SirLindsley wrote:


Oh and I do think they would be better off to make standings based on a chess like rating system. One thing about chess ratings, it rarely benefits a very good player to play an average player because he will not move up much at all if any depending on the relative scores of the two players involved. Of course the difficulty there would be how to rate a multi player game. This could be done by simply considering all players on one side to have played each other and those who scored higher then players on the opposite side would be considered to have won, thus a 16 player game with 8 on 8 would see each player being considered to have played a game against all eight opponents. He wins or is beaten based on how his score is compared to the opponents score. If you are the high score in the game you are considered to have won eight games, one against each of the opponents, etc. The chess rating could then be scored based on that assumption. Draws would be considered to have occurred with anyone on the opposite side who scored equal.

And if you want to get really hairy you could pro rate the sunken tons based on numbers of guns with the short range guns being 1/2 value to regular guns. So a 28 gun ship has to score double a 14 gun ship to be outscore him. This would allow the small ships to be a viable choice in a multi player game. Instead the current system makes it very difficult for a small gunned ship to win a scenario against the big boys. Thus you always see the big ships fill up first then you wait and wait for someone to finally take the smaller ships to get the thing going.

Secondly the current system rewards very good players taking on rookies. That being said I know there are players who help rookies, but still they gain an easy win while helping the rookie player to learn is hardly fair to make a win against a poor player the same as against a good player.

So if the top two play they score the same as they would if they played the last rated player in the game. This would temp others to use rookie players to pad their scores. This is not the best system to use. Granted I hear there are changes coming and that is a good thing, but if it does not address the basic problem of scoring vs weak players being worth the same as against a good player you will see rookie players jumped by those wanting to climb the ladder. Allowing that system to stand will hurt you in the long run as to gaining player base.

If the games were rated based on a chess ranking type system, the elite player could still play a rookie, he would just not gain anything points wise if he wins and would lose 300 if he somehow lost the game. This would be a rare event though.

But I doubt it will be considered, I know in WEBL boxing they use chess rankings and that seems to help balance things although they have no choice as to whom they play because of the scheduler.