Announcement: First monthly Edgemenace glitch-free SvS tournament

[Edward Edgemenace]

ANNOUNCING: The first monthly

Edgemenace GLITCH-FREE SvS TOURNAMENT!

Date: January 10th, 2009, 7PM PST, 8PM MST, 9PM CST, 10PM EST
New Date: January 10th, 2009, 5PM PST, 6PM MST, 7PM CST, 8PM EST
Duration: 2 hours (plan for 3.25 hours.)
Location: Battira, meeting on Ile d'Etable de Porc at shipwright.
Prize: 10,000 Gold doubloons, transferred at a poker table in Ratskellar to each person on the boat that has the highest score (score, not bounty, combined from both hours of play.)


Rules:

1) Approximately evenly matched sides.
2) No additional participants joining after first 15 minutes. (Please reply here if you plan to attend.)
EDIT: See "contingencies" for how to deal with unwanted launches, after the tournament start.
3) Sailing: no OPEN FIRE, no TAKE COVER. (Broadsides, full sail, come about, ramming speed and leadership only.)
4) Cannon: No grape shot, thunderbolt, explosive or fury. Round shot, chain shot and firebrand only.
5) Base islands are to be considered sanctuary. (No camping on or near enemy base islands.)
6) 10 minutes with no enemy contact: return to home port. When "Drop anchor" is seen, you may proceed back to mid-field to battle.
EDIT: By this, I mean, no hiding. No sailing to world's end and sitting there, during the tournament.
7) Ship repairs to be performed only when AT base island.
EDIT: OK, this rule bites. If all agree, rule #7 will be discarded.
8) The captain of each ship is to be ONLY the person who launched the ship. That captain must have everyone aboard in his or her crew. Boarding permissions may NOT allow friends to board the ship (as they have not read nor understood these rules.)
9) Absolutely no grenades, staff, pistol, etc.
10) No infinite-ammo (aka skeleton glitch.)
11) No "god-mode" glitch.
12) No "blinking" aka pausing game during a full sail or ramming speed.
13) Ship types: any ship type or class welcome. (This may change next month.)
14) No sailing inside islands or rocks.
15) No ventrilo (i.e. no secondary lag allowed as even a possibility.)
16) No glitching whatsoever.


Overview:

The idea here, is to simply have an SvS tournament that every participant can enjoy.

Everyone knows how pervasive glitching is, in SvS. Nobody likes it. Increasingly, glitches are being found to be genuine defects the game simply can't handle. Lag from thunderbolt, explosive and fury (that act as if they stun opponents because of severe server-side lag) serve only to destroy the game. With firebrand causing client-side lag, it too, may be eliminated in future month's tournaments.

High-level pirates may at first be put-off by not having their killer ammo at their disposal. If my theory is correct, they will all find that their "lesser ammos" still do tremendous damage, yet not enough to completely discourage and alienate lower level players. They will find that with many more people enjoying the battle, the strategies and tactics will become more interesting and delightful, as a result.

Participants should have 1GB (EDIT: was 2GB) or more main computer memory. Participants with slow connections should not attend. Pirates that have "Aggressive Memory Conservation" checked in their game options, must not participate.

Please come 5-15 minutes early to the event to facility choosing sides. For the best game-play, 4-8 people should be on each ship. If you have fewer than that, you may be asked to join another crew, or have additional crew assigned to you.

Crew heads (captains) must verify that they can repair before crew members board (if no green circles, they must land and relaunch immediately.) All ships will be launched from Ile d'Etable de Porc, one at a time. (First launched will be French, second will be asked to join the opposition - Spanish, third will be French, fourth will be asked to join the opposition, etc.) Boarding permissions must be set to CREW only; no friends, guild or public.

I will have a "communicator" pirate created for the occasion with an empty friends list. Each crew captain will need one friend slot open, for the event.

After the first hour, we will all take a screen shot of the score, then switch sides (French will be Spanish, Spanish will be French) for the second hour. At the end of the tournament, all will return to their base island but not land, until everyone has pressed F9 to capture the final score.

Adding the first and second hour's scores, a winning ship will be obvious. (If a near-impossible numeric tie occurs, the crew members of both ships will be awarded 10,000 gold each.)

The gold will be disbursed over the next hour, so plan for three hours for the total event. Even the lowliest pirate can end up on the winning ship. (While next-day arrangements might be made, they generally are not practical.)


Contingencies

In the event the game is disrupted by interlopers, both sides will return to their home port, then the interlopers will be attacked en-masse using all available means to repeatedly sink them until they leave. If disrupted for more than 10 minutes, we'll all land then meet at the French shipwright to announce a new (random quiet) server.

Accidentally shooting a shot of grape or fury ammo (etc.) will not be tolerated. It may be best to expend all ammo before the event so that you do not inadvertently use it. (The obvious exception, being the eradication of interlopers...no penalty incurred for using fury then. But it may be wiser to leave that to someone else.)

Captains will all be crew-heads with crew matching on, to allow people to rejoin the proper crew after an all-too-frequent game crash. By communicating with the befriended "Edward Edgemenace," the opposition ship will be asked to stand-down whenever a crew member's game crashes.

Registration

You need to reply here to participate. No other guarantee that you've read the rules will be sufficient.

Please have fun. This will be your best sea battle ever, I promise.

.

[Edward Edgemenace]

Yes, guilds are welcome to participate, but I will not guarantee that some members will have to cross over to the other side, to maintain balance. I request that guilds participating use privateer chat instead of guild chat (especially when split onto opposite sides.)

For the duration of the event, I request that all participants keep the plus sign turned on for the duration of the event (to maximize the audience.)

[Sven Osymthe]

I'll try my best to make it, Ed. Not sure yet.

[Edward Edgemenace]

Someone pointed out a typo - I meant 1 GB, not 2 GB. (Don't want to exclude myself from this!)

[Edward Edgemenace]

I had rule #7 in place, as I understood that some people disliked the notion of repairs. On reflection, I can't agree with that. I can agree with the comments I've received via PM (please no PMs - say it here!) that think rule #7 is excessive.

Edited the original post - more comments welcome! And thank you, all. So far, so good...about a half dozen pirates so far are trying to adjust schedules, but this seems like the best middle-ground time, all considered.

For those that can afford only two hours but still win the prize, I won't be heartless in trying to work something out at a later date. But I won't be able to guarantee anything, in that regard.

[Maximvs]

Ok, so heres a few more for ya (as per your request)

- The Starting Times of 7pm PST - making it 10pm EST (and 11pm my time) - for a three hour event (1 hour each side and 1 hour for winner gold transfer) makes it very late for East Coast Players (1am for EST - 2am for me to finish up cause I'm gonna win hehe )

Should the starting time be moved to 6pm PST or possibly 5pm PST? (making it 9pm EST or 8pm).

- Choosing a "B" Server is kind of like shooting yourself in the foot isn't it? If all the players signing up are legit players via here or word-of-mouth, then a quiet server down the list which would avoid SvS Gliterchers looking to play on "A" and "B" servers could be more avoidable to Glitchers showing up (no SvS'er looks at an "L or M" server for action - usually the "A, B, and the latter servers from S onward")

And yes - I'm still going to try to make it, cause I got a baby pirate that can always use a few bucks

[Edward Edgemenace]

I tentatively picked Battira because I never see anyone in SvS there. As the initial furor died down, all SvS (except for occasional guild tournaments) has moved to the crazy A servers. Patros ocean, would be my second choice.

I'm very leery of moving it earlier, as that would conflict for most Pacific-coasters. But if a few more people chime in with the same complaint...

[combatlizzy]

Been thinking about attending with my second lower level pirate. Not positive, though. And I have to agree with Max about the time zone differences. I quit playing the Founders contest because it got too late and I was too tired to continue being EST. But, since I am not positive about attending.........

[Edward Edgemenace]

Thanks to the amazingly generous pirates of the Founder's Guild, the prize will be increased, for an additional 10,000 gold, to be split evenly. It wasn't clear if they meant that as the second place prize, or just a larger first-place winner-takes-all pot...more details to follow as I learn more.

Come get some gold, folks!

[Edward Edgemenace]

The PRIMARY purpose here, is to have fun with this.

My dream with this, is that enough people will play in this tournament and see how offsided "crazy A server" SvS is. With luck, every participant will have so much fun, seeing how SvS was intended to be, that on some servers, the glitch-free atmosphere would become the norm.

But that's my dream. And this is my tournament. Sorry for the confusion introduced there.

The pot remains at 240,000 (or less) gold doubloons...enough for the prize of 10,000 gold doubloons for two war frigates with full crews. All from my personal coffers (several pirates at max, able to sell war frigates as needed.)

[Ghostcannon]

Sounds interesting. Unfortunately, I am from the East Coast and by 10PM EST scheduled to work that night. Will this be on Jan 11th as well, but on an earlier time-schedule?

[Edward Edgemenace]

OK, it seems unavoidable now, too many ESTers would miss out.

Moving schedule up two hours.

Old time: Date: January 10th, 2009, 7PM PST, 8PM MST, 9PM CST, 10PM EST
New time: Date: January 10th, 2009, 5PM PST, 6PM MST, 7PM CST, 8PM EST

Duration: 2 hours (plan for 3.25 hours.)

The plan is for Saturday evening, not Sunday. As a monthly event, not daily. For next month's, I'll aim for a Sunday evening to try that out (but as I recall, that worked poorly for the races we had last fall.)

[Tuefenhandel]

Max? Sven? What time are ya'll "shooting" for? I might be up for it (if only I can manage to remember)........

.....senility reeks.

[Edward Edgemenace]

Reminder: new times on January 10th, 2009, 5PM PST, 6PM MST, 7PM CST, 8PM EST.

[combatlizzy]

Lizzy plans to be in attendance since you adjusted the hours Edward. And, maybe some other BBK. We will see in the very near future. Has to be near future rite...lol SVS is Saturday! I think it is a great idea and a good experience for all pirates. btw Maggie (me second pirate) will probably be there...not Lizzy.