Side Balancing......huh?

[Simaril]

<---buys Lynx the patented Acme "Sarcasm Detector," 'cause it seems like his isn't working any more.

[Simaril]

Originally posted by Mr No Name
One LW arena would solve the vast majority of the problem.

Nonsense, NoName.


The difference is that now all 3 sides get to experience the joy of being ganged. I was mostly flying Knight before the arena switches, and that country was on the receiving end of the nastiness consistently, for months on end.

Try a search.

___________


I'm puzzled at HT, though. The only comments I can remember him making about balance came down firmly on the side of "roughly even numbers are important for everyone to have fun."

But, you'd never know he thought that way by the decisions he's made lately. The ENY has been neutered -- it never made many people switch, but now its not even noticeable. Now, the game applies absolutely no pressure to keep things balanced...none at all.

If his goal is to see whether the new reset rules can alone even the sides -- well, I trust that the answer "NO" is obvious enough.

[LYNX]

Originally posted by Simaril
<---buys Lynx the patented Acme "Sarcasm Detector," 'cause it seems like his isn't working any more.

Yep. I need a better detector. I did see sarcasm in Hub's post but with his vehement approval of all the changes I wasn't 100% he meant it that way.

Hubs my apologies.  However, I think I kinda summed things up further and the "" wasn't aimed at you either.  It was in reference to ...lets say an inebriated person.

[hubsonfire]

Yeah, when I supported all the changes, I didn't think we'd wind up with no balancing mechanism at all. I'm not a huge fan of the current setup at the moment, but I'm hopeful that something will be done.

[Baine]

I'd prefer to fly on the side with lesser numbers than to have the wait in line system implemented.

[bj229r]

Originally posted by Baine
I'd prefer to fly on the side with lesser numbers than to have the wait in line system implemented.

Often ya have no choice--last night, Blue was about full, bish had about 50% of ALL the people in arena, were about to reset rooks for about 8th time in arow....rooks had about 50 guys against 130+, and rooks had mebbe 2 airbases left, both of which were under vulch---go to check out Orange..FOUND all the rooks...zillion of them there (who wants to face that watermelon in Blue?) eny was like--cant even get the chitty jug, much less the N.....went back to Blue, but a few more bish must have shown up, as it was now full. Flew as nit for the night. At least there were some good fights, and for once, i landed some kills in what has been a forgettable camp. (Bish seem to send the cannon-fodder to the nit side, I must conclude;) )

[CAV]

I keep looking at this mass and think. how would I fix it......

1). Use the latest reset rules.

2). One MA with the large maps.

3). Remove EW & MW.

4). Rollin plane set in the new MA.

OK... so it looks alot like the old AHII.

Now if I only knew how to get players into A v A.



CAVALRY

[Mr No Name]

I like the option of the EW and MW... these are mostly populated with dedicated furballers or squadrons that had a hard time getting in another arena to fly together.  I am also glad that bases were fortified to make them a little more challenging to capture, I really believe this was the best single change to the game in ages.  If it were my call, I would extend the radar range out another 8 miles or so to make bases even easier to defend. (It would give ample warning for NOE attacks to be thwarted)

Honestly the side imbalance is caused mainly by the LW arena splits.  In the natural ebb and flow of arena population everyone is going to take a turn being ganged and ganging from time to time.  Simaril, I flew this game for about 5 years, as a Knight... I know what I am talking about, I have seen it for myself. I never really mided being outnumbered though.  Your insistance that the large arena wouldn't add stability to the numbers is fantasy, a number of screenshots of arena numbers have shown this with great consistency.

[Simaril]

NoName,

Regardless of your claims of expertise (which of course go unverified since you continue to hide behind anonymity), fact remains that for the last 6-9 months of the old MA the normal variation in numbers had stagnated. Again, if you don't believe me, I'd suggest you do a search... you'll find a number of posts saying just exactly that.

In fact, I switched from rooks to knights for that very reason...They were always lowest numbers, and I wanted to practice fighting against more targets.

[SteveBailey]

Originally posted by Gooss
I prefer to be on the side with fewest numbers.  It's kinda like flying a plane with .50 cal guns.  I like the challenge.

And... it's easier to find targets.

HONK!
Gooss

Can I get an Amen, brotha?!

[TwinBoom]

something needs to change imo

[FrodeMk3]

The biggest problem is, It's not just the people who jump arena's...We all fly different time-zones, even when you consider that most of AH is probably based in the continental U.S., It leads to an always-changing set of players, that realistically will never balance. HTC might try changing his Side balancing system over to reflect the time zone that the player is in, But I'm not sure that this will help. Especially with all of the different arena's.

[LTARghst]

Well I have notice this same thing a few times. So what I did is went and checked the other arena. So what do I find 100 plus rooks milking that arean with only maybe 25-30 nits and bish. So my advice is to get those milkers out of that arena and bring em to even it out.

[Tilt]

The clipboard page shown above is chocked full of errors.............

1) it says side balancing is enabled but infact the form of side balancing tried before xmas (forcing folk to swap sides) is NOT enabled. Just the ENY system which we all know does not balance sides.

2)when it says Knights it means Rooks, when it says Rooks it means Knights. Rooks cannot own 0% of their own fields unless the field capture order (preserving 3 core fields) was switched off.


I would say that last night Orange did have the field capture order switched off for a very small map............and there was every likely hood that Bishops (thanks to a very efficient Rook invasion)could end up with no fields without a reset.


Given all that I think what we have is OK.

Last night in orange we had approx 80+ Rooks and 80+ Knights (each) and 60+ Bishops. Rooks absolutely stormed through Bishops territory taking base after base. Yet Knights were held at both Bishop and Rook borders (give or take the odd base).

The point is that when you saw the population figures and the flying figures you saw that Rooks always had a higher % airborne. Even more importantly they were focussed (agin Bishops) and organised. (never seen so many P38's) Hence their success.

I note quite often that Bishops maintain a low % airborne.

But the evening was fun and eventually Bishops halted the "invasion" (dunno what happened after I left).

What is clear is

A)that you can have perfectly balanced sides yet a well organised, focussed country can roll up one side of the map (but they will not roll up two sides so easily to gain reset)

B)that balancing to an exact number is a waste of time if one side  spends (on average) more time in the tower than another.

C)that the errors on the clipboard page confuse and then annoy.

D)that there should be a fail safe to ensure that the 3 core non capturable fields are indeed non capturable.

E)that despite balancing an organised side can easily create a massive local imbalance and totally dominate a small (moving) area of the map by largely ignoring the rest of it.

F)Last nights orange experience also showed (IMO) that when an arena resets with a population in excess of 220 the next map loaded should NOT be one of the smallest maps in the terrain folder.

I still hold the view that given C & D (and perhaps F) plus 1 & 2 above are executed properly that the system we have now is by far the best we have had.

[LYNX]

Originally posted by FrodeMk3
The biggest problem is, It's not just the people who jump arena's...We all fly different time-zones, even when you consider that most of AH is probably based in the continental U.S., It leads to an always-changing set of players, that realistically will never balance. HTC might try changing his Side balancing system over to reflect the time zone that the player is in, But I'm not sure that this will help. Especially with all of the different arena's.

Sorry chap but the biggest problem is split LW arenas.  You even contradicted your self with the last sentence above.

Here look at me post earlier in this thread...I'll paste it here...hang on a sec.
4 AM in the UK so just before I go I visited both LW arenas Total players on ........634
Bish............................209
Knight.........................202
Rook............................223
10% more rooks total than knights one could argue but if every LW player was in JUST one LW arena that's pretty much balanced as you could get. Plus no ENY

Bish are in LWb and Rooks in LWo as their selected, prefered, settled snugly in, comfortable arenas.  Both arenas outta balance one way or another and both suffering heavy ENY.

This shows the vast MAJORITY don't want to switch sides.  They would rather be 20ENY than side switch.

One LW arena would help (not going to happen) but I also liked HTC's pre Christmas solutions.  That's a predetermined-determined path of capture/s and the 3 options when your side out numbers others.