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Community Events / Sandstorm Republic's 20th Chaos Skirmish

« on: August 13, 2015, 02:46:10 am »

The Sandstorm Republic Chaos Skirmish

What is the Chaos Skirmish?

The Chaos Skirmish is a series of 3 matches where crews and roles are randomized from players in the lobby all three rounds. In addition to the randomized crews, the third round carries special rules or a "theme" that makes things especially chaotic. Past themes have included weapon randomization, ship randomization, and even choosing the load out of the person across from you. The theme rules are revealed at the beginning of the third match.

How are crews randomized?

I manually enter the names of every player in the lobby into a random group generator. The group generator can be programmed to return the names in groups of four. Each group constitutes a ship, and the order the generator spits out the names left to right is how I fill the ship top to bottom. That is to say, the first name is the captain, the next the gunner, and the last two engineers. I then ask the lobby to quiet down, and people use the swap slot function to move to their designated places on ships (this is because if you leave your slot to swap via a spectate slot, someone trying to join the lobby could easily take it by mistake and asking people to leave is never a fun thing to do, it also slows things down a lot). Once everyone is settled, preparations for the game begin as usual. For this Chaos Skirmish, I will be enforcing a 5 minute ready up timer to help move things along, which will be started when all players are in place.
Provided here is a link to the site I use: http://www.aschool.us/random/random-pair.php

Why participate?

The Chaos Skirmish is a great way to meet new people. Each match doesn't start unless the crew slots are all filled, so we pull in everyone we can from our collective friends list. You also won't play with your usual group of people, in fact all you know is that you'll play with people in the lobby. Randomized crews and roles mean many players will be out of their element or usual role, meaning a widely varying degree of skill. Competent gunners will find themselves at the helm, engineers behind the barrel of a lumberjack, and pilots struggling to maintain the ships they so often abuse. Given the usual pleasurable nature of people playing with you, all of this happens in good fun. You'll find yourself laughing at your friend's inability to dodge a mountain you could've flown around gracefully, and they'll be laughing at you as you miss every shot from your weapon. Scale this up to a 2v2 or a 3v3 and you have, well, Chaos.

Participation Etiquette

Unfortunately I do need to include a short section on this. People who are not cooperative greatly slow down the speed of getting every settled into their randomized roles. It is of the utmost importance that, for the sake of everyone's time and personal enjoyment, people follow these rules.

• Do not "bounce" around empty slots in the lobby. Often times I will begin entering people's names as they fill in to speed up the initial randomization. "Bouncing" prevents me from doing this and slows the first match down
• Stay off the mic and/or type when I ask. I need to be heard in order for people to know where they're going to be. When others talk, there's a lot of confusion that occurs. I do not type the randomizations. I am very clear on when you are free to banter, and will let you know the instant you can, I promise
• USE SWAP SLOT. It is extremely awkward and time-consuming to explain to a person who just took your spot that they cannot participate. In addition, it is very disappointing for them to have success joining, then find out they cant play. Please please please only use the swap slot feature
• Take very fast breaks. If everyone is cooperating, I can very quickly get randomizations going. If you are afk, the entire lobby is waiting on you to get back. Again, this is very time-consuming and people start to get squirrely. Take fast breaks. If you are going to take an extended break to contemplate your life, please exit the lobby.
• If you know you are going to leave after a match, leave immediately. We at SREP love you all very much for participating, but we can tell war stories later. Say your goodbyes in the end-game screen and leave so another person can quickly fill your place and we can get the next match going.
• Understand you are not guaranteed a slot at any point in the skirmish. If you leave, disconnect, are kicked for being afk, etc, I will not ask the person who takes your place to swap back with you. If you are able to reenter the lobby, you may ask them, although this may not happen either as spectate slots may be filled by our DJ and recorders. There are no reservations either. Be ready to join the lobby when it is created and announced via global chat.

Lobby announcement, start time, and password

Each match start will be announced in global. Matches are not timed, they take as long as they need. Unfortunately, this is not a euro friendly event. The start time of the event is 04:30 GMT. Only those euros with the broken body clocks will be awake to play. If enough euros tell me in the comments below they want their own version of this, I will happily host one, but I would like to see support for it first. Chaos skirmishes typically last as short as an hour and as long as two and a half, the latter being a very rare occurrence. The password for the lobby and for all three matches will be Chaos.

Recording, music, and this Chaos Skirmish theme

At least two spectate slots will be reserved for our own DJ Calvary and someone from our media team, who will be recording the match. Recordings of previous Chaos Skirmishes are available on our YouTube channel. I have provided a link here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3Z1H9RlpXDXJX5c7-LWR0Q
If you are interested in recording the Chaos Skirmish, please contact me via the thread comments, private message, or simply contact any SREP officer or co-leader in game. We are more than happy to have you, and you can even record POV as well.

DJ Calvary hosts a music party while the game is being played. The music is kept at a reasonable volume and can be adjusted on request. Calvary creates a playlist via the requests of those in the lobby. Due to the program he uses to create these playlists and the nature of the party chat to be used often by players, you must send him your request in the following format, in a private message.

Artist - Song Name
I.E.
Darude - Sandstorm
(plz no)

If you do not like music, do not join the party. Songs are not skipped, not matter how much you don't like them. Remember, someone requested the song, although DJ Calvary doesn't tell who. They are more than welcome to identify themselves. Please be decent in party chat and allow the music to play.

Lastly, every Chaos Skirmish has a code name for its theme. They are carefully chosen so that only those who are truly twisted or clever can guess at the theme (most of the time). The Random Gods have told me they will be making a new addition to their ranks for this skirmish, and thus the name is "Random gods meet...". It will be revealed at the start of the third round!

Thank you for taking the time to read through this, I truly hope you enjoy yourself at our event. This is our 20th one since they've started, and we host each weekend as often as we can. We hope to see you there!

From Dust and SREP