Rookie Ladder

[Peter Yearsley]

I've been talking to Firestorm about this, and he and I have played a few games with rookie teams. We've worked out a set of rules. If we can find some other players, it might be worth starting up formally ... any takers?

The Rookie Ladder

Suggestions for “rules”:
0 The fun’s not in getting up to the top of the ladder, so much as in watching your team develop. So, in a way, if you improve your team against the AI, you’re playing a different game to others on the ladder. There’s no way to stop you doing this, and you’ll move more quickly up the table ... where you may well bump into other players doing the same thing. So there will effectively be two overlapping ladders: why not simply start one up yourself, with different rules?

1 A team comes onto the ladder as a newly-created set of (any number of) rookie jocks in whatever titans you like. Titans can be standard or player-designed.
A player can have more than one team on the ladder, but they must not play each other. (You *could* get another player to handle one of your teams, but it would be too easy to to tweak your teams’ skills by doing this.)

2 Teams only play against other teams on the ladder. (They shouldn’t be exercised against the AI between “proper” matches, although you can test them against the AI, as long as you don’t save after the match.)

3 Generally both players should fight a battle with the same number of titans, alhough you can play an unbalanced match if you both agree. If you want to, you can agree, before or during a battle, not to deliberately kill opposing jocks (you’ll be penalised by not getting the XP bonus for a kill).

4 You can’t import team members into an existing team, although you can dismiss team members and take on new rookie jocks if you want (or need) to. If you can’t afford to repair your team or buy new titans after a battle, either dismiss the team and start again with a newly created team, or play a few solos to build up some cash.

5 New entries start out at the bottom of the ladder (but above the non-playing teams .. see the rest of this paragraph. Generally, a challenge would only come from the lower-ranked team. Any team that’s not been in battle for two weeks drops one place down the table (swapping position with the team underneath) .. until it hits bottom. (If there are other non-playing teams below it at the bottom of the ladder, it stays at the top of the non-playing stack.)
You should tell who-ever’s keeping track of the ladder if you dismiss your team so it can be taken off the ladder.

6 Put a note on the Rookie Ladder thread after the battle - after you’ve refitted your team, adjusted skills and dismissed or employed jocks. For each team, you should list the team name, number of jocks and max&min jock status in the team. Then say who won, and the date and time of the battle.
Movement on the ladder after a battle:
A The high-ranking team beats the lower: no change.
B The low-ranking team beats the higher: the low-ranking team takes the position of the higher, and the higher is displaced to the next place down.
C Draw: if there are two or more other teams between them on the ladder, the lower-ranked team moves up one place, the higher-ranked, down one place. If the two drawn teams were closer than that on the table, there’s no change.

7 Ladder entries will look something like this:
5; Monstrous Regiment; 4 jocks; Novice/Rookie; Won 4, Lost 3, Drawn 0; 14/06/02; Pete Y
(Position on ladder, Team Name, size of team; rating of best and worst jock/s; battle stats, date of last battle; player’s name on the forum list.)


The ladder should be updated daily. When there is more than one battle to go onto the table, they go on in order of when they were played (or when they went onto the forum, if you forget to put the time of day on your battle result .. make sure you put your time zone in your battle report).
At the bottom of the ladder, before you generate much cash and XPs, there’s a good chance of your team being so badly beaten in their first battle that you’ll have to dismiss them. But it’s easy enough to recuit a new team, and there should soon be other players starting at your level for you to beat in your turn.

[Peter Yearsley]

If this does get going .. to avoid cluttering the forum, I think the details would be handled by email, with the ladder positions only going onto the forum every week or so.

[PrinceCorrin]

Why don't you try setting up a website? You could have a list of all the teams posted, and their rankings, stats etc. You could also have players submit their wins this way, but you would have to stipulate that both players send not only who won, but also an updated copy of their teams. It could be interesting if there's a link to view each team's members and their stats. Then the players could decide who to challenge.

[firestorm]

i donate my web site!!
would actually give me a reson to update it.

[Peter Yearsley]

I'm away from all my reference books at the moment, and haven't yet had a go at building a web-site, have thougth that this would be the best way to handle the ladder.
Thanks, Firestorm, I'll be talking to you about this .. I know that it'll take a lot of time to set up and maintain, but I'm happy to do as much of the work as I can.

[Korgmeister]

While I'm here, I might as well suggest that you use an automated update system such as Greymatter for the website.

You need to be able to CHMOD it, though (so free providers are right out) and your host needs to be PERL compatible.

It's not as nifty as a PHP script, but it's a helluva lot easier to use.

[ERicDBQ]

I have two questions for you.

1.)When do you think you will have the ladder going?

2.)Do you have to start with a new rookie team or can you use one that you already have started?



:p

[Peter Yearsley]

Sorry; I've been away from the computer for a few weeks.
I'd have to write the ladder display in Access (it generates an html version of the database fairly easily). I picture a week or so from now .. my VBA's fairly rusty ... tho' the pseudocode version's nearly complete. (The VBA's needed to automate the ladder changes and data log for the ladder moderator.)
To avoid mucking around with password-protected access for the players (which I don't know how to handle), the web-site would simply display the ladder. The team stats would be summarised (described in the table description, I think) ... and players would simply email the moderater with their match result as soon as possible (through the web-site?) and update their team summary when it's convenient for them.

The teams would be used solely for the ladder, and could only enter as new teams (completely unimproved).