Vaultf4 Payload

Bock

Noob
Hello everyone - some people may remember me some might not but I am very interested in the payload server that is going live after the 9th. I've talked to lavaRed and would like to discuss and find out more about the payload server. I have many friends from the old FFN who are anxious about getting their good old server back up VF4 style. One of the things that really brought people to ffn was not only the community but the excellent map rotation.

Large payload servers (30+) are the most popular servers in tf2 right now and would love to see what you guys at VF4 have in mind ?

I look forward to your responds :)

Cheers
 
yeah!

We need the excellent rotation back. we can take care of bringing the people back. need dat payload!
 
Oh yes yes, I'm getting sick of Dustbowl being our only reliably populated server, and am missing the custom payload maps something fierce.
 
Payload is coming back when the Halloween event servers are taken down. So I imagine soon as in within the next few days.

Vintage will have to respond more in depth though as he would be managing that project.
 
Yup, PL will be back shortly. I believe there is a TF2 update incoming shortly, after that I'll restore the map rotation and UMC, and you guys should be all set.

Player count is something we'll have to explore though. What I'd like to do is start at 24, then when I get a confirmation it works properly, I'll try bumping it up in steps. What I'm hoping is we can find a sweet spot greater than 24 players where we can still play without the netcode shitting itself and making everyone lag that seems to be an issue with 32 man servers. Though maybe it's been fixed since the MVM update needs 32 player slots.

Does that sound like a plan?
 
Yeah that sounds like a good plan.

Will you be starting out with stock only maps? or have a custom map included here and there. I know a lot of custom maps gear towards high player count. Plus some popular custom maps attract more people than maps such as badwater and goldrush so a mix would be a good idea in my opinion.

Also would you have a nominate and voting system that would happen at the end of the first round (of 2 assuming)? or set rotations. I'm fine with either and I think that a set rotation as long as it's tweaked every month would be good to start the server off till maybe more maps be added.

A huge attraction for the old FFN crew was alltalk and I'm assuming after being on some of the other servers that alltalk would be on there as well as soundclips.

And please no reserved slots - I believe that was a huge drive for a lot of FFN regs

I know I make a lot of connections with FFN mainly because of mine (and many others) miss of the payload server and all that it stood for. I am very excited to see vintage as the main administrator of VF4 and look forward to the future!
 
I can start out with whatever maps you want. Right now it's running the same rotation as it was before it was shut down at FFN.

There is map voting enabled, that's what UMC is for :)

And yes, all our servers are alltalk and setup that they work with hldj.

Reserved slots is something we NEVER have on our servers. The only exception is if we get enough supporters that there is demand for a "supporters only" server, at which point that, and ONLY that, server would use the reserved slot system.

I'm glad to see you guys back, I know you got burned when everything turned sour at FFN and the servers were abandoned.

Lastly, if there are issues, PLEASE tell me. I can't fix stuff if I don't know it's broken, and much as I'd like to be, I'm also not omnipresent, though it may seem that way at times.
 
This is also a message for anyone from the old FFN Payload that was banned for non-hacking reasons. With the rebrand, we are more than willing to give second chances - please post in the Ban Contesting section and mention this, and we will revisit/alter your ban as appropriate.
 
Great! I see that it just went up and I got some people together and some random people joined (~10)... Here are some issues that struck me

The round win and time limit are about 60mins/150wins and it only lets you rtv to change
The autobalance seems to favor blue for some reason, 2 more players got stacked on one side
Red respawn seems to be a bit long - like 8 secs - usually 4-5 secs is standard from what i've seen

Could you set a rotation - a random rotation? and maybe add woodlands!?
 
Whoops, sorry about that, the timelimit snuck under the radar. it was set to that b/c of the halloween map. I've set it to 20 minutes.

Winlimit is a PITA for payload maps because of the way some maps count a checkpoint as a win, and it's even more of a headache to set a unique winlimit/maxrounds for each map. Would you be okay with just having a 20 minute time limit per map for unlimited rounds?

Respawns are not modified from the defaults, it's vanilla. If I change them, it will affect quickplay traffic, which is where the additional players came from when you were in.

Random rotation? I can do that, if you don't want a map vote option.

I've added woodlands.
 
Great! I see how that can be a complete headache! I did not realize that captured points on payload were counted like that. I think a random rotation would be good for now and maybe a voting option as the server gets more populated. More population on the server should lead to more maintenance and I would gladly help out in any means even though I'm not too savvy with coding.
 
The problem is, if we do a 20 minute time limit wouldn't that mean there's a good chance of the map only playing through one time, instead of teams swapping at round end?
 
depends how long the map is. Would 30 minutes be better?
 
Yeah and some maps like goldrush and woodlands have multiple levels for each side to go across which could take forever. Like I've said if you need help counting or whatever I wouldn't mind doing that and I'll even provide a code for it if you give me a template.

I know it had some lag issues and I dont know if you did anything different with the providers but there is pl_wintertown which is appropriate for the season!

Also another map that could draw attention is pl_pharaoh_rc1 (or 2) I'm having a tough time finding it - I dont know if you have any inside connections or recommended websites?

I've thoroughly enjoyed pl_promotion - It's a good 2 stage server
http://forums.tf2maps.net/downloads.php?do=file&id=4776

so many requests! Sorry!!
 
I think I remember pharaoh, and that it didn't really go over too well. Think the second and last points were next to impossible to attack.
 
If you're willing to count what would be good values for mp_timlimit, mp_winlimit and mp_maxrounds for each payload map, I'm more than happy to put them in for you. UMC is at least able to have map-specific configs in its rotation file, which means I don't have to go creating a .cfg for each map.
The problem isn't so much that payload maps count checkpoints as wins, it's that some maps do, and some maps do not. So for two different maps with 5 checkpoints, you might need to set either a winlimit of 10 on one for two rounds, and 2 on the other.

We have quite an archive of maps we've amassed over the years, http://timeforfun.net/tf2maps/maps/ is our fastDL server which probably has everything we've ever run. pl_promotion is in there somewhere, I believe, as well as pharaoh.

I hope to get around to dealing with random nextmap at some point today.

Actually Bock, if you're interested in becoming a Rotation manager for Payload, we are looking for someone to keep the map cycle file fresh. You're welcome to either PM me for more info or go drop an application in the Community applications section - just follow the admin application guidelines and say you're interested in becoming a Payload RM. I'm sure we'd love to have you on board. This would let you handle the map cycling and time setup without having to go through me.
 
Payload count me in! I will sound the drums of War for payload!! :D Also let some of the old regs know their E-Wife is alive and kicking once more!!!
 

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