IC Tourney 2018

Universal News
1

Enough talk, let’s figure this out. I’m lookin at you @The_LiGhTgUnS, @Random regarding prior conversations here and in chat. Any others with thoughts on this, feel free to add em here!

No Patreon subs required, this will be an entirely open bracket style tourney. What we need to figure out:

Tick Speed

Right now we support hourly, 15-min, and 1-min options. For the sake of simplicity we should stick to 1 type for all tourney matches. 1-min is pretty crazy, super fun, but also terribly exhausting and likely inconvenient for most. Hourly on the other hand would be familiar and convenient but might drag on a bit.

15-min sounds like a good middle ground, but you all play more than I do so I’d like to hear your perspective.

Map Size

1v1 would work better on a small map imo. At most 60x60 but possibly even smaller. Remember, we can do custom maps now too so having multiple matches play on the same map layout is possible.

Round Length

This will be affected by tick speed, but depending on how many sign up we’d likely want shorter rounds than longer, so we can keep things moving.

Per-Matchup options vs Standard Settings

The previous options would likely be standard across all matches, but other galaxy options don’t necessarily have to be. Should they be?

Tourney Style

Lastly, what kind of tourney should we run? I’m not too familiar with this stuff but I am reading that single-elimination is the simplest. If others think another type would be better, I’m all ears.

Signups!

Lastly, if you’re interested in being part of this tourney, sign up below. There are plenty of egos out and about. Now’s the time to see who can back it up. :muscle:

  • Sign me up!
  • Don’t sign me up (This poll feature requires 2 choices, bleh)

0 voters

1 Like
2

Single elimination bracket style … have like 12 games going at once… not sure how you would seed players … maybe just random?

3

I would say:
Full tourney takes a month with 16 players. That’s 4 rounds. One week per match.
Single elimination like in tennis.
Short normal round (4 weeks) has 672 ticks. If we do 15min ticks, that compares to a real life week.
I would stretch the tourney to 6 weeks by leaving a few days (for sleeping :rofl: ) between matches.

You want expo to be over halfway into the round. With 2 players you would need. Around 200 planets total.

To not overpower 15 min ticks
40 x 40 grid
50 systems size 4

4

A slightly different setup idea: Initially try to match players from the same time zone as much as possible? So start with 3 regions, Amarican region, European region and East Asiana and Australian region. Fun side affect is that with 4 players per region (then only 12 player tournement though) you can initially battle for regional champion. That you end up with 3 champions to pick the world champion from might not be ideal. But two suggestions to deal with that:

Either: put them all 3 together in a 3 player final galaxy.
Or: pool systems, they all play eachother (so 2 rounds each) and every planet you end with in a round is a point. Most points (planets) from the two battles wins.

1 Like
6

An idea i had was a Group table situation. so if you have 16 people 4 groups of 4 and top 4 go into a final group to battle. Mix of time zones then, so if u lose one because of a timezone you still have 2 other chances to win and the person you lost to may have the disadvantage the next match because of their timezone. This also allows for a balanced playing field as i think single elimination wont help the best player as we all have a bad start or real lives and you make an error or some one gets lucky and i could end up winning xD which should never happen xD

7

I think we definitely need just 1v1 for the whole thing, after all, it’s a championship, pitting each players skills against each other, 2 men enter 1 man leave style.

With 1 week rounds @ 15 min tiks, we have a couple of options.

***Short option

Option 1 - 1 gal, 2 people per round knockout.

Option 2 - if @I_like_pie can set both gals up at 15 mins. Both run until we get to the final, also knockout.

***Longer option

Option 3 - needing 2 gals really, Round Robin, (everyone fights everyone)
points scorer wins.

A lot of the scheduling will really depend on how many want to participate and how long we want the whole thing to run for, Imo a month max.

Then we have to consider game setup itself.
Hardcore? New or old morale setups?

Race allowances, any race allowed, just special races or only custom races.

Starting resources?

Map size of 220 planets so that expo finishes half way through and fighting ensues.

system planet counts at 6 or so to still be able to utilise DS and have plenty of ground to fight over.

Matching timezones doesn’t matter, everyone has to sleep and different peoppe hold different hours, so just because they are in the tz doesn’t mean they sleep

2 Likes
8

We can do as many simultaneous rounds as needed. Round robin sounds awesome if we can coordinate it without too much hassle.

Agreed on a month max for 15 min ticks, maybe even shorter tbh. 15 ticks is 1/4 normal speed, so 6 weeks / 4 = 1.5 weeks? Either 10 RL days or 2 RL weeks could be a decent sweet spot.

Classic morale isn’t supported anymore, so it’d either be modern morale or no morale. Given the fast nature of hyper-rounds, I’d lean more not being HC so that the winner doesn’t just go to whoever’s able to avoid sleeping so they can kill off the other.

As for race restrictions, we could bring back Qezians as a one-time event. Normally this isn’t possible because it requires code changes, but for a tournament we could manually set players up easily enough.

Starting resources and fleet can be entirely preset. Our starting units aren’t limited to only e-ships; we could start with any fleet configuration we want.

Agreed on system size. I’d even drop it further at 3 planets per system. With only 2 players in an entire galaxy it will be more interesting to have more systems with fewer planets each than the other way around.

I think you’re on point with regard to the timezones too. The ultimate goal will be a final 1v1 showdown to declare the winner; it’s going to be impossible to guarantee 100% matched timezones for every match anyway.

9

I mean 4 week’s total for the whole tournament, should be easy enough depending on players and having 2 gals running.

The 220 planets is set for a 1 week round.

Qezians sounds great, equal footing for all players :ok_hand:

I rekon start with just resources, no eships, no fleet, so build planning is also a massive factor.

With 15 min tiks maybe current morale setup then, as hc could be an unfair advantage for some. People gotta sleep/work

1 Like
10

I like this idea.

I have lots of experience running both leagues, single elimination as well as double elimination tournaments both online back in the day with yahoo pool and in person in the pool competitions I partake in.

Merits of each:

Single elimination benefits the most consistent person on the day. Probably not going to be an issue in this case depending on round set ups.

Double elimination means a stronger player can have a bad game and still recover to show their class but the pressure is on.

League style means the cream should rise to the top!

Speed wise single elimination is by far the quickest option with double elimination being roughly double the time and a league being dependent on the number of entrants and times you play each opponent.

Anyways me personally here is what I’m thinking:-

Do regional qualifiers similar to the world cup. This will overcome the issues of time zone differences.

Zones
Euro * 2 divisions randomly generated.
Americas
Australasia

Euro I have said two because I think most are euros, Pie can confirm the true break down and this can be adjusted to suit.

Why two in Euros, simply to allow the break down of what could be a otherwise large and long division. The aim is to get this down to 4-6 weeks all in.

Once the divisions are created players can then agree which day they can compete against each other within a one week window.

Winner of each division goes in to a semi against one of the 3 other winners randomly drawn.

Semi finals and final are then single elimination.

Galaxy setup:-
Pie, this could be a chance to try the full home planet start approach we discussed and put the focus on strategy. If not then I suggest 50x resources at start.

I suggest 10-12 hour 1 min ticks. This gives 600-720 ticks. By doing this we ensure a round can be played in one day and with the day and time being agreed by opponents there should be no complaint off needing to sleep or work and so on.
This is about 30% fewer ticks than normal hence the thoughts on starting resources. I’d suggest available planets reflects this and perhaps, considerably lower to ensure expo finishes within roughly half the available ticks to encourage a battle.

I would suggest no morale as this opens up maximum potential for battle. Could create two extremes of an early battle or expo/res battle prior to war.

I would also suggest no market as this would be redundant as you would only be aiding your opponent.

I would limit both to the same race as this makes it a fair battle. I would however suggest wardancer or another race, perhaps even a bespoke built race just for the battle.

I am not sure regarding ops, if you use them then I would suggest either no ops or a race with every available op. Do all ops work correctly at present?

There is many more things I am thinking but this gives a rough outlay of my thoughts.

1 Like
11

Some great points there.

I initially thought 1-min (chaos) ticks would be too intense; but you have a good idea there about agreed upon times. If we could get competitors on a weekend round for even 8 hour play, that could be quite a game to watch. We can schedule multiple matches over a single weekend.

Our first chaos round was 48 hours which was ridiculous. 8 hours by comparison is still pretty intense but perhaps a little more reasonable if players are down to give it a shot.

I am a bit unsure about the regional/timezone thing. @Random had a good point that a regional split might not necessarily ensure balanced schedules. Maybe instead of a location split we could simply plan on opening a handful of matches across a given weekend on pre-set windows and see who’s up to commit.

8 hours ends up being 480 ticks which is just under 50% of a normal round tick length. If we reduce the map accordingly this should end up feeling like a fast but appropriately scaled battle.

Of course, this is all entirely assumption on all of us. Perhaps we should run a few live test rounds to iron out any balance issues beforehand. :thinking:

12

I’ll keep my account for fast rounds only I only new ectroverse was more familiar with that game than IC I like it more intensifying quick based strategy games is there an exact date for the next fast round? Cheers besides my little brother getting Married so much to do in RL and business gotta take care of my brother and be the best man in that wedding so I won’t be as active ugh!

13

The issue with 1 minute tiks is that you aren’t necessarily getting the best most strategic player the win but the fastest person to get limited things done in a short time, because we all know you don’t get everything done with 1 minute tiks, I just don’t think that 1 min allows players to truly show what they are made of :confused:

14

I would only 1 min ticks if it is on a compatib server for fkeet elite :rofl:

1 Like
15

Does this have to be 1v1?

16

Good way for me to re-learn the game is fast ticks ::slight_smile:

17

I would be interested in 8 hour rounds (however long the ticks are) at player chosen start times. The current 30-45s it takes to update ticks isn’t going to cut it unless that’s just an MW thing. To get a full round in one day you could also play with giving qezians 500-1000% speed and 70% income or something with 3-5 min ticks.

18

That’s a good point @Random; chaos is so fast that speed does become perhaps a little too valuable over strategic skill.

@Hala yeah at least for now, we want to keep it 1v1. There seems to be some coordination overhead that is already slowing us down so keeping it small will get us out the door faster, at least initially.

Let’s get on with a test then. 1 week @ 15 min ticks. More info coming soon.

19

Looking forward to see what’s ahead!

20

@I_like_pie - sure, but 1v1 is boring, and this is a team-game (hence we call it ‘families’ :p), involving cooperative strategies. I’d be more than happy to coordinate the subscribings, teams, fixtures etc.

21

I dunno about 1v1 being boring. We’ve never tried it in this format, how could we be sure? Besides, IC isn’t just a team game; Supernova itself lacks families after all.

Still, I wouldn’t mind branching out into a team focused tournament if this one proves fruitful. Why not both, right?