Why camping happens, and what we should do about it.

[seana11]

1. Humans are more vulnerable

FPS games are in essence spatial manipulation games. You input changes to the world around you in order to achieve a goal. As such, one of the most important skills in an fps is maneuverability. An opponent with greater maneuverability gets to manipulate the world more than a less maneuverable opponent. One of the main consequences of this is that they can set the engagement distance more easily, and determine when combat ceases. This is a crucial underlying problem in tremulous because humans can't break off the fight unless they kill the alien, or the alien retreats. This lack of maneuverability and control favors a more conservative style by the humans, and a more aggressive approach by the aliens.

1. Structures cannot defend themselves

In tremulous, all bases can, with enough time, be destroyed by one alien (or human, though they generally have to worry about ammo more). They are in constant need of babysitting as they cannot defend themselves effectively. As stated before, humans have less maneuverability, and thus less ability to react to changing conditions on the map. A surprise attack by the aliens can be unopposed for 15-20 seconds while the humans scramble back to base. An attack by humans rarely lasts that long before they are confronted. This makes it harder for humans to push out since when they leave the base they are simply putting out an invitation for the aliens.

1. Humans are more base-dependent than aliens

As a human, the main consideration you have to account for is health. For every encounter, you trade some health and ammo and resources for expected future health and ammo (credits). When the perceived loss in resources (eg. dying) falls below the expected return, players attempt to break engagement and replenish these sources. For humans, this often requires a trip back to the base upwards of 30 seconds round trip (10 seconds to and from, and 10 seconds in-base). During this time, humans cannot defend the perimeter and they cannot gain credits. Aliens, on the other hand, can simply fall back to the previous room and regenerate hp, or go to an egg. This process can take less than 20 seconds (5 seconds to and from, and 10 seconds healing). During this time, they are close to the front line which they can defend if need be and earn credits in the process. This ability for aliens to constantly reinforce lets them hold a front line much further up than the humans.

Lets look at the implications of the new res system on these factors. In the first factor, humans are still more vulnerable. In the second, the humans base is still more vulnerable. In the third, the humans are still as base dependent. The humans must now have good map control, even though the underlying problems leading to lack of human map control have still not been addressed. As we have seen, this leads to even more alien wins and human losses.

Second, the new system does not actually promote aggressiveness. It simply increases the number of defenses available, making it harder to win the game. In Risk, for example, neither the defenders nor the attackers have an advantage. This leads to long games where the only way to win it by playing risk cards. However, these simply add more units and simply increase a player's "hit points." In addition, there is an incentive to play these cards as late as possible as you get more armies that way. These systems lead to long, boring games, which does not seem to be what you had in mind.

For the second point, there is nothing you can do, as making structures more powerful would decrease the ability of first stage aliens to make any sort of dent. However, there are ways to mitigate the first and last reasons. The last can be fixed by giving humans regenerating health and not aliens. Regenerating ammo for energy weapons could also work as a cool thing that would extend human range. In terms of the first point, I believe that the dev team does not want to increase human ability to maneuver in combat. Excluding that, there are several ways to increase humans' passive mobility. Teleporters have been used before and can greatly increase a team's ability to react. A speed boost ability could also be included (an item that would give the humans 2 speed, but could not be used while in-combat). Overall, however, the main relationships should be rethought to mitigate the causes of camping, or make camping fun for both teams and embrace the result.

[vcxzet]

I don't think camping is an issue. It is an essential part of the gameplay.
Camping during the whole game is bad though. But then you are guaranteed not to win.

[ViruS]

Try an idea I already have on my gpp-1.1 mod: Regeneration.

No, not like KoRx -crazy, but something just enough so having a tiny scratch doesn't make you want to go back to base.

On my mod, I have a really weird ass algorithm to the human regeneration that looks something like this:

Code: Select all

#define HUMAN_REGEN_MOD 1.8f
...
...
...*stuff about alien regen modifiers*
//dynamic regeneration for humans
    else {
	int healthneeded;
	healthneeded = client->ps.stats[ STAT_MAX_HEALTH ] - (client->ps.stats[ STAT_HEALTH ] - 5); //so it doesn't recover horribly slow near 100 hp
    client->autoregen += (1000 / ( BG_FindRegenRateForClass( client->ps.stats[ STAT_PCLASS ] ) * HUMAN_REGEN_MOD * healthneeded * 0.01 ) );
         }
//--------------Add Health to the client---------------------
//Regenerate!
        if( ent->health > 0 && ent->health < client->ps.stats[ STAT_MAX_HEALTH ] &&
            ( ent->lastDamageTime + ALIEN_REGEN_DAMAGE_TIME ) < level.time )
		{
		         int numer = 2;
		         int denom = 1;
		         float modifier;
        	   ent->health ++;
		//TODO: Find out why 'for' function doesn't work (no effect elided)
		//so I made a simple unreliable psuedo-loop here, checked only 4 times
		//TODO: Find out how to make proper loops
		if(client->autoregen < 50)//TODO: Is it possible to insert the sv_fps.integer here?
		   {
		   ent->health ++;
		   modifier = numer/denom;
		   client->autoregen *= modifier;
		   numer ++;
		   denom ++;
     		   }
		if(client->autoregen < 50)
		   {
		   ent->health ++;
		   modifier = numer/denom;
		   client->autoregen *= modifier;
		   numer ++;
		   denom ++;
     		   }
		if(client->autoregen < 50)
		   {
		   ent->health ++;
		   modifier = numer/denom;
		   client->autoregen *= modifier;
		   numer ++;
		   denom ++;
     		   }
		if(client->autoregen < 50)//quadruple check
		   {
		   ent->health ++;
		   modifier = numer/denom;
		   client->autoregen *= modifier;
     		   }
		}

Don't worry about that regen stuff, I added it just to fix the context of the "autoregen" variable. The autoregen variable is just the period between regeneration frames and that random pseudo loop crap is just a compensation to only have 20 frames a second on the server.

Anyway I'm not saying to use this due to it's inreliability and messy-ness, but the basic idea is that I have a system that heals the human 2 hp/s at 0 health and 0.05 hp/s at 100 hp.

On GPP, one of the changes I hated was the out-of-creep consequence where you heal at half speed, and I turned it into x0.75 on my mod and I was satisfied with that. However camping aliens isn't the issue anyway so that doesn't really need to be tweaked. I just hated the fact that the booster became the new "medistat" for aliens, after they stopped using the overmind's aura in the early GPP days.

[Viech]

The resource system is in no way supposed to counter camping. At its core, it serves as a limit of how many structures teams can build (I'm not going to explain why a limit is desireable). There are two main differences to a simple fixed limit as Tremulous had it: First of all our limit scales with the "sane needs" of a team: A team that builds in multiple places or maintains an expanded base needs more build points for a fixed desired structure density (desired minimum by team, desired maximum by developers). The second difference is that the team has the option to optimize their limit and I consider that to be a source of fun. However, please be fully aware that the new system is designed so that a base layout typical for Tremulous GPP would still work out and there is no deliberate punishment for camping or compact bases involved. The one thing you can do against campers is building a mining site closeby to reduce the enemy efficiency, but that's pretty much it.

I'm a bit tired of how gameplay systems that have been introduced since Tremulous are judged based on a misunderstanding of their purpose. So while I appreciate your feedback and proposals, I'd don't really feel like discusing your analysis as it seems to be based on the idea that the building resource system was a failed attempt to counter camping.

Regarding your proposals, we are indeed aiming to have stronger bases that don't need babysitting, we just didn't figure out how exactly to accomplish this. I also want to increase human mobility for the reasons you outlined, but I'm also very open to decreasing the alien's mobility, if the former isn't sufficient for balancing (e.g. my current concept for alien classes and evolving includes that aliens can evolve only on creep, in order to prevent small aliens from slipping through and turning into a base destruction class after they got behind enemy lines).

[ViruS]

To be honest, with the new resource system in normal games, I find myself either spending a crapload of time building (the generators allow this, if you wait 5 seconds for enough bp for a new buildable why fight?) or a just fighting constantly to keep the other team under pressure.

However I find that in two-vee-two situations of 'experienced' players (those who have known gpp at least and plays successfully), is that either one builds and the other defends, or both builds until out of bp then both rush the enemy, and if that doesn't work, build more again with the new bp.. Sometimes these games last until the first rush on either side or until about ₄₀ minutes has passed which kind of leads to the timelimit.

If I were to draw a graph from my experience (exaggerated), it'll look something like this:

Wins Frequency
^
|......O
|....O...O
|.O........O......................................O
|O........................................O
|____________________________>Time

And past that data it's just draws because the map gets cluttered too much from running out of credits as aliens, but humans don't really have this problem unless there is a camping dragoon or something in the alien base. I find it significantly easier to attack as humans when low on funds as comparison to aliens, but then the situation kind of reverses when I have high funds (i.e. Aliens find it easy, zap whore on turrets, zap around corners where teslas can't detect you, get dragoons to snipe turrets that are practically out of reach for you)

[Elmo]

I think it would be nice to see the humans be a little more athletic and agile, like a major increase in stamina and sprint speed, followed by a decrease in stamina regeneration, smaller jumping penalty, maybe increase the length that a human can jump? I'd hope space faring humans would have the best steroids.