It might be nice if servers could set their own balance. Give us a bunch of cvars, say marine_start_res, with a default value. Then, it would be quite easy to adjust this to achieve a balanced server. Possibly, take the values from all the servers (have it update similarly to the icons), and find averages. This *should* give you a balanced game. It should also be possibly to auto-generate a new config file, once a week or so.

It would be pretty easy to just grab a new config file, and try it on the server for awhile. Anything that seemed like it wasn't balanced could be tweaked.

I think involving all the servers is the best way to achieve balance. Confining it to one or two test servers is not the way to go.

Sure, you may have people abusing this one way or another.. but not for long. How many people will play on a server where all the marine structures are free? Would you want to be the aliens there?

The only problem I could see is in clan play. That's easily solved by having the server retrieve default values, and not allow them to be changed when mp_tournamentmode is enabled. I'm not sure how difficult this would be to implement, but I think it would effect the game for the better.

WOW!!! i think I've read this before... rofl

Moving...

Server specific variables are interesting, I mean thats how most servers tweak their game. Released games have all sorts of scoring and weapon variables that people can use. AvP2 allowed you to change the points won from killing each class of player. You had servers that gave few points for killing huggers/bursters, and gave more for killing drones, encouraging players to make big kills as opposed to bodycamping.

In NS, you could translate this as allowing different RFK scoring for certain lifeforms/upgrades. Thats one example. Another would be custom costs for upgrades/etc. While this would lead to an initially chaotic pub circuit, it would soon balance out.. then you would only need serverspy or similar in order to see how the players are voting with their feet.

It also means you could truly have some sort of competitive setup versus a public setup. Again, thats how it works for other released games. There's the defaults, competitive play tweaks, and public server tweaks. NS is a strange beast because there's not an awful lot to be tweaked on the server end, afaik.

Yes, you would get some silly servers, like the AvP2 ones with lifecycle on, one kill = queen, 5 exosuits, and tracking weapons only...... but for each of those, there would be many more servers where admins had made only minor tweaks.


Anyhow, I agree with Nully, more tweak options would be fun.

I can see some servers that which to "promote fun" on NS willl end up giving plenty of res to rines/aliens at the start to "speed it up"

But like its been said, people will just stay away from those servers.

impliment now plz