qlfreeze.de Forum

[eye]

analysis of some settings:

team damage makes hitscan weapons more useful and projectiles less useful

low (5s) weapon respawn helps the weaker team

dropweapon/powerup helps the stronger team in theory, in practise just funny thing

carrier dropping PUs (not sure about what dropping items means, invuln and tele?) benefits the stronger players

auto-thaw punishes campers

frozen reset benefits the stronger team, but it also makes optimal play less campy

weapon reset benefits the weaker team, and makes good players work more

health reset benefits the stronger team when teams are nearly balanced, otherwise depends a bit on frozen reset and suicide penalty, somewhat complex

armor reset benefits the weaker team, and makes good players work more

world death respawn should IMO be quite high (12 seconds?), because in many games with many players it is almost always beneficial to suicide often, and this isn't too fun. ideally a function of player amount

timelimit/roundlimit is ok, 2min=1point is ok conversion

timers i personally enjoy having in, benefits average players (not good not bad)

start countdown timer i personally dislike, but here are some points:
-countdown causes those annoying situations where you and opponent both sit on some armor (stronger team suffers??)
-countdown causes those annoying situations when multiple opponents near you have time to aim at you (lone spawns suffer)
-in 1v1, countdown helps newbies against good players
-in QL without countdown, the last guy to get frozen usually accidentally shoots at the start of the new round because he immediately spawns after action (q3 allowed a delay here)

based on these i would perhaps recommend something like 50ms countdown, if possible

i recommend disabling bfg

timeoutcount 0

inactivity drop around 80 seconds seems okay, could be slightly lower even

no round time limit "ties", at least if there is some sort of autothaw.. unless some very exotic camp scenario perhaps

personally i prefer weaker powerups, to make them closer to normal items. mainly much weaker battle suit, and slightly weaker quad

personally i find the current mg sg pg start an odd choice. sg is powerful with plenty of ammo which pushes people to focus on it. pg is one of the strongest weapons at max accuracy and also quite spammy even when they miss. not having rg at spawn also makes some maps extremely uneven at worst (think q3dm7).
personally i prefer low ammo self-defense weapons at start (standard mg + sg 3 ammo, rl 2 ammo, rg 2 ammo and no universal ammo boxes!). the idea is to keep spawned players dangerous, but to not allow sustained combat ability for them. also having to swap weapons is and feels uncomfortable (perhaps too much so for newbies? not sure), so the danger potential is lower than what the assortment of weapons shows. specifically low ammo rg allows to play maps like q3dm7 which have only one rg but a bit more rg ammo boxes.

slightly longer than default thaw time can be a good idea sometimes. it may make people slightly uncomfortable, but it is a major benefit to thaw someone, especially if starting weapons allow prolonged combat.

not sure if i forgot anything.

[tkr]

Hey,
thanks a lot for the detailed and elaborate feedback. I have half finished a reply i don´t want to post in parts, i expect to finish it tomorrow.

[tkr]

Hi,
took me a while, hope it makes sense:

i want to try two kinds of QL freezetag servers, one for everyone including newbs - currently called "vanilla"
and another one for experienced players looking for more challenging gameplay (osp).
i picked the names because i was to lazy to make up new ones

i dont want to overbalance things. quake has never been a balanced game when it comes to scores.
in 1on1 and tdm small differences in skill often result in big differences at scores.

freezetag rules have changed a few times from Q3(multiple mods and rules, i mostly played osp) to "initial-(official)-release-QL" to "post-steam-QL"

people seem to like "(full) classic-ft" which i think refers to the form ft was in some time after the "initial-release-QL
i dont know if i remember the rules correctly:
standard warmup (3-5s) where you could pick up items and health (not sure about thawing, if autothaw disabled)
no reset of armor / weapons / health after round end
no teamdmg
initial weapons: mg+sg+pg
very low world-death-delay if any at all


here are my thoughts on the topics you mentioned:
teamdamage: id personally like to have it turned ON on both servers,it makes fights more complex and interesting.
you are less likely to get raped by a group of enemies
theres been some complaints about it so i disabled it on the "vanilla" server

weapon respawn time: agreed,will set to 5s on both servers

weapon/armor/health-reset & autothaw:
complex topic; i am not a big fan of resets, imo they add some randomness, depending on starting weapons / warmup time and other factors
resetting armor and health & autothaw somehow go together imo, i can only think them all being turned ON or OFF:
resetting armor benefits weaker team
resetting health as you said varies, but overall resetting benefits weaker players who dont´t know how to manage their health well
resetting health + armor somewhat implies autothaw being ON
not resetting health + armor + weapons (as in "classic ql ft") imo it makes sense to not autothaw
autothawing benefits the stronger team (even more with the strong classic-ft starting weapons), not having autothaw on creates some interesting constellations as well so i chose to turn it off in "osp"
resetting weapons benefits weaker team but adds randomness, depending mainly on starting weapons and to a lesser degree on armor/health/autothaw

world-death-delay: 12 seconds is a bit too much i think, will try 8-10s depends on team-size

thats another topic: i enjoy smaller teamsize (5on5) over bigger teams on most maps but many people do seem to enjoy playing 8on8 on campgrounds as well
you cant set a max teamsize though, only lock at a certain size without vote.

timers: will set ON for "vanilla", OFF for "osp" as default, will still be avaiable for vote

countdown timer: totally agree with you there. sadly theres no control the behavior of item-pickups / thawing during warmup.
turning it off completely results in a soundbug at start. the value that you control is the amount of miliseconds.
any value above 0 seems to enable the 10s warmup before the first round, theres no way of changing that value as far as i know.
i think having some warmup benefits the weaker team. the 1s in osp is just meant for spawned players to
maybe grab their mouse and should not interfere too much with thawing of frozen teammates (provided autothaw is off)
maybe a value of 500ms is sufficient for that as well.
setting it to any number not being a muliple of 1000 / 1 second seems to make the announcer count from the rounded up number but at the correct
time offset, so setting it to 50ms the announcer would still count from "one" starting at -50ms
which would take longer than the actual warmup time left.
Update: did find a g_warmup cvar that ive changed but not yet tested (should affect first round warmup time)

bfg: will disable it - if i find the cvar for it.

round-time limit: i am not aware of any setting that lets you control that behavior

starting-weapons:
i have to look up the settings for that, lower ammo would be reasonable.
i dont remember when they were being introduced
still a good thing for less experienced players, and both weapons are not too
i dont like the idea of spawning with rocketlauncher and railgun even with low ammo both weapons are too
powerful imo, maps are designed for some weapons to be at specific places and mg +sg are weapons that dont change
the way a map was meant to be played as rl/shaft/rg do.
id rather go all the way and set starting weapons to gauntlet+mg only (osp). turning off starting weapons in vanilla might
alienate players.
Update: could not find a command to change the starting ammo for anything else than mg

timeouts: will set to off in vanilla, maybe keep one for osp

thaw time: i started the servers with the (old) default of 3000ms, it felt quite long.
will try 3000ms on osp.





I don´t know if theres any demand for a "pure" osp or vanilla ft without starting weapons so i based the settings on the "full classic ft" settings from initial-release-QL which is much better than
new non-classic-ft and made a few changes to that.
Most of the players don´t pick a server by the rules, they either dont care / know about the differences before they join or just join the server with most players connected.


Do you have suggestion for another ruleset ?
You can edit the factory-template below and post it here, I will set up a server with those settings. I can also give you some access to a small vserver if you like.


{
"id": "cft",
"title": "my-freezetag",
"author": "-",
"description": "classic-ft,freezetag",
"basegt": "ft",
"cvars": {
"pmove_BunnyHop" : "0",
"teamsize" : "6",
"g_itemTimers": "off",
"g_doWarmup": "1",
"g_dropCmds": "0",
"g_dropPowerups": "0",
"g_freezeAutoThawTime": "120000",
"g_freezeEnvironmentalRespawnDelay": "7000",
"g_freezeRemovePowerupsOnRound": "1",
"g_freezeResetArmorOnRound": "0",
"g_freezeResetHealthOnRound": "0",
"g_freezeResetWeaponsOnRound": "0",
"g_removePowerupsOnRound": "1",
"g_freezeRoundDelay": "1500",
"g_freezeThawRadius": "64",
"g_freezeThawThroughSurface": "1",
"g_freezeThawTick": "1",
"g_freezeThawTime": "2000",
"g_freezeThawWinningTeam": "0",
"g_friendlyfire": "1",
"g_startingWeapons": "135",
"g_timeoutCount": "1",
"g_weaponrespawn": "10",
"timelimit": "20",
"g_allowKill": "1",
"g_overtime": "300",
"g_loadout": "0"
}
}

[tkr]

Ok, i discovered some cvars for some of the things you mentioned:

"disable_weapon_bfg": "1"
"g_startingAmmo_pg" : "25"
"g_startingAmmo_sg" : "10"

The settings will be applied to all servers. currently the vanilla factoriy looks like this:

{
"id": "cft",
"title": "classic FT (vanilla)",
"author": "tkr",
"description": "classic-ft,freezetag,vanilla",
"basegt": "ft",
"cvars": {
"pmove_BunnyHop" : "0",
"teamsize" : "6",
"disable_weapon_bfg": "1",
"g_startingAmmo_pg" : "25",
"g_startingAmmo_sg" : "10",
"g_itemTimers": "1",
"g_doWarmup": "1",
"g_warmup" : "3",
"g_dropCmds": "4",
"g_dropPowerups": "1",
"g_freezeAutoThawTime": "120000",
"g_freezeEnvironmentalRespawnDelay": "7000",
"g_freezeRemovePowerupsOnRound": "1",
"g_freezeResetArmorOnRound": "0",
"g_freezeResetHealthOnRound": "0",
"g_freezeResetWeaponsOnRound": "0",
"g_removePowerupsOnRound": "1",
"g_freezeRoundDelay": "3000",
"g_freezeThawRadius": "64",
"g_freezeThawThroughSurface": "1",
"g_freezeThawTick": "1",
"g_freezeThawTime": "2000",
"g_freezeThawWinningTeam": "1",
"g_friendlyfire": "0",
"g_startingWeapons": "135",
"g_timeoutCount": "0",
"g_teamForceBalance": "0",
"g_shufflePowerRatingThreshold": "999",
"g_timeoutLen": "60",
"g_weaponrespawn": "5",
"timelimit": "15",
"roundlimit": "7",
"g_allowKill": "0",
"g_overtime": "300",
"g_loadout": "0"
}
}