Springlobby: randomize faction when joining battle room

[AF]

Your overlooking a horrible consequence of implementing it in the lobby

So, springlobby implements it.

The lobby server protocol still requires though that a side number be sent over the network.

So springlobby has to pick a side already resulting in the following scenarios:

1: Springlobby randomly picks a faction and sends it off

Immediatly anybody running an older springlobby or a different lobby client instantly knows what faction you are and thus cheats.

2: Springlobby just sends the first or default

This can be misleading as nobody would know what faction you are till you start, they instead would believe you where faction A, and that would influence their decisions, so when they come out as faction B in the end and everybodies plans are buggered and they're all confused and you have no idea why. In a mod where you need to have players on different factions in a team this could be disastrous.

3: Springlobby uses a special number or negative number

This would be a problem since it would not be a part of the protocol, and as such other bots or clients that see this wouldnt know that it is a special case situation and to handle it.


But most damning of all

The Content Developer may want to deliberatly remove support for random factions.

[CarRepairer]

http://trac.caspring.org/wiki/CaSongs#C ... actionSong

[Argh]

The Content Developer may want to deliberatly remove support for random factions.

If you want to have Units that don't belong to any Faction, that's easy enough to do.

There is no reason to have a Chickens faction, for example, unless you want them to be playable. They don't need CanBuild or Commanders, which is the only real purpose of the Faction code. They can fake that stuff with Lua.

[Pxtl]

I think a lot of people are missing something here.

There is a lightyear of difference CA's "Random Faction" and simply being assigned a random faction when you connect to the Battle Room. In the latter, you (and every other player) know what faction you will receive when the game starts.

I still think the best approach is to have a "default" flag you can put on the faction in modinfo, and if there are multiple "defaults" then a random one of those is selected when you connect to the Battle Room. Thus, the Teamspec and Chickens can be eliminated from the randomized list.

However, this is probably solving a problem that doesn't really exist - I don't see any games where the "default" faction is overwhelmingly popular compared to the alternatives.

[zwzsg]

It's unnecessary silly feature creep, that's all.

[Gabba]

I think a lot of people are missing something here.

There is a lightyear of difference CA's "Random Faction" and simply being assigned a random faction when you connect to the Battle Room. In the latter, you (and every other player) know what faction you will receive when the game starts.

I still think the best approach is to have a "default" flag you can put on the faction in modinfo, and if there are multiple "defaults" then a random one of those is selected when you connect to the Battle Room. Thus, the Teamspec and Chickens can be eliminated from the randomized list.

Thanks for clearing things up.
I think the title of the thread and my OP are pretty clear. I think many people read an average of three words per post, otherwise I don't know how they can misinterpret stuff like this.

However, this is probably solving a problem that doesn't really exist - I don't see any games where the "default" faction is overwhelmingly popular compared to the alternatives.

That's the key question. My impression in BA (from playing or speccing about 25 games in the last two weeks) is that 80% of players go Arm.
I'm not the only one to have this impression, as shows this older feature request that koshi linked at the beginning of the thread.

[CarRepairer]

A new Robot faction has appeared, known as the Random. This mysterious army, which fights under the flag symbolized by the ancient human symbol known as the Question Mark has acquired both Arm and Core technology. Fortunately they only start with one at a time.

http://trac.caspring.org/changeset/2001

[JohannesH]

However, this is probably solving a problem that doesn't really exist - I don't see any games where the "default" faction is overwhelmingly popular compared to the alternatives.

That's the key question. My impression in BA (from playing or speccing about 25 games in the last two weeks) is that 80% of players go Arm.
I'm not the only one to have this impression, as shows this older feature request that koshi linked at the beginning of the thread.

How the hell is that a problem for you or at least for anybody else.

[lurker]

unless you want them to be playable

That's why they're a faction now instead of just misc. units. Chickens happen to be UP to avoid having to balance against them, but they're still playable, and a very bad thing to get if you don't intend it.