RA2 CHALLENGE THREAD - RULES

[Sage]

Welcome to the RA2 Challenge thread! Here you are given the chance to take on the building skills of other members in order to boost your Challenge Points (CP).


Let's go over the rules:

• The procedure must be followed to the 'T'. It is there to keep this place running smoothly so take it seriously.
• A maximum of four contestants and a minimum of two contestants per match. This is due to bot number contraints of the vanilla RA2 game executable. This means no round-robins, joint-contestant tag-teams or any other work-arounds.
• All contestants have one week or less to submit their entries to the host.
  • Extensions will not be made.
  • Cancellations will be reviewed by a case-by-case basis to determine of which (if any) contestants are at fault and should receive a disqualification penalty (below).
  • Contestants should be let known in the thread when they have submitted to the host. This acts as evidence if the battle moves to a disqualified state.
  • If any of the contestants have not submitted their bots within seven days of the battle thread creation date, then the battle is deemed to be in a disqualified state.
  • In a disqualified state, a moderator shall review the thread for evidence as to which contestants are responsible – by not sending their bot(s) to the host – for the disqualified state. This will reflect in point penalties (discussed further below).
• The challenger decides the type of contest and decides whether it be a community vote (like BOTM) or a battle. A neutral third party must host the challenge.
• If a community vote is chosen, it is just a picture of the bot, nothing more. This is not who can make a better splash or skin a bot better,  it's who can build the cooler or better or more interesting bot  (depending on the challenge). Community votes will take place in a separate thread and voting will last three days.
• A person may participate in a maximum of three challenges at any one time. You must wait to challenge someone who is already used up their quota of challenges until after it is completed.
• Bots should be AIed by yourself. If not, the host may AI at their own discretion, but no responsibility or blame can be given to the host if a competitor loses because of host's AI.
• Remember to create a poll instead of a general topic for voting challenges.
• Hosts have one week after the submission period to post the results (as pictures or video) before a poll is started instead.

Challenge Points system:

• CP will be recorded on the leaderboard. Viewing of the leaderboard and discussion is in its own dedicated thread found here.
• The competitor that wins a match gain 1CP.
• Competitors that lose a match lose 1CP.
• For disqualified battles, the competitor(s) responsible for the disqualification or who have been given a disqualification penalty lose 1CP. The other competitor(s) not withheld in the previous filter criteria do not have a delta on their CP for the match.

Procedure/Steps (Follow it!)

• To start a challenge, the challenger sends a PM with the proposed rules to the person that challenger wants to challenge. At that time, the challenged may choose to submit a modified rule set to the challenger (instead of accepting or declining). This back and forth communication may continue until both contestants agree to the terms. All of this should take place via PM or anything else that can't be seen by other members.
• If you require a host, the challenger must PM one and get it approved by the host before moving on to step 3.
• The challenger should start the challenge thread with all the rules and the host's name (if applicable). The thread name should follow the format "ContestantA vs ContestantB".
• After the challenge thread is started, the .bot file (and if a battle, the AI) for each contestant must be PMed to the host withion seven days. Failure to meet all requirements will result in the disqualification procedure as outlined above. The thread will then be renamed according to the standardised format (discussed below).
• If a community vote was chosen as the match type, the poll should be started by the last person to post a bot and should end in up to three days.
• If a battle was chosen as the match type, he/she should post confirmation as he/she receives entries. Entries should not be accepted if the submission period has passed (so get them in early to ensure that he/she has time to post confirmation before the deadline). If the results are not posted within a week of the submission period's end, the contest type will be automatically changed to a community vote (started by the challenger).
• After the results have been determined and the thread deemed inactive (up to criteria of a moderator), a moderator will label the thread as such using the standardised format (discussed below).

Here's a general outline for a challenge:
(NOTE: Game version and bot weight MUST be chosen from the options given.)
Game Version: STOCK/DSL/Ironforge (IRL invalidates the challenge and the challenge will not be counted in any way)
Realistic: YES/NO
Bot weight: AW, BW, LW, MW, HW, SHW, UHW
Bot type:
Bot restrictions:
Contest type: VOTE/BATTLE


Thread standardised naming format:

Code: [Select]

ContestantA vs ContestantB[ vs ContestantC][ vs ContestantD] [\[Title\] ]({ContestantWinner Wins || DQ: {ContestantsDQed || All}})
Definitions:

• Square brackets “[]” – optional components.
• Braces “{}” – required components.
• Two pipe symbols “||” – the computation OR function.
• Contestant(A-D) – each individual contestant of the match.
• \[Title\] - the challenge title if applicable (square brackets escaped with backslash for inclusion).
• ContestantWinner – the winner of the match.
• ContestantsDQed – a list of the competitors responsible for the DQ state of the match, separated by commas and a space.
  

[Sage]

RULES HAVE BEEN UPDATED! make sure you read up on the changes.

[Naryar]

How to clarify your challenge board post so no one enters an illegal entry:

If something in your ruleset is not explicit and could be understood as something else, then make it so it can be understood

There, the golden rule. Now in detail, you must take into account all of those:

GAME MOD
Select one of : Stock (vanilla), DSL or Ironforge. If you are using an ancient version of DSL, please put it on.

WEIGHTCLASS
Simple. Select one of : AW (0-125.0), BW (125.1-175.0), LW (175.1-249.0), MW (249.1-399.0), CW (399.1-600.0), HW (600.1-800.0), SHW (800.1-1200.0), or UHW (1200.1-5000.O)

BUILDING STYLE
Select one of : Unrealistic, IRL, DSL-S, or anything goes. See the wiki for what those mean.

ARENA
Select one arena.

MATCH SPECIFICS
How much rounds do you want, and how do you win, and how long does the match last. General assumption is best 2 out of 3, and a 3 minute match. Also include havok rules

COMPONENTS ALLOWED
If you want to ban some components in the game mod you're using, please specify. Alternatively, if you are allowing custom components/cheatbot2, please put it here. If you do not say anything about banned components, assume the normal setup of components (aka no cheatbot2) is being used.

BOT TYPES ALLOWED
If you want to ban some bot types, please specify. Or even ban all bot types but a single one. General bans include SnS in Ironforge and crawlers in anything, but if you don't put a specific ban, expect someone new to enter a crawler.

BUILDING TECHNIQUES/GLITCHES ALLOWED
If you want to ban some building techniques or glitches that aren't already banned by the building style, please specify. There is a general ban on BFE and AAM, but it is not a hard ban and people may misunderstand.

(Optional) GIMMICKS
Other rules. Examples may include no wedges (static and component wedges both !), all bots must have a flamethrower, bots must be skinned/named after a specific theme, etc.

There, everything is in there.

THE STANDARD TOURNAMENT RULE

For simplicity, and considering all challenge rulesets are pretty similar, we'll use the Standard Tournament Rule (STR) to simplify rulesets.

Standard tournament rule is exactly that : what is used in most tournaments.

-No cheatbot2 parts or custom components
-No BFE, AAM, hax mode or bots that rely on an unrealistic glitch to work (rupting, trinity, nasty pickle), no custom armor unless it is cosmetic only
-3 minute matches
-Havok restarts are 1 per bot and per match, above that the bot will havok forfeit
-Fights are best 2 out of 3
-No crawlers
-Combat Arena, hazards off just kidding on that last one.

[yugitom]

I suggest, for the assumptions part that, when using any arena, hazards will be on if the op has not stated otherwise. Some other assumptions that must be addressed:
Mulitbots are banned
Matches will be judged by the in-game points system

I also think that it should be addressed that rules are never to be included in the thread title. For example, if the thread title is 'R v R: IRL MATCH OF GREATNESS' but an IRL ruleset is not specified in the rules, the challenge will not be IRL.

Other than that, thank you for this thread. It'll make things easier for challenge hosts if they ever have any doubts.