Adjusting ticket values

[Super-Medic-Ace]

I have played on and off of your amazing servers and enjoy the carnage of destroying bots (and sometimes getting destroyed myself!). In some maps though, the games seem to end rather quickly (less than 20 minutes). I notice that most of the maps have ticket percentages of 500-550. I was wondering if you have ever considered raising those percentages a little higher to say 600-700? I realize that would mean more time on the map, especially if only a few people are playing. I just thought it would extend the enjoyment on many maps so everyone gets to slaughter bots for just a little bit longer. :)
Some day, I hope to play on Terminus; for if I have been informed correctly, the ticket values were extremely high. I'm sure there are perfectly sound reasons for having the values set where they are and welcome any input on this thread.
Looking forward in hearing your comments fellow gamers :)

[tinybobdfa]

I'm with you on this one when the game servers get real busy the game is almost over before you get warmed up, but then you have the other problem of when there a just a few playing or even just one the game can drag a little.

[[Team] Jenifearia]

some maps go faster than others. and some like maps with more tickets than others. However my thoughts on this are as follows: there are quite a few who would struggle with a positive attitude to add tickets to maps like Heaven and Hell revisited. I for one love the map but I know that others really struggle with it. the same is true for me on maps like easter island, clean sweep, & midnight sun for example. I don't overly care for those maps but I know other people seem to enjoy them so I try to find something unique to do on those maps to keep me busy and be supportive. while in some maps it appears it would be nice I think we would all have a different view on what maps need more tickets added. plus I believe someone told me it is a pain in the neck to do. Just my two cents worth;)

[Super-Medic-Ace]

I appreciate both comments greatly and the ones likely to follow. Jenifearia, I like how you pointed out that some enjoy certain maps more than others. I can see Clean Sweep as very enjoyable if you love flying and happen to be lucky enough to be in one of the few aircraft. On the other hand, if you were on the ground... that could make for a grueling 45 minutes of waiting while the planes/choppers nuke the rest of the map. I didn't know it was a challenge either to adjust ticket values. In a perfect world I guess it would be nice to have a voting feature in the map to raise/lower tickets to XXX%. Seeing as that won't happen though, I'll happily frag with 500% ticket values. Any other comments are welcomed and encouraged on the matter, especially those who may have administrative experience hosting/controlling BF2 servers.

[[Team] Kilemal]

Unfortunately there's a lot more to the tickets than just setting how many starts the round. You set in the game the number of tickets you want to start with - most of our games are at 500 or so. I believe that a good round should last 30-45 minutes, but each map has its own settings for both ticket ratio and ticket bleed values. The round of Terminus that Jen referred to was played before I had adjusted the ticket ratio built into the map. So - the game was set for 500 tickets, but the mapmaker had the ratio in the map settings set to 300, so in fact the game started with 1800 tickets. I always adjust the ticket ratio to be the same, but had missed that one because it needed to be replaced on the server awhile back.

The reason Clean Sweep is such a slow round is different though. That round starts with the same number of tickets as all the others but I think the ticket bleed is much slower. The mapmaker can also set the rate at which the tickets go down and the requirements for them to go down. Some maps you can win without even taking a control point other than the one you start with, others you can't win without holding at least half the c/p's on the map. I wish that setting was uniform also and perhaps it can be, but I've never tried modifying that one.

[Raptor25k]

If you'll go into the map folder and open the server.zip of any map and find Init.con and open it with a text editor like notepad you can play around with the tickets. I'll use clean sweep for an example, heres whats you'd be looking for.




Team 1 is MEC Team 2 is US

Map Size->16 Team-> 1 Num tickets for this map size->100

gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 16 1 100
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 16 2 110
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 32 1 200
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 32 2 220
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 64 1 300
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 64 2 330
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 128 1 150
gameLogic.setDefaultNumberOfTicketsEx 128 2 250
gameLogic.setDefaultTimeToNextAIWave 0
gameLogic.setTicketLossAtEndPerMin 200
gameLogic.setTicketLossPerMin 1 12
gameLogic.setTicketLossPerMin 2 6


I'm not positive but i think you can do this server side only and it would work for everyone.

[1-8th_Fury]

Perhaps the extreme short game phenomenon is primarily found on the AIX server and only since its recent stability attracts larger numbers of skilled vets. Last night had a Hammer Down map that lasted maybe 5 minutes, among others that were shorter than usual duration. We might wait and see if this is a passing fad, these players with mad skillz.