Spring RTS Engine

Having nearly reached 300 hours, I figured I would take a peek at the forum community the game has. Hi

Something I am keen to gain knowledge on is the state of the games "Squads" or "Clans" if you prefer.

After a brief skim over the forum I found no posts relating to Squad rosters, Squad conflicts, recruitment etc....

Is there any real "squad life" yet or are squads still generally based on friends getting together under the same tag for purpose of identification only. (If you see what I'm getting at)

I used to moderate for another online game called Subspace which I'm sure some of you may have heard of. The best thing about the game was the strong squad based play, with squad match planning, recruitment, flame wars etc... all being being held in a Squad section in the games popular Forum. (In fact the game was played in the forum just as much as in the actual game)

My Questions is does a similar section exist here? Or are there any plans to add emphasis to squad based play in the future?

anyway I'm starting to ramble on now.

Hello.

There have been occasional clan tournaments, but its mostly just friens getting together.

Subspace was a sort of MMO. You had hundreds of players competing with eachother in public servers. Banding together in this wild, competitive, conflict based environment was not only advantageous for planning and coordination, but often necessary just to survive.

Correct me if the assessment is incorrect, i only played it briefly and my knowledge of it is far from complete.

In Spring, first and foremost, games are organised by players. Players host the servers, and almost all games are random, public team games. You and someone you probably dont know fighting against someone else you dont know with someone he doesnt know. There is no reason to form a clan or squad, as teams are made ad-hoc and then adhered to for the duration of the game. The next game, you might be playing with someone you were trying to kill just half an hour ago.

Equally, its important to get balanced teams in spring games, otherwise the game becomes a boring (for both sides) noobstomp. Clans tend to attract good players- i find myself fighting against my clannmates more than i fight alongside them, as we are usually the best players in any particular game. I find that more fun anyway. The most memorable games ive had are ones where i am fighting someone i know, whose tactics, skill and strategy i am familiar with, as if this is just another part of an epic saga of our conflict, and who i can debrief with afterwards and go 'wow, wasnt that an awesome game?'.

As for flame wars, we already have factionalism among players based on mod and map, we dont need to encourage flame wars over clans as well. That being said, all clans except LCC are full of stupid jerks.

I would love to join a clan/squad, but nobody seems to be recruiting. I really love cooperative play and have the most fun in Spring when I have a team that really knows how to play together. I think we need to build on this kind of thing, as it seems to be a weak spot in the Spring community. Let's do it! How can I help? (I have web/graphic design skills I can offer)

Saktoth wrote:That being said, all clans except LCC are full of stupid jerks.

tl;dr for you

There are a few clans you may as well note, I'd recommend that you create a new one and drag in friends to staff it rather than try to draw from the current community, of course.

PRO: Pets Reunited Online, classic OTA clan, with trainees. Currently the best ranked on the BA ladders, and probably the most well known outside of Spring.
[XHC]: Extremely Handsome Chaps, generally good though half-idle competitive clan.
[WarC]: WarCows, current stewards of the most popular game content, BA, generally good but once again half-idle.
[LCC]: Leet Commanders Club. Largest in Spring, with some fairly skilled members, forged out of evil!

There are at least two dozen others with multiple members, particularly [CN], [tN], [NR], [x], [RoX], [DfD]...

In addition to clans, we have some people with development or fan tags. These function as clans in autobalance but are not organized for competitive reasons and tend to play considerably less.

[S44]: Spring: 1944 development group. Lead by Nemo.
[Evo]: Evolution RTS development group. Lead by Forboding Angel.
[SWS]: Star Wars Spring development group. Lead by Warlord_Zsinj.

Fan tags include... [FF], [EE], [SW] and [1944].

Lastly, there are two special tags. [TS] for people on Spring teamspeak, [Tired] for the numerous accounts of Tired.

Correct Saktoth. You have pretty much hit the nail on the head when it comes to explaining Subspace. And I agree that it is both better suited and more dependent on Squad based play.

And i also agree that squads do tend to attract the best players, and squad members like to play their teammates because of the similarity in skill levels. But thats not to say that these circumstances should hinder a healthy collection of competitive squads from forming, with varying skill levels.

Another aspect of squad-play, is the added hierarchy which becomes part of the game.

For instance, If a squad has been around for a long time, has strong members, and a good reputation, lesser players aspire to join their ranks, or they create their own squads to rival the best squads, and before long a squad ladder forms almost like a Ranking system. With people being able to tell how good you are simply by looking at your squad.

I'm just brainstorming really, I'm not campaigning for anything

It is likely that i would enjoy creating my own squad, sadly I have no time. But others might, and i would like to encourage them


Yet again i find myself Rambling...

Saktoth wrote:That being said, all clans except LCC are full of stupid jerks.

+1 other clans sux.

Tags are for fags lozl

Peet wrote:Tags are for fags lozl

STFU n00b

I've been involved in some competitive play environments on a couple FPS titles now Final, and TBH, the size of our community vs the relative uselessness of clans here, I'm surprised at the number of squads and clans we DO have. I'd really love it if we saw a bit more competitive action in spring, but frankly, with a community barely pushing 1000 members at the best of times what we have isn't too bad.

I've run leagues and what not before. It's alot of work, and without player support it's a huge pain. That being said, if someone wants to take up the project for the 4th time or whatever it is now, I'm fully in support of them.

I am rather saddened that, under your comprehensive list of clans, there wasn't a section for 'Secretive ***Holes.' Can I claim moderation Bias?


Nah, just kidding. Final, the best thing you could do is keep your options open, at the moment. I know that's what I do.

We can implement a clan league system under the current ladder for whichever game on the engine we wish to, but manual tending to avoid mixed teams would be necessary until Mel has the time to implement new dynamics.

Sounds like a good plan, but as people have pointed out, the current state of squads probably doesn't merit that course of action, (correct me if I'm wrong). I suppose It depends the actual difficulty of implementing a new league into the ladder.

By which i mean it would be a shame to see someone put alot of effort in to creating the new league only for it to fail.

My simple suggestion would be to first create a new sub category in the forum where people can advertise their squad recruitment, rosters etc. And this in turn, would bring new players to forum, and encourage Squad growth.

The advantage of a squad forum is that teams can talk to one another without them all having to be online at the same time, which rarely happens. This would allow them to gain structure by holding recruitment polls etc, thus creating a squad community.

On the other hand this may be against the preferred purpose of the forum as I notice it is very Development based. (I'm just making suggestions, and would not wish to step on anyones toes)

any thoughts?

We already allow creation of private channels and discussion of clan activity/recruitment in #main. The vast majority of active spring players are far more likely to stumble into a clan that way than through anything on the forum. Only around 50% of our community even has a forum account, and the active formers group is much smaller.

Final wrote:It is likely that i would enjoy creating my own squad, sadly I have no time.

I played with you the other day Final and you were pretty impressive! I think you'd find there are plenty of clans out there who'd be willing to at least give you a trial.
On top of that, you clearly know how to articulate yourself and seem to have a maturity years beyond most of the spring community, so i think you'd be a welcome addition to most clans.

There are a few desperate clans around here that will take anyone who can burp, and if you fart they will make you their king.

thanks pew. made my day :)

My aim with this topic was not really to get recruited.
but hey, why not.

anyway i will stop banging on about squads now.
My questions have been answered.

thanks all.

Regarding competition between clans: like I said more than 2 years ago. Why keep reinventing the wheel? As in creating our own ladders/laddersystems. Something that would really benefit spring is getting a ladder on a site like http://www.clanbase.com.
Not only is it a solid and tried out system but it would attract new players as well. It also has functionality like challenging a specific player/clan for a match on a date and time which makes finding matches less of a pain in the ass.
I used to play a mod for the original UT for about 6 years which had roughly the same playerbase as spring. We had cups, multiple ladders etc and also loads of matches being played every week. This mod would never been able to stay alive as long as it did without the CB ladders for it. To be able to compete with others players/clans motivates people and just makes it more interesting...

End of rant........

most recruiting ive seen has been from new guys playing 1v1s and some clan member sees how good they are and invites them.
clans are pretty useless atm anyway, i joined tN for clan battles but there is rarely enough people on to muster even a 2v2