Frozen Synapse PBEM tournament

[Inverselaw]

Tournament Has been started, you can read the matchmaking rules here

Feel free to use this thread to discuss meta stuff and non-matchmaking tournament stuff.

Hello everyone, I have been reading RPS for at least two years now but I never bothered registering for the forum because I didn't have a reason to. But now I do!

I have been enjoying a bit of Frozen Synapse but its hard to organize PBEM games with strangers, so I thought I should organize a tournament, a structured system with a winner should make everything all the more interesting. I've ran online tournaments before (mostly EVE) but this will be my first asynchronous one.

The plan is simple each round lasts 6 days, from wednesday at midnight to tuesday midnight, giving me one day to sort everything for the next round, Since we can play PBEM it wont even be necessary for each opponent to agree to a time.

It will be an elimination tournament, preferably double elimination maybe even triple depending on the number of players, one fight per round. As for the matches itself well its a bit open, I'm not to sure If we should do just one match type, or randomized matches (like one round its chase, the next extermination).

So here is the plan, people who want to participate post in this Thread with the following information.

your FS ID,

what server you want to play on, the server that wins is the one we will play all matches on that way we wont have to server hop to watch the playbacks. (you can vote on more then one (like for example vote all the UK ones if you just care about it being a UK server))

What match types you want, random or a specific set, or even all except certain types (don't forget there is light and dark versions)

your preference over the kind of tournament (for those who dont know what double elimination is, heres a wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-...ion_tournament).

any other gubbins you want really.

<strike>On the 17th I will count up the votes and the posts and chose the specific servers and settings then we will have one more week for people to join or leave based on what has been decided. On the 24th we will be locked and matches will start on the 29th at midnight.</strike>

Registration is now closed!!
people who have been wronged feel free to post in thread and ill see what i can do.

So that's about all I have to say. I hope you all find this interesting and we will get to have lots of fun making little green silhouettes bleed.

NEW STUFF

Here are the maps that will be used in the tournament, more specifically tournament maps will be randomly selected from this set.

Feel free to discuss their fairness in the thread. Changes so far are adding a shotgun to each side of Extermination 1

[EndelNurk]

Sounds good to me. My ID is EndelNurk and I play on UK6. Double elimination isn't a tournament style that I've ever played before but it looks decent and fair. The game type question is a bit tricky as you mentioned though. I would say that Elimination is the purest form of the game and the randomness in character placement and weapon loadout should add enough variety to be interesting without having to pick other modes. That being said, I would prefer both Dark and Light modes be available as they each require different tactical expertise and I would argue that a player should be good at both (although I'm not, to be fair).

[imirk]

Right I'm a bit of a nub but I'll take at least two beatings for the sake of a shot at an RPS Cup. I'm imirk and on Texas 4

[ColOfNature]

Sign me up. I'm ColOfNature in the game too. I'm not fussy about server as I've mostly been playing the SP campaign since the shards were introduced. And I'm equally pants at all the game modes.

[Lambchops]

I'm still rubbish at the game but I'm definitely in. Point me at people to play and I'll do it!

FS username is Lambchops

I was completely unaware that there was a choice of servers, which no doubt shows it has been a while since I've played the game! A UK one would presumably be my preference.

Last time we played an FS tournament it was a round robin style thing so we all played on the same map. This made sense in terms of fairness but for a knockout it doesn't matter so I'd rather have different maps each round.

[Wolfenswan]

count me in, my ingame nick is antilope.

[EndelNurk]

@Lambchops: The new server shards only turned up a few days ago. The game videos and results tracking were supposed to be reintegrated yesterday but I don't know if that actually worked.

[Kelron]

I'm in. FS name is Kelron, any UK server preferred.

For game mode/maps, symmetrical extermination maps would be the fairest way to do it as otherwise you can end up with maps that clearly favour one team. If we did that, but let each match take place on a randomly generated symmetrical map rather than insisting on the same map for everyone in the round, it should make a nice variety of replays to watch.

[Krans]

Krans, UK1.

Can we not use Extermination? It's getting pretty dominated by silly camping these days, and Disputed has a lot more tactical interest. I've been finding Light modes more challenging from a "mind games" point of view than Dark recently, but YMMV.

[Jolima]

I'll join in. I'm Jolima on FS as well. Currently playing on UK2 but wouldn't mind another server. Would prefer deathmatch or secure. Prefer dark over light. Either symetric or playing both sides on the same map. I don't care strongly about any of this though, so I will play most anything you decide on.

[Web Cole]

Sounds good, I'm in. Web_cole on FS, I am also a bit rubbish.

What Kelron said about symmetrical levels sounds good, and I'm up for any game mode and any UK server.

I would say that the 29th seems like quite a long way away however, might be a good idea to move things along quicker so people don't lose interest?

[Malawi Frontier Guard]

MalawiFG, UK 1, Any.

[Oak]

Is this multiple server nonsense temporary?

[ColOfNature]

Last I heard the plan is to stitch them all back together at some point.

[Vexing Vision]

I love Frozen Synapse from the beta, but six days for a match can be pretty harsh if both parties don't meet each other online at one point. (My longest match so far took 18 glorious turns.)

/Edit: Username is VexingVision, server: UK3

[Inverselaw]

I tried generating a few symetrical maps but honestly they look rather boring compared to the more dynamic ones, also a bit broken for stuff like chase and secure, We could do it for extermination matches though. Personally Id much rather have a veto system where the challenged can veto the map the challenger offered and make a counteroffer instead.

An even smarter solution is for me to generate a bank of maps now, then we review them, make sure they are all balanced to our liking and then a random selection of these are chosen for the tournament.

as for the match length, 18 turns is incredible, especially considering that some match types end at 7 or 8. We can agree to a set time limit of X turns and then a secondary resolution like least number of players lost. Don't forget that after the initial turn you can do two turns per log in, so 6 days is 11 turns if you log in once per day and 23 if you log in twice (every 12 hours), also if we do double or triple elim then there will be slack time

as for the time period, well im really impressed with the showing so far (more the merrier though), we have enough players for for 5 rounds single elim, 8 double and 12 triple (actually after checking I see it can be compressed down to 5/7/10 if you dont mind the ranks getting mixed a bit in the second and third branch). Though triple elimination is kinda silly with a chain of 1 match per round from round 7 to 10. If nobody objects Ill move everything up a week so deadline to join and vote will be this friday and deadline to join will be the week after.

Anyway Thats all for now. Ill post some maps next time and a link to a google spreadsheet that will be used to coordinate all of this.

Have a nice day.

[Frutz]

I am in the same situation as Inverselaw. I have been reading alot of this forum and blog, and have enjoyed all my time here. I have purchased Frozen Synapse and would love to participate in a FS tournament. I don't have much experience with this game yet but I hope this will help me get some more.

My FS ID is Frutz. I play on the Texas 4 server.

[Rond]

Rond, UK1 or UK2, Any.

[Kelron]

Pre generated maps sounds good, we can have a nice mix of game modes that way. I'd prefer to leave turn limits on the default for the mode, they work well as is and if you set them too high then there's no compulsion to attack. There's already a scoring system in-game that I don't see any need to mess with, draws can be resolved with a rematch.

[J.B.]

I'm digital_pariah in FS, I play on UK6 until they unshard (did I just invent a new word?) the servers. I don't mind which mode we play tbh, but I do much prefer Dark over Light.

Looking forward to playing against you guys.