Next competition

[bron]

I've wanted to have a comp where the ranking criterion was something other than "fastest completion". On 26Jan2016 I posted a proposal (#422 in this thread). Nobody seemed to like it. So here is another (admittedly similar) proposal: A Sil competition. No artefacts. Any race. Any house. Any level of win (1 sil is as good as 3). The ranking criteria is "lowest maximum number of skill-points in any category".

I think that no-artefacts is important because a lucky artefact find can hugely influence a game that is restricted like this, and the competition largely reduces to "who finds the best artefact soonest", rather than the skill of the competitors.

I've done this sort of thing before, but not with no-artefacts, so I don't know what's possible. Particularly within a limited amount of real time.

[ranger jeff]

Would that be in 4.0.5? Interesting proposition, would make early game easy, late game tough, would have insanely low turncounts...

Also, I'm trying a Brownie Naturalist in Steamband, so far okay, though only 4 Brownies on the ladder, one Engineer winner, so untested late game. But Steamband seems very winnable, and Naturalist pretty powerful. Though I understand the last two bosses need to be fought in melee with a Naturalist with AoE's running, so given a Brownie's weak melee, skill point distribution might be tough.

[Pete Mack]

There was some talk of permacursed Deathwreaker as starting equipment?

[debo]

Hi,

As you've noticed, there haven't been any competitions recently. Things have become markedly crazier for me, and I haven't had the time or attention to rig any new ones.

I have contacted a bunch of folks 1-1 to see if they'd be interested in taking over, but no luck yet.

If you are someone who has even an inkling of a thought that you could do this -- trust me, you can. Before I started running the competitions, I think the only variant I'd ever played was Sil. It wasn't that hard to figure out enough about the others to make a savefile for them. Most of the work goes into figuring out what might be a decent configuration for a variant I've never played before, and briefly playtesting the character.

In the interim before we find someone more responsible to take over, creating and linking savefiles will make it a lot easier for me to set up new ones. Usually when I create a savefile, I try to play it for at least a few floors to make sure there's not anything majorly broken, weird, or annoying about that particular start (e.g. the equivalent of finding Deathwreaker on 50', terrible consumables in shops, etc.)

For what it's worth, I think a Steamband comp would be neat to do again. If anyone has a savefile for one of those kicking around, would be happy to kick one off.

I'm going to be traveling a lot for the next 9 days, and after that things should stabilize for a little while.

Apologies to those who've been waiting for their next competition. If you want to help make this faster, start nominating someone to take over long term, and pressure them until they do it

[MattB]

I'll always vote for Vanilla (but maybe I'm just boring...)

[PowerWyrm]

Ironman MAngband competition. There was a 1.1.3 release a few days ago, first release in ages (although it's not a big one). I was amazed to see that a veteran player actually managed to kill Morgoth in Ironman MAngband, so it's actually doable. So go grab the latest client from the MAngband website, connect to the server and just play. You don't even need a starting savefile, any race/class is fine.

[ranger jeff]

Ah, right, Variants tab rarely gets updated, still says 1.2.1 in 2014, I see the competition with Sil this year was with 1.3.0. So, sorry for the confusion, but we've already had a competition with the current Sil.

But, two votes for another Sil comp is two votes more than any other *band, so...

[nikheizen]

But Sil was very recently done as a comp, back in January. And I notice there's been no new release of Sil for over 2 years...

There was a release in January!

[ranger jeff]

But Sil was very recently done as a comp, back in January. And I notice there's been no new release of Sil for over 2 years...

[HugoVirtuoso]

Chenband (is this completely superseded by PosChengband?)

Superseded in every aspect, YES

I'm leaning towards a Sil 1.3 competition. Sil has been quiet on the oook.cz ladder these days.

[ranger jeff]

Sooo.... it's been a while, huh?

Not sure what all's involved in helping along the Competition process, just submitting a savefile? I spent a while today looking over the variants and when last they were in the competition, and I have a few suggestions of what to try next:

Vanilla is up to 4.0.5...
ToME has only been done twice, and not for a while
Unangband
Steamband
DAJAngband
Chenband (is this completely superseded by PosChengband?)
Z+Angband
haven't had a NPP competition with the current release...

and I understand that comps are great for testing new releases, any maintainers out there need some playtesting?

Thoughts?

[Pete Mack]

Yikes. Quickband autoscum is brutal, and half-elf makes it even worse. (Quickband half-elf is "lucky" in that it gets lots of "special" levels. But High-elf is even worse, since it gets bad luck with increasing frequency starting at CL 27...including cursed (blasted) weapon and random summons.

[T-Mick]

Quickband Half-Elf Warrior/Rogue with Auto-Scum and randarts. Just about the most excitement you can get out of twelve floors.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Iron-man no-artifacts would be a good (hard) comp. Pick a strong race/class, e.g. High Elf Mage, Dwarf Priest, Half Troll Paladin, Dunadan Ranger. Personally, I'd still like to see a comp where "fewest turns" was not the deciding factor, but making it hard(er) to win at all is something. [Since the first few levels can be slow (esp. for a mage), it would probably be good to start a comp character at dlvl 30 or so.]

Oh, no! Shades of Leon are coming back to me.

[bron]

Iron-man no-artifacts would be a good (hard) comp. Pick a strong race/class, e.g. High Elf Mage, Dwarf Priest, Half Troll Paladin, Dunadan Ranger. Personally, I'd still like to see a comp where "fewest turns" was not the deciding factor, but making it hard(er) to win at all is something. [Since the first few levels can be slow (esp. for a mage), it would probably be good to start a comp character at dlvl 30 or so.]