Treeburst155

Looking over the purchases I have in, there are only three games I can put together. Swamp only sent in purchases for one scenario, GravesReg, Ghost, and Fionn sent none. This shows a general lack of interest that occurred after the scenario descriptions were made known. The tourney flopped, but I will try again with CMBB. I can put together the following: Broken vs Deathdealer.....Major Taktik Scenario Major Taktik vs Broken..........Swamp Scenario Swamp vs Wreck..................Swamp Scenario Of these three battles, only one is on a pretty map. I think I should send the four nicer maps to Deathdealer, Major Taktik, Broken, and Wreck as a reward for getting their purchases in. You guys can chat amongst yourselves, arrange games, maybe edit the maps and parameters a bit, and generally kill time with your fellow Titans while you wait for CMBB. Skelley might be interested in joining the party too. I would be happy to act as a third party to purchase forces for any battles you guys arrange. Sound good? Treeburst155 out. [ August 04, 2002, 12:27 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Skelley, In fairness, Fionn was not the only one who was holding things up. He was just the only one to place the blame on me and others for HIS "inability" to follow through with the tourney. I will attempt another Clash Of The Titans this winter(northern hemisphere)with CMBB. I don't know yet how the tourney will be structured. I want to get familiar with the CMBB QB features first. There may be some interesting possibilities there. I will be looking for 24 Titans. If there are that many interested, there will be a mighty Clash of the Titans in a few months. Unlike this attempt, I don't think any Titan who wants to play will be left out. What's a Titan? A Titan is a highly competitive CMer who spends lots of time playing other humans, and usually beats them. Titans usually log lots of ladder games, or are very active (and successful) in club/tournament play. Titans will take on anybody! The tougher the opponent, the better. They hate to lose, but do not fear the possibility. When a Titan loses he will ask for a rematch. When a Titan wins he will grant a rematch. Titans don't brag much. They let their performance do the talking. Titans don't play historical forces if given the choice because such forces generally suck. Treeburst155 out.

Thanks for the compliments on the maps. Not all of them are built from scratch however. The Swamp, Fionn, and Wreck maps fit the bill without spending much time. They're very QBish. I think it's interesting to play on maps with the "scattered woods" effect produced by the auto-generator occasionally. I believe I have purchases for all the games from the five of you. This means I can put together four fights for each of you if you wish, just for fun. Keep in mind, not all your fights will be on the four prettier maps. If you still want to fight one or more of your battles, get with your opponent for the specific battle and verify that he is still interested in light of recent developments. If he is, just email me and I will send the secured game file to the German player within 24 hours. This way I don't put together any battles that one party no longer has any interest in fighting. Treeburst155 out.

Fionn, this is your lucky day. You caught me in a very bad mood, so I'm going to be brutally honest here. No diplomacy or tact. I don't care if I'm banned forever. You piss me off that much. YOU are afraid to play CM in a FAIR, public, competition setting. If you can't win in the negotiation phase, you won't play. I have bent over backwards to accommodate you with this tourney. I changed the entire format for you, much to the chagrin of at least one other participant. You were gungho in the early stages BEFORE you even knew there would be no time limits. This was also before you realized you could not get the tourney structured EXACTLY how you wanted it. You had plenty of time while attempting to manipulate the tourney format. When you found out you couldn't dictate EVERY aspect of the tourney, you all of a sudden became too busy. You're an extremely GAMEY player. So gamey in fact, you won't even play in a situation where the playing field is level (the tourney). Let it be known to the entire community, FIONN is afraid to take on known CM Titans in a FAIR competition! He absolutely will not participate. Your ego is so big, you absolutely cannot take the chance that you might lose. I pity you. I really do. I can beat you, Fionn. The Titans can beat you even worse, and you know it. That's why you would never play me or the Titan's in a FAIR setting involving five or more games (one game proves nothing). You have no spine!! Stand up and fight, man!!! We've all heard the talk. This tourney WAS your chance to walk the walk! When it comes to CM, I think you are little more than a mediocre player with excellent manipulation, coercion, and whining skills. The only real CM skill you excel at is game engine exploitation. You are an unsporting, rude, socially inept, cowardly, egotistical jellyfish. I have no respect for you. I've been wanting to say that for a year. I only wish I could say it to your face. I want to bitch slap you, just to see if you'll fight back. I'd bitch slap you if you were 7 ft. tall and 300 pounds because I think you're a coward in real life too. The Clash Of The Titans is cancelled. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The five of you who sent in purchases are all champions in my book because you were willing to do battle with your peers. Treeburst155 out.

On August 7th we will make that determination. Right now, it's not looking good. 3/8ths of the participants have dropped out of sight. :eek: Treeburst155 out.

GI Combat is ahead. Let's go people. It's time to vote! It only takes a few seconds. The link takes you straight to it. Treeburst155 out.

I will process game results within 12 hours. At that time, if indeed there is a finished section, I will send the players the final game scores. Keep in mind these will be the CM scores, not the Nabla scores. You will get a good idea of how the section stacked up; but if it is close, it will be difficult to tell who actually won the section. You'll have to wait for the tourney-wide median to know for sure. Also, any game scores are top secret. Do not give the scores to people outside your section. It will tip them off as to scenario balance. Fight On!! Treeburst155 out.

Very good, Sgt. Gold. I have the game reports. Ligur seems to be a bit sporadic. Keep me informed, please. Treeburst155 out.

Yep, Real Life usually doesn't interfere with games one is winning. Give 'em hell, Captain Carrot! Minimize your opponents victories. Maybe you can even pull one out of the fire completely and get a win. Treeburst155 out.

I think we need to set a deadline on purchases. The "purchase period" has run for at least two weeks now, albeit with a few glitches that may have required a couple to be re-done. All purchases need to be on my drive by August 7th. This will insure I have all games out by the 20th, which will insure we have a solid month to play the games before CMBB begins arriving in people's mailboxes. If you cannot make it by the 7th, I don't think you have the time to take part in this tourney. On the 7th we will see where we stand. If anyone fails to make the deadline then the tourney will have to be cancelled or completely restructured in some way. I would be for cancelling the tourney unless someone can come up with a good way to restructure the thing. If the tourney is cancelled I will be happy to set up the games I have purchases for if players still wish to play them for "fun". Treeburst155 out.

Thanks, SuperTed, and thanks to Kinch too for the new Boots & Tracks scenario! Treeburst155 out.

That's great to hear, Wreck! Enjoy it, Champ! Treeburst155 out.

If you geniuses manage to do this, don't forget to write a cheat detector program of some sort to scan PBEM files for inconsistencies. Treeburst155 out.

Five of twenty eight games delivered. I can only put together three more games with the purchases I have now. Two of them are on Swamp's scenario, the first one I made. Looking at it today, I may decide to rework it a bit. Then again, maybe not. I'm too tired to decide right now. BTW, It's good to see you guys have decided to go with historical forces. Treeburst155 out.

Thanks for posting, guys. It's gonna be good!! Treeburst155 out.

SuperTed, Here's a bump for you. Things are really heating up on the old forum now that CMBB is just around the corner. Treeburst155 out.

I managed to get a game out today. I WILL do another one tonight. I still have zero purchases from Fionn, Ghost, and GravesRegistration. Treeburst155 out.

TOURNEY I, Section 3 Replacement for Jazza found. You can expect a new contact list soon. ______________________________________________ TOURNEY III, Section 2 Replacement for GeneralSV found. You can expect a new contact list soon. ______________________________________________ TOURNEY I, Section 4 Saport and von Lucke are alive and well, having successfully beaten back a vicious attack by the infamous Real Life Brigade! JonS, Saport is aware your game is lagging behind. He will be picking up the pace as soon as he finishes a couple games that are in the final stages. ________________________________________________ Fight On!! Treeburst155 out.

All CURRENT openings in the "Boots & Tracks Brawl" have been filled. Pak_43, You are #1 on my list of potential replacements unless you say otherwise. Is the email address correct in your profile? Treeburst155 out.

Wreck, No problem. I assumed you would want to redo your Ghost scenario purchases. To all, I received a few more individual game purchases today, but didn't get time to send out any scenarios. Why? I'm dealing with dropouts in the RoW II tourney. Thanks for your patience. Treeburst155 out.

This be the new thread. Once again we will start it with the tourney "manual". HOW IT WORKS Once the 72 players have been assigned to one of the three tourneys (24 in each) as described in the first post to this thread, they will be further divided into four sections of six players. This division into sections will be done in a completely random manner by drawing names out of a hat. Your section is where the "regular season" action is. You will play one game against each of the people in your section. You will also play each scenario one time. This means you will play five games in the "regular season". The sides you play, and your attack/defend duties could very well come out lopsided. You may play the Germans four times, or you may find yourself defending four times. The only guarantee regarding your matches is that you will play each scenario once, and each member of your section once. The scenarios will be provided by the "Boots & Tracks" design team headed up by SuperTed. They will be historical/semi-historical scenarios never before seen by the community. The guys at B & T are working on our scenarios right now. Without them the tourney would not have happened. The scenarios may or may not be balanced. Don't count on a fair fight! The scoring system will determine balance. It is possible to "lose" the battle, and still win if you perform better than the median established for that side of the scenario. I will explain how this works later. You do not need to understand the nitty-gritty of the scoring system, although some may be interested. You need only be aware of the following: 1) Points for contested VL's will be split. This means final game scores will always total to 100. There is a very good reason for this I'll not get into now. If you think "gamey" you can probably figure it out. 2) Voluntary surrender is ALWAYS bad. Your opponent gets too many points for all the people he captures. You should always withdraw your people from a hopeless situation. This way you deprive your opponent of capture points. The game will auto-surrender you once your global morale drops to a certain point. Every unit that you successfully withdraw off the map will lower this global morale. Try to have all your people step off the map together once you are near the auto-surrender point. This prevents capture of units who would have made it off, but didn't due to the auto-surrender. If you score very poorly in relation to the median for a scenario you will suffer a penalty (your score will be made even worse). This is to discourage surrender, and careless play just to get the game over with. If your score is that low compared to the median we assume you surrendered or got purposely stupid. WITHDRAW YOUR TROOPS IF POSSIBLE when faced with a bad situation!! I'm telling you all this because it is quite possible you will find yourself in a very bad situation due to deliberate scenario imbalance. Do not give up!! Withdraw!! The median score for your side of that scenario may only be 20 points. IOW, if you score 32 points you did very well. You can "lose" and still win if you get your people to safety so they can fight again another day. 3) Your goal with each scenario is not so much to beat your opponent (could be impossible), but to get the highest score of the 36 people (three tourneys) who play that side of the particular scenario. "Winning" the game may be virtually impossible due to imbalance. You never know what hand you may be dealt. LAUNCHING THE TOURNEY Each player will receive the schedule for his section only. Where your name is on the LEFT you will play the Allied side for that scenario. Along with the schedule of games you will receive a contact list with all the email addresses of your five opponents. When you receive these the tourney is officially underway. After this, over the course of the next several days, you will receive an email for each of the five scenarios. For games where you are the Allies you will find two briefing files attached, a general briefing and your Allied briefing. This email will also contain your password for that scenario. Your German opponent will start the game. To open the first file from him you will need to use the password I provide you. This will put you in the Allied setup phase. If you are playing the German side you will also receive a secured saved game file in addition to the two briefings and password. By 'secured' I mean that the briefings have been stripped out, the game begun, and the passwords entered. This is the file you will use to start the PBEM game. It will be a .cmb file, not a .txt file. Start the game just as you would any other new PBEM game. The only difference is that you will have to enter the password I provide you. You will find yourself in the Axis setup phase. DEADLINES AND GAME RESULTS REPORTING All games should be completed within 90 days of the date I send out the last scenario files. This means you will need to keep at it. Don't be the one to hold up the show. Don't get lazy. Take your turns. We want to at least get into the playoff stage before CMBB comes out. The tourney cannot be scored until ALL games have been completed. The LOSER reports game results. If you end up being on the weak side of a few unbalanced scenarios you will find yourself having to report most of your games. This is, as they say, tough luck. Game Report email needs to have the subject, "Game Report". The body of the email must contain the following information: Tourney Number (1-3), Scenario Title, Your username on this forum, the side you played, your score, your opponent's username and his score. The body of the email should then look like this if you are Fred: Tourney 1, The Ambush, Fred (Axis) 37, Joe 43 Reporting games in this manner will save me a great deal of time. With 72 people I NEED to have games reported this way. Do not send me final game files. Keep these in a safe place in case of disputes. FOG OF WAR No discussion of scenarios is allowed on the forum until ALL players in all three tourneys have completed a scenario. I will let you know when it is alright to talk about a scenario. It won't happen until near the end of the tourney. No game results are to be revealed on the forum. You won't know who beat who until all is revealed at the end. Think before you post, and remember, no game scores, no blow by blow descriptions of the last movie, no general discussion about the scenarios, etc.. THE NABLA SCORING SYSTEM Your game scores will be recorded on an input file for the Nabla Scoring Program, created by Jarmo Hurri (Nabla). The Nabla program will crunch the scores and spit out your Nabla Score, also called your "Tourney Score", for each scenario. Below is what the program does: 1) Checks for game scores that total less than 100. Adjusts to 100 if necessary (60-30 becomes 65-35) 2) Determines the median score for both sides of every scenario based on all 36 instances of that scenario. 3) Determines the distance, plus or minus, of your score from the median for each scenario. 4) Calculates a Nabla Score based on this distance from the median using a rather complex formula. 5) Averages all five of your Nabla Scores to give your final Tourney Score. By establishing a median for each side of a scenario we determine the balance of the scenario. Your score is then compared to this median. If you score 30 points and the median is only 20 for that side, then you have done very well inspite of your "loss". This is why you don't want to surrender. You never know what the median of a scenario might be. You won't know this until the end. Establishing scenario balance (the median) means we can measure relative performance within your section without the necessity of balanced scenarios. This is a major breakthrough for competitive CM IMO!! With this scoring system we can play virtually any scenario and not worry about unfairness due to the balance issue. AARs Bonus points will be added to your final Tourney Score if you submit AARs. Each full credit AAR will be worth 4% of the highest player's tourney score (before adding his AARs). If you write five full credit AARs you will receive additional tourney points equal to 20% of the highest player's tourney score. AARs will receive either full credit or half credit. You must write more than just a few short paragraphs for full credit. I will let you know if an AAR is too short soon after you send it to me. You don't have to write a book either. Just give us a fairly good description of how the game played out. You are not required to write AARs. You just get a few extra points if you do. This could put you ahead if you're in a tight race in your section. The primary purpose of the AARs is to provide the scenario designers with feedback on their work. If you've ever designed a scenario for the community, you know how rare it is to get this feedback. Writing AARs is one way to express your thanks to the designer. Even negative feedback is welcome as long as it's constructive and not mean spirited. Another thing AARs do is help people learn to improve their tactics. Every scenario is played twelve times in a tourney such as this. There are eleven other people who had to deal with the same tactical situations you did. It can be very instructive to learn how others handled things, especially if you did worse than most. (BTW, all the AARs will be sent to you upon request once you have completed your games.) Lastly, by writing an AAR (feedback) you are doing the community a small favor. This is because the designer can tweak the scenario based on feedback before releasing it to the community. Having a scenario played twelve times by twenty four different people is a great test of a scenario. I think it's safe to say that very few scenarios get that degree of testing before they are put out to the public. They may get played twelve times, but not by twenty four different people, and certainly not under blind conditions. Those of us who enjoy these tournaments need new scenarios (security). In return for these scenarios the designers get the feedback they like. IMPORTANT! Submitting AARs 1)AARs should never be sent in with game results. Send them in a separate email. 2)AARs can be .txt, .doc, or .pdf files. Do not write them in the body of an email. 3)AARs should not be more than 4 MB UNcompressed. Screenshots can cause you to go over this limit easily. I would recommend the .pdf format if you want to include several screenshots. 4)In the subject line of emails containing attached AARs, write your username and the scenario name. For example: Madmatt, The Ambush THE PLAYOFFS Everybody makes it to the playoffs! However, only the four section winners in each tourney are eligible for the prize. The four section winners will play a 3 scenario round robin. The second place finishers in each section will do the same, and so on. If you place last in your section, you will face the other three last place finishers in the playoffs. The playoffs will be scored exactly like the "regular season". Those of you who aren't eligible for the wine (not first in section) are still very important to the tourney. Your scores will determine the accurate median we need for the playoff scenarios. THE PRIZES The winner of the "First Place Playoff" in each tourney will win the prize. The winners of Tourney I and Tourney II will each receive six different bottles of WineCape's fine South African wines, postage paid to their doorstep. The winner of Tourney III will receive three almost new VCR movies. They are, "Stalingrad" (by the people who made "Das Boot"), "Cross Of Iron", and the somewhat obscure "A Midnight Clear". I purchased these a year ago from Amazon.com and watched them all twice. All three are very good war movies IMO, and the tapes are in mint condition. REPORTING MIAs In order to keep all games proceeding at an acceptable pace we need to identify any potential dropouts (MIAs) promptly so I can find out their intentions regarding the tourney, and replace them if necessary. Please email me if you have not heard from an opponent in 3 days unless that opponent has informed you beforehand of his inability to send turns for a specified period of time. This way I know what is going on. The tourney cannot be scored until every last game is completed. By informing me of possible problems (3 days and no turns) I can act promplty so matches don't get way behind. It's up to you guys to keep me informed. That should cover just about everything. Ask questions if you have them. I probably left something out, or explained something in an unclear manner. Treeburst155 out.

White4, Yes, I will let you know where to send your latest Jazza file. You will receive an updated Contact List. I'm starting a new thread now while I'm thinking about it. See you there, guys. Treeburst155 out.

Pak_43, Thanks for your interest. You are number two on my list at this time. I have at least one more opening. Hang loose for a couple days. I'm talking to number one now, and trying to determine if I have a second opening too. Are you aware there is a very good chance you will have to play games that are already 1/4 to 1/3 completed? It's a real challenge taking over for someone else because chances are the situation will not favor you. Treeburst155 out.

You're in Cpl Carrot. Thanks! I'll get you squared away within the next couple days. Anybody else interested? I have at least one, possibly two more openings. The status of the games is unknown at this time. Most likely you would have to pick up in the middle of the battle. This can be quite a challenge, because the cards will be stacked against you. People don't seem to drop out when they are winning. Treeburst155 out.

Good to hear von Lucke is still with us. Any word from Saport? Attention TOURNEY I, Section 3!! Jazza has become a casualty of RL. I'm looking for a replacement. Please let me know the status of your game with him. Thanks!! Treeburst155 out.