Tribes 1 Legendz

Traditionally, teams are balanced only at the start of a mission. Base rape is disabled when any team has less than 3 players, which encourages players to switch teams, or simply cause a stalemate until more players connect.

I hate this method... What I hate about it most, is when you get a team full of vets vs a team full of noobs, and the server won't let them rearrange the team assignments without an admin making the decisions for everyone.

My solution is simple:

• 1) When you attempt to spawn, the server counts the number of live players on each team. If your team has less live players than another team, you will spawn. Otherwise you enter your team's spawn queue, and the server attempts to spawn the next player in the other team's queue.
  2) Disable "Annihilation::fairteams", which prevents you from choosing to be on the team with the most teammates. This way, you can choose to be on which ever team you want. But if you choose the team with the most players, you'll have to wait longer to spawn (unless your whole team sucks and dies frequently).

That's it... That's the whole concept.

This will keep the number of live players per team even, even when the number of clients per team is not. The only way you'll encounter unfair teams with this method, is if one team never dies, and the other team rage quits. But it'll sort itself out quickly if any of them do die, because they won't be able to respawn until teams are even, again.

What happens if you join and the teams are already balanced with players? Are you able to join still? Or do you have to wait out the map in order to join?

What happens if the teams are balanced with players, but one teams skill is higher than the other and their flag caps are half the caps already on the map, and the other team with the lack of skilled players have zero caps still? This is when I usually see players in the ahead team switch to try to even out the skill level of the winning team, but this puts more players on one side than the other, and when this happens, it's showing an unfair balance in the number of player per side, but maybe not skill level.

Currently, if you are on a team with 6 vets, and the other team has 7 noobs, you cannot switch to help them out.
With my suggestion, if you are on a team of 2, against 7 noobs, you CAN switch to help them... You'll enter the spawn queue, and when your ex-teammate kills off enough of the 6 of the 7 noobs, you'll finally spawn.

You choose your team based on who you want to play with or against.
The server only lets you spawn when the number of live enemies is greater or equal to the number of live allies.

K, like this idea, sounds good.

It sounds good, but I think people will just drop as soon as they aren't able to play the game because they are stuck in a spawn queue

I'll use center print to inform people who rapidly click to spawn, that they are in the queue, and clicking does nothing... But if they are impatient, they can switch to a team with less live players, to spawn immediately.

Any suggestions on how to word that better?

I can make the message state the name of the team that needs more players...

It's funny how on old games the rules and mod edits have to be chosen using more corporate rational than servers on newer and more populated games. The bottom line of any decision at this point should be made while considering the risk of losing players. We don't have enough of an active player base make too many risks. Even maintaining 6 players in a server can be difficult -- so losing two or three people who are too stubborn to deal with big new updates is a problem.

Is there any way to figure out who the best player is on the unbalanced team and switch him to opposing team automatically? This may be a little annoying for that person but you could also look at it as a challenge. Whenever I see the teams are unbalanced I always switch teams. Just make it auto and that 1 person has to suffer lol

It should be a OZ 1:2 ratio ^^

^ agreed