This mod will remove the ability to gain points, period. Damaging/Killing/Reparing anything at all in the game world will result in no points being given.
It might sound crazy, but it would actually work out better in my opinion. The players in the team are less concerned with their own personal rank, and more
focused on actually getting the job done. You either win or lose as a team, there is no personal glory in either defeat or triumph. It's a team thing.
I've set it up to give the credits you should be gaining from the points, you just do not receive points anymore.
This plugin is primarily designed for marathon servers. However, I believe it could also work well on servers with a time limit, especially if run in conjunction
with a plugin I am now starting work on (Sudden Death; Which will activate under certain game conditions near the end of the map).
Here is a quote from vloktboky some years ago...
In the concept of the game, points are irrelevant.
The concept of the game is to destroy the other team while staying alive, not to inflict the most repetitive but meaningless damage in a set time frame.
Yes, when you play under a timed rule, points do come in to factor. And it's a good thing they do, since that is why the point system is there to begin with.
There are only two things points do in this game: they give you a bragging right, and they allow for another set of conditions to be placed on top of the game in order to please people who want to play short games.
CNC Mode, in its core and in its finest, alongside similar game styles, works best in a long-term stance. When you have a cooperative team, the game does not easily become too stagnant to die off after multiple hours in.
But let's be honest: when was the last time you played with a cooperative team?
Could you even fathom playing the game for over two hours with a team that uses team chat only to ask for money or tell someone to get out of their way?
Hence the timer for making short games mandatory, hence the point system to help decide a winner. They don't decide who's the better team.
Simply put, the better team would be the one who destroyed the other one. And if neither team can manage to destroy the other, then neither team are the better team. They both suck.
I agree that the game is really fucked in this area. I don't like points at all; it doesn't fit. In fact, it's the first C&C game to use points to decide a winner.
RA2 had a point factor put in it, but I've never met a single soul who used it to say who won.
Everyone I've ever played with acknowledged the person left alive at the end as the winner.
What should happen is if you insist on having 40 minute games at max, and both teams are still alive at the end, then a stale mate should be called or a sudden death should be initialized.
I believe that if 40 minutes have gone by, then from that point on - in a steady fashion - everyone and everything's maximum health should steadily drop, and the amount of damage should begin to increase, until it reaches the point where everything is blowing up left and right just by staring at it.
Sure, your games won't last 40 minutes, but given the trend and the right tweaking of the algorithm, they won't last but 5-10 minutes in and there will always be a winner chosen based on merits and not "how much overall damage did the team deal to the other."
Or just do those players a favor and drop a nuke on their sorry asses.
You'd be doing their mighty military machines a favor. "Sorry chaps. I know I sent you men in there to kill the enemy, but it's been almost an hour and they are still there.
So we'll just call this one a draw for now and move on to bigger and better things. Better luck next time; here, have a medal."
So yes, fix it. But fix the problem, not one of the side effects.
The mod, including source, is available, here:
http://www.spencerelliott.co.uk/downloads.html
