Teamdamage bans

[wurst]

oki that dont fit in topic but
F10 multiple times for that.

[SteveMcqueen]

[blah blah blah reasons why wurst got to stay the way it is... else:]

and there wouldn't be a lot of people telling how stoked they are when playing on dswp_tdm. i have been told this more often than you can imagine. also people coming back (despite the kickbans) speaks for itself, even (or especially?) when they were away for some time..

DSWP server r0x! And you know what I´am talking about. I tried others UrT servers, and many of them are really bad...

Keep up the good work guys.

self explanatory

[wurst]

oki what to do?
call a vote?
double it simply since it counts 200?

im sure we could even send teamkillers to spec or lock in the other team or whatever none lethal punishments hihi.

sry that theres no way to discuss on wether teamkillers should be legalize it.
not with us, im sry again.

[SvaRoX]

As we often try to answer questions about teamkilling process, I've tried to find out how it works once in for all, but I didn't manage to find some documentation about it. Those on the official b3 website are quite light, so I dug into the code to see how it works. I don't give any warranty on what I found, I'm just sharing =)

As you know, the TK system is based on the warning system. Warning TKers was done manually by admins, then the TK plugin has been developped to automatically warn teamkills and teamdamages. The TK plugin also handle the forgiving commands.
When you TK someone, 2 things happen : the damage points you give are recorded and a warning is sent to you. Damage points depend on 2 parameters : the client level, which acts like a damage multiplier (related to regular user/moderator/admin status) and the fact that you kill or not the victim. There is a third value called ban_length, I will talk about it later. Here is the (simplified) multiplier table for the TDM server :

______level_______|_kill multi_|_damage multi_| ban length
------------------------------------------------------------------------
normal user ______|____2____|_____1_______|___2
moderator (lev 40)_|__0.75 ___|___0.5_______|___0
admin (lev > 40)___|__ 0.75___|___0.5_______|___0

For example, if you are a normal user, you get 100*2 = 200 damage points for killing someone. If you are a moderator and you shoot someone in the helmet with LR300 without killing him, you get round(51*0.5) = 25 damage points.

The second thing is the client warning. A warning sent to a client doesn't mean he will actually get a message, it depends on some additional conditions I won't describe here. When an attacker get a warning from the TK plugin, some values are stored : the message ("Do not attack teammates, Attacked:") and the warning duration (to simplify). The warning duration determines the expiration time of the warning. The default value for a TK is 1 hour (plugin_admin.xml:spamages/warn_reasons/generic). It means that the warning will be deactivated 1h later after the TK. There is a specific case : when you get the message "Rule #9: Do NOT fire at teammates or within 10 seconds of spawning", that means you have killed someone within 7 secondes of spawning when the map starts (plugin_tk.xml:settings/round_grace). In this case, you will get a warning duration of 3h (plugin_admin.xml:spamages/warn_reasons/rule9), plus tripled amount of damage points.

Now I will try to describe how the kick/tempban process works. The important thing to understand is that you can be banned from two different b3 systems : the TK plugin or the standard b3 warning system (actually the admin plugin). The main difference is that the global b3 warning system takes in account other warnings, like saying bad words or be warned by admins for camping, so it cumulates standard warning and TK warnings.

For the TK plugin way of ban:
The first thing to know is that all the damage points you have are divided by 2 when the round ends. All players get a maximal amount of points when they connect, which is 400 on the TDM server (plugin_tk.xml:settings/max_points). When you damage or kill someone, the TK plugin compares the total amount of damage points with the maximal amount. If it exceeds this limit, there are 2 possibilities : if the amount of damage points is greater or equal to the max amount * 1.5 (= 600 on the server), the attacker is banned for a duration equal to the "ban length" value written above in the table, after having been sent the "team damage over limit" message. If it's not the case, the famous message "Alert: X auto-kick if not forgiven" is sent to all players, who have 30 seconds to forgive the attacker and prevent him to being banned. After these 30 seconds, if the damage points are still greater than the maximal amount, the attacker get banned for a duration equal to ban length * number of players attacked.

For the standard warning way of ban:
The ban mechanism is quite different from the TK plugin. As I said before, players get warned for various reasons, including of course TK, but also bad words and manual warnings. In fact, bad words warnings are automatically sent by the Censor plugin, which analyses each sentences said by players. Every warnings sent to players are stored until they expire. As you know, some warnings are predefined : if you type !warn X camp, a warning will be sent to the player. It is composed of a message "stop camping or you will be kicked!" as well as a duration (1h in this case). So after a while if you are nasty, you have a warning list.
As soon as there are 4 warnings in this list, (4 is a value set in plugin_admin.xml:warns/alert_kick_num), the message "ALERT: X auto-kick from warnings if not cleared" is displayed. If not enough warnings are cleared in the 25 seconds following the message the player get banned temporary, in some cases with the "peeing in the gene pool" message. The length of the ban is a little more difficult to calculate than TK, so not described here.

To illustrate these actions, let's take some case studies.

1. Jochen, the day he wrote the post about TK
For those who don't know, ban data are extracted from the echelon system which logs warnings and ban for everyone.
| Penalty-type | Added | Expires | Reason
Warning___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (18:59)___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (19:59)___Do not attack teammates, Attacked: stupidHUNter (200)
Warning___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (19:23)___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (20:23)___Do not attack teammates, Attacked: Libertaire_Pengu (200)
Warning___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (19:35)___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (20:35)___Do not attack teammates, Attacked: stupidHUNter (200)
As you can see the total amount of damage would be 600 if the "divided by 2 at each round end" rule wasn't applied. Then Jochen teamkills someone again :
Warning___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (19:45)___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (20:45)___Do not attack teammates, Attacked: MEZARCI_Player (200)
At this moment, we can assume that the total amount of damage is less than 400, because :
- first warning takes place at 18:59. We can imagine that rounds last about 10 minutes (for example 18:57, 19:07, 19:17, 19:27, 19:37). So the amount of damage points for the first warning is, thanks to the divisions by 2 : 200*(1/2)^4 = 12 (rounded).
- second warning : 200*(1/2)^2 = 50
- third warning : 200*1/2 = 100
- last warning : 200
Sum = 375 points < 400, so the TK plugin doesn't ban him. But a 4th warning occurs, and at time 19:45 no warning has expired yet, so the warning system still ban him :
TempBan___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (19:46)___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (19:54)___too many warnings: Do not attack teammates, Attacked: MEZARCI_Player (200)
You can see that the duration is equal to 8 minutes : duration = ban length * number of TK warnings, so 4*2m for a regular player.

2. Still from Jochen, a little bit later
Warning___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (22:41)___Monday, 29/06/2009 (01:41)___Rule #9: Do NOT fire at teammates or within 10 seconds of spawning
As you can see, teamkilling at the beginning of the round gives you a 3h penalty (plugin_admin.xml:spamages/warn_reasons/rule9)
TempBan___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (22:42)___Sunday, 28/06/2009 (22:44)___team damage over limit
He got banned just after, but no additional lines in echelon because it only logs teamkills and not team damages. The previous penalty added to some damage make the total damage points greater than 400, so this time the TK plugin banned him.

3. From Fedakyn, to illustrate combination between bad word and team killing warnings
Warning___Monday, 29/06/2009 (00:23)___Thursday, 02/07/2009 (00:23)___Rule #8: No profanity or offensive language (in any language) ( bitches => bitches )
Using some bad word for a regular player cost him a 3 days warning... (plugin_admin.xml:spamages/warn_reasons/rule9)
Warning___Monday, 29/06/2009 (15:16)___Thursday, 02/07/2009 (15:16)___Rule #8: No profanity or offensive language (in any language) ( fuck => fuck )
Warning___Monday, 29/06/2009 (15:16)___Monday, 29/06/2009 (16:16)___Do not attack teammates, Attacked: neuner96 (200)
Warning___Monday, 29/06/2009 (15:40)___Thursday, 02/07/2009 (15:40)___Rule #8: No profanity or offensive language (in any language) ( asshole => asshole )
4 warnings with different reasons, then :
TempBan___Monday, 29/06/2009 (15:41)___Monday, 29/06/2009 (22:55)___too many warnings: peeing in the gene pool ( asshole => asshole )

The 3 days warning duration is quite long : this may explain the "I was kicked although I didn't kill anyone" thing that some people complain about. It reminds me an old thread about that (forum-gameserver-support/was-kicked-but-why-t156.html). Imagine you have said 2 bad words in the past 3 days, that you got a warning for "spectator too long on full server", and then you teamkill only one guy : you are banned for too many warnings. The ban can last hours, because ban duration for too many warnings is calculated by taking the whole duration of the warnings divided by 30, which would mean in this case 6 days divided by 30 = almost 5 hours only for the first two warnings...

I hope I've been clear... anyway this is not exhaustive, it just gives the general behavior of teamkilling management system as I think it works from the source code point of view...

[SvaRoX]

Now I can give my 2 cents advices about teamkilling

Of course I'm against removing teamdamage bans, it's a great system but we have to do some to prevent abusive bans.

Maybe svarox or XTJ can make b3 plugin which could disable b3 autokick while admin is specting? Something like auto and manual mode. When we're not online or we're playing b3 does job, when we have free time we do it's job.

Humm I would say that there are only 10 cases : either moderator/admins are online, or no mod/admins are on the server
- if you TK someone who doesn't care about forgiving, as AimMe or Chinese said you can still ask an admin to remove the last warning. !wr <player> for the short version... The only problem with it is that it only removes the last warning. To clear all warning from a given player, the !wc <player> can do that, BUT only level 80 or more can use it (I'm level 60), EXCEPT if we modify this minimum level (plugin_admin.xml:commands/warnclear-wc) to allow moderators and admins to use it. I think it's the best solution. But if you still get banned, for example because admins were too focus on their frags when you asked them to clear your warnings , it goes to the second case.
- if no mod nor admins are online or if you get banned, remember there are still solutions, don't connect yet to another server . Of course you can post like you did, but it can take some time. You can try mumble where you could find admins (murmurinfo.php). You can also try IRC (server: quakenet, channel: #dswp) to find admins. I already unban some players because they came on IRC to ask me to do so.

point is, you simply have to improve your gameplay and prevent such situations to happen.
its not the ban that is bad, its your teamplay.

You are right when you talk about improving gameplay, but sometimes it's really not your fault... for example, havoc came several times on irc to ask me to unban him, and he told me that the main cause of the bans is lags or packet loss (ok I know you know a lot about that, I don't know if you TK a more when you got packetloss...)

i get kicked, too, if i do several (like 3 or 4) tk's in a map. not by the server bot, but because of urt itself, which is not affected by admin status settings.

Maybe because of the server-side variable g_maxteamkills, I don't know what is its value on the tdm server (default value is 3 on my urt version).

About the kills/TK ratio, it's not a bad idea, but you would need to modify the b3 core files to code that, which IMHO should be avoided (think about updates). I think there is a less complicated solution : give people who ask for it a slightly greater user level, with smaller damage multipliers (see the table in my previous post). In fact this level already exists in b3 but is not used on the server. We just would have to tweak 1 or 2 file to get it work (and of course modify the status of the player in the DB, that's another story...).

Oh wait, I just found the ultimate solution... set g_friendlyFire "0" o/

[wurst]

thx svarox.
i didnt have any bigger understanding on how it works.

when i read that now: decreasing it to 30 min could prevent the most.
we just cant simply switch it off, u wont believe in what this server turns in after...

<set name="warnclear-wc">40</set> is set, bot need a restart for that.
i dont think that warnclear is such an evil thing, i think we can give it to the mods.

[SteveMcqueen]

You are right when you talk about improving gameplay, but sometimes it's really not your fault... for example, havoc came several times on irc to ask me to unban him, and he told me that the main cause of the bans is lags or packet loss (ok I know you know a lot about that, I don't know if you TK a more when you got packetloss...)
...
Oh wait, I just found the ultimate solution... set g_friendlyFire "0" o/

packetloss? dont over-use nades then... with some watching out you should not teamkill at all with the other weapons.
you are more likely to teamkill, but it is not sure that you will just because your conn sux. yeah i know damn much how it feels like. and if your conn is too bad, just get it that you should not play then, for the sake of your mates. or just stick to healing them then, at least that is what i do then.

ff 0 is not an option... else you would have 32 conan-the-barbarians on the server in no time.
ff REALLY is needed to keep the server (more specifically the players using it) on a higher level.

else it would just be another úrt tdm server, and we all wanna be special, dont we?

also this could help:
change the bot, so that spamming mutes you after 3 or 4 alerts (but alerting dont adds to warnings for tempban)
but just for spam, because the bot cannot tell the difference between someone swearing and someone insulting others...

[SvaRoX]

Hehe I was joking about no FF of course =)

when i read that now: decreasing it to 30 min could prevent the most.
we just cant simply switch it off, u wont believe in what this server turns in after...

<set name="warnclear-wc">40</set> is set, bot need a restart for that.
i dont think that warnclear is such an evil thing, i think we can give it to the mods.

It's the 1h TK warning duration you want to decrease to 30 min ?
Cool for the warnclear level, I will try to !wc people I know not to be teamkillers...

change the bot, so that spamming mutes you after 3 or 4 alerts (but alerting dont adds to warnings for tempban)
but just for spam, because the bot cannot tell the difference between someone swearing and someone insulting others...

Nice idea, I will look into the b3 files to see if we can modify that without touching core b3 files, think it's possible since most is done by the censor plugin.

[natirips]

You are right when you talk about improving gameplay, but sometimes it's really not your fault... for example, havoc came several times on irc to ask me to unban him, and he told me that the main cause of the bans is lags or packet loss (ok I know you know a lot about that, I don't know if you TK a more when you got packetloss...)
...
Oh wait, I just found the ultimate solution... set g_friendlyFire "0" o/

packetloss? dont over-use nades then... with some watching out you should not teamkill at all with the other weapons.
you are more likely to teamkill, but it is not sure that you will just because your conn sux. yeah i know damn much how it feels like. and if your conn is too bad, just get it that you should not play then, for the sake of your mates. or just stick to healing them then, at least that is what i do then.

I know I used to have a bunch of TKs before while I was on WLAN (I'm on LAN now, since I bought a switch I'm sharing the cable with AimMe) because of retarded drivers (you run around for like 5-6 secs perfectly, then there's a cca. 2 sec total C.I. and you even don't know if you're still shooting or not and where your going on the server).

Another case: if your internet connection is shared (mine at home is shared among 5 computers all the time, sometimes more) it's all fine most of the time, but then someone starts uploading something and you get horrible lag unexpectedly.

The point? If someone has an urge to code something, maybe count teamdamage less while the players is experiencing a connection interrupt?

[SKracht]

Hmmmm in CoD4, Damage done to your Teamplayers is reflected to you, that would be quite a good solution *imho*.
Teamkillers cannot kill anyone than themself, however you have to be pretty carefull cause instead of your teammember you blow yourself.

But that's not just done by a config-setting or just a hand of code eh?

Just another thought on this topic.