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I posted last year about smaller games and got shot down with the pick a bigger map argument. It doesn't work. There is an optimum size relative to the strength of weapons. Huge amounts of people available to defend & galv etc is horrible. Shields/hull both base & ship aren't scaled to huge numbers.

There two are easy answers, one much easier than the other.

1. Scale a core to multiple game sizes. Big project, scan ranges, ship, base & weapon strength, EVERYTHING needs to change for every variance of 10 players per side I reckon, maybe less.

2. Play smaller games, with limited team sizes on reasonably sized maps. That is Allegiance. Not the hundred player abortions that we currently have.

Five star post Juckto.

The trick is to persuade people to start more games rather than just join the massive cluster$#@!. Short of a group of like-minded people coming together and arranging to play decent games at a set time I don't see it happening.

One thought here. We could make 3 main games and just refuse to accept new players once the game has started. Then people would have an incentive to join the other games instead of say 60 in main and 7 in side game.

My plan was to start a game with the intended maximum number of players per side as its name. Set the server password as the same, say eighteen. Then anyone who knows enough to join, will know that if they join the lobby and see the game maxed, they move to another server and start again.

We could also divide up along rank lines. I'm happy to play with my fellow intermediates, and let the newbies and vets do their own things.

In my opinion, the ideal number of players in alleg is 15 +/- 5. Anything larger and strategy and tactics become pointless. Viewed from a bomber pilot perspective: above 20 there are just too many damn lucky newbs spotting your bomb run. There is no way to sneak anywhere and not get seen. It removes an important part of the game, stealth, planning, foresight, reading of the game dynamics.

Maps like snowflake are really fun 5 v 5 if you have OK->Good pilots on both teams.

I really like the idea to let the GC limit the max players so they dont get the temptation of just one more.

Unified lobby chat per server would make it so much easier.

Of course, sometimes you just don't expect your teamsize to be greater than 15, so when there's an influx there is little one can do but hope the team can work cohesively something hard in a PUG.

Also, wasn't the grand old days of allegiance filled with absurdly large teams? I was wondering why there was a 200 (100?) player limit on the servers..

Lt_Duong_ wrote:QUOTE (Lt_Duong_ @ Feb 4 2009, 06:46 PM) Of course, sometimes you just don't expect your teamsize to be greater than 15, so when there's an influx there is little one can do but hope the team can work cohesively something hard in a PUG.

Also, wasn't the grand old days of allegiance filled with absurdly large teams? I was wondering why there was a 200 (100?) player limit on the servers..

no other then the Zone Events... or if there were I'd just go to an appropriate sized game

Grimmwolf_GB wrote:QUOTE (Grimmwolf_GB @ Feb 2 2009, 12:14 PM) In my opinion, the ideal number of players in alleg is 15 +/- 5. Anything larger and strategy and tactics become pointless. Viewed from a bomber pilot perspective: above 20 there are just too many damn lucky newbs spotting your bomb run. There is no way to sneak anywhere and not get seen. It removes an important part of the game, stealth, planning, foresight, reading of the game dynamics.

Yeah just what I think. The initial suggestion of a "max 15 a side" is too low... 18-20 works fine (heck there's been a lot fo squad games recently with attendances of that size) but over that there's too much luck/lack of viable strategies going on.

I think limiting server size to 40 or 45 may have some effect, or at least is worth a try, especially at times of the day/week when there are more than 50 online in any case.

Also the "grand old age of allegiance" had a MUCH lower average skill level than we have now (despite what some people would have you believe), cap wars abounded...

QUOTE (Evincar)the first thing would be a size (without counting noat), then a squad filter (everyone, squadded, of xxx, yyy, zzz... squad, etc, like a regular expression filter[/quote]

The ability to ban certain squads from certain games?! That's not going to help, is it? If you're referring to squad games, well the current system works just fine imo.

Hey, who wants to play with SysX anyway?