Super Team Balancer v1.3

[Mysterial]

This mutator does three things to help balance teams better:

1) It makes sure there are the same number of human players on each team.
2) If there are bots in the game, they are scaled to the two teams' performance. For example, if the Red Team has really good players and the Blue Team has only average players, the Blue Team's bots will be set to a much higher level than the Red Team's to balance things out.
3) Optionally, it can also evenly distribute the human players among the teams based on their performance in the previous match. You can also set an option to prevent players that have had their teams chosen from switching teams.

It's mainly intended for server admins and maybe LANs; it doesn't really do anything useful in Instant Action.

Version 1.3 reduces server CPU usage and fixes a couple bugs.

You can download it (both UT2MOD and manual ZIP versions) from my site.

Also feel free to discuss it on my forums.

[legacy-NachoUK]

Sweet, I've been looking for something like this to come out for a long time... I hope that plenty of servers adpot this mutator or an official epic version because I'm tired of unbalanced teams!

Anyway, nice job!

[legacy-[Ci]CrazyCougar]

Re: Super Team Balancer v1.3

Originally posted by Mysterial
[B]This mutator does three things to help balance teams better:

1) It makes sure there are the same number of human players on each team.

This isn't a good idea. I have seen many pubs where 1 or 2 players dominate a match and basically don't need much help from their team. The other team could easily use the extra person or persons(ie in a 5x5 game having the teams 6v5 where the losing team gets the extra person).

3) Optionally, it can also evenly distribute the human players among the teams based on their performance in the previous match. You can also set an option to prevent players that have had their teams chosen from switching teams.

A mutator like this needs some way to adjust teams as players enter the game. If you start adjusting teams based on past performance they will just change their name...

What is usually needed is to stop people from joining a game already in progress and then unbalancing the teams more.
For example:
If Red is down by 3 points and their top scorer is well below the bottom scorer on the Blue team...

1) When a new player joins they automatically go to losing team.

Or
2) The bottom scorer on the Red team gets transferred to the Blue team. The new player gets added to the Red team. If the teams are already off by 1(ie, 4v5).

Now as far as score goes. I wouldn't want to use score as an accurate indicator of skill. The FPS rating(when working) can show a much more drastic skill level. Ie, they just show up and immediately start gaining points. However when a new person joins they are still the lowest scorer... but they have a higher FPS.

In UT this mutator also had a teambalance command that a team could type in order to force a team change.

I think it took the highest scorer and put them on the other team. This wasn't very popular and could be abused....

Now in an average game of CTF if only one player outclasses everyone else they would have to grab the flag and then usually they end up going to retrieve their own flag while they still have the flag. Sometimes you'd get two skilled players on one team and they would be able to hold the flag in the base and retrieve the other flag. If that is the case transferring the second highest scorer to the other team may help balance the teams...

So if you need to transfer someone to the other team try sending the second highest scorer/FPS player on the winning team. That way you don't get punished for scoring too well. Plus the other team wouldn't be able to call them back if there was a teambalance command.

Since teambalance is such a hard thing to control you'd likely have to tryout a few different methods of balancing teams. Hopefully some of what I've said can be useful.

/EDIT:

I would also put in an option for volunteers. So that if one team issued a teambalance command a person on the winning side could switch on purpose.

So once the command to balance teams was issued there could be a 30 second window for voluntary switches. After that time a switch would be forced.

That could promote sportsmanship and make the person switching look good. Some form of optional bonus could be used as well...

[Mysterial]

Re: Re: Super Team Balancer v1.3

Originally posted by [Ci]CrazyCougar
This isn't a good idea. I have seen many pubs where 1 or 2 players dominate a match and basically don't need much help from their team. The other team could easily use the extra person or persons(ie in a 5x5 game having the teams 6v5 where the losing team gets the extra person).

In a game with an odd number of players the extra player is free to go to any team.

A mutator like this needs some way to adjust teams as players enter the game. If you start adjusting teams based on past performance they will just change their name...

The previous performance is tracked via the unique player id, which is based on CD key and does not change if you change your name.

Now as far as score goes. I wouldn't want to use score as an accurate indicator of skill. The FPS rating(when working) can show a much more drastic skill level. Ie, they just show up and immediately start gaining points. However when a new person joins they are still the lowest scorer... but they have a higher FPS.

I'd love to base it off FPS. When Epic fixes the time calculation, that's exactly what I'll do.

In UT this mutator also had a teambalance command that a team could type in order to force a team change.

Leave anything like this to the users and it gets abused.


Also: If one player is singlehandedly dominating the server, there's very little you can do. Stacking the losing team usually makes that team the powerhouse, and even if it doesn't it will both frustrate the hell out of the winning team (especially if it's only one player doing most of the scoring) and give the players that much more excuse to throw insults and obscenities at each other.

Regardless, in the majority of cases this mutator significantly helps pubs maintain balanced teams. It's certainly a hell of a lot better than you get in the stock game.

[legacy-[Ci]CrazyCougar]

Any servers where this is being tested?