The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Hello all you clowns and clowngirls! It's that tournament time again. Well, not exactly. I'm looking for a smaller number of players for this. We're going to be playing an Auction House tournament and I only need exactly four players. I'm gonna pull ships out of a hat and the participants will spend a limited number of points to bid on each of them until everyone runs out of points. This is Cedric's idea, not mine, but he can't be bothered to show up on these forums more than once every three months so I intend to run it instead. I am blacklisting all top players for the duration of this tournament. No one likes them anyway. Fly away, jerks.

Everyone else post in here if you want in on this. People on this forum are a flakey bunch (seriously) so you may still get in if four people have already expressed their desire to play.


-----[Date]

Saturday, August 23rd.


-----[Time]

    *  5 AM Sydney
    *  7 AM Otaki
    * 12 PM Los Angeles
    *  1 PM Denver
    *  2 PM Chicago
    *  3 PM New York
    *  8 PM London
    *  9 PM Paris
    *  10 PM Helsinki


-----[Place]

#UQM-Arena on irc://chat.freenode.net.


-----[Auction Rules]

All participants begin with 200 points.

Participants will bid on randomly chosen ships in order. Bidding order will be random at the start, but I will give first bid to the player with the highest remaining points and work backwards from there.

Participants will bid in even numbers only.

Participants are limited to one of each ship type. Players already in possession of the same ship that is up on the auction block are excluded from bidding on it.

If three players possess a particular ship then that ship will not appear on the auction block again. This is to prevent the fourth player from getting something for free.


-----[Tournament Rules]

Everyone plays everyone else once. The person that comes out of this with the highest score wins. I need to know exactly which ships were left standing at the end of each match so don't close the game immediately after a match ends. I will remind you of this repeatedly.

Connect to competitors with the exact fleet you paid for. Doing otherwise will not get you disqualified, but everyone in the chat room is going to yell at you until you correct yourself.

This sounds like a thing that shouldn't take too long, so I think I'll be there.

My faith in this computer's connection having been restored, I'll gladly take part.

If I don't work, I'll play. What do you mean the top players are being blacklisted??

The best players won't be playing in this tournament. I will act as auctioneer and referee, but will not be involved as competition.

as part of the gimmick, how about using Elvish Pillager's crazy mod?

It's imbalanced and crashes quite often (atleast for me)...

'Imbalanced'? Huh?

I'll play if there's a spot available. Also intrigued because I saw no mention of a Thraddash ban.

Well, I wouldn't even need to use a ban if there aren't any Thraddash cards in the hat. Upon seeing this, I debated putting Thraddash in the mix. One of its two game-breaking characteristics--its ultra-low price--would be nullified if people had to bid on it. Unfortunately, the other problem of abusive, un-fun tactics that grind the game to a near halt is just as likely as it would be in a normal tournament, so I still can't justify fitting the ship in. This tournament requires only four people so there's no need to bend over backwards to get one more person to play. The ban stays.



No. I would have refused anyway, but right now I can't use his mod for anything. He's going to need to release an update that doesn't crash. Currently the Arilou in his mod is a game-wrecker.

Total BS

Well, let's say it's crazy shall we?

Is it really?  The top handful of players are already excluded from this, and I don't know if anybody else really uses the Thraddash that way.  For many players, the Thraddash is just like any other ship.

On another note, I probably will not be able to participate in this, though if there's a no-show and I happen to be in the IRC channel, there's a chance I could take someone's place.

I know, it's debatable. Amiga Nut himself is a little hard to pin down in that regard. I've seen him go underhanded, but he's generally not that bad. The worst he's done was a tournament game against EP, not me, but I heard he spent upwards of 10 minutes shooting at a Chmmr's satellites with Supox among other things during that game. My problem is not with Amiga Nut using Thraddash, its with the ship's potential in general. What am I supposed to say when someone starts griefing people with the ship? "Stop playing Thraddash effectively"? The option is right there, just like a person can choose Spathi and run away forever or choose Androsynth and bubble bath forever. The difference is that those other two merely cause a stalemate. The Thraddash wins outright when its pilot decides to go down that path.

If you can film your games, send the raw avi to me and I'll put up a summary.

I have Fraps full version but it may slow the game down. I'll try it.

I'm not comfortable with the number of volunteers here. Someone always flakes.

Since its bidding tournament why not allow the Torch then? You might get a few more people.

-and no, I will never stop beating this drum. It’s a silly thing to impose, especially since you’ve excluded the top tier players.

Amiga, if you want tournaments with the Torch allowed, feel free to host some...

Read page 1 again.



By "a few", you must mean "one".



Indeed. I don't think anyone's going to try and stop him from doing this.

Despite my bad record with flaking, there's a 97.5% chance that I can play this weekend if you're planning another tournament.

Shiver, EP: " There are none so blind as those who will not see."

Actually, that's not true anymore. I won't speak for them. If they see this thread they will speak up for themselves, hopefully.

I won't be able to play anyway, but I don't see why you need to ban it. I mean, no one who can be good with it will be playing.

You don't need to be good with it. Only a small amount of skill at the game is involved in Thraddash abuse. If C Bob can poke my Chmmr to death in a practice bout, I'm sure other average and below-average players can too. Also, newbie players play dirty as often as regulars, they just do it with Spathi and force a stalemate by running away instead of something more dangerous.

when I clicked the thread I was hoping it would be an all-druuge tournament :-)

but this looks like fun.  I'll do it if someone drops out.

I'd do it all earthling or all mycon .

Alright, I got my times for the European regions wrong (they're fixed now) so the tournament is being postponed by an hour on the hope that Dabir actually follows through on his word. SweetSassyMolassy, who almost definitely lives in the US, has decided to flake once again. We're down one person at the moment.

Dabir and SweetSassyMolassy have both decided not to show up. May lightning fry their motherboards. I'm starting with a few different people and will cover the results later...

Wait, that was today?


...BUGGER.

I forgot my friend's wedding today, although fry my motherboard if you must

Results



Congratulations to Ph, winner of the August Auction House Tournament.

The auction house tournament turned out very well. The turn-out was embarrassing as usual, but enough people wandered into the arena to make it work. It turned out that having a bidding order was unnecessary with only four people, so we dropped that quickly. The other significant change was to force a minimum ship cost of 10 points on anything other than Zoq-Fot-Pik, Shofixti and Umgah rather than let the last person with points remaining stuff their fleet full of top notch ships for 2 points each. This was a rather clumsy solution and I'll have to assign each ship its own starting cost next time around.

The ship draws were strange but not bad. Three Chmmr and three Kohr-Ah made it into the game, but no Utwig ever drew. These heavyweights would be disproportionately powerful due the lack of decent counters. Similarly, one player bought an Orz while no Androsynth ever appeared for anyone to counter it with. I might have to put a stricter limit on certain ships next time around.



-----[Participants]

• Jake
• Niblick
• Phallosopher
• MrBrian



-----[Galactic / Jake's Fleet]

Galactic had to leave in the middle of the auction. I gave his half-formed fleet over to Jake, who played the rest of the tournament out in his place. This fleet was 198 points going by vanilla Star Control rules. This was the largest fleet in the tournament. It's missing Chmmr, but shaped up well otherwise.

1) Shofixti
2) Kohr-Ah
3) Spathi
4) VUX
5) Slylandro
6) Melnorme
7) Chenjesu
8) Ilwrath
9) Earthling
10) Syreen
11) Pkunk
12) Supox
---
Defeated Niblick with Pkunk and Spathi remaining.

Had to leave early. Presumably would have lost to Phallosopher, but this is not a certainty.
---


-----[Niblick]

This fleet was 179 points going by vanilla Star Control rules. Niblick overspent his points more than the other players, but he did manage to grab both Chmmr and Kohr-Ah for himself.

1) Kohr-Ah
2) Syreen
3) Shofixti
4) Spathi
5) Chenjesu
6) Melnorme
7) Pkunk
8) Slylandro
9) Chmmr
---
Lost to Jake.

Defeated MrBrian with a Chmmr remaining.

Lost to Phallosopher.
---


-----[Phallosopher]

This fleet was 197 points going by vanilla Star Control rules. Phallosopher missed his chance to pick up Kohr-Ah, but that Orz he was carrying without any opposing Androsynth present throughout the whole tournament to stop it made a big impact. Player skill probably had more to do with Ph's victory than fleet composition.

1) Mycon
2) Orz
3) Chmmr
4) Ur-Quan
5) Ilwrath
6) Mmrnmhrm
7) Syreen
8) Supox
9) Melnorme
10) Earthling
11) Zoq-Fot-Pik
---
Defeated MrBrian with Chmmr, Mmrnmhrm, Melnorme, Earthling, Ilwrath remaining.

Played an inconclusive game against Jake.

Defeated Niblick with Chmmr, Mmrnmhrm, Melnorme, Ilwrath, Syreen, and Earthling remaining.
---


-----[MrBrian]

Mr. Brian's fleet was 214 points going by vanilla Star Control rules. This is primarily because he ended up snagging an Ur-Quan for the minimum price of 10 points near the end, skewing his fleet's artificial value by quite a bit. This fleet has Chmmr and Kohr-Ah as well, but it is not as good as the price tag would have you believe.

1) Spathi
2) VUX
3) Chmmr
4) Slylandro
5) Kohr-Ah
6) Pkunk
7) Supox
8) Arilou
9) Ur-Quan
10) Melnorme
11) Umgah
---
Lost to Phallosopher.

Lost to Niblick.
---

Yeah, sorry about having to leave there... good that you found someone to replace me.

For being my first time in a tourney, this was pretty fun
The auction part was perhaps as fun as the fighting :)   even though it took 2 hours