Team-Based Loadout Restriction Brainstorming

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SoSilencer

Harry Goz (1932 - 2003)
Nov 27, 2000
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I've been thinking about this for a while and the more I think about it the more I realise INF would benefit greatly from such a system. This system would be certain restrictions placed on the amount of weapons and ammo an entire team could have. It would be used to limit teams to 2 grenade launchers, or 2 sniper rifles, or 4 shotguns, 16 frag grenades, you name it. It could be a per-map setup as certain maps like EP would require more sniper rifles than maps such as Siberia.

The question is, of course, how do you implement something like this that is fair to all players? How do you determine which two players get the grenade launcher, or the sniper rifle?

I don't think it can be based on scoring because if it was like this you'd end up with a very stale pool. What I mean is you'd get one guy who is decent with the shotgun and he would always score really high. Another player could be better with the shotgun but since he is stuck with an AK he never has a high enough score to show how good he can use the shotgun.

It can't just be first come first serve because that gives the benefit to people with fast machines.

It could involve a player voting system, but something like this would take a lot of time before each round and would cause many arguments between players.

What else is there? It needs to be fast but it also needs to be fair. For the life of me I just can't think of anything but if a lot of people reply with ideas maybe we can all come up with something.
 

devilmonkey

Sgt. Carlos Hathcock wannabe
Oct 15, 2000
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agree

I was thinking about a similar system last night. This would be especially good once the SAW comes into play, otherwise I'm sure we'll see entire teams of guys with SAWs and GLs. This will also add to the realism since most squads will have 1 or 2 sharpshooters, 2 or so GLs a heavy MG and rifle/smg men filling it out. If you get a chance check out the show on the SEALs that has been on the Discovery channel from time to time and you will see that this is far closer to real squad tactics/loadouts IMHO.
 

Kisen_K

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Maybe just rotate the weapons. So like if I wanted to use a shottie, and another guy also want to. I could use it the
first round , he can use it second round and I use it third round again, you get the idea...

ILCR is going to implent this into their strategy league... If 2 people on the same team use the same "restricted" weapon, they will be disqualified.
 

RogueLeader

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Oct 19, 2000
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It would add more realism if, when you start each round, you have preset loadouts for each map to choose from. That way if a mapper wants a map to be an American attack on a Yugoslav military installation they could make the Yugoslavian side use AK's, and the Americans can use M16's, and everything makes sense.
 

krate

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I was thinking about this too. One way I thought of that might work was to have a vote option where you could give one of your teammates a tumbs-up and one of your teammates a thumbs-down, if you wanted. The team budget would then be divided based on the thumbs-ups and downs of each player.

At the start of a round, whoever had the best standing would get first crack at the equipment, with his awarded share of the budget. Any money he didn't spend would be passed to the #2 guy, and so on.

To speed things up, you could also be given a list of your loadouts that you can afford with the money you have available, so you could pre-tailor loadouts to fit different budgets.

Of course, you could chat too, and ask the #1 guy to save enough money for you to buy the loadout you want.

The main problem with this scheme is that it would take some time for everyone to pick out equipment, and it would need to be sequential. I'm not sure how to implement time limits.

This could be a good mod.

Here is a completely different idea:
Have one big pool of equipment for both sides, and have an auction. Both sides compete in the auction for the same equipment. What ever equipment is best suited for the map will go for a high price. People who can fight well with modest equipment will be a big asset for the team.
 

Baal

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I think this is a great idea and would make u feel like u have an important role in the team. I think the best idea so far is to have a rotation system but if it was every round, it wouldn't have much continuity so maybe the server can set the number of rounds b4 it changes.
 

SoSilencer

Harry Goz (1932 - 2003)
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I wrote a long post about an auction idea when it hit me...


Why not give each player a small amount of money each round. TOO small an amount. Rather than 10k each round, why not like 4k or something. Then the price of the more 'desireable' weapons can be increased to something HIGHER than the amount of money you are given. So if there is a large map but only 2 sniper rifles per team the sniper rifles could be made very expensive while the rest of the weapons remain cheap. The only way to purchase the sniper rifle would be to receive a donation from another player or two. Somebody who is taking a more affordable loadout might have a few hundred left over, and the sniper rifle might cost a few hundred more than you are given. If 3 people want the only sniper rifle they will have to be given money by the rest of the team to purcahse it. Essentially the entire team will decide who get's the more rare weapons because they are the ones who control who they give their extra money to. In the event that more than one person has enough money to buy the weapon and people fight over it simply give it to the highest bidders.

This also has the benefit of scaling down with the amount of players on the server since the less players = less money for each team to circulate.

The question with this system is... How do we make it quick and easy for server admins to set something like this up. It would be a lot of work to set values and inventory for every map out there and I wouldn't expect any server admin to do all that. Therefore we need an easy system where we can set like a base cost and amount of each weapon, and then the cost of the weapons is modified automatically when the server admin sets up the inventory. This way there is only half the work to do and they are much more likely to take the time to do it.
 

SoSilencer

Harry Goz (1932 - 2003)
Nov 27, 2000
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Also I think the rotation system could work out nicely too. It would be first come first serve. After maybe 3 rounds the item would be back up for grabs. Anybody else on the team would have a chance to take it, if nobody wanted it you could take it for another 3 rounds. This could also go from map to map. When you hit a map with a high restriction on that weapon and only one or two available it would just go down the line. The people who used it least would have first chance at it, then the people who used it a while ago but not too recently, and finally the people who just used it the last 3 rounds on the other map would have last choice. This would have the nice benefit of being a deterrent to NOT taking a weapon just because it's available. Like if there are enough m203's on dockside for everybody on the team you might NOT want to take one so that the next map, which might only have 2 available, you have higher priority.

-Edit- I thought of 2 minor things while taking a shower after posting that.

First, players entering a server would be placed at the end of the line when it comes to weapon priority (it would be like they had just used all the weapons). This way people wouldn't quit and rejoin to reset the counter.

Also, they could possibly implement an either/or setup where if you take a certain weapon, you aren't allowed to take a certain other weapon. Like if you have an hk69 you can't take a scoped weapon, for example. Though if they implement the xcom system this wouldn't really be needed since loadouts involving weapons such as that would be inherently disadvantaged.
 
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krate

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The giving money to your teammates is a great idea. Better than my thumbs-up-down system. It does need some way to avoid shill players... people will log on to one server with extra guys, and give all the money to their one real guy. If that could be worked out, it could be really good.
Will people actually do this? We can sort of do this right now. You could buy 40mm grenades and give them to your launcher teammates while you go snipe, but I haven't seen this done.

Ideally, it would be nice to avoid a system that gives more money to the best players. That would make the game really lopsided, and people won't try. I don't mind getting killed ten times in a row by a better player if we are on equal footing, but if he is armmed to the teeth and I have to go against him with one handgrenade and a knife, then I would pick another server.
Instead, a good system would encourage the best players to fight with less equipment. If we have one guy who can kick butt with nothing but a pistol, he could be a team hero by allowing the weaker players to arm up. The right system could encourage this.


The rotation idea is good too. People would need to develop skills with all of the weapons to play well, and it would discourage specialization. You couldn't spend the entire match sniping for example.
 

SoSilencer

Harry Goz (1932 - 2003)
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To prevent players from creating fake characters we could limit who can give money. The players at the bottom of the scoreboard, like the bottom 25% (worse person in a 4 man per team game, last 2 people in 8 per team), would be unable to give money.

I mean those players are doing poorly so they need the money anyways, plus we'd stop people from making fake chars. Somebody could still make a fake char but they'd have to get them up past 25% so they'd essentially be playing with that guy anyways.

What does everyone think? I can't decide between a money system or the simple 3 round system. I'm leaning towards a 3 round rotation simply because it would be both fair and easy to implement (relatively speaking). Or maybe somebody else has another idea?
 

yurch

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what happens if someone demands a extremly large amount of money? If hes really good, then most of the team will sway with him, even if he buys 6 rifles, leaving the team squat. It will be justified by some lame argument like "he's the only one who can use them well, so let him have them"

make sure to avoid this kinda situation, and put a cap on the amount of money a single person can recieve.

Thumbs up on the idea itself, and to the man who took the trouble to post it :)
 

NotBillMurray

It's Suntory Time!
Mar 11, 2001
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Working with the concept that the mapper would generate a list of weapon loadouts, you could depend on that list to assign the first round loadout.

The list should be generated with the intention of scaling to a low player count, so if a server is half full it would have the meat and potatoes weapons like the M16 and MP5, with specialized weapons further down the list. I imagine a list may look like this :
Player...Red..............Blue
1...........M16/203......M16/203
2...........M16.............M16
3...........MP5.............MP5
4...........M16.............M16
5...........M16/ACOG...M16/ACOG
6...........Robar..........PSG
7...........Shotgun......HK69
8...........P90.............SIG

Then, as each player initially joins the server, they are assigned the next weapon loadout for their team on the list. First to connect would receive the M16/203, next a regular M16, etc.

One round is played with this distribution. On completion of that round, the players are provided the chance to choose their loadout. The order of selection is based on whether the players survived the round and then on their score. So it would be based off of the living players by score, then the dead players by score. This provides motivation to survive and to contribute to the team.

This system would work immeasurably better if score was based on teamwork instead of frags, but if the kill based scoring was impartial and didn't favor shotguns over sniper rifles, it would still work.
 
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R-Force

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I like the idea of this thread ;). I lean toward the "players give money to other players for more/better equipments" idea... When players have to share ressources to get needed equipment, they may begin to talk to each others and make plans about how they gona play, and who will do what. I think it's much better than players who pick up equipment without consulting the rest of the team...

I also think all maps should have varying price for weapons, i think it could even be random, forcing players to play with less than optimal equipment... I think more interractions between players will lead toward more teamplay, the more decision, the better ;).
 

SoSilencer

Harry Goz (1932 - 2003)
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Just because somebody is good I don't think anyone will be willing to screw themselves over just so that one good guy can get all the weapons. Even if they did I doubt they would do it a second time after seeing that the idiot took the weapons for the entire team and left everybody else with knives and grenades.
 

R-Force

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Anyway, what would a single guy do with ALL the weapons? He would be overloaded. And i believe the amount of cash we can donnate and the amount a single guy can have would be capped. In addition to a varying weapon cost (simulating availiability in the current area), it would be unlikely anyone could buy more than a few weapons...
 

LordKhaine

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How about a menu that pops up when you connect to the server, asking you to select one of your loadouts. It would tell you what weapons were restricted on the map, and how many slots were left for those weapons. That way you can pick your loadout and enter.

This would also give people a nice quick chance to select loadouts for each map, without having to quickly go thro the voice menu while in spec before the first round starts.
 
Mar 19, 2001
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These are all great ideas but I think if something like this was implemented it should be a mutator so public servers can use it but private clan servers can stay to unrestricted loadouts.
 

Yaweh_

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Mar 19, 2001
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I see one problem with buying weapons based on a pool of money, or auction, or anything to do with money. I don't wanna change the price of the guns, I like the realistic pricing. Now, if we CUT the amount of money you're given WITHOUT changing any of the prices, I like that. It doesn't subtract realistic pricing limitations, and it adds realistic budget limitations.

How about this (different idea): no loadouts. Each team starts with a pile of weapons laid out. You pick them up, but you can ONLY pick up a weapon every 5-6 seconds or so (to prevent one guy from grabbing everything). This way, the server can preset limits on certain guns by simply not making them available. In another sense, you lose all monetary restrictions, and that could be explained that, because we're a high-powered special forces team, or infantry sqaud, we don't mess with money, we get what we need/want.

If you wanted to implement something with a money restriction, I like having a pool of money (say, the whole team starts with 25000 or so). Each player chooses what they want, and if/when the team exceeds the limit, someone has to willingly give up an item (clip, grenade, a whole gun, whatever) to stay under budget. If nobody does so, we need a system whereby the server automatically removes something from somebody, so as not to delay the game indefinitely. If you're only a few dollars over, it takes away a clip from the guy that has the most, or if you're a long way over, it takes a weapon and all the ammo for it away from the guy with the most. That would if you try and horde a bunch of stuff, you'd be punished for it by losing a more or less random gun (or clip, or whatever). That makes it in the players favor to willingly give something up to make budget, because then they'd have a say in what they lose. Perhaps a vote system to force a single player to have to give something up (so everyone on the team can vote to see who loses something, instead of random. Problem there is that this would develop intra-team rivalries, which would cause tk's. BAD. A random selector like I described above avoids this by punishing anyone who takes all the guns, without him being able to point a finger at his teammates, it's all his fault :) ).

There ya have it, my idea. My head hurts.
 

NotBillMurray

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Mar 11, 2001
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These are all great ideas but I think if something like this was implemented it should be a mutator so public servers can use it but private clan servers can stay to unrestricted loadouts.

Agreed, uh, *name*.

I would imagine this would be used for professional match play, assault, or maps the designers feel is better played with a restrictive loadout. Imagine being able to play Island if scoped weapons weren't available...