Coop Tournament

[lightspeed_aust 681]

Has it been done? Who is interested?

Goal: To determine who are the best COOP Squads.

Probably looking at 4 up to about 12 man coop.

Post thoughts here and I am following up other stuff in other threads.

Thanks

Lighty.

[terox 316]

This would be an interesting concept if you could get it to work correctly.

If memory serves me right, this was attempted back in OFP days.

How would you go about and define the "Score" for such a competition ?

[HitmanFF 6]

If memory serves me right, this was attempted back in OFP days.

How would you go about and define the "Score" for such a competition ?

Your memory does serve you right.

Flashpoint Combat Missions (FCM) was a coop league, with a mission played every few weeks. As I remember it, there were objectives to be met (rescue pilot from search party, rescue hostages, defuse bombs, ...) within a certain time frame; faster would mean more points. You'd get penalised for every team member that got killed, and the team with the highest score would win that week's round.

Each team would play during a reserved time slot on the FCM server to ensure no early exposure to the mission.

[lightspeed_aust 681]

ok thats interesting.

How would you go about and define the "Score" for such a competition ?

Each mission will be done in a Ghost Recon style with several objectives to be completed in any order in the mission. Objectives will have different points awarded based on difficulty level. Teams must consider risk/reward (harder objectives = more danger) if they don't think they can complete all objectives they head to extraction.

If the team gets wiped out then they receive 0 points for the mission despite the fact that they may have completed some objectives. Effectively the team must reach extraction at which point the score is calculated.

Bonus for time can be added.

Number of players killed could deduct score.

Possibliilties are endless really.

[terox 316]

Maybe the following would be fitting

Rather than having a final score based on points, base the score on a percentage of completion and call it an efficiency rating

The elements of the scoring could be something along the lines of

25% based on casualty rate

25% based on time taken

and then the objectives themselves make up the other 50%

This could then be implemented as a general scoring system over any mission

In more detail:

CASUALTY RATE

If you were able to complete the mission with no friendly casualties, you would have 100% success on that element and therefore be awarded the full 25% towards the final rating. If you had casualties say you started with 12 players and ended up with 9, therefore having a casualty rate of 25% you would only receive 18.75% as the casualty rate element of the score

TIME LIMIT

There would be 2 time limits

a) Time limit to achive a full 100% for the time element

b) An overun time limit, where if the objectives are not achieved by that time you would receive 0% towards the time element and the missions would be aborted.

For example

Time limit to achieve 100% = 40 minutes

Time limit where command would abort the mission, lets say 1 hour 20 minutes

If you achieved your objectives within or up to 40 minutes you would receive 100% of the time element score, eg a full 25% towards the final rating

If you achieved you mission at say the 1 hour point, you would receive 50% of the available time limit score which would add 12.5% towards the final rating

MISSION OBJECTIVES

3 objectives for example would each add 33.3% towards the full score allowed for the objectives, each giving 16.65 towards the final rating

Overall clans would then see their overall efficiency rating which would work generically on very different scenarios

The final rating would of course be output at the end of the mission via a dialogue with a time and date stamp on it which the clan could then take a screenshot for proof of their accomplishment.

Ideally this should always be the same server to allow continuity of fps, warping etc and to better administer and preventing cheating etc

Our server "Zeus" is not used anything like to its potential, so I would be more than willing to allow its use for such a project

Edited December 11, 2011 by Terox

[lightspeed_aust 681]

Love the scoring concept!

[nkenny 1051]

Ghost Recon COOP tournament

> Up to 6 players per team.

> 15 minute timelimit on each map

> Varied missions.

I think it is important to have a practical outlook on the nature of organising such an event. You will be playing with wildly diverging time zones and gaming communities. Aiming for 15 minutes per mission and around 60 minutes total per team-- combined with teams of up to six players is close to ideal.

It is a mistake to have too much randomness involved. Leaving to much to random chance can make the experience unfair and makes it impossible to prepare for such missions. In an open COOP environment it wouldn't matter, but this is a tournament. In PvP its better to be upfront about what you are offering and encourage groups to play the mission before entering.

Suggested outline below.

<picture here>

CONCEPT:

Small COOP tournament with missions of a Ghost Recon (or LITE) style nature.

Three scenarios with 15 minute timelimits

*

EXAMPLE: Three maps with varied objectives

1. Information raid (collect 2 out of 3 randomly placed briefcases within the timelimit)

2. Demolition (random insertion. random QRF position. Destroy a BRDM-2 HQ and ZSU-23 AAA then reach the extraction zone within the timelimit)

3. Hostage Rescue (collect the blackbox of a crashed jetfighter and rescue the pilot before he is executed within the timelimit.)

MISSIONS:

Game should be set to

EXPERT

difficulty and each mission should feature no more than 20 opposing soldiers

**

Each mission should have slots for observers with a camera script.

Ingame VON should be used to communicate. Dead is dead.

TROOP/RESOURCES:

Up to

6 players

per team

On Chernarus: Limited 'Force Recon' weaponset (1x m203, 1xMk48, 1xDMR, 2xSD weapons, misc ammunition)

On Takistan: Limited 'Delta Force' weaponset (1x m203/RCO, 1xMk48, 1xMarksman, 2xSD weapons, misc ammunition)

Every soldier may bandage, but no revive. Dead is dead.

***

SCORE SYSTEM: ****

Score Counter

starts at 30

-1 per minute played

-2 per friendly casualty

-5 per failed task

Mission ends

once objectives are completed, the score counter reaches zero, or the timelimit is up.

Score outputted to RTF and shown on-screen.

Add score from each map to a total then compare against other teams.

COMMENTS:

*

With 15 minutes per team you can expect one full round to take about 1hr. Depending on the nature of the missions it is possible to extend timelimit to 20 or 25 minutes.

**

A hard 20 AI limit enforces the size of the map but encourages clever scripting, positioning, and interesting equipment options.

***

Revive systems tend to mess with the in-game score counter. No revive emphasises the speed and deadliness of the mission.

****

Scoring system as outlined by Terox is equally workable yet much more complicated. I'd want something that is clear cut and easy to understand.

Ideally a tournament should work well 'out of the box'. I would advice Arrowhead or Arma2 based. Six player limit may seem harsh, but this permits smaller groups to enter and there is nothing stopping larger communities from entering more teams is there?

-k

[lightspeed_aust 681]

Obviously I'm open to all suggestions but a 15 minute mission? I cannot imagine a single real world mission that would take 15 min. Has to be at least 40 - 60 min.

Also don't quite understand your 15 min maps, 4 in total.

Note: I am totally not a fan of lazy mission making (my interpretation) of having lame objectives like capture a flag or find the brief case. I can't really imagine that sort of situation irl. I want missions with plausible multi objective missions made by great mission makers. Infantry or limited use of vcl. Think ghost recon for the style of play.

[Guest]

Think ghost recon for the style of play.

Keep in mind many Arma players never played GR or saw the potential it had which we all experienced in the organized tournaments.

They may not even know what you are on about. Maybe you can show some briefings or reports of old tourneys so they can read how it was.

Specially the +SD and the AS tourneys were great. I can still feel the adrenaline :)

Maybe the guys at AS can provide you some old data. There are very active here, not sure if they would be into doing tourneys. But you can always check with them, maybe they can be of any kind of other help for your project ;)

[lightspeed_aust 681]

you're right - I will put together a sample mission and brief to demonstrate how it works.

i'll also contact AS to see if they have anything.

[lightspeed_aust 681]

How many players inserting? 6, 9 or 12?

[DaveP 66]

Reminds me of the old school TV show Combat Missions

Would be interested to have a shot, but all depends on when/what timezone

[maddogx 13]

This does look extremely interesting. Anyone wanting to form an ad hoc coop team for this? :D

[Robalo 465]

This system might be very helpful, see if you can track down the author of this and use it for replays:

For reference about GR tourneys, the AS forums still have the old threads with the tourneys between 2003-2006. I had as much fun watching ~40 teams trying to beat our missions as in participating in other tourneys like those by teams BAD and +SD.

Good luck !

[lightspeed_aust 681]

Thanx robalo. Having problems getting into as forums, I think buegler is checking it out though.

Have made cOntact with replay scripter, hopefully it will work to record mission attempts.

[terox 316]

I have to agree with Lightspeed_aust. A 15 minute coop just wouldn't allow for the planning, decision making that I have personally seen in my 10 years of playing BI's military simulator. To get enjoyment out of it, I would say you need about 40 minutes to play a fairly fast coop game.

Elements I hadn't given much thought too, but which have come to light in this discussion are the concept rightfully or wrongfully of allowing players to practice the mission prior to playing it in the competition.

There are arguments to both sides of this one, which from what I can think of can be countered by mission design.

As the discussion seems to be leaning towards small coop teams, eg fireteam to section size then it would be fair to assume that the type of missions we are, or should be seeing in this tournament are going to be the type given to real SF units. Intel gathering, covert ops, route denial, assassination, hostage rescue, small scale ambush or hit and runs.

in the real world it is not their superiors but the men in these units themselves (not the wanabee versions) that decide on the vehicles, equipment that they want to take.

So a mission template design that allows this choice, for example as a "params" option could add an interesting element to the competition.

As per the server settings point, this would need to be done either on the same server or a limited number of servers that can be trusted to not "edit" the difficulty settings.

There are a lot of "issues" that would need to be thought about and worked around to make such a competition successful

[Guest]

With the GR co-op tourneys all teams were offered the mission briefing on beforehand. Like a week or so before (cant remember exactly).

This way teams could make a plan how to "attack" the mission and indeed the objectives were of those you listed. Sometimes you needed to be fully stealth to be able to succeed.

Sometimes you had to go silenced to have the best chance to win the mission but the choice was of the team itself. And the choice was made based on the info provided in the mission briefing/intel/background.

Going in guns blazing was an option too but those squads which organized the tourneys kind of made sure anyone doing that mostly died.

We once tried to move across a swamp fully hidden and we were only like 50 - 70 meters of the target when the entire team got suprised by a enemy patrol jeep. We died in 30 or so seconds, all 9. The jeep run over 3 of my mates 5 were taken out by a few nades and 1 was killed trying to retreat to extract to at least get the extraction points.

But, there also were missions where you did not get a briefing on beforehand, or ....... where after you spend a week planning, the mission was cancelled and you had a whole different briefing before you. (thank you +SD and AS!!!! I still hate you for it ;) )

All this added to the experience, expect anything. It was great and if I would be part of a co-op squad I would made sure that squad would sign up if all this goes through!

The only thing teams could choose (most of the times) was the loadout (weapons, ammo, etc). All other assets were and should be the same as this creates way to much troubles for administrating a tourney and making sure all teams have the exact same chance of completing/winning the mission, but thats just my opinion.

[lightspeed_aust 681]

hi Terox

Yes, in terms of mission length - historically, it usually takes the team 5 min from insertion to review the brief, divide up team into smaller squads, and move out. From this point, mission usually take another 40 - 75 min on average to complete. It has to be this length to travel an AO which is around 1000m2 and has several objectives.

In terms of loadout, I provide a custom set for each unit prior to insertion, as well as, a custom ammobox on the ground with a certain amount of other weaponry options. Obviously, I won't place 9 sniper rifles or AT Launchers in the box because I like to keep units as specialists in their own class as much as possible.

I don't like the idea of practice runs - but am also trying to tone down level of difficulty of a mission so that a well-coordinated team should be able to complete 100% of the mission most times. Mistakes will be punished.

The flipside is, for each coop mission in the tournament, a dedicated web page with full briefings, rough idea of opfor numbers and armored units, aerial surveillance images, and map details will be provided which teams can study prior to insertion.

Still working on a sample mission at present to demonstrate the concept clearly to teams.

Alos, looking for some trusted server hosts who might offer server during mission times (there will be a window of time, say 48 hours) in which teams will have to book a time to insert and attempt a mission. Scores will posted later on a Tournament Table to show where each team is placed, as well as, a debrief on the mission.

[nkenny 1051]

15 minutes * 3 missions for one sitting allows for multiple measurements/instances to test a units skill. ~60 minutes was based on my experience in organizing games. As I note there is a very distinct practical consideration to take into account. You are after all reaching out to many groups across many timezones.

75 minute playtime per mission in practice often means 60-120 minutes admin/organization time. Multiply this with five or even ten teams and you'll see the time problem straight in the face.

However. What I posted was a suggested outline motivated by tournament fairness and practicality. :) It really comes down is is making a thematic choice and sticking with it.

Either way I think its a cool idea.

-k

[lightspeed_aust 681]

Hi NKenny - I appreciate your thought into this and the logistics involved.

What I am trying to do is capture the abilities, planning and execution of the teams in a 'real world' situation.

I also want to do this in missions created by our excellent mission makers.

I want the players to be immersed in the mission and thinking about their every move. How do they work as a team? How to they react when things take a turn for the worse - do they panic or do they think quickly and sensibly to recover?

If the interest is big enough then I believe ppl will come on board to help administrate the tournament to make it a success.

I just have to make sure things are well prepared leading up to the event to ensure things run smoothly for players and coordinators.

At this stage, I am currently preparing a sample mission (on Isla Duala) for the coop tournament and a friend of mine is working on a Tournament mission (on Thirsk Winter). which combined should stir the interest of the coop community.

Full Briefings will follow at which point teams can register their interest and we will commence organisation of teams and schedules.

Still a fair way to go in preparation but things are moving in the right direction.

[igneous01 19]

are you going to be doing this via scheduled matches and brackets? that would make more sense for 40+ mission length, as I doubt two teams would be on 80+ minutes in a single round. It would probably be better to simply create a master schedule showing what teams are competing against who and the mission name they are playing.

This will give you the amount of time you need to successfully host a realistic GR like tourney. Needless to say this does introduce problems such as teams finishing a mission before and possibly spoiling it to other teams before their time to go in. However I guess thats for you to decide on how to compromise between playing time && practical time

[lightspeed_aust 681]

just to be clear this is not a round robin, elimination type event. imagine 5 missions - at the end of each mission the points earned by each team will go on to the tournament table so you can see how each team is performing.

at the end of each mission, the table is updated and you would expect there to be some shift in the position of teams (some will do better 2nd mission, some worse).

so teams are not playing off against eachother per se, but being ranked against all teams at the end of each round.

still working on a system whereby teams cannot reveal the mission to other teams - yes they could talk about it but there will also be a full page briefing with surveillance screen shots so that no team is blind going in anyway.

it may be the case that teams request the mission when theri team is available to attempt it and they have a 2 hour window in which to submit their result by way of replay (tba) and screenshot of score.

[terox 316]

Here's a thought on how you could issue the missions. lets say there are 5 missions in total to be played by each team. The server that hosts the missions, only holds the 1 mission in its mpmissions list while each team has played it, then it is removed and replaced with the next mission. The server is passworded, the password is changed for each mission. It is unlikely that competing teams will inform the other teams of important information, because that would be counter productive and teams wouldn't be able to grab hold of the mission because it will be protected on a passworded server. The team would be given the password when they are ready to play. You could then host the briefing separately, on a pdf which can be downloaded from a website, days or hours before the mission is played.

It may be possible to create a server side add-on that maybe pv's a variable that would be used on the client side end mission dialogue to display server time and server name, the dialogue would then be proof of what time and where the mission was played, or alternatively the screenshot has to be emailed to the server admin within 10 minutes of the mission finishing.

I know there are loopholes in this system, but its gonna be incredibly difficult to find a system that isnt full of them.

The only way you could pull this off, was if every mission was played by every team on the same server, otherwise policing it would be a nightmare.

You could have a civilian slot with a spectate dialogue, but who wants to sit in that slot for an hour to police the competition

I would also create a dry run mission, and go through the entire rigmaroll of hosting a briefing and allowing the teams to test play the entire system. You may find that you will need more detail in your briefings etc that you hadn't felt was necessary and other issues may come to light from the feedback that you may get

Edited December 20, 2011 by Terox

[lightspeed_aust 681]

thanx for the feedback Terox - I like your suggestions.

I am working on such a test mission now to gauge level of interest, and iron out any issues along the way.

Not sure what you meant about the pv variable created on the client-side but something like this system would help as one of the checks and balances. I would also require screenshot at end of mission to show score.

[terox 316]

Not sure what you meant about the pv variable created on the client-side.

There is a command called "missionStart" http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/missionStart

If memory serves me correctly, I think there was an issue with this when running the command from a linux server, so this may only work on a windows server.

But basically you could public variable some of the elements that this array contains along with a string and have the client end mission dialogue output these values onscreen (for the screenshot)

If you were to do this using a server side addon, (We do something similar to inject our teamspeak details to every mission briefing automatically) then you can use this to state the date, time and place where the mission was played which would be a more automated way to police the end results

Edited December 21, 2011 by Terox