Thoughts to Revive Squad Play

Tactical advice, How-to, Post-mortem, etc.
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zombywoof
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Post by zombywoof »

So one of the things about Allegiance is that it's at its best when there are competitive, cutthroat games going on. Apart from the tribalism of "this is my crew," it's also just good to have some bragging rights. So with that, I want to propose a sort of "squad-lite" play. Here's the idea:

Active commanders can declare their intention to join in, and pilots can declare themselves "eligible" for the "draft." Then the active commanders will rotate through the "draft pool" until all of the players who declared are in the squads.

This is a sort of reboot of the squad realignment from a while ago that actually worked pretty well, was Dome's idea (I think), and so credit where credit is due.

Each week there will be scheduled matches for each active "squad," but these matches take place on the main server. The way the matches work is exactly like the old squad rules: one team is "home" the other is "away," home team picks map or settings, away team picks the other.

The commander of each of these "squads" will get on the proper team, along with their drafted pilots. Then we'll do a pick pool of the remaining pilots. We'll start with regular pick pool and if we need to institute things to balance the teams, we'll do that ad-hoc: the goal here isn't to rofltstomp through games like there's a prize to be won, but rather to make intense, competitive, high-level matches.

After the match is over, the next set of comms will step up, and we'll do the process again.

Example of a Sunday Docket of Games:

P1 v Terran
Ryujin v Nightflame
Weed v Thallium

@SGT-10: P1 and Terran take command of the blue and yellow team, with their "Squaddies" joining them. Terran and P1 take turns picking, the squad with the worst record picks first, if tied then home team picks first.
@SGT: Game 1 launches, P1 v Terran. Hard fought battle, someone wins, hooray!
@SGT+ G1 time: Ryujin and Nightflame take command, squaddies join them, then pick pool. Game 2 launches. Then repeat for game 3.

Honestly I'd be happy to do this with just me vs someone (Terran? Weed?), but having at least 4 commanders on the rotation would be nice if just for diversity of games.

The advantage I feel to this system is that we will have the higher-level games guaranteed once a week (a big draw for some players), knowing that at least ONE game (preferably 2 or 3) has set commanders already so there's no question who's commanding the "next one," and if we can get 4-6 commanders to sign up then we can also ensure that the people who tend to command the most games are able to fly at least once on the afternoon.

Please let me know if you're interested so I can start finalizing plans to make this work!
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Terran
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Post by Terran »

sure, i can f5 and right-click
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Papsmear
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Post by Papsmear »

Sounds like a great idea.
Like you already mentioned, as long as you can get 4 to 6 dedicated commanders, this should increase competitive game play.
Who knows it may even bring back a few old timers.
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Drizzo
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Post by Drizzo »

:ninja:
cashto wrote:QUOTE (cashto @ Oct 16 2010, 02:48 AM) Interceptors are fun because without one, Drizzo would be physically incapable of entering a sector.
Dome
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Post by Dome »

I like the enthusiasm and would support any attempt at organizing competitive play.

The hardest part is getting commanders and drafted players to show up on game-day. In my time organizing games I got many personal commitments from comms and then they either told me the day before the game they could no longer make it or they simply didn't show up. And the squad remake/rebuild of 2014 survived just over a year before most squads simply couldn't field teams even with all mercs available.

I'm more partial of the idea of another YvB myself which guarantees at least one large (as large as possible) game on Sunday. Comms could sign up to do that, and we could have backup comms, like before.

In your scenario I see a high possibility of having game 1, it goes long and then 50% of the playerbase logs off including some of the next comms leaving games 2 and 3 in shambles.
Vortrog
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Post by Vortrog »

Good luck with this. In first with crying stack.
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zombywoof
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Post by zombywoof »

Dome wrote:QUOTE (Dome @ Jun 22 2019, 08:14 PM) I'm more partial of the idea of another YvB myself which guarantees at least one large (as large as possible) game on Sunday. Comms could sign up to do that, and we could have backup comms, like before.

In your scenario I see a high possibility of having game 1, it goes long and then 50% of the playerbase logs off including some of the next comms leaving games 2 and 3 in shambles.
It's really an attempt to make a YvB kind of thing, but we'll keep track of how small groups do.


So for example, suppose you have players A-M with 3 players per "squad," giving you the following squads (with their current "records" in parenthesis):

1: A,B,C (3-1, 1-1 commanding)
2: D,E,F (2-2, 2-0 commanding)
3: H,I,J (2-2, 1-1 commanding)
4: K,L,M (1-3, 0-2 commanding)

Now suppose there are a handful of mercs. The way I see gameday going is this: The two scheduled matches are 1v2 and 3v4. For game 1, the squads are distributed "evenly," while keeping the squads together. So we look at the records and recognize that 1v2 is going to be a good matchup, but 2 seems to be better commanding. So the matchup for game 1 would be 1+3+mercs vs 2+4+mercs, with squads 1 and 3 required to be in the command seat. I guess it would also work to have like, squads that don't have commanders in them.

If the game goes long and we can't get another big game going, that's fine. I would suggest though that we permit and actively encourage resigning lost games. I'm on the opposite end of team no-resign. There are bad resigns, but there are also good resigns: sometimes the game is just over and the rest of it isn't going to be particularly fun for anyone. Skip it and move on to the next game.
Vortrog wrote:QUOTE (Vortrog @ Jun 23 2019, 11:24 AM) Good luck with this. In first with crying stack.
All the games you play in are stacked (against you).
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Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain.
Cookie Monster wrote:QUOTE (Cookie Monster @ Apr 1 2009, 09:35 PM) But I don't read the forums I only post.
zombywoof
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Post by zombywoof »

P.S. I also like intermission DM breaks for about 10 minutes. Gives people time to decompress after a game, go pee, go get food/beer/weed/whatever...

p.p.s. Drizzo/Brood/Spidey as a squad would be great fun to play against so yeah come back and make it happen ;)
Last edited by zombywoof on Wed Jun 26, 2019 5:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain.
Cookie Monster wrote:QUOTE (Cookie Monster @ Apr 1 2009, 09:35 PM) But I don't read the forums I only post.
Vortrog
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Post by Vortrog »

phoenix1 wrote:QUOTE (phoenix1 @ Jun 27 2019, 03:31 AM) All the games you play in are stacked (against you).
Seriously though, this is allegiance. I appreciate anything that gets squad play going, but its more than just coming up with a good way of reintroducing squad play, its more about getting what's left of the community to drop their wants and go with whatever you logically suggest. My assertion on stacking is based on the 'Box set' phenomenon we saw during the YvB era, but it manifests in other ways like 'Ill only fly / wont fly for xxx' etc. Maybe everyone is desperate enough to cooperate completely this time.

And, yes of course the game is stacked against me when my lowest ping is 300.
Last edited by Vortrog on Wed Jun 26, 2019 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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zombywoof
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Post by zombywoof »

Vortrog wrote:QUOTE (Vortrog @ Jun 26 2019, 02:03 PM) Seriously though, this is allegiance. I appreciate anything that gets squad play going, but its more than just coming up with a good way of reintroducing squad play, its more about getting what's left of the community to drop their wants and go with whatever you logically suggest. My assertion on stacking is based on the 'Box set' phenomenon we saw during the YvB era, but it manifests in other ways like 'Ill only fly / wont fly for xxx' etc. Maybe everyone is desperate enough to cooperate completely this time.
Really this is far more about organizing games around what the community wants. If you step back for a moment, you'll see it.

The Box-Set Phenomenon? That's what I'm trying to organize and collect information on. Now you're not just flying with your friends, you're flying with your friends AND your successes and failures are recorded so get your bragging engines ready.

"I'll only fly/won't fly for xxx" is another big part of why this is being set up. Only want to fly for one commander? Join that person's box set. Don't want to fly for a particular commander? Then don't! Merc for the other guy!

Really this whole thing is designed just to make even games easier to achieve and allow people to fly with their friends.


QUOTE And, yes of course the game is stacked against me when my lowest ping is 300.[/quote]
As a general rule, you tend to anti-stack. Also, the only people who complain about stack are those who are stacked against (for what should be fairly obvious reasons). Hence, no matter the player, the game is Always Stacked Against Youtm.
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Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain.
Cookie Monster wrote:QUOTE (Cookie Monster @ Apr 1 2009, 09:35 PM) But I don't read the forums I only post.
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