King of the Alpha

As the beta draws near, the days of Alpha will be left to the pages of history. When people look back at these days, they may ask. "Daddy, when Planetary Annihilation wasn't complete, had no real orbital or planet smashing functionality, had all sorts of bugs and balance issues, who was the best player? who was the King in those days?"

Well this is the question we intend to answer with the next great tournament "The King of the Alpha"

http://pa-tournaments.com/tournament/64

I'm currently not sure of the structure, it depends on how many people join. The one thing I do know is that all games MUST be completed by the 25th of September and it should be started on Friday the 20th. More information will follow soon, but I just wanted to get this up sooner rather than later.

There can only be one King. Will it be you?

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1. I will be locking the tournament off at 12pm UTC on Thursday SO JOIN NOW!!
2. You will have from Friday 12pm to Saturday 12pm UTC to finish Round 1 matches.
3. You will have from Saturday 12pm to Sunday 12pm UTC to finish Round 2 matches.
4. From Sunday 12pm to Monday 12pm UTC the Quater Finals and Semis must be played.
5. The finals will hopefully be played on Sunday too, but we'll have until Wednesday the 25th to do this.

If the deadline has passed and your next round opponent is waiting in the IRC with you. Then you automatically get the bye.

Otherwise:

If any players do not reach their target times, one player must be given a bye. The two players should decide who gets this. If you can't decide together then the one who's communicating most with me will get the bye. If that's unclear then it will be decided by a coin toss by myself.

To help organise your matches you can use: http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/

Other rules:

1. A caster should cast/stream your match - they should be lurking in the IRC channel so just announce that your match is about to start. If there's no caster available then take screenshot of the winner in the same manner as the Gentlemens Ladder.
   
2. Casters are referees and have the right to restart the match if they think the positions are unfair. If you have no caster, find an impartial referee.
3. You will be able to update the results of your own matches directly on the website. Please feel free to do this. Otherwise let me know and I'll do it.
4. GL HF!

Ive joined up...but seriously what kid says that???

Don't worry. My kids will.

Hah, this is a nice idea oxide. King of the Alpha! Will you do a subsequent King of the Beta, and perhaps a King of PA?!

So, an annual/monthly tournament to determine who is THE best player at the moment? I like that.

I can't take full credit, one of The Realm guys gave me the idea.. I think it was Greppy. EDIT: it was indeed him - give yourself a pat on the back Greppy

And yes, I will definitely hold a King of the Beta before release. After that, not sure.. how quickly can a King lose his crown? I guess monthly is ok.

Isn't this what the gentlemen ladder is about?
I have absolutely no bias in the question.
Although King of Alpha sounds cool.

Hey Guys, As we're on time constraints this is how this one will be.

1. I will be locking the tournament off at 12pm UTC on Thursday SO JOIN NOW!!
2. You will have from Friday 12pm to Saturday 12pm UTC to finish Round 1 matches.
3. You will have from Saturday 12pm to Sunday 12pm UTC to finish Round 2 matches.
4. From Sunday 12pm to Monday 12pm UTC the Quater Finals and Semis must be played.
5. The finals will hopefully be played on Sunday too, but we'll have until Wednesday the 25th to do this.

EDIT: If the deadline has passed and your next round opponent is waiting in the IRC with you. Then you automatically get the bye.

Otherwise:

If any players do not reach their target times, one player must be given a bye. The two players should decide who gets this. If you can't decide together then the one who's communicating most with me will get the bye. If that's unclear then it will be decided by a coin toss by myself.

To help organise your matches you can use: http://www.worldtimebuddy.com/

To help with the process I will be putting EU teams on one side of the bracket and the rest of the world on the other. We're pretty evenly spread at the moment which is great.

As usual the rules are as defined by the Gentlemens ladder.

There's 11 positions left, Join up people!

harsh

I think it's going to be Godde or Cola.

Anyways, I think I'll pass on this one. King of the Beta? Maybe, but I'm spent on 2 FPS Leveler Slugfests.

NOOOO mushroom you must play, your one of my favorites i enjoy seeing your crazy comments in the chat

So I registered for the tourney but i can only game from like 11 pm to 4 am U.S. Mountain Time, If this is to big a hassle for the tourney creator feel free to remove me ^^ Sorry for the awkward time constraints. Hope to be able to participate.

That's totally fine, as long as you're aware that you may end up having to forfeit a match at some point. In which case you'll be awarded 1 Gentleman's Hat for doing so willingly.

Hey oxide, when do you plan to have the setup ready?
At 12pm or will take until the evening?
thx

Since there have been some disagreement of the role of the referee about starting positions. Can we go with that the players themselves can ask for a restart if they feel that starting position is bad?
Alternatively the player can say before the game starts that they are not happy with their starting positions and once the game has started the referee can look if the positions really are unbalanced. If the referee then judges the starting positions to be fair then the game can continue.

This might be an improvement, but what happens in the circumstance where two commanders spawn really close. We've also had people moaning about matches where spawns were too close. Does the ref have the right to restart the match in these instances?

Also one thing I'm wary about with players having input is one of information. If a player says "my position is ****" then the game goes on anyway cos the ref says it's fair, the other player knows they don't need to scout high mass areas. But I guess this is the same as when the player doesn't say anything, they can assume the other player is on a level playing field and scout similar areas.

Anyone else want to chime in here with their thoughts?

EDIT: This would all be a lot simpler if we didn't allow restarts at all, and we took the line of: "This is the current state of the game and this is the hand you were dealt, so deal with it." I know a lot of people wouldn't like this because brings about an element of luck into the equation. Could people ever accept PA as more like a game of poker rather than a game of chess? Better players will still usually win, but there's still an element of luck when it comes to spawn locations?

I like close start positions so I'd say no. I think it would be good if PA plays great both with close spawns and far away spawns. Eventually I think there should be some setting to guarantee close or far away start positions so that people can set up their game of preference but I like having to adapt to the situation depending the relative start positions to your enemy but it is just alpha.

Yeah it is not optimal so I'd actually prefer if players decide if for themselves. It takes some skill to judge your starting position but if players aren't skilled enough to judge if they got a good start position or not it might not matter.

I could accept that, if you play a set of 3 but if you just play 1 game and get unlucky it wouldn't be that fun.
If the starting positions are close it might not matter as the game might not last that long so the difference in mexes will not come into play. It is hard to tell.
I think that it could be good to add a scout once you get the egg. I usually go airplanes first to be able to scout so I can prepare a strategy. It gives me the edge in close starting positions as I can rush in with my commander from an unexpected angle. It puts me a little behind economically if the start positions are far away from eachother.
If players get a firefly at start you could avoid this blind choice and both players would be able to see each other without trading intel for economy.
It depends on how much you think that players should deal with random factors when they set up their strategies.

Sorry, forgot to answer this one. I plan on having the bracket ready by 12pm (8pm my time) on Thursday. I can't lock it without this finalized. It *may* take a little longer but it will be done before I go to sleep that night. Matches shouldn't officially start till a day later.. but I guess there's no harm in doing them earlier as long as you can have the match recorded/casted by someone.

Godde: I'm leaning towards having the players responsible for requesting their own restarts with no ref interference (and maybe only allowing 1 request?) But I'd like to hear from some other people.. specifically Cola_Colin and ZaphodX who I know were at the other end of two of these controversial issues. i.e. close spawn locations and ref decision making... I'm too easily swayed by the last thing I heard to make a decision now.

2v2 spawns are very difficult to call and very subjective.

1v1 spawns however are far easier to judge if the spawn is fair.

Regarding letting players decide for themselves: That's fine but they can't see their opponent and have no clue how good their spawn is relative to their opponent. You may have a good spawn you are totally fine with but if your opponent is right next to the mass field you thought was yours or if they simply have twice as much mass you start at an enormous disadvantage and and are unlikely to win before the game even starts. Games should not be decided on who started with a large advantage due to random chance.

Regarding close spawns: Starting close will usually result in very short games. Games are often decided by one tiny random chance e.g. who scouts first, which way you expand or who builds the first raiding unit.

For example - in the 1v1 open tournament final the game was over after 1 minute when Colin sent his first expanding group of engineers to the left, directly at godde's base. The mex he captured were never going to be secure and he was always going to lose those vital early mex. The game was categorically over after 2 minutes when godde happened to have his commander in the right position to see Colin first. He moved in and killed 4 engineers, guaranteeing the win after just 2 minutes. Now if Godde had chosen to expand to the right and Colin went the other way then the game would have been decided in the exact opposite way. I do not think this makes for a fair, fun or entertaining game for either viewers or players.

I'd propose that the solution then ought to be:

The game gets played out and afterwards, the ref can drop in and say "Those spawns were rubbish - let's try that again." Or indeed one of the players (probably the losing one) will appeal to the ref for their opinion on the spawn locations, but of course the ref has the final say.