about the TTT karma code

[ursus]

so, as it stands, when you damage someone in TTT the game lowers your karma by a set ratio to the damage and number of hits, and the damage multiplier takes effect on the next round

the problem with this is:

When you kill without hard evidence, on a whim or suspicion, you not not just risking your own karma.  The victim may retaliate and kill you first, losing their karma in the process.

This is how we fix it.

Change the code so that, when you damage a teammate, your karma momentarily drops to 0. Using an exponential function, your karma will slowly return to its natural value (what will show at the end of the round) with a decay factor based on

1. how much damage you've done to the teammate, total
2. how many damage instances you've caused

This is so that the more you shoot your teammate and the more you damage them, the longer a time they can kill you with almost no penalty. With the decay function in place, you wouldn't be able to retaliate against an accidental crowbar 10 minutes after it happened and expect to lose no karma. This would help eliminate any form of t-baiting that involves actually damaging your teammates, and encourage innocents to defend themselves with more certainty. It's extremely frustrating to get shot and hesitate to shoot back because you could lose karma if the person killing you is just RDMing or plain wrong.

Let me put it this way. As it stands, this is how a scenario could play out:

• Innocent A shoots Innocent B for 20 damage.
• B immediately shoots back and hits A for 100 damage, killing them.
• B's karma is reduced from 1000 to 750. A's karma is reduced from 1000 to 950.

This is obviously unfair. I want to make it this way:

• Innocent A shoots Innocent B for 20 damage.
• B shoots A immediately for 100 damage, killing them.
• Since B retaliated quickly, they suffer a negligible karma loss. A, however, suffers normal loss for their damage because they fired the first shot.

I can't think of any reason this wouldn't work. It would obviously take some tweaking to make sure innocents don't kill anyone who damages them on accident and that traitors still have a margin for error, but I think it would be a heavy improvement. The karma system has always been too simple.

[Deathie]

The game already does this to a minor degree.

Reducing your karma to 0 temporarily is a horrible way to do this though.

If you just want something so that "this guy started shooting me, but I was too afraid to shoot back" doesn't happen, it'd be really easy to append one line of code so that it doesn't penalize you nearly as harshly for shooting back at someone who shot you first.

[ursus]

The game already does this to a minor degree.

Reducing your karma to 0 temporarily is a horrible way to do this though.

If you just want something so that "this guy started shooting me, but I was too afraid to shoot back" doesn't happen, it'd be really easy to append one line of code so that it doesn't penalize you nearly as harshly for shooting back at someone who shot you first.

I just assumed that must have been super difficult because I've literally been suggesting it since 2010 and it still hasn't happened.

[Monorail Cat]

If you just want something so that "this guy started shooting me, but I was too afraid to shoot back" doesn't happen, it'd be really easy to append one line of code so that it doesn't penalize you nearly as harshly for shooting back at someone who shot you first.

Yes please. 

[Deathie]

Yes please. 

Add a poll and lets see what people think.

It's literally just two lines of code, and wouldn't take much effort. It'd just be a major gameplay change and basically turns anyone who damages another player into a free target.

I don't want to confuse people or upset people. We could also have a dry run for a day and see how it goes too.

[ursus]

don

[Monorail Cat]

It'd just be a major gameplay change and basically turns anyone who damages another player into a free target.

I completely understand, and I think this is why it's not been implemented yet.  However, the chances of getting accidentally shot by someone are lower than someone shooting you, thinking you're the traitor, and you killing another innocent in return.  The latter happens very often, and it's pretty annoying.

[Deathie]

Here's how it would work.

Innocent A shoots innocent B.
Innocent A is flagged as a jerk for a set period of time.
If innocent B (or any other innocent) shoots Innocent A, the karma penalty is drastically reduced and scaled based on how long ago they opened fire.
If Innocent A continues to fire, their timer is reset for the same amount of time.

Here's a practical example, if we set the cooldown to 10 seconds.

I shoot Ursus, who is also innocent. We both have 1000 karma.
He turns around and instantly kills me within one second of me shooting him.
His karma is only penalized under the assumption I had 0-100 karma.

Let's change this around to him killing me, say, 5 seconds after I first shot him.
His karma is only penalized under the assumption I had ~500 karma.

If Ursus waits 15 seconds to kill me, he would be penalized for my full 1000 karma.

10 seconds is an arbitrary number. It can be set to 5 seconds, which might be better imo.

[Shawn]

Wait i thought the game already did this.... where you take less karma damage for shooting someone that shot you first....

[ursus]

Wait i thought the game already did this.... where you take less karma damage for shooting someone that shot you first....

they lose a little bit of karma for doing damage to you but otherwise no, a lot of the time I'll get shot out of nowhere by an inno and I shoot back and kill them and lose more karma than they did which is the point of this thread

[Deathie]

Deathie hurt Dill and is now flagged! CT:156.06

ServerLog: 00:44.06 - DMG:       Dill [innocent] damaged Deathie [innocent] for 15 dmg
CURTIME: 157.75, VICTIME: 161.06
Normal karma: 984, Modified Karma: 334

Tested it, and it works totally as intended. Since the vote seems pretty in favor of it, i'll be adding this along with the modified loot glows.

If anyone takes issue with this, do leave a post here with your opinion. I'm hesitant about adding it myself, but we can see how it goes.