Spawncamping

[TyrNemesis^]

We could always admin_bury the mapper whenever he shows his faec in the server?

I think the best mapper comment EVAR was when tommyd was a fade, came to attack me and another marine in reactor room and was getting shot up, so he goes to run. He tried to go up the little ladder toward west access, got stuck on it, and proceeded to die from my pistol. Then:

TyrNemesis^: BET YOU WISH YOU MADE THAT LADDER BIGGER EH

[a civilian]

Cofr, civilian?

Yes.

Alternatively, preparing for your final rush on the enemy's last base and then watching them all go back to the ready room is also not fun. Don't think competatively here, because this isn't a competition. We're just here to have a good time.

Yes, sometimes it's not much fun to fight when the ending seems inevitable, but don't deny the other team the momentary enjoyment of victory just because you're unhappy with it. The map will change and you get to start all over again. I think of it as a sort of a gentleman's agreement.

By F4'ing you are denying the victors their fun?  What fun is there in fighting and defeating an opponent that has become powerless to fight back?

And again, these things aren't going to be taken on a case by case basis. We have a finite number of admins and, believe it or not, some of us actually just like to play the game and not be interrupted to argue with people over whether or not they are spawncamping or whether their F4 was justifiable or not. If I have to take time out of the game to concentrate my attention on something, I much prefer it to be something important like suspected hacking. There's no reason to overcomplicate things by turning something that could be black and white into varying shades of gray.

A simple black-and-white rule for F4'ing would be to allow it only if a sufficient number of players do it at once to elicit an autoconcede.  If a sufficiently large portion of a team feels that an F4 is warranted, then it probably is.

[Niteowl]

if you disagree with the f4 rule, you can always take yer hand off the mouse/trackball/pointing device, and go get a drink, or something.

[BobTheJanitor]

Instead, why not try counter attacking? F4ing is almost never a problem for aliens, as by the time they get to the last hive, they're usually down to a bunch of crappy skulks vs. HA or JPs with l3 w/a. GG in a few seconds.

The problem is marines, and turtling. Instead of turtling in base and shooting everything that walks in, gather your troops and pick a hive. Go for it. Ignore everything you see along the way (except things actively attempting to eat you, obviously) If you make it to the hive, shoot! You might just get lucky and actually take down a hive. The chances of turning this into a win are about nil, but it is still a lot more fun than camping your base for a half hour while waiting for the inevitable. Ignore the fact that the aliens are eating your base while you're gone. It was bound to happen anyway. There, greater fun for everyone. The next round comes much faster. And you can feel like you made an EFFORT instead of just camping base.

[a civilian]

F4ing is almost never a problem for aliens, as by the time they get to the last hive, they're usually down to a bunch of crappy skulks vs. HA or JPs with l3 w/a. GG in a few seconds.

Low-level aliens can actually hold out fairly well if the marines are not making a concerted effort to end the game, and at this point the marines have little incentive to make a concerted effort.

The problem is marines, and turtling. Instead of turtling in base and shooting everything that walks in, gather your troops and pick a hive. Go for it. Ignore everything you see along the way (except things actively attempting to eat you, obviously) If you make it to the hive, shoot! You might just get lucky and actually take down a hive. The chances of turning this into a win are about nil, but it is still a lot more fun than camping your base for a half hour while waiting for the inevitable. Ignore the fact that the aliens are eating your base while you're gone. It was bound to happen anyway. There, greater fun for everyone. The next round comes much faster. And you can feel like you made an EFFORT instead of just camping base.

Yes, that is generally what I try to do when I command (which is almost never).

[SaltzBad]

*remembers ns_lost* :p

I agree in concept a compromise like "If 75% of the team agress to f4, its legal" would work, its just not very practical. In explanations, selective memory will quickly make it "You can F4, okay" or other chaotic situations. And the benefit isn't that great - it makes more sense to give an added incentive to finishing a game quickly as the winner, than to pulling out as the likelier loser.

Of course, what does make things a bit worse is the no-spawncamping pseudo-rule. If there an admin on the alien team, he'll obviously be grumpy when you finish 10 minutes earlier with a rush, mines and a few guys covering the shotgunners killing the hive. So HA, siege and snailpaced wins are what the rules basicly tell you to do right now - only Aliens may rush a base :/

Same as when in a 3on3 2 shotgunners walked into maintenance hive, killed their RT and walked out - killing 5-6 spawning Skulks while at it. Just because a certain admin felt that was spawncamping, he slayed them - we could have ended the game right their otherwise.

[lolfighter]

One way to make a marine loss funnier is to start farming IPs instead of turrets. When the game's more or less over and only the marine base remains, most comms start building as many turrets as possible in a last-ditch effort to hold out as long as they can. Not only is that strategy flawed, it's also boring. Building lots of IPs instead makes the game more fun for both sides. The aliens have lots of marines to fight (much more fun than just slowly tearing down turrets), and the marines don't spend most of their time in the spawnqueue.

The most notable example was a game of origin. We marines were losing badly, so LB got in the chair and relocated to Computer Lab of all places (or whatever it's called - that node halfway between biodome hive and marine start). We held out for half an hour against a fully teched alien team, frags climbing into the hundreds and everyone having a blast. An eight-man marine team had twelve IPs at one point. It was like the essence of every "valiant humans defend themselves against endless hordes of nasty aliens"-scene you've seen in any movie.

[Squats]

I probably shouldn't antagonize the admin position on this issue because I'm a nobody around here, but I have to basically agree with those against the blanket no-spawncamping rule. I personally think a no llama rule is plenty. Spawncamping of the worst sort described in this topic is clearly llama behavior, like tking and parasiting your teammates. If a player is a llama, he's probably showing it in more ways than just killing some people in the spawn. If this llama is being so annoying as to deserve kick/ban, do it. But to blanket remove such a basic part of NS gameplay because it isn't "fun" to be on the recieving end seems excessive.

I used to admin on a CS server with a sizable community like this one. We were a ff server, and so had many of the same llama problems you're trying to deal with here. For us, the answer was easy. We banned llamas. Lots of them. Our ban list had over 13000 wonids. But the game play was always good, and after we banned them all, llamas were rare.

Now, I admit a couple of important points here:
1) we were a "pub", but we catered to cal-clanners. if you weren't cal-o quality or better, you would have had no fun at our server. And we liked it that way.
2) CS is a very simplistic game compared to NS. this makes llamas easier to spot and ban, and evades some of the complicated issues brought up in this topic.

Well, enough antagonizing admins, I'm outa here to go play before you decide to apply the above llama ban concepts to me...

Squats