously anyway.

Does that mean Matrix/Slitherine will have a database of historical tournament results? I think that’s an interesting idea and reinforces the need to make sure everyone understands how the scores are calculated.

[Bertram]

I have a problem loading one of the games in my battle against DukeBannon. Finished a turn with me as Soviet, and tried to log in my Allied game, got a message that there was an error.
(There was an error loading this file (2): Acces violation at address 11AD914 in module FlashpointCampaigns.exe. Read of address D8 for file FCSS_158140.bpm) (with a lot of zero's thrown in at the adresses).

Logging out and restarting the game did not help.

Bertram

Nb.: Duke, you will have to wait on this one.

[DukeBannon]

Nb.: Duke, you will have to wait on this one.

I think that Soviet steamroller heading your way must've gave your computer a heart attack!

I thought it was strange when I received just one email notifying me of my turn. Good luck with the issue.

[SgtZdog]

I have a problem loading one of the games in my battle against DukeBannon. Finished a turn with me as Soviet, and tried to log in my Allied game, got a message that there was an error.
(There was an error loading this file (2): Acces violation at address 11AD914 in module FlashpointCampaigns.exe. Read of address D8 for file FCSS_158140.bpm) (with a lot of zero's thrown in at the adresses).

Logging out and restarting the game did not help.

Bertram

Nb.: Duke, you will have to wait on this one.

Sorry for not being able to get this fixed in time for you guys.

[DukeBannon]

Sorry for not being able to get this fixed in time for you guys.

I'm sure you did what you could in the time allowed. Bertram was a trough opponent, and we ended the battle we could complete with a contested draw.

[SgtZdog]

Thank you to everyone who participated in the tournament! Please feel free to leave any feedback about the tournament here. Don't worry, future ones will give more time to complete the rounds.

[Zacvalsky]

Why does the score in a match at 1st turn was higher and then every next one the score would go down ?

I don't know if there is a way to have the score go up each turn starting at 0 instead.

I had 3 timed out opponents and sometimes I felt like they were not playing their turn to keep the max score, I know it's probably not that but.

[SgtZdog]

Why does the score in a match at 1st turn was higher and then every next one the score would go down ?

I don't know if there is a way to have the score go up each turn starting at 0 instead.

I had 3 timed out opponents and sometimes I felt like they were not playing their turn to keep the max score, I know it's probably not that but.

For the tournament score we're using a variation on the scenario scoring from single player. This means that for most scenarios one player will start with most or all of the points. As the match wears on the other player will hopefully be able to earn more points. The tournament system does let me shift points from the less active player to the more active player towards the buy value, so I could potentially raise the turn requirement to avoid that penalty kicking in. That way if a player doesn't give their opponent enough turns to reasonably get the objective the scores are a little more fair.

[DukeBannon]

Did anyone report PBEM+++ issues during the tournament?

[SgtZdog]

Did anyone report PBEM+++ issues during the tournament?

Current things I have tickets for regarding PBEM++:
- Improve error reporting to generate the logs we need to debug problems. Right now that report generation is locked to clients running in debug mode.
- FoW settings somehow got overwritten for a few players in the first round. This seems to be correlated to clean installs of the game, but I have been unable to reproduce this and it's rare, so I probably won't get to this soon.
- WP player is getting the NATO perspective in post-game screens.
- The other player isn't getting to view the replay of the last turn when they go to review a finished game. (This one is actually assigned to Rob right now, not me.)

If anyone is aware of a PBEM++ problem that isn't on this list, please let us know.

[Bertram]

[
[/quote]

Sorry for not being able to get this fixed in time for you guys.
[/quote]

It happens - can't complain if it is a beta . The other game was more disappointing - we had 8 minutes left on the clock when the game timed out..... And it was pretty close.

My comment on the format would be that
- the score for the "bye" seems to be to high. It looks like you get the score (1200 points) as if you win both games, instead of getting a draw. As such getting a "bye" is a large advantage. 600 points seems to be more in line with other games.
- I like the running score system. But does it give away the "real" possession of the VP point ownership when these are in FOW? (or is this nitpicking? )

Bertram

[SgtZdog]

It happens - can't complain if it is a beta . The other game was more disappointing - we had 8 minutes left on the clock when the game timed out..... And it was pretty close.

My comment on the format would be that
- the score for the "bye" seems to be to high. It looks like you get the score (1200 points) as if you win both games, instead of getting a draw. As such getting a "bye" is a large advantage. 600 points seems to be more in line with other games.
- I like the running score system. But does it give away the "real" possession of the VP point ownership when these are in FOW? (or is this nitpicking? )

Bertram

Yeah, I'm probably going to be lowering the bye value at least a little? I'm a little unsure to be honest, because I don't want a player to be eliminated from potentially winning because they got a bye round (either through no opponent or an inactive opponent). A player has a theoretical max score of 800 (perfect game giving the enemy 0 points, forcing sudden death on the enemy, and completing the scenario). A landslide victory will still easily be in the 770-790 range. So a 600 score should be beatable, while not being so low a player can't still compete. But I'm thinking I'll probably knock it down to like 550 or so.

Unfortunately right now the ground truth of victory hexes is always given away right now in the scenario info window, so hiding it in the FoW really just penalizes newer players who don't think to look there. Until we decide to address that window, I'm probably going to keep the tournaments on leaving objectives revealed.

[DukeBannon]

Do you have an estimate of when the new version will be generally available on Steam?

[SgtZdog]

Do you have an estimate of when the new version will be generally available on Steam?

With what all is upcoming in our schedule right now, I'm guessing not earlier than at least late May. But I think Rob wants to include Tactical Transport stuff and jump all the way to 2.1.5, so we're probably looking at mid to late summer.