Slitherine

Following on from the welcome news that paired challenges will become a proper mp feature could I ask that the following be 'fixed' or changed:

1. Resignation - to result in loss. And to avoid resignation to save casualties in paired battles or leagues, loss of 2/3 of the loser's men and units as default. Thus if the break point was 30, and the army in question were 30 000 men strong, a resignation would result in 45/30 and 20 000 casualties.

2. That games where a player has not played a turn for, say, a fortnight (or maybe a month) should result in an automatic resignation by that player (solving the issue of 'deadbeats').

3. That games where both sides exceed their break point in the same turn be declared draws rather than the first one to exceed in that turn losing (I'm not sure if that's meant to be how it works, but it doesn't seem to).

Once RoR is out we'll do a poll to see what are the most heavily requested features and try and work then in as soon as possible!

Totally agree with Paisley's points!

1. Resignation - to result in loss. And to avoid resignation to save casualties in paired battles or leagues, loss of 2/3 of the loser's men and units as default. Thus if the break point was 30, and the army in question were 30 000 men strong, a resignation would result in 40/30 and 20 000 casualties.

Nice suggestions Paisley. Its a tricky decision about kill points, especially in a competition game where your result can effect other peoples chances in the competition. The only semi-fair way of doing things that I can think of is that after a player resigns, the AI takes over. While not a perfect solution, at least the player still has to work for his win!

That's not at all a bad idea, if it's practical. There needs to be some added penalty for resignation, otherwise if playing paired games, if one has won the first (say) 18/30 versus 32/30 and is losing the second 24/30 to 20/30, resignation is the only logical move... you lose that game but win overall. Of course it'd be unsportsmanlike but could be done through ignorance.

In an ideal world of course, resignation would be accompanied by a short video sequence where the resigning general is shown on his knees, sobbing and pleading for his worthless life... I'm not generally a fan of cutaway video scenes, but in this case it would be sufficicent moral deterrent to mean other changes were less necessary I think... it'd also be hilarious.*


*Note, I'm not entirely serious about this.

I think a reignation should result in all your BG's being immediately routed/destroyed. This will give you the worst possible score.

That would work, but it might have unwelcome consequenses for tournament play where if player X resigns against player A, A then has a very, very large boost to his total break points for/against. Most lost games have break points exceeded by no more than 10% so too much of a larger penalty might unbalance things a it. I think that was (the other) Ian's point.

While we are on the subject of resignations I would like to re- raise the idea (from old beta) of being allowed to keep a "blacklist" of people you dont want to play in MP. 99.99% of people who have picked up my challenges are good opponents and sportsmen - but there are one or 2 people out there I do not want to play and I find I am challenging less and less as I know they may pick up the challenges.

being able to just add to a list anyone you dont want to play would solve this without affecting anyone else, and once the coding was done its done, no admin required by slytherine, places all admin on user. (I do not believe password protecting games is the same although thats great for competitions and playing mates - I believe you still want as many open challenges as possible - allows new users in and keeps game fresh for experienced ones)

And the blacklist need not apply to password protected games so it would not mess up competitions etc.

Paisley wrote:That would work, but it might have unwelcome consequenses for tournament play where if player X resigns against player A, A then has a very, very large boost to his total break points for/against. Most lost games have break points exceeded by no more than 10% so too much of a larger penalty might unbalance things a it. I think that was (the other) Ian's point.

Your right but if someone is participating in a tournament the effect on their (the resigning party) bp totals would be highly punitive and is arguably the best protection against it happening.
Otherwise why enter a tournament?
Tournaments also have the option to forbid resignation/disqualify for resignation.

The beauty of Ian's suggestion is it is very simple.

As and when multiplayer results are recorded Ian's suggestion would also protect against players resigning because the punishing effect of resignation would send them tumbling down any bp table.
The threat of this mitigates strongly against the possibility of the odd player receiving too many bp.
Anyway any general ranking of bp's is strongly subjective and will depend on proportion of large vs small scenarios played - proportion of wins to losses is more informative but still relatively subjective.

Freinds lists & black lists are things that would be nice to have but not going to happen in the immediate future.

It's not so much the resigner tumbling down the listings as his opponent being boosted. But it does depend how a tournament is set up. If there are divisions of say 8 players then I think it's a problem, if big divisions of 20 or so, much less so.