The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Let's give this another go. Let's see if we can't get the best starships captains in the land to do battle once more. Who is game to to try their luck?

Date: 31 March 2006
Time: Saturday 4pm EST
Place: #uqm-arena at irc://chat.freenode.net

Be here for this historic second ever online Star Control Super-melee knockout tournament!

Time where you live
Sun 6 am Sydney
Sun 8 am Auckland
Sat 1 pm Los Angeles
Sat 4 pm New York
Sat 9 pm London
Sat 10 pm Paris
Sat 11 pm Helsinki

I think I have got the time zones right - its a bit difficult because of various daylight saving changes. The most important thing is that its definitly 4pm EST (USA). Please let me know if I have any of the above wrong

Tournament structure

• Basic Knockout tournament
• Seedings based on order of entry. So the earlier you enter the higher the likelyhood of a getting a  bye in the first round.

Schedule (all EST)
16.00 Check-in/Register
16.20 Cut-off for entry
16.30 Round of 16 begins
17.15 Quarterfinals
18.00 Semifinals
18.45 Final - Utwig Urn

Game rules

• Maximum 200 pts per fleet
• Maximum one of each ship type per fleet (no duplicates)
• Maximum 40 minutes per melee - Timed out games result in both players losing and exiting the tournament (an effort to nulify boring stalemates)

• You must have your team set up before melee - this prevents you adjusting your line-up to counter your opponents team!

Everyone and anyone is welcome - novices to super star starship admirals. Men and Women. Black Folks and white folks. As an equal opportunity league we especially encourage small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri to enter

Let's do it peoples!

If you really mean Eastern Standard Time, not Eastern Daylight Time, you're one hour off. However, as far as I can tell, most of the US will be on EDT, not EST, due to recent changes to daylight saving time.

Could we agree on a time in UTC, instead? At least everyone knows what that means without having to sort out daylight saving for at least two different countries.

Oh you're right. EDS.

Well i dont know if anyone outside of europ knows what utc is.
Actually, i should probably use GMT.

I do make the effort to put times in various important time zones - hopefully i get these right!

Can you explain what UTC is?

Short answer: what everyone is really talking about when they say "GMT".

Long answer: GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) is mean solar time with noon in Greenwich, London, i.e. a timescale with a constant day length such that the average time at which the sun reaches its highest point on the sky in Greenwich is noon. Apart from being a pain to keep track of accurately (and being dependent on the position of Greenwich), the length of a day has a nasty habit of varying for various astronomical reasons slightly. As a solution to this, UTC (coordinated universal time) is based on an atomic clock (and the modern, non-astronomical, definition of a second) that is corrected to conform to the Earth's movements by adding leap seconds as necessary at specific points in the year. UTC has essentially replaced GMT.

I have a little suggestion.
Since you used New York 4 PM in the Pkunk Plate tournament too - and this isn't fair for people on GMT +2, for example, who have to participate at 11 pm.
I suggest aiming this one a bit to the east - I mean New York 2 PM, for example. Or so. Even 12 AM (midday).
After all, it's Saturday.

Which is why people want to sleep in. ;)

People as lazy as to sleep till midday are too lazy to get in the tournament, anyway.

I appreciate you comments Valagger, they are valid. My logic of the tournament time is very considered and i shall explain it.

I wanted to put the tournament on at a time where it would get the most people, so it would need to convenient to those that live in the north american and european time zones. MOST importantly, the tournament needs to run when I'M available - as without me there's no tournament. I live in New Zealand.

The only time of the week when the time zones align at reasonably socially acceptable hours are 4pm Sat New York time. this makes it early afternoon in LA, and late in the evening in europe. It also makes it 8.00 am in New Zealand. If i shifted the tournament back an hour or two, I would be rising at 6.00am Sunday morning to play a COMPUTER GAME. that's is not gonna happen.

I figure that most people dont mind staying up past midnight on a saturday night - i am banking on that really

These are the tournaments that I run so I would like to be there. I encourage others to run tournaments at time zones even more conveient to where they live - I have always said that weekday evenings would work well. Unfortunately when its 9pm in europe, i'm getting ready for work. and when its 9 pm in new york I'm about having lunch at work. So someone else will have to do it!

It is unfortunate that the one person who is willing to run tournaments is also 1 of the 2% of SC folk who live outside of NorthAm and europe. Bring on the forum and automatically run tournaments!

So.....it's still a week from tommorow, 4pm EST? (EDT whatever, I live in Toronto, Canada so 4pm my time lol)

I'll play anytime!!!  And I don't even want a bye!!!  The more battle, the better!!!   ;D

Just to get things straight, I plan on logging in at about 2 pm on Saturday, which is Mountain time (2 hours behind New York).  Haven't followed all the time zone chat.  Hopefully that is right.  Let me know if I'm wrong.

By the way, you still referenced the Pkunk Plate in the tournament timeline for the final.

I'm in. After last nights dueling, I'm totally stoked about playing against REAL people.

Yep, i believe Toronto is the same time zone as new york - if anyone is ever in doubt www.worldtimezone.com (http://www.worldtimezone.com) is always a good place to look

So 4 P.M. EST, that makes it 21:00 UTC/GMT?
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=31&hour=21&min=0&sec=0
Europe changed to summer time today so your table is one hour off on some countries now.

Let's sort the times out once and for all (http://koti.mbnet.fi/lonnberg/urntimes.txt). This is the output of:
run on argument "2007-03-31 16:00 EDT".

Ok, well the original post said 4 P.M. EST. So is it 4 P.M. EST or EDT?

EDT, based on the third post and the fact that most of the USA on EST (e.g. New York) has already switched to EDT for this summer. Also, that way the times in the original post are actually correct.

Yeah I factored the european daylight savnig change into it

Well, slipped off the front page of threads so better boost it to the top as a reminder for you all to enter. When I say all of you, I only mean most of you.

Saturday 4pm New York time (8am my time *yawn*).

Remember the Utiwg Urn is open to ace pilots and novice navigators alike. The most important thing is to hang out and have a bit of melee madness. Put some of those "this ship is better than that ship" theories to use!

See ya there :D

 

How about mandatory random ship selection?

I'll welcome any improvement suggestiosn from those who come along and play.

That's @1175371200, for all you Unix machines out there [beep].

Well that was an awesome KO tournament. Congratulations to Tiberian for pipping Cedric6014 at the post and taking out the Utwig Urn. I thank him for sparing me the embrassment of winning my own league.

Here's how it looked in the finish:

               Quarter              Semi             UTWIG URN    Champ

               1 Tiberian 142         
            
                                        1 Tiberian 35      
9 Tomsik 0            
              8 Meep-Eep 0         
8 Meep-Eep 30            
                                                             1 Tiberian 18   
            
              5 Novus 75         
            
                                         4 Novus 0      
            
              4 Galactus 0         
            
                                                                                  1 Tiberian
            
             3 Megagun DEF L         
            
                                          3 Cedric6014 53      
            
             6 Cedric6014 DEF W         
            
                                                               2 Cedric6014 0   
            
             7 Catelite 0         
      
                                          2 Elvish_Pillager 0
      
             2 Elvish_Pillager 164   

Looks a lot prettier in MS Excel, but that's the best I can do.  If anyone has any neat ides on how to make it look neat let me know.

Thanks to all 9 participants for being good sports and putting up with dodgy lag on occasions. It was fun! More awesomely fun tournaments to come.

Not sure if this will come out any better, but this is one idea.....

Save the results if you could.  I could put a link on my website for all the tourney results going back to the begining.  That is, unless they would agree to post a link of of the Ur-Quan Masters main site.

                                                          Quarter                Semi               UU Champ
                              1 Tiberian  142
                                       |
                                       |--------------1 Tiberian  35
 9 Tomsik  0                     |                       |
           |--------------8 Meep-Eep  0                |
8 Meep-Eep  30                                        |------------------1 Tiberian  18
                                                               |                                 |
                              5 Novus  75                |                                 |
                                       |                       |                                 |
                                       |--------------5 Novus  0                            |
                                       |                                                          |
                              4 Galactus  0                                                |
                                                                                                  |------------1 Tiberian
                                                                                                  |
                              3 Megagun  DEF L                                        |
                                       |                                                          |
                                       |--------------6 Cedric6014  53                   |
                                       |                            |                            |
                              6 Cedric6014 DEF W        |                            |
                                                                     |------------6 Cedric6014  0
                              7 Catelite  0                     |
                                       |                             |
                                       |--------------2 Elvish_Pillager  0
                                       |
                              2 Elvish_Pillager  164

Yeah that look a bit better, feel to somehow paste it into a webpage. That would be neat. I have results from every official game and it would be good to post them somewhere