Cog structure overhaul suggestion: planetary gearing

[Wundsalz]

I've just got into the cog rules and frankly I consider the current league system quite flawed. Most of all I think it is way too static - especially for the lower tier (3). You basicly have to wait for your one shot to advance to the next league and if you fail you have to take a break for a months without any new encounters. In my opinion this significantly harms the motivation and progression of new clans/crews as there's no better training than participating in actual clan wars. At the same time I really like the aesthetics of the gears, as they just fit the steampunk theme of the GoI.
So I've put some thought into how to improve the system and came up with a solution which allows every participating clan to play every week and furthermore is highly adaptable to the communities needs: epicyclic gears!

Let me elaborate the picture above:
We've got the Champions gear in the center which is attached to a hollow gear with cogs on boths sides. There are 3 clan slots in that gear. One clan is fighting the champion, the other two clans of that "League gear" fight their challengers in the "transition gears". the other teams in transition gears encounters their challengers from the B-League. The B-League (a hollow gear with cogs on boths sides) holds 3 clans as well. 2 of those are busy fighting the clans in the transition gears. The 3rd clan has to defend its position in the cogs against a newcomer. At the end of the week all clans are repositioned into the gears according to their match outcome and all gears rotate by one segment.

As stated before this system does not only allow all clans to participate in clanwars every week, but it's also highly adaptable to the communities needs:
- A wave of new clans want to enter the cogs? - just add another space in the B-League gear and add a second newcomer gear.
- the clanscene grows? - add new slots to the League rings and add another transition wheel.
- the clanscene grows alot? - add another league ring.

[Moriarty]

I agree clans need to play every week, its hard to stay together otherwise. I don't know if this suggestion is the best way forward (it could well be) but the discussion is overdue.

[Skrimskraw]

more games for more clans I would like to see this.

but I still dont like the fact that there is a newcomers cogs where losing means you are rejected, a system which allows more cogs to be added would be awesome.

2-3 games within 3 week per team would be an ideal goal in my opinion.

[Wundsalz]

Also note the system described above works like a blender, when it comes to matchmaking. Even if all teams stood steady at the same position in the same gear, the same matches can not repeat more than once every (defender-gear-slot-count*challanger-gear-slot-count) week as long as prime numbers are used for all gears slot counts (which I strongly suggest)

[N-Sunderland]

I see a couple of issues with this:

-Having breaks can actually be nice. In the Raft's case, after losing to The Paddling we have three weeks to test out new builds and strategies while ironing out the issues that cost us the victory. In the proposed system, we wouldn't have very much time to do that. We'd immediately be fighting to hold our spot. It could hurt the diversity in Cogs builds, since teams wouldn't have enough time to practice new ones.
-6 matches a week is a lot. Last week Cogs went one for what, an hour and a half? And that was with three matches, two of which were short and one of which was long. Since all the maps would be used, we'd end up with long sniping matches every week, a Labyrinth match, etc. Some people can't hang around that long, especially considering time zones (like for Russian players).

That being said, it does solve several other issues. Certainly an interesting system.

[RearAdmiralZill]

I'd like to think if this was to happen, the cog's rules wouldn't be so static to not fit the new system. Maps for example, could be restricted to only 2 total matches before being removed from the random pick instead of just 1.

Split the matches across two streams to lessen the time. So long as they are all recorded, I have no issue with that, and it opens the field for more casters.

As for the breaks, I don't know. Being the first team to get "shit spot" on the third cog has made me hope for an update. Practice is great and all, but we all play enough to know what may or may not work against team x. I don't need a month to sit around and hope another small tourney comes up. Sure we've done some scirmmages, but we know that's not the same. Maybe your breaks can come in the for of things like the spire thing coming up, which halts cogs anyway.

[Urz]

There will be more non-Cogs events in the coming future. We don't need to put the burden of supporting the entire competitive community on a single event.

[Captain Smollett]

I think the setup of our current third Cog definitely needs an overhaul.  In my opinion it's fine for a team to have a weak off but sitting a competitive team out for a month has always seemed ludicrous.

This actually seems like a nice solution though as Zill suggested I do feel we would need more than one stream at once to fit in all the games.

Now I don't have anything in mind but I wonder if there would be a way to modify this so that the champions and A league would play every week while B league would play every other week to lessen the overall amount of games that needed to be played and casted.

Though looking at it we'd only really need to expand to about 5 or 6 games a week to let all the teams play which would take the same approximate amount of time if we casted on 2 streams.

[Sammy B. T.]

A small break is good in the case of the challengers cogs. Its basically a week off. However falling into the up comers Cogs is horrendous. Assuming no cog interruptions, it takes 4 weeks to play again (you're off for 3b 3c 3d). Imagine if you dropped out and joined again. In the time it would take for you drop, you could have made a new team and advanced to the top. This was my main motivation this last Saturday because I didn't think the Brood could survive a month off as we've had an unfortunate string of events.

What I would do is make up-comers cogs three as well. While this might crowd the cogs, we have only had one week where there were two newcomers.

More smaller cogs would be fantastic and we are developing a number of casters beyond the just Swallow and Qwerty.

Just involve the community more and we can make more games work.

[Captain Smollett]

For me I think either solution works as long as we find a way to make more matches.

Seeing so many talented teams languish away week after week without competition just doesn't seem right.

[naufrago]

If the competition will be structured how I think it will based on the diagram, I love the idea. I'd occasionally thought a bit how to fix the Cogs for a while, but epicyclic gears never crossed my mind. It seems to fix all my issues with the current Cogs system. Salute to you, Wundsalz!

Btw, if the current system is a bit too rigorous, Cogs can take the occasional week off (maybe once every month or two?) to let teams have a break or get some extra practice in.

[Swallox]

...I actually like this idea. We've toyed with adding multiple cogs at the same level before, but it's always fallen flat at the highest level due to the fact that there's only one Champion spot, and adding in addition cogs to the existing rotation made it possible to win a match and then have to play for survival or sit a week out... But I can see a few ways around that too with this setup.

I wish someone'd brought up this layout sooner.

[Ccrack]

what if the outer ring had 4 slots instead of just 3 so there could be 2 newcommer battles, and 2 advancement battles

[Squidslinger Gilder]

If there are best of 3 matches then I'm for it. Even if it meant less matches or time limits imposed. Sky Tournament was much better to play it with the best of. Right now the game is too flaky and crap happens. Aurora went through the same lag/connection issues we had weeks ago. Had the match been a best of, I think they would have adjusted their strategy to compensate and given a better showing.

Till the network problems in game get fixed I cannot support single elimination play.

[Wundsalz]

what if the outer ring had 4 slots instead of just 3 so there could be 2 newcommer battles, and 2 advancement battles

I can't estimate how huge the need for additional newcomer slots is at the moment. I've designed the diagram above in order to roughly match the current cogs size (current system: 9regular slots+2newcomers, suggested system: 11regular slots+1 newcomer). If there are significantly more crews interested in entering the cogs than there are slots, adding an additional newcomer segment in between the transition slots sounds like a good idea - this way the teams in the B-League had to change in between defending their place in the cogs and having the opportunity to advance in  a weekly cycle.
The only downside I see is that the change would harm the matchmaking, as the matches to advance from the B-League into the transition gear could repeat in a 4-weekly cycle (with the diagram above we'd have a 6weekly cycle). If the size of the clanscene can handle it, I think it'd be better to add a 3rd newcomer slot while we're at it, as that'd result in a 10 weekly cycle.

As for the pauses:
I personally don't think they're really needed, as losses in the suggested system are way less dramatic compared to the current system. If you loose a match at any position you just need to win the next encounter to get the opportunity to retake your former position the week afterwards.*
If pauses really had to be integrated I can currently think of two solitions for this system and none of them are nice:
1. One could add empty segments to the league or transition gears, but that'd result in a frustrating experience for the players who miss their chance to advance on that day.
2. Introduce official pause days where the gears stop to rotate.

*The only exceptions are the champions match (if the champ looses he has to defend twice before beeing able to reclaim his former title) and the first B-League vs Transition match after the newcomer slot where the looser of the game can try to advance in the next week again.