Saturday, August 06, 2022

Proposal: Welcome to the Little Leagues!

Timed out and failed, 1-2. Josh

Adminned at 08 Aug 2022 08:22:24 UTC

Add a new subrule to the rule Bot Loadout titled “Little Leagues”:

If they do not already have one, an Operator may purchase a Mini Bot by paying ₩1,000 and gaining a Mini Bot.

In the rule titled “Bot Loadout”, reword the second line and the four bullet points below it to the following:

Each Operator possesses exactly one Bot, whose characteristics are publicly tracked. In addition, each Operator may have up to one Mini Bot, although each Operator defaults to not having a Mini Bot.

The characteristics that each Bot and Mini Bot must have are as follows:
* A name, which may be freely selected by the Bot’s Operator, must be different than each other Bot’s and Mini Bot’s name and is flavour text
* An Engine, which is by default a Petrol motor for Bots and an Electric motor for for Mini Bots
* A Chassis, which is by default an Apex Systems X1500 for Bots and a Frictionless Inquisitor for Mini Bots
* An ordered list of Systems, of which a single Bot may have between none and a number equal to the number of hardpoints on the Bot’s Chassis, defaulting into none

Mini Bots must also have the following Characteristics, and a Mini Bot is considered to be Defunct if any of these Characteristics are not true of it:
* The Chassis may not have a cost exceeding ₩3,350
* The Engine may not have a cost exceeding ₩4,000
* The Systems used may not exceed a total value of ₩2,000

Move the last sentence of the subrule “The Arena” to the end of the rule “BotScript”, prior to the first subrule, and reword it to the following:

Relative to each Bot’s and Mini Bot’s Script, the Bot or Mini Bot who is performing the Script may be referred to as the Actor, and any other Bot or Mini Bot participating in a Bout with the Actor may be referred to as an Opponent.

In the subrule titled “Engines”, change the first line to the following:

A Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Engine has the following characteristics: a fuel type (which also acts as its name), a one-off cost, and a power output. The characteristics of each type of engine can be found below.

In the subrule titled “Engines”, change the text reading:

At any time as an atomic action, an Operator whose Readiness is Workshop may:
* Either increase their money by the effective one-off cost of their engine or add their engine and its condition to their Spare Parts Bin.
* Replace the Engine of their Bot with another of any Condition by paying the Effective One-off Cost of the new Engine. If the new Engine is present in their Spare Parts Bin, they may instead remove it from their Spare Parts Bin.

To the following:

At any time as an atomic action, an Operator whose Readiness is Workshop for either their Bot or Mini Bot may do the following for the corresponding Bot or Mini Bot:
* Either increase their money by the effective one-off cost of their Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Engine and then remove it, or add their Bot’s or Mini-Bot’s engine and its condition to their Spare Parts Bin.
* Either set the Engine of the previously referred to Bot or Mini Bot with another engine of any Condition by paying the Effective One-off Cost of the new Engine, or set the previously referred to Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Engine to one matching an Engine in their Spare Parts Bin and then remove that Engine from their Spare Parts Bin.

In the subrule titled “Chassises”, change the first line to the following:

A Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Chassis has the following characteristics: a model (which also acts as its name), a cost, a number of hardpoints, and a consumption. The characteristics of each type of chassis can be found below.

In the subrule titled “Chassises”, change the text reading

At any time as an atomic action, an Operator whose Readiness is Workshop may:
* Either increase their money by the effective one-off cost of their Chassis or add their Chassis and its condition to their Spare Parts Bin.
* Replace the Chassis of their Bot with another of any Condition by paying the Effective One-off Cost of the new Chassis. If the new Chassis is present in their Spare Parts Bin, they may instead choose to remove it from their Spare Parts Bin rather than paying the Effective One-off Cost.

To the following:

At any time as an atomic action, an Operator whose Readiness is Workshop for either their Bot or Mini Bot may do the following for the corresponding Bot or MIni Bot:
* Either increase their money by the effective one-off cost of their Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Chassis and then remove it, or add their Bot’s or Mini Bot’s engine and its condition to their Spare Parts Bin.
* Either set the Chassis of the previously chosen Bot or Mini Bot with another Chassis of any Condition by paying the Effective One-off Cost of the new Chassis, or set the previously referred to Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Chassis to one matching an Chassis in their Spare Parts Bin and then remove that Chassis from their Spare Parts Bin.

If the subrule titled “Systems”, change the first line to the following:

A Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Systems can each have the following characteristics: a name, a cost, a consumption, and an effect. The characteristics of each type of System can be found below.

In the subrule titled “Systems”, change the text reading:

At any time, an Operator whose Readiness is Workshop may add a System of a desired Condition to their Bot by spending its Effective Cost or removing that system from their Spare Parts Bin as long as that system is present in their Spare Parts Bin at that condition. An Operator whose Readiness is not Set may remove a System from their Bot at any time by either increasing their money by 50% of the Effective Cost of the system being removed or adding that system at the appropriate condition to their Spare Parts Bin.
The list of a Bot’s Systems represent the mounted positions of those systems, listed from front to back. When a System Effect refers to the Exposed System of a Bot, it means its frontmost System (if the Bot is facing the Bot using the Effect) or its rearmost System (if it is not). While a Bot is Flipped, none of its Systems are Exposed.
While a System has a Condition of 0%, then its Effect is considered to be “No effect.”, and it is skipped when determining the frontmost or rearmost System of a Bot.
If a System effect is preceded by “Passive:”, then it has no effect when used, and instead applies to a Bot with that System at all times.

To the following:

At any time, an Operator whose Readiness is Workshop for either their Bot or Mini Bot may add a System of a desired Condition to the Corresponding Bot or Mini Bot by spending its Effective Cost or removing that system from their Spare Parts Bin, as long as that system is present in their Spare Parts Bin at that condition. An Operator whose Readiness is not Set for either their Bot or Mini Bot may remove a System from the Bot corresponding Bot or Mini at any time by either increasing their money by 50% of the Effective Cost of the system being removed, or adding that system at the appropriate condition to their Spare Parts Bin.
The list of a Bot’s and Mini Bot’s Systems represent the mounted positions of those systems, listed from front to back. When a System Effect refers to the Exposed System of a Bot or Mini Bot, it means its frontmost System (if the Bot or Mini Bot is facing the Bot or Mini Bot using the Effect) or its rearmost System (if it is not). While a Bot or Mini Bot is Flipped, none of its Systems are Exposed.
While a System has a Condition of 0%, then its Effect is considered to be “No effect.”, and it is skipped when determining the frontmost or rearmost System of a Bot and Mini Bot.
If a System effect is preceded by “Passive:”, then it has no effect when used, and instead applies to Bots and Mini Bots with that System at all times.

In the subrule “Systems”, for each System with the word “bot” in its effect that is not part of another word, change that word to “Bot or Mini Bot”.

Reword the text of the subrule titled “Repair Wrench” to the following:

As an atomic action, when their readiness is set to workshop, an operator may:
* Set the condition of any part on their Bot, Mini Bot or in their spare parts bin to any condition higher than it previously was
* Decrease their money by the formula: ((new effective cost of the part) - (previous effective cost of the part)) * 1.25

Throughout the subrules “Scratch Damage” and “Statuses”, change each instance of the word “bot” that is not part of another word to “Bot or Mini Bot”, and change each instance of the word ‘bots” that is not part of another word to “Bots or Mini Bots”.

Change the first two paragraphs of the rule “BotScript” to the following:

Each Bot and Mini Bot has a Script, being a list of up to ten Triggers, each Trigger having a corresponding Reaction. Up to two Triggers may also be optionally combined into a single Trigger. This is formatted as “A and B”, where A is the first Trigger being combined and B is the second one. Combined triggers are accompanied by a single Reaction as normal. Bots’ and Mini Bots’ Scripts are tracked privately by the Announcer.
An Operator may change their Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Script at any time by privately informing the Announcer of this.

Throughout the list of possible Triggers and Reactions in the rule “BotScript”, change each instance of the word “Bot” that is not part of another word to the following: “[Bot/Mini Bot]”

Beginning with the part or the rule “BotScript” reading “To run a Script” and continuing through to the end of the second to last paragraph of the rule (not counting the subrules), change each instance of the word “bot” that is not part of another word to “Bot or Mini Bot”.

In the rule “Income”, change the word “bot” to “Bot and Mini Bot, up to the maximum value of 100%”.

Change the effect of the System known as “LED Banner” to the following:

Displays the name of every distinct Operator that this Bot has defeated in a Bout while using this System; these names are publicly tracked. If the Operator of this Bot also owns a Mini Bot, they may also include up to two names of Operators that that Mini Bot has defeated. Has no other effect.

Change the text of the rule “Bouts” to the following, without changing the subrules of that rule:

Operators pit their Bots and Mini Bots against each other in Bouts. At any time, each Bot and Mini Bot may be engaged in at most one Bout. The number of bouts each Bot and Mini Bot has been engaged in is publicly tracked, and includes announced bouts that include the bot that are yet to be resolved. This publicly tracked value may be referred to as the Bout Count.
Bots and Mini Bots have a Readiness, which is publicly tracked and may be either Workshop, Ready, Staging, or Set, and which defaults to Workshop.
* When a Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Readiness is Workshop it is not Trashed, the Operator of that Bot or Mini Bot may set the Readiness of that Bot or Mini Bot to Ready at any time
* When a Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Readiness is Ready and they are named in an Announcement Post then the Announcer should set their Readiness to Staging
* When a Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Readiness is Staging, the Operator of that Bot or Mini Bot may set the Readiness of that Bot or Mini Bot to Set at any time.
* When a Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Readiness is Set and they are participating in a Bout then the Announcer should set their Readiness to Workshop
Changes to any of a Bot’s or Mini Bot’s physical hardware components by that Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Operator (i.e. anything defined in the rule Bot Loadout) may only be made when the Corresponding Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Readiness is Workshop. Changes to a Bot’s or Mini Bot’s software by that Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Operator (i.e. anything defined in the rule BotScript) can only be made when the Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Readiness is Workshop, Ready or Staging.
If, at any point during a Bout, one of the participating Bots or Mini Bots has had their Readiness set to Set for the last 48 hours and the other has not changed their Readiness from Staging since the Announcement Post for that Bout, then the Bot or Mini Bot whose Readiness is Staging forfeits the match and the other Bot or Mini Bot is the Winner for that Bout.
Mini Bouts are a special type of Bout, which is still treated as a Bout for the purposes of anything that refers to a Bout, with the exception that there are always 0 Configuration Variations.
As a Daily Action, the Announcer may Announce any number of upcoming Bouts and Mini Bouts, by randomly selecting two Bots using the Selection Criteria for Bouts in this rule for each Bout, selectings two Mini Bots using the Selections Criteria for Mini Bouts in this rule and making a post Announcing their names.
The Selection Criteria for selecting Bots to engage in a Bout is:
* If a Bot has a higher Bout Count than any other Bot, they may not be selected by the Announcer, except if there are no other available Bots to select.
* If a Bot has a Readiness that is not Ready, it may not be selected by the Announcer.
* The random selection of eligible Operators is weighted towards Bots with a smaller Bout Count - for each eligible Bot, subtract the current Bout Count for that Bot from the highest Bout Count of all eligible Bots then add 1 to get the weighting that the random selection will use.
The Selection Criteria for selecting Mini Bots to engage in a Mini Bout is:
* If a Mini Bot has a higher Bout Count than any other Mini Bot, they may not be selected by the Announcer, except if there are no other available Mini Bots to select.
* If a Mini Bot has a Readiness that is not Ready, it may not be selected by the Announcer.
* The random selection of eligible Operators is weighted towards MIni Bots with a smaller Bout Count - for each eligible Mini Bot, subtract the current Bout Count for that MIni Bot from the highest Bout Count of all eligible Mini Bots then add 1 to get the weighting that the random selection will use.
Whenever the Announcer is required to randomly generate an outcome as part of administering a Bout they may do so privately.


Throughout the subrules “When Push Comes to Shove”, “Evasion”, “The Arena”, and “Ending a Bout”, do the following:
For each instance of the word “bot” that is not part of another word, change it to be “Bot or Mini Bot”
For each instance of the word “bots” that is not part of another word, change it to be “Bots or Mini Bots” with the exception of the last instance of the word “bots”
For each instance of the word “bot’s” that is not part of another word, change it to be “Bot’s or Mini Bot’s”

Change the last paragraph of the subrule Ending a Bout to the Following:

When a Bout has Ended, the Announcer posts an entry to the blog summarising the events of the Bout and its Winner. All Operators who had Bots in the Bout gain ₩1,000, plus ₩500 for each Opponent. Likewise, all Operators who had Mini Bots in the Bout gain ₩750 plus ₩250 for each Opponent. When these values are awarded, the Readiness of all Operators to have participated in that Bout are set to Workshop if they are not already at that value. Once this summary post has been posted, that Bout is considered to be fully concluded and may have no further impact on the gamestate.

If https://blognomic.com/archive/tattlebots passed, reword the subrule “Secret Loadouts” to the following:

If a Bot or Mini Bot’s Readiness is Ready, and it has no Systems, then that Bot or Mini Bot is considered to have a Secret Loadout. A Secret Loadout is an ordered list of Systems that matches a subset of the Systems in that Operator’s Spare Parts Bin, and which must obey the same rules as if that list of Systems were the ones applied the Bot or Mini Bot; a Secret Loadout defaults to an empty list. While a Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Readiness is Ready, the Operator of that Bot may change their Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Secret Loadout at any time by privately informing the Announcer of this.

When the Announcer has been informed of a Secret Loadout by a given Operator, they must—immediately prior to changing that Operator’s Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Readiness to Staging—perform an atomic action called Kitting Out as follows:
* Removing the set of Systems matching the Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Secret Loadout from that Bot’s or Mini Bot’s Operator’s Spare Parts Bin
* Setting the Systems of the Bot or Mini Bot to match their Secret Loadout, in the specified order, with the same Conditions they had while in the Spare Parts Bin

This took a long time. If this infringes on Fair Play under spam, I’ll withdraw this, but as Fair Play says that spam is subjective and the concept this proposal introduces really needs this much text, I’d appreciate it if y’all deemed this NOT a fair play violation. Aside from that: TLDR; This proposal introduces Mini Bots, which piggy back off of most of the existing rules with some exceptions. They are intended to be a small scale supplemental to pick up the pace of the game a bit, while maintaining the current schedule. Most of the text introduced in this proposal is incorporating Mini Bots into the preexisting ruleset. If anyone has minor quibbles about the design after the edit window please consider introducing changes via proposal/cfj (as required), as this took a LOT of time. If this passes, I apologize to whichever admin ends up enacting this. If nobody else wants to enact this, just wait for me to notice the result (or ping me on discord) and I’ll get it myself.

Comments

Josh: Observer he/they

06-08-2022 07:54:34 UTC

I acknowledge the work that went into this, but I’ll be honest: having read through all this I’m still not clear on *why* we’d want Mini Bots, what gameplay it opens up or facilitates. The thing that it seems to open up is low value-cap battles, but that can be done with much less ruleset verbiage, I think

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

06-08-2022 13:51:20 UTC

I should add that it allows adding up to 2 player names that your mini bot to your LED Banner, which I accidentally left out of the TLDR when I posted this because I was so tired at that point. That can speed up the endgame a bit, since currently it sends to be on a rather slow timer. It also introduces more to do for anyone that wishes to do so. If this fails and someone else can think of a way to do this in less words, I’ll probably vote for their proposal. In addition, another thing i left out of the tldr is grammer updates to a handful of things that actually didn’t make a lot of sense when looked at closely.

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

06-08-2022 13:51:45 UTC

Plus mini Bots are fun by default :)

SingularByte: he/him

06-08-2022 19:55:35 UTC

I respect the amount of effort that went in, but I’m not really seeing the benefit of having a second set of bots.  against

Josh: Observer he/they

06-08-2022 20:18:04 UTC

imperial

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

06-08-2022 21:07:37 UTC

My initial thinking for this proposal was that since many operators are building up cash, instead of adding increasingly expensive components I could add a second, smaller set of Bots instead, which could supplement the list of names in LED baskets for anyone that had those.

Josh: Observer he/they

06-08-2022 21:09:39 UTC

A cash-sponge is an interesting idea. I do wonder if it bakes in the advantage of having loads of cash, though. A bit rich-gets-richer, you know what I mean?

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

06-08-2022 21:31:19 UTC

I was slightly worried about that, but the actual effect on ending the game is limited to 2 names on the banner, and they still have to be distinct from the other ones.