JoeBrogan7

I'm not sure what you mean. That's the whole point of the suggestion...the only way that swap goes through in the first 5 minutes of the game is if the person swapping is being replaced with another player of comparable performance. Otherwise, it doesn't happen.

Good thing - if we had absolute balance then our marathon matches would never end

I think that's a bit of hyperbole. When team stacking is *not* going on, there usually aren't any balance issues. One team might randomly get assigned better players for a single match, but it gets corrected on the next. This isn't a problem; but intentional team stacking that throw off the balance of the server for 8+ matches in a row is a huge problem.

Personally, I think it's a problem worth focusing on, even if it's difficult. Balanced teams are so important in RenX and team stacking is a significant problem in that regard.

I have a suggestion, Tom, though I don't know if it is technically feasible or not, so I'll just throw it out there. How about a system where a team swap is only allowed if the player switching teams is replaced by a different player of roughly comparable performance. How do we measure that? We could tie it to kills, k/d, wins, or points per x unit of time (or a combination of any of these). Since the "pro" team stackers in question usually have a ridiculously high kill count and k/d ratio compared to the rest of the players in the match, let's pick some numbers and say that two players need to be within 85% of each other in terms of kills per the last 180 minutes of gameplay in order to swap teams. Scenario: Player A = 414 kills over the last 180 minutes of game time. 2.3 kills per minute (kpm) Player B = 46 kills in the same period. 0.26 kpm Player C = 364 kills in the same period. 2.02 kpm Player A cannot swap teams with Player B because there is too big a discrepancy between the players in kpm. However, Player A can successfully swap with Player C because Player C is within the 85% threshold in kpm at 87.8%. This would keep team swapping allowed for most of the playerbase, but the elite players, who can handily decide a game when they stack together, wouldn't be able to swap unless someone of comparable performance is willing to take their place, keeping some semblance of balance in the match. Admittedly, focusing only on kills per x unit of time is only really targeting a certain type of team stacker, and wouldn't really stop another type who forgoes sniping and prefers sneaking or something else. But again, there are many metrics that could be used for this, including a combination of a few of them which I think would make the most sense (especially wins). But I realize this is a pretty complicated solution and might not even be possible to implement server-side, so

I haven't done that....

Yeah, I'll probably try 32bit just to see, and if it crashes again I'll go back to 64bit. Better to restart after every match than to crash in the middle of the game, as you say.

That's funny - the only reason I started using the 64bit version in the first place is because the 32bit version would often crash, giving me an "out of memory" error. I'll try 32bit again and see if that issue has stopped.

This happens to me a lot. Sound will cut out at some point between the match ending and when the new map loads. Using the 64bit exe Edit: and the only way to fix it for me is to restart the game.

This all sounds pretty cool, but I'm starting to wonder if that would be a bit too much for the one commander to handle. Usually the commanders who are chosen tend to lean more on the side of offense. Commanders are usually out in the field, or organizing rushes. I don't know how much time they would have to keep a close eye on power distribution back at the base. I wonder if the commander's roles should be split in two, and have an offensive commander and a defensive commander? The offensive commander gets emp bomb, cruise missile, offensive buff, etc. The defensive commander gets the ability to remove mines, defensive buff, ability to power on/off certain structures, etc.

I think that should depend on whether there is intentional team stacking going on or not.

I don't know about anybody else, but I'd much rather see City_Flying as the next map.

I'd be interested in seeing Nod's win v loss ratio in the AGN server vs the other servers. I feel like Nod wins more often on AGN because of the availability of Tick Tanks, as well as GDI's tendency to buy Titans which are hugely expensive and pretty terrible. I think those two things can have a big effect on the outcome of the typical game.

I tend to agree that team stacking is overall very bad for the game. I've been unlucky enough to be on the losing end of team-stacked matches quite a few times over the last several months. Best case scenario is the losing team accepts it and does the best they can despite getting steamrolled. Worst case is the server dies because half the players are tired of getting crushed. The focus should be on growing the player base, not frustrating people into quitting. I don't know what the solution is, other than to not allow team switching at all and randomize the teams each match. I'm not necessarily advocating for that, I just don't know what else would fix the issue. All I know is I tend to leave the server nowadays if I notice teamstacking going on. It's just not worth the frustration. I'd rather do something else with my time.

I got the error again tonight. Both times were on map Eyes, so I think that map is the problem. I played a few other maps with no issues tonight.

I keep getting the error "ran out of video memory". It happened the first 2 times I tried to join the AGN server. I then tried to join CT and it worked. So I left and tried AGN again and it actually worked that time. I got to play for a couple minutes before it crashed and I got the video memory message again. I don't know if this is an AGN specific issue, as I was playing on the CT marathon server last night for about an hour with no issues. Here's the end of my log if that helps: Edit: deleted log

I think there should still be an element of sacrifice needed to bring a building back, as opposed to "just play well and eventually these options will become available to you". There's already incentive to play well, so there is nothing new that really needs to happen for you to unlock a destroyed building or its abilities? Why not make it a tactical decision: We have enough credits (or VP or whatever system you want to use), but it's going to take some dedicated manpower and a few minutes to bring this building back. Do we want to do it right now or wait because we can't spare the engineers at the moment?

I don't really like it being tied to VP, and would prefer a credits-based system or tying it to other building health. The VP proposals seem overly complicated to me. This means the refinery becomes even more important in games, but I see no problem with that. Don't lose the ref. A tiered system could be implemented to keep it from being abused. For example, 30,000 credits for the first time a building is brought back. 50,000 the next time, and 75,000 the next time. That way, even on rich maps like Islands, there will be a point where it's just not feasible to purchase yet another building. I actually like this idea, too. Or, just require engies or technicians to "repair" the husk (on the outside, not the MCT, so they can't hide in the safety of the building while they do it). It would take a very long time to complete while draining the resources of whoever is doing the repairing. Since no 1 person would be able to do this alone, it would require donations from most of the team, which is where the teamwork element comes in. It would also serve as an additional layer of disadvantage to the team if 5 people were busy repairing the husk for several minutes at a time. So, bringing a building back would not only require a certain level of time, and team sacrifice, but also strategy, because deciding exactly when to devote the manpower to bring a building back could also be an important element to this.

I simply stated my opinion...or should I not do that next time? Thanks to vandal and madkill who actually responded to what I said.

Wait, why? The original Renegade had epic sniping battles between Havoc/Sakura/Sydney/Raveshaw. These characters are 1k credits for a reason. Why should a 350 credit chem trooper be able to dominate the tunnels when it is 1/3 the price? Maybe I'm overlooking something, but nerfing Sydney/Raveshaw would make them almost useless. They already have: Slow re-fire, putting them at a disadvantage against actual sniper classes No secondary weapon, making them vulnerable to ambushes in close quarters; No scope, and are therefore not a substitute for a Havoc/Sakura at long distances, Medium range, rendering them ineffective at killing tanks from longer distances (I can stand at the top of the wall in Walls_Flying and not even be able to hit tanks that are visible to me, close to the middle of the map. And Walls is a tiny map.) Medium range anti-infantry is one of the few things Syd/Rave is actually good at...nerf that and you may as well just buy a Mobius/Mendoza. But so can Havoc/Sakura... I dunno...I get killed by snipers all the time...

I signed up just to respond to this thread. I'm an old Renegade player that has easily put hundreds of hours into the original game, so I was very excited to come across this version a few weeks ago and start playing again. So I thought I'd throw in my two cents here. I personally enjoy the 50-60 player games. Before I learned that the server tends to fill up on the weekends, I played a bunch of smaller games (mainly 20-30 players) and most of these were not very fun because there were some very skilled people who would tend to dominate games and end them within 10 minutes of starting. Now I get that this isn't necessarily a bad thing, however I have two comments about this: First, the server in question is a marathon server. Long, drawn-out battles with a ton of players is intentional. It makes every aspect of the battle more intense--sniping, sieges, rushes, etc--and it makes winning all the more gratifying when it finally happens. When marathon servers first started popping up in the original Renegade, they were usually 50+ players and often lasted longer than an hour. People tended to gravitate towards these marathon servers because it was a nice change from the standard 40 player servers whose games usually only lasted 15-20 minutes. And the reason marathon servers had more players than normal is because higher player counts tend to balance teams out and prevent any single player from dominating, which in turn makes "teamwork" the most important factor in winning vs losing; which brings me to my second point... This game is really, really old to some players--and really new to others-- so there will tend to be a drastic difference in skill level between the best players and the worst players in any given server. This makes it easy for a small group of experienced players to work together and easily bring down 1 or 2 buildings in the first few minutes, which only tends to frustrate newer players and cause them to ragequit (for lack of a better term). So having 25-30 people on each team instead of 15 or 20 really helps to balance things out and usually prevents a minority of players from dominating games and making them frustrating to play. I saw this very thing happen a couple Sundays ago when about 6 or 7 games in a row were ended within 10 minutes because the teams were so one-sided. Every time a new map loaded, a few more players would quit (because no one was having fun) until about the 7th game when there were less than 12 players in the server. That's when I decided to leave. My last point: this would essentially be a non-issue if there were more people playing this game. Ideally, the people who enjoy 60-player marathon servers would join those, and the people who enjoy smaller, non-marathon servers would join those. I think the only reason this is even being talked about is because there's only really 1 server that ever has players in it, and it happens to be a marathon server. I might just be remembering incorrectly, but I don't think there were ever any issues in the original Renegade with 50-player marathon servers because the people who didn't like playing those games simply avoided the marathon servers. I think the dynamic map size and other suggestions are simply solutions in search of a problem. So to me the real problem is,, how do we get more people interested in playing this game??? Anyway, I'll stop rambling and end with a very positive note that overall I've really been enjoying Renegade-X and I'm very happy to be able to relive some of my favorite gaming years playing the original Renegade and having tons of fun.