(this mainly applies to pubs, but can apply in the rare case that a person gets disconnected in a match)

I found in NS1, that if a portion of one team left, for whatever reason (like internet connectivity), that the remaining players on that team were at a massive disadvantage. Some servers would force people on to a specific team to prevent this, however I dont think anyone really wants to leave the team they fought so hard for to go work against it.

Instead I would like to see some changes in NS2 that would help solve this problem. One possible solution would be to increese the damage/health of the remaining people to make up for the diffrence (the next time they spawn in), which would last untill they die or more people join thier team. Another possible solution would be to increese the MAX upgrade state, the point at which you have bought "everything", which if combined with more resources for the disadvantaged team could even things out.

Do you guys have any other ideas? Do you consiter this a problem with NS1?

No.

Why? Because it could (and would) be abused to give a team the advantage.

It also breaks known situations in NS, e.g. a Fade can kill a Marine with Armour level 1 in 3 normal swipes. But in your example this might be 2 swipes or it might be 4 swipes depending on who's team was bigger for whatever reason.

It would be far better to implement a warning system in a discrete part of the game, i.e. the scoreboard flashes red when the teams are unbalanced and there is a server option to force a team balance after 60 seconds of unbalanced teams.

Well the change wouldnt be instant. It assumes that the person has to respawn before they gain the advantage, and it goes away the moment the teams equalize. If your on a team with a 5 to 3 advantage, why shouldnt the fade need to take an extra swipe or two as long as its balanced (the total power of one team = the total power of the other team).

How do you think it would be abused? Even having to respawn may not be enough to totaly prevent abuse, but add in that it slowly "ramps up" to the total bonus (over like 5 minutes). So to "abuse" it they would have to have thier team leave for 5 minutes (in which case the other team would be given a massive advantage during that time.

It will not get balanced most likely. Let's say you've got a cele focus 2nd hive fade against a0 marines. It's just way too good since you'll need just one swipe to kill everything. At that point the marines have little chances of defending against it since meds, welding, grouping up and everything else will do little good against the fade. Also, the present system relies a lot on spreading the roles. Let's say you've got a siege situation going on. You'll need 2 gorges, a lerk, maybe another fade, maybe onos, skulks biting res. Now, if you're missing one of those you're losing even if you do the 10% more dmg.

I'm not that worried about the abusing, but how would the delay work anyway? Delaying the powerboost brings us back to the starting point. What good is a team balancer if it doesn't kick in before its too late?

I don't consider the player loss during the rounds much of a problem. In 8v8 and bigger you shouldn't miss one player too much. Obiviously losing 2 out of 8 hurts a lot already, but that's either quite unlucky or for a good reason most of the time. On competetive play its your own responsibility to have one player as a backup if you feel you need one.

Of course if the devs decide to make it primarily a 3v3 game its going to be a whole new situation. Right now with 12+ players I can't see any need for this system.

I'd say in NS1 this is already addressed well enough without damaging gameplay. Resources. Supply vs demand. A team with fewer players can more easily provide players with the things they need whereas a larger team may struggle with resources for spending and must push for more resource towers to compensate. All of the Marines are going to be asking for HMGs, but a large team won't all be able to get what they want. All Aliens would have their own desires for spending their res, but in a large team their few resources are shared equally reducing their res income rate.

A small team can survive more easily on a few RTs, but a large team absolutely must push to eventually gain more strength. This is a delicate balance and when this balance is broken, you then can identify which team is doing better at what they need.


That aspect, although a rather significant objective, can be rather subtle in the area of size balance. Considering how long that aspect has been a part of the game, I'm sure the issue is already worked out for NS2.

I'm going to have to agree with terragamerX on this one, that fewer ppl means more res and equipment for you, and with NS1 if enough ppl leave or get disconnected the game usually ends for the team that has lets say 4 aliens vs 12 marines, game ends they start a new one with 8vs8 teams and try again.

I disagree that it self balances, since extra bodies does help.

However, I'm of the opinion that people will fix it themselves. It's worked for many many other games, I'm sure it will work again. And people will continue to create auto-balance scripts to force people to switch that you can slap on your server.

I do like the idea of notifying people of unbalanced teams. There's so many times I don't realize it's been unbalanced for a couple of minutes, then I realize why we've been losing or winning. I would have switched if I'd have known, but by that point is usually is too late except to finish and re-make the game.

Also, this should be in Ideas and Suggestions Forum.