Autobalancer Problems

[ShrykeAbyss]

Lately the autobalancer seems to have been having problems such as moving VIPs, moving people to the winning team and switching people close to the end of the round. I've noticed that these problems started occurring in the past few weeks. Before that everything seemed fine. If you have time, could you take a look into it please?

[WolfSanguis]

Here is why Shryke. Tho i am going to be rude and copy Basies post.

OK.. update on this issue.

I noticed that there were some rounds where more than 6 BaBu's were on the same team and none on the other.
This happened because ALL these BaBu's were VIPS. And VIPS are never balance, not even for 'ClanTag Dispersal'.

+/- 60% of all BaBu's are VIPs. So when only VIP BaBu's have joined, the server would become BaBu stacked.

Unfortunately the original author of the plugin is no longer active on the Procon forums to request such a feature
So... I tried to edit the balancer plugin to make sure the "ClanTag Dispersal Function" ignores the whitelist.

Unfortunately making such a change myself I will probably break the plugin, since it's quite a complicated structure with many different checks in 15000 lines of code

So... I decided to stop using VIP Slots as balance whitelist and added the NON-BABU players on the 'normal' balance whitelist.
So, BaBU is not whitelisted any more and clan dispersal will work properly again for them.

[ShrykeAbyss]

Thanks for the response, and I understand why BaBu is no longer whitelisted. Quick follow up question though.

Is the autobalancer intended to be switching players close to the end of the round, and from the losing team to the winning team? Because it feels really unfair to spend a whole round on one team fighting for the win, only to be switched near the end and get an undeserved loss.

Edit: There was a response, not sure where it went.

[EBassie]

Hi Shryke,

I had removed Wolf's post because I wanted to make a kind of different post with the same explanation. The post that Wolf quoted me from is not really for the 'general public'. Bad Wolf!

Since you already read it... it does not matter any more, so I placed it back

But yeah, I'm trying something new since we get a fair amount of complaints from other regulars and VIPS about the balance when there are many (8+) BaBu's (or other 6+ player platoons) playing.

I'm happy you understand the reason why we do this.

This is currently just a test because I don't feel it's the best solution yet:
BaBu's will now be balanced more often (even when less than 6 BaBu players online) and that's not the way I want it to go, since it's unfair to you guys.

My goal is to have it work this way:
When more than 6 players with same tag (VIP or NON VIP) are on the same side, the balancer will try to disperse these players across teams equally. So that should work for all clans / platoons (even 11clan).
VIPS (including BaBu players) should still be whitelisted for normal balancing moves.

I haven't changed anything else to the balancer though, but I will keep monitoring this issue.

[ShrykeAbyss]

That sounds like a good solution, our (or at least my) intention isn't to clan stack and balanced rounds are always better.

Slightly related question; will balancing continue to happen mid-round? To me, it's always seemed unfair to switch players mid round even if it is just to make the team numbers more even. After all, more people tend to leave the losing team mid round which would inevitably lead to people from the winning team being moved. I'd personally be in favour of balancing at the beginning of the round only, and then placing anyone who joins on the losing team if both teams have space available.

[EBassie]

Yes, mid round balancing will stay active like it's now and always has been.
There are times when teams are unequal in player amount, like 32-28.
When no new players join, usually the players on the losing team will leave the server making it even more unbalanced.

But keep in mind the balancer always tries to balance last joined (NON VIP) players first and it should never balance top scoring players unless there is no other option (which does not happen usually).

I do feel our balancing methods do a fine job. Our server is usually one of the best balanced "CQ All Maps" servers out there. So I don't want to change too much, since it has been proven to make our server this popular.

I just want to make sure we don't get too much clan stacking.