War Of The Mods

[Frans]

I have this Wonderful idea!

A Modding contest should be held!

This contest should work to something like this.

Every group partaking in the contest, needs to make a name.
They should then, create a mod, with one side, named after that groups name. In that mod, every unit made, must follow a set of rules, to determine how everything should be balanced.

These set of rules, that every unit should be based on, will dictate, how much should a units properties be relative to each other. Meaning, if a unit has this much firepower, then it should cost at least this much, or have less then this much health and armor.

I haven't thought up of any formulas, that will make up these rules,
but, the idea is, that once each group has finished making their mod,
They should be all grouped together, and then a battle should be held, with this new combined mod. Each group will play as their own side, that they made, and spectators should be welcome to watch the game.

After the battle is done, the winning group should congratulated, and maby given some kind of prize, and have their names written down, in the beginning of a hall of fame. After that, second contest could be held, to then determine the new winner to have their name written in the books.

But, the battle shouldn't be all that should be in the contest.
Each group, should choose the best group, beside their own, that qualifies the most, for a set of category's, such as how good it looks, how are the effects, how balanced is it, how well is its performance, and so on.

Those results, should too have a winner, to be included in a hall of fame, and maby also given a prize.

After both of those are completed, the overall winner should be chosen, and that should also be recorded, etc.
Both contest should earn you a set amount of points, to determine who should be the overall winner, which of course, is the true winner.

So, the goal of all this, is to be the overall winner, and that can only be archived, by making their mod look the best, and play the best.

[KDR_11k]

I'll add a Lua gadget that destroys all units not belonging to my faction .

Seriously this is silly, you'll just get the same unit with different stats. If the rules specify health, firepower and range what's to stop me from using the Melee weapontype with a really low reload time (damage of course really low too) knowing that an engine bug will result in that thing instantly flinging any enemy unit across the map? Will you specify weapontypes and their operation parameters (turnrate, speed, flighttime, etc for missiles and stuff)? How much freedom can you really leave the modders if you don't want them to use unspecified properties to their advantage (mass, COB, ...)? Could you really let us make anything that goes beyond a bunch of tanks with standardized weapons?

[rattle]

Alphabet soup contest, yay! Expect BloX vs. BA in a year or two.

[KDR_11k]

Also wouldn't this be "war of the modders"?

[smoth]

So, the goal of all this, is to be the overall winner, and that can only be archived, by making their mod look the best, and play the best.

Hang on while I drop everything for you internet penor contest and produce subpar content for YOUR amusement.

[Argh]

I think, personally, that if everything about the Unit and its weapon was standardized, except for the animations, that it might be fun, but it'd just be a beauty-prize contest, and an absolute time-waster- kind've like making skins for Quake, except that we wouldn't have Quake's gameplay.

Now, if somebody wants to create a Quake-like LUA game design, with MoveCtrl and UI stuff (changing weapons, etc.)... I'd be interested then. We can finally do flat mazes and cities and other stuff fairly decently, and if characters could jump, strafe, and move backwards... the game could be fairly interesting...

[Google_Frog]

I think this would end up being who could exploit your cost formula the most. eg. a unit with 1 hp, no turn speed but massive range. To stop this the formula would have to be very strict but then the units are very similar and thus boring. And what about special things like shields or cloaking which are hard to put an exact cost on?

[smoth]

what about the fact that noone is going to waste their time with this.

[hoijui]

what about.. if someone that likes this idea, does all the work? and instead of a contest, it could be a kind of fun mod. so lets say.. the creator of this mod takes 3 units from Kernel Panic, 3 of CA, 3 of BA, 3 of ... . and adjusts just the basic values like build time, build cost and weapon damage, so they still work quite like in the original mod, but are a bit balanced.
this should not be too much work, and the mod could be used well for advertising the engine and the mods at once.. and could be nice for short fun LAN-plays, where everyone can play with his favorite mod against his buddies.

[rattle]

by making their mod look the best, and play the best.

Doubt it.

[SinbadEV]

tl;dr BUT I had this idea one time for an "open source" card game where all the rules for what could be on the cards were associated with a cost and you could have a certain number of cards with the same class, sub-class, "rarity"

[AF]

In my mod, my cookies will collect your units and take them to a reprocessing centre where they will be fed to my babies, and out the other end will appear ultra beautiful women with bowls full of omgwtf super curry being refilled by mini curry gurus standing on the units which are now small compacted cubes with footrests on them.

[CarRepairer]

In my mod, my cookies will collect your units and take them to a reprocessing centre where they will be fed to my babies, and out the other end will appear ultra beautiful women with bowls full of omgwtf super curry being refilled by mini curry gurus standing on the units which are now small compacted cubes with footrests on them.

AF wins. Contest over.

[Snipawolf]

In my mod, since of course, constructors will probably be left out of the equations, I'll make a super "constructor" unit that just reclaims shit, that can build more of itself...

[smoth]

tl;dr BUT I had this idea one time for an "open source" card game where all the rules for what could be on the cards were associated with a cost and you could have a certain number of cards with the same class, sub-class, "rarity"

if you make this, can I get a NON gpl copy and add a gundam mutator? Seriously, if you do it, I will add it as a mutator for gundam!

[Noruas]

Finished Model, ill show you tomorrow.

[Fanger]

SPEEDER, ITS HOSTILE!

[Pxtl]

Really, any number of tabletop games already have rules for mech/vehicle designs. You could probably extend (for example) the Battletech rules somewhat, and say "make units that conform to these rules" to build factions, and let mod-devs do their own designs.

The problem is that any sufficiently powerful system is prone to minimaxing. Mekton was notorious for this. At the very least, the optimizing of values means that neat, clever concepts might be unusable because of being mathematically sub-optimal.

Really, remember all the threads about the impossibility of numerical/mathematical balancing? This is like that, in reverse.

[hrmph]

what about the fact that noone is going to waste their time with this.

rofl