FCOL Tournament Rules Draft: Please Read and Comment

[terryoc]

OK folks, I'm willing to be the organiser for a FCOL tournament since there seems to be some interest. Here's a draft of the rules, please read them and comment on them. My own explanation/comments in parts are green.

Federation Commander Online Tournament Rules

1.General Tournament Rules
Ships shall be selected and games shall be played according to the latest revision of the Origins Federation Commander tournament rules as posted on the federationcommander.com website forums, except as modified here.
A. Ship Selection: The Organiser of the tournament shall set a date for ship selections and only ships available in the Federation Commander Online Client at that date shall be eligible for selection.Other restrictions shall be the same as the Origins ship selection rules. (Paul Franz and others are working hard to add more ships to the client and the selection is increasing rapidly, but I don't want to advantage later selectors over earlier ones. If FCOL gets more use, it will encourage them to put more in the client. Later tournaments will have more ships available than earlier ones, but that's no different to Origins really.)
B. Time Limit: Games shall last for eight turns or until one player concedes. You don't have to play all eight turns at once, you'll have three weeks to get the game in, and it should be possible to save the game in mid-game. Wins matter, points will only be used as tie-breakers.

2. Online Specific Tournament Rules
Communication between the Organiser and the Players: The Organiser shall post deadline and match-up information on the federationcommander.com site. The Organiser shall also email players with this information. Announcements may also be posted on the starfleetgames Discus forums and/or the ADB, Inc. Facebook page. While the Organiser shall make every effort to ensure that players are adequately informed, it is the responsibility of the players to make sure they know the deadlines and matchups, and understand the rules.
Emails to the Organiser: All emails to the Organiser must have the name of the tournament in the subject line (e.g. "FCOL Tournament #1") or else the email wasn't sent. (This is to make it easy for the Organiser to find the email(s) later.)
Signup: Players sign up by sending an email to the Organiser. Once all the players are signed up, the Organiser will set a date for the ship selections (to determine which ships are available for selection) and players have one week after that date to select their squadron and email their squadron to the Organiser.
Play Deadlines: Once the Players are informed of their match-ups, they must arrange between each other a mutually agreeable time to play the game on FCOL. The Players shall have a certain amount of time to make these arrangements and complete the game. (These deadlines may vary from tournament to tournament.) It's up to both players to actively pursue the match; if one player makes a reasonable effort to arrange a game and another does not, the first player is awarded a win. If neither does, both are awarded a loss. "Reasonable effort" is in the judgement of the Organiser. All emails between players attempting to arrange a game should be carbon-copied (cc'ed) to the Organiser so that the Organiser has evidence that players are actively pursuing the match-up. If both players are actively pursuing the match but circumstances beyond the players' control prevent it from happening, the Organiser may extend the deadline or adjudicate a result at his option.
Number of rounds: This will be a four-round tournament, that way, with three weeks per game, it should be over in three months.

[ericphillips]

I am in. In addition, anything I can do to help out I will. I am good with the interwebtubes, designing pages, etc. What do you need?

[Scoutdad]

This event would certainly convince me to re-up my lapsed subscription.

[JimDauphinais]

Terry -- It is a good proposal.

B. Time Limit: Games shall last for ten turns or until one player concedes. (Origins has a four-hour time limit, but FCOL games can be saved and continued later. I'm thinking that ten turns ought to be long enough for multi-turn arming weapons to take effect. I'm hoping that the FCOL dice-rolling and damage allocation features will speed things up a bit.)

I don't feel dice rolling and damage allocation is any faster in FC Online (I have found that in our local group we are able to do it faster in a face-to-face game even with FC Online's neat features). However, I think there is merit to going with the ten turn limit as it may help to provide some limited data in regard to whether the perceived problem with multi-turn weapons (especially plasma) in the Origins Tournament format is related more to an insufficient number of turns in that format or a more fundamental game system issue.

If folks would prefer not to use a ten game turn limit, I think you will need to find out from the FC Origins Tournament Organizers how many turns they were expecting a typical four hour game to last and then use that as our turn limit for this tournament. A playtime limit is impractical and too open to being "gamed". A turn limit avoids that issue.

Does anybody have any thoughts in regard to deviating from the Origins starting distance? I believe it is about 45 hexes in the Origins Tournament Scenario. In a standard duel scenario, it is only 30 hexes. 30 hexes gets things going faster, but it may hurt or help certain empires.

[ericphillips]

I don't feel dice rolling and damage allocation is any faster in FC Online

I have found that die rolling is a little slower, and the typing communication slows things down slightly. Even with the speed of the damage allocation in FCOL, I find the game plays a little slower than in face to face.

So I think 10 turns is too long. Many scenarios use six turns as a cutoff, so how about making this six turns?

[terryoc]

I think they were getting about four turns in four hours at Origins. Six turns is probably OK, that's three photon cycles or two plasma cycles.

[Kang]

Why not use Skype, MSN or similar to communicate? Worldwide voice comms for free....

Take a look at the article I wrote for playing FC using Instant Messenger programs; you might get some ideas from that. It's in CL#40. Note that I don't mean for you to play it over the Internet like that, as opposed to using FC Online; just that you might be able to tweak your comms a little.

[pinecone]

I think ten turns is what we should go for. It makes sure there is enough time for everyone to get the most out of their weapons.

I am in. i'll send you an email as soon as possible.

[Jean]

I've added a link from our page on Facebook to here. Please make sure I know about any deadlines for signing up so I can publicize them on our page as well!

Thanks,

Jean

[Scoutdad]

We've played Fed Comm and F&E via internet using th voice chat feature in Yahoo Instant Messenger.

It's quick, easy, free, and fairly non-intrusive.

[JimDauphinais]

Voice Communication: I look at that as a very helpful and highly recommended supplement to playing with FC Online, not a replacement for it. I find it helps speed up the stepping through of phases and provides something closer to a face-to-face experience.

Number of Turns -- As I indicated earlier, I would be fine with ten turns. However, if we go with something shorter we need to carefully think through the Photon/Hellbore/Plasma sequence. Four turns is definitely too short (no wonder folks were not picking the Plasma empires!). Six turns may be workable as a minimum. I am not in favor of going fewer than six.

[DirkSJ]

If a moderate sized tourney gets going I may consider a subscription.

[terryoc]

How about this:

Seven turn limit
Weapons may start on last turn of arming, even plasma. So you can have photons pre-loaded as per normal rules, and first two turns of plasma completed.
Ships start about 30 hexes apart

That's enough time, assuming that weapons all get fired turn 1, for seven disruptor shots, four photon shots, or three plasma shots. It also means that you're not wasting most of Turn #1 getting into weapons range.

[JimDauphinais]

Terry -- I like the revision.

Any thoughts yet on whether it would be single elim, double elim, swiss or something else? Preliminarily, I think it would be best best to do double elim, swiss or something along those lines since the underlying objective is to encourage FC Online play.

[pinecone]

I'm cool with that too.