Minor Rules Change (Game Settings)

[Jediluke]

I'm with Melvin on this one. Bright ships had better be on. I don't recall the last time I EVER played with it off.

[Mark392]

Tbh I was SURE that was already in the hosting rules. It's like leaving a spawn invuln or spawn previews on with out telling anyone...

[LotharBot]

[bahamut]

Well how many PPS is default then?

[LotharBot]

I don't believe we have such a setting, but maybe we should.

In the modern era, people are used to playing at either 20 or 30 pps. Higher is better, as long as it doesn't begin to overwhelm your connection (unlikely except in large games on a bad connect) or computer (slightly more likely; some compies or network cards just don't do well at high packet rates.) I have found that playing at lower packet rates tends to introduce Kali-esque lag elements into the game -- at 10pps or below, ships seem a little jittery and leading becomes much harder due to inherent limits on information rates.

[Jediluke]

I vote 20.

[bahamut]

So then you'll continue adding rules to force players to use options people find comfortable? or "fair"?

[LotharBot]

Nobody is forced to use these options. Players can always agree on alternate settings. You can always say "let's play on 15 pps because I like it more" or "let's play on 20 pps because my computer gets funky at 30 pps" or whatever.

The point is that, in the absence of specific agreement, it's important to have default settings. This way you don't get a scenario where someone plays a game and then afterwards looks at the tracker and realizes some option was different from what they expected and then claims the game wasn't legitimate because of it. And something like packet rate is certainly a valid area where a player could say "this game had more connection oddities than I expected, and I think it's because it was set to 10 pps" and I don't think I would be willing to insist that they report such a match. Especially if they had complained about the connection during the match.

So yes, this being a competitive game with competitive people, I would continue to add default settings when they have been left out by oversight, in order to ensure that both players know what to expect and don't get blindsided by unusual settings that they weren't prepared to deal with. If a player gets blindsided by something they're not prepared to deal with, it should be the opponent's skills and tactics, not an unexpected game setting.

[bahamut]

I just don't get how playing with or without it could CHANGE skill rating, and in fact I just don't believe it could happen.

[Jediluke]

Well said Lotharbot.

Competitive game, needs default settings that are as fair and mainstream as possible.