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[Tartiflette]

When we can expect PPvsAi tourmanent, Tartiflette?

PPvE (or any PvE for that matter) require a huge amount of work.

 A PvP tournament requires a handfull of hours to setup and then one or two hours per round. Say 20 hours spread over a month and a half without counting the time spent watching the streams. Nice and easy.

 A PvE tournament on the other hand requires about the same time to setup but then anywhere between 15 to 30 hours of work per round (to create hundreds of ship variants and make sure every single wave is balanced against every single fleet), and that's when you don't go ludicrously overboard and add brand new ships to each round. That gives you easily 100-150 hours to spend working on the tournament over about a month (since they fortunately are shorter). Up to twice that if you really go crazy like the 6th tournament, and again, without the time spent watching the streams.

So this is a convoluted way to say, there is no way for me to organize such tournament at this time. I may setup some heavily modded PvP tournament (maybe PPPvPPP actually, with rules closer to the previous PvP tournaments mixed with the best parts of this one) in a couple months if I manage to finish the big Diable update beforehand, but that's it for the foreseeable future.

[sotanaht]

I'm not exactly sure how a "PvE" tournament works here, but "making sure every single wave is balanced against every single fleet" seems to be missing the point, if the point is to compare how player fleets perform against AI fleets.  If the AI fleets were perfectly balanced against "every single (player) fleet", then every single player fleet would perform exactly the same and there would be no point in having a tournament at all as the outcome would be pre-determined.

[Tartiflette]

 The point is to provide an actual fair challenge for every fleet, and as much as possible ensure an even spread of losses across all waves.

 If every single player fleet looses on the same wave how can you rank them? Or what if your first wave is so strong it eliminates half the players fleets, but the next few ones are too weak and suddenly the fleets that barely survived the first gain a huge score gap? Then no one in the wrong half can hope to crawl back to the top and would rather quit.

 Ensuring a good spread of scores is actually difficult because the difference between the best fleets and the worst ones can be very narrow too. Additionally, given how the AI can be unreliable the results can vary wildly, making sure to create waves that deliver at least a somewhat reliable challenge is also time consuming.

 There is also the matter of putting up a good show for the people watching those tournaments, and the more fleets that can eke out an extra point by the skin of their teeth the better.

 In any case you should watch the 6th tournament, you'll see how some very minor variations in the power of the waves can create big roadblocks.

[BulbasaurWizard]

In any case you should watch the 6th tournament, you'll see how some very minor variations in the power of the waves can create big roadblocks.

I mean even the same exact battle in the 7th tournament showed that sometimes it can be a close fight and other times a complete wash.  The minor variation thing is so real.  Tartiflette, do you use a special program or mod to make the PvE waves?  Makes me wonder if given a certain set of conditions (which mods and general rules and player deployment points) if someone like me even could give some waves a shot and help create a good starting point or even just for fun.

[Tartiflette]

I just use the tournament mission. Usally it goes like this:

- I make a rough plan of what each wave "theme" will be.

- I make a truckload of loadouts for them as well as basic wave compositions.

- Only THEN I take a look at the player fleets to see if there is a fleet that would either be uterly stomped or would completely stomp everything. I don't want to favor someone just because they were the lucky one that would perfectly counter the early waves before their fleet start to suffer.

- I run the match against most fleets to find the ouliers. Usually time accelerated.

- Then I keep runing the match again and again against the couple of strongest fleets, adjusting the waves so that they loose some ships against each ones but can somewhat reliably get to the last wave.

- Once I'm starting to get a coherent round I check against the weakest fleets to avoid them getting stomped and adjust the early waves to have a smooth ramp up of the difficulty.

- When I'm happy with the extremes, I run the round against everyone without time acceleration to make sure there is no intermediary roadblock; and there usually is, meaning adjusting and rechecking everyone. Rince and repeat.

Overall there is no magic trick except a lot of experience to anticipate the impact of every late changes so that they don't disrupt everything.

[sotanaht]

I just use the tournament mission. Usally it goes like this:

- I make a rough plan of what each wave "theme" will be.

- I make a truckload of loadouts for them as well as basic wave compositions.

- Only THEN I take a look at the player fleets to see if there is a fleet that would either be uterly stomped or would completely stomp everything. I don't want to favor someone just because they were the lucky one that would perfectly counter the early waves before their fleet start to suffer.

- I run the match against most fleets to find the ouliers. Usually time accelerated.

- Then I keep runing the match again and again against the couple of strongest fleets, adjusting the waves so that they loose some ships against each ones but can somewhat reliably get to the last wave.

- Once I'm starting to get a coherent round I check against the weakest fleets to avoid them getting stomped and adjust the early waves to have a smooth ramp up of the difficulty.

- When I'm happy with the extremes, I run the round against everyone without time acceleration to make sure there is no intermediary roadblock; and there usually is, meaning adjusting and rechecking everyone. Rince and repeat.

Overall there is no magic trick except a lot of experience to anticipate the impact of every late changes so that they don't disrupt everything.

Yeah still sounds like bias to me.  I would either set it up blind or in advance.  Hell, tell the players exactly what fleet compositions they will be up against and let them build specifically for that, then if they fail it's on them.  Still up to you to create a difficulty curve, but if someone comes up with a fleet that breaks said difficulty curve that's essentially the entire point of the tournament.

[Tartiflette]

 Well, the first "blind" run of tests before any tweaking usually go like this: Everyone dies against the same wave, more often than not the first one, or they all beat all the waves.

 The thing you vastly inderestimate is how damn hard it is to create opposing fleets blindly that have just enough power to hurt the player fleets, and it gets harder at every wave because it is even harder to gauge how much have the fleets been hurt by then. This is made even worse because the waves use ships that aren't balanced in vanilla such as the remnants or the derelicts.

 It would be like writting all the year tests for students you don't know the school year and without knowing what they are taught at all besides "stuff taught in school".