Server Team Player Count Balance

[rare dome]

Almost all of the servers now have startling differences in player counts between teams. We need server convars like Rust or Source engine has to help offer some relief in this case. For example, mp.limitimbalance with a default value of 3, which would prevent players from joining a team if that choice meant the team had a 3+ player count advantage over other teams. Some of this could be done with mods later but this seems important in the short-term

[wet meteor]

With how varied the teams will be, I don't think that'll be a good idea in the long run. Players joining a game and then not being able to join the faction they want, they'd just leave and find a better server.

Causing a potentially worse problem where no one joins the server

[rare dome]

I'm okay with the default being that the feature is turned off, but some hosts/servers would prefer players leave rather than exacerbate the imbalance. Better to have a more fair experience for all imho. But are you saying it's better for balance that certain teams have a higher share of players?

[wintry swallow]

yea i dont want to play the aliens, i want to shoot the aliens.

Instead of forcing people to play a team they dont want to play, the teams should have their resource costs & build times lowered the fewer people are on that faction to make it fair.

[rare dome]

That's brilliant. There are some endgame concerns where deserters could make it harder to end the game but endgame conditions can be fixed too.

This is another reason why I wish we had easy server-side mod support so we can quickly implement ideas like this and test them out rather than wait for the devs.

[icy patrol]

Team balance is a planned feature that will be needed for competitive play. Is this something you'd like to see as soon as possible?

I dislike the idea of boosting a faction's performance based on the number of players involved. It discourages the use of players and further more discourages unit design with varied stats, such as different construction times and cost balancing.

[wintry swallow]

no it doesnt discourage the use of players.... because you cant stop players from joining the team they want to play.

[icy patrol]

Not right now, but with the suggestion going through you might.

[wintry swallow]

It would only be discouraged if you could lock the teams to make sure nobody else joins. But you cant.

If more people want to join your team they are going to and you cant stop them.

[karmic tapir]

I think this would be too easy to abuse, get all the players to leave for 20 seconds que up a bunch of now super cheap units then the players all come back. Should be tied to income instead, if you leave you lose all the money so players won't want to hop out

[wintry swallow]

You cant do that so its not even a consideration worth talking about. you think random people are going to LEAVE because you tell them to? i dont think so. have you ever dealt with people on the internet before?

[karmic tapir]

If they are all on discord you can. And if the game ever got competitive modes I would expect that to be a Meta strat with the change your proposing, with my proposition it doesn't change the amount of resources in circulation just the balance of its distribution.

I also really don't want any of it to effect the commanders if we can avoid it. You can give them whiplash when they are trying to run a tight ship, can cause them to become toxic particularly if the peons don't adhere to the Meta strat, and it's only 1 player.

[uneven dove]

I wont play if i have to play as aliens. Who the f wants to be a crab

[wintry swallow]

would be good if the AI could be trained by an AI.

[karmic tapir]

Coop/Teamskirmish should definitely be on the list of modes to add

[inner jolt]

Playing as a crab is a pretty terrible experience imo. Crabs need something to help them. They have zero range, on a mostly barren map, so they get killed at range super easy. So not a lot of people want to play as them. Honestly almost every server that I have played on has been lopsided teams for the humans, and I really think that reason is because the base unit sucks so bad for the aliens.

[lofty shale]

It's kind of annoying especially when you're an alien commander and you see that they have so many units being micro'd by humans while you might have 3 scorps doing the micro lol

[whole rampart]

I've seen both teams stacked and I think this game desperately needs an option for team limit enforcing since whichever team is stacked usually wins. E.g. when the stack is on alien side you usually see 20 crabs sniping research and killing all harvesters by glitching into them. On the other side you see 20 humans teleporting into hive with scouts and wiping it out in the first few minutes of the game.