Springlobby: randomize faction when joining battle room

[Gabba]

Moderators, feel free to move this thread if there's a better subforum for Springlobby requests.

Could the faction be assigned randomly when players join a battle room in Springlobby?

Right now it seems to default to whatever faction game developers have listed first in their data files. For instance in BA everybody plays Arm by default. Many newbies probably don't realize for a while that games offer them a choice between several factions, and by the time they do, they're already used to the default side, and are reluctant to switch over even if they'd like to.

- Problem: some games such as CA have playable factions that we don't want as default (teamspec???).

[maackey]

I don't suppose you've seen the random faction in CA?

Not that i disagree. It does seem a rather hacky fix for something that could be done elsewhere, I'm just saying that it has already been done

[Gabba]

C'mon, it's five lines of code to write for a bored Springlobby developer, and then we don't have to wait for every game to copy CA in this respect.

[JohannesH]

Not every game wants the possibility of picking random. It has some obvious balance issues (at least if you dont know the enemy faction once ingame) and its not like CA is the only game where you can do that.

[JohannesH]

C'mon, it's five lines of code to write for a bored Springlobby developer, and then we don't have to wait for every game to copy CA in this respect.

Edit: ok I misread, dont mind this... But even when i understand what you mean i dont agree, its simpler when you know when you need to change and when not. And the BA newbies are better off playing arm anyway

Edit: hmm seems i quoted some random crap instead of editing my 1st post

[zwzsg]

Some games have factions that are not meant to be played by human players. Like, uh, Chickens!

[luckywaldo7]

Or backup and teamspec.

[koshi]

http://springlobby.info/issues/show/571

[Gabba]

@JohannesH

I'm not an expert myself, but I've heard the opposite opinion: that Core is better for newbies since it has uncomplicated tough units, while Arm is requires more skill to use its specialty units effectively.
In any case, in other games there might not be a "newbie" faction.

As far as having to check your faction each time you enter a battleroom, is it really so horrible? I think it's a good trade for seeing more variety in the factions played.

@zwzsg

But... but... I wanna be the chickens

@koshi

Ok, I read that bug and it's conclusion, and I understand the problem.

It's too bad that this issue wasn't addressed before, since now we're stuck with bogus factions.

CA's random faction (which seems to be it's default, actually) is good for when you want the added challenge of not knowing your side in advance. But usually it's better to know beforehand the distribution of factions: you might change sides depending on what the opposing team picks. If you know it only when the game starts, it's harder to have balanced teams.

Are there already many games with bogus factions like that, or is it still limited to CA? If it is, there's still time to ask CA (and future mods) to add a new tag to sidedata.lua to distinguish between factions that should be picked by the randomizer, and those who shouldn't.

We can add a new attribute lobbydefault to factions; on entering the battle room, your default faction will be picked from those that have lobbydefault = true.
So for CA, the sidedata.lua would look like that:

local sideData = {
[1] = {
name = 'Random',
startunit = 'random_comm',
lobbydefault = false,
},
[2] = {
name = 'ARM',
startunit = 'armcom',
lobbydefault = true,
},
[3] = {
name = 'CORE',
startunit = 'corcom',
lobbydefault = true,
},
[4] = {
name = 'Chicken (Random if disabled)',
startunit = 'chickenbroodqueen',
lobbydefault = false,
},
[5] = {
name = 'Backup',
startunit = 'backupunit',
lobbydefault = false,
},
[6] = {
name = 'Teamspec',
startunit = 'backupunit',
lobbydefault = false,
},
}

If it doesn't see the lobbydefault tag on any faction, the lobby will pick the default at random from all available factions.

[smoth]

I don't want the lobby changing my faction. I play the same one all the time.

[Gabba]

I don't want the lobby changing my faction. I play the same one all the time.

So by chance you always play the default one?

That's another feature request that has already been made, though: save user preferences.

[smoth]

I play the faction I choose to.

Also sometimes the default is the easier faction to play. I set federation to default for gundam so that starting players would always start with the easier faction.

[Gabba]

I don't want the lobby changing my faction. I play the same one all the time.

I play the faction I choose to.

Sounds contradictory. Trolling much?

Also sometimes the default is the easier faction to play. I set federation to default for gundam so that starting players would always start with the easier faction.

Putting lobbydefault = true on federation and false on the others would achieve exactly this.
If it's really too much trouble to add this (omg omg), the default behavior in absence of lobbydefault tags could be to not randomize anything (contrary to what I said below that code snippet above).

[smoth]

Putting lobbydefault = true on federation and false on the others would achieve exactly this.

ummm the first faction is the lobby default, we do not need an extra tag for this.

[Neddie]

Couldn't we just move our manually added Random factions to the first faction option as game or mod developers?

[Gabba]

Couldn't we just move our manually added Random factions to the first faction option as game or mod developers?

I was gonna say "noes!", but thinking twice about it... putting the "Random" faction as default does make newbs aware that there are several factions to choose from. Let's say I'm 50% convinced .

On the other hand, my solution would open the door to a !randomize factions command or button, that picks a faction for everybody. Useful when the host wants to encourage everybody to try something different, and it still allows for manual adjustments before the game starts.

[smoth]

that would be pretty gay. Bad enough that game hosts can change our colors/aliance/faction, I would really hate to see a button to randomize our stuff.

[JohannesH]

You really think it takes people long to realize that there can be several factions?

And I'd never want to play with a host that changes my faction with no reason.

I see no reason whatsoever to implement any of this

[CarRepairer]

The current implementation of random faction in CA is better than having the lobby choose it. It gives the player a pro and con. The con is that he loses his faction choice. The pro is that it hides his faction from the enemy until scouted. That said it wouldn't hurt to have a "randomize" button in the lobby for playing around with that chooses a random faction for you.

[Pxtl]

My preferred approach:

LobbyDefault flag on the factions list. If a mod has multiple LobbyDefault faction, then the faction will be randomly selected of the various LobbyDefault factions when you join the battle-room.

For example, if you had experimental or backup factions like in CA, you could mark all the normal factions as LobbyDefault. Then the lobby would pick one at random when they join... but this is different from CA's "Random" faction, since it would just be a random selection at join-time, not at in-game time. That is, the player was just randomly assigned a faction when he stepped into the battleroom - his faction selection is visible to himself and other players while the game is still waiting to begin.

Ultimately, it's an unnecessary feature - we don't seem to have a problem with players sticking to the default faction.

@Gabba:

BA EMGs are easier to use than BA Laser units. Laser units have the hidden micro-intensive part that they do double-damage at point-blank range.