Spring RTS Engine

Now handycap give you bonus. I think it could be better if it gave you malus. I explain : If you made good player vs new player , the new player have to _learn_ how to play. So it's better and faster if he learn with real value.
What's your opinion?

agree

how about u make it a poll?

Perhaps make the handicap go to -100 to 100 so people can do what they whant.

@Torrasque: Please rewrite your first post to make it intelligeble.

- I don't think that there should be an upper limit to handicap (let people in the battleroom decide for themselves whether an inexperienced player should have a 25% or a 117% production bonus). Remember players may have VASTLY different skill-levels, and the handicapping system should behave according to this fact.

- It should be readily apparent in the battle room what the effect of the handicap is (e.g. "Mines produce 25% more metal", etc.)

- I believe that increased efficiency of production is one good way of handicapping, which in my opinion does NOT take anything away from a beginners learning experience

@jensgb Sorry, I don't speak very well engish.

I have heard the the handycap is a Float. Then, I think people can do what they want.

(I'm just thinking about game with 5x more production. It could be funny)

Hmm so why would a very good player play newbs...

Lack of anybody also to play with? SO the newbs could learn how to play?

Handicap by definition is a disadvtange. Make it so that metal extrators mine -X% of their standard metal. So a handicap of 0 means you get full resources, while a handicap of 50 means half, 75 1/4 etc. (and a handicap of 100 means you cannot get metal!)

Redfish wrote:Hmm so why would a very good player play newbs...

Because I like to play versus real friend, even if they are not good.

@Doomweaver: Good point on handicap. I would however extend the notion to all units producing energy, since in play emphasis otherwise just would be moved from metal extraction to metal making (which would suddenly seem more lucrative).

@jensgb Just modifie the final metal/energie production. no?
Like that, you are sure that all units/strucuture wich produce energie/metal are modified.

jensgb, good point, but bad implementation I think... ALL things that give you metal should be affected by handicap, including metal makers, commander etc.

Hmm. Handicapping value could be also used to make 1 vs. 3 or 2
experienced vs. 2 newb -battles.

After thinking a while, I think it wouldn't help the newbs if there would be that kind of handicapping -feature. I have noticed that most of the adv. players put up a big amount of power plants while doing their basic stuff, adv. players only would have to change their order in building stuff and they would make it up without noticeable change, remember that most nebs doesn't expand much so the adv. players stuff the map full. This needs solution which really works and limits the ability to seek and destroy.

What about making an radius from start location where the adv. player could only build buildings instead of whole map, this radius would be smaller dependant on the handicap -value.

Redfish: Where did you got so nice attitude? You remind me from my country's goverment. There are high support for older people but no-one takes into account the young ones who will build up the future and breeds the next generation. Internet is used to contain information, young and new users are the ones who lacks the information, Internet gives that and much more because people in Internet reflects this beauty. You don't look like one who could help somebody else than themself. The newbs keep up the community in the future, so they are required for a perfect community.

Doomweaver wrote:

ALL things that give you metal should be affected by handicap, including metal makers, commander etc

Since metal makers are dirt cheap to build, limiting their efficiency would have little effect (players would build more of them at little expense). They do however depend on another resource, energy, so limiting the supply of this resource would actually amount to a handicap.

To summarize:
One reasonable, general way to handicap is to decrease the resource generating efficiency of all units that EXTRACT metal (mines), GENERATE metal WITHOUT expending energy (construction units, etc.), and ALL energy generating units and structures.

I am not opposed to the idea of implementing other types of handicaps, but I believe that the above mentioned handicap should be implemented first.

Ok, for those whose didn't read the Dev Forum, i just want to point out how the handicaps works.

This is only a float value which multiply ALL the output from ALL the units in game. If you want to disable handicap for only some units, i tell ya good luck, because this will need you to create a new entry in units scripts.

An handicap of 0 mean 100% energy/metal output, and handicap of 100 mean 200% output and an handicap of -100% mean 0% ouput.

The formula is RealOutput = TmpOutput*((Handicap/100)+1).
The formula is hardcoded in spring.exe.

And because this topic is becoming more technical, maybe it is a good idea to move it to Dev section.