BetterTeamBalance

Better Team Balance

Yet another autobalance mod. Highly configurable, aims to get the teamcompositions right the first time by using stats from the previous match as well as NuTone, so that no mid-match faffing about is needed. Or is at least kept to the smallest amount tolerable. Tons of features, all with the overarching goal of improving team balancing, while being as un-annoying as possible, so that we might enjoy challenging and even matches more often. Full featurelist below.

Relies on FSU for chat commands. If using FSU, you will want to disable its built-in auto balance and team shuffle features.

Get FSU here: Fifty's Server Utilities

You can also run BTB without FSU, although this will disable teambalancing by vote, parties, and nemeses. All automatic features will work.

The more powerful (and hence disruptive) team balancing features are disabled by default!

By default, this is what BTB will do:

• Shuffle teams between rounds, using data from NuTone and the previous match, to keep them balanced
• Then, teams are adjusted further if needed (someone left/joined), and locked after 60 seconds
• Place any joining player on the team that needs more help
• If needed, switch the team of another recently joined player for better teams
• Auto-level the player count between teams, but only after waiting 20 seconds for new joins (unless one team is empty)
• Only swap over a player that would make teams more even, never less
• Allow rebalance by vote (and suggest it when relevant)
• Allow players to form parties and choose a nemesis
• Kick any players that are AFK for 70 seconds
• Will not automatically rebalance teams (can be enabled)
• Will not level team-strength by subtly swapping the teams of players (insidious mode, can be enabled)

If this sounds good to you, you can install BTB on your server with zero configuration. The default config is intended to do the basics of what anyone would need, prioritizing not annoying anyone playing on the server. If you would like to enable/disable or tweak the behaviour of BTB, check mod.json

Changelog

3.3.0

• NuTone support (Replaces Tone API functionality)
• Participating servers contribute player stats, BTB can use those stats for better team balancing
• No API key needed for read access, all servers running BTB can use the data for teambalancing
• Stats submission mod: https://github.com/nutone-tf/nutone-server

Features

Complex Team Balancing

BTB uses a balancing system where each player is assigned a value based on their kill-, death- and objectiverates. These values are then used to try and create two teams with equal total strength. This is able to account for players who are as good as several others put together.

Other balancing methods, such as the one used in the playervote mod and for a time even in this mod, would sort players from best to worst, then go down the list sorting every other player into opposing teams. This works well, but in cases of very skilled players, this always creates a team in their favor. When they perhaps should get none who rival their skill on their team, they would still get half of the skilled players on the server as teammates.

For example, in a game with three players, the best player would go to team one, the next best to team two, but then the third best would go to team one again, even though team two is the one who needs help to go up against the best player.

BTB will in that scenario pit the two less skilled players against the single more skilled one. With BTB, highly skilled players and even to an extent cheaters will find themselves fighting against even odds.

Parties and Nemeses

• Parties
• Players can invite other players to form a party
• If anyone is on opposite teams, teams will be minimally adjusted to unite the party
• Parties are kept together through any team balancing, and across multiple matches
• Party members can see the locations of their fellow party members
• Party strength check, parties that would stomp are not allowed
• Nemesis
• Mark someone as your nemesis
• Nemeses are kept on opposite teams

Team Shuffle

• Player ranking information is saved into convars at the end of each match
• At the beginning of a match, this data is retrieved and used to inform the shuffle
• The shuffle incorporates some randomness, so as to leave room for variation
• Accounts for players leaving/joining between games, by waiting until the next match to actually build the teams
• Will make on the fly changes during a 60 second grace period at the start, if any players leave/join, throwing teams off balance
• Objectiverates are used in Attrition, Frontier War, LTS, TB, and Amped Hardpoint
• In other modes only kill- and deathrates are considered

Mid-Match Rebalance

• Same algorithm as team shuffle, but without any randomness
• Redistributes points earned by players to their respective new teams (in round based modes, and for example hardpoint or fw, simply equalizes them)
• Can trigger on vote, and/or on crossing a configurable imbalance threshold
• By default, only informing players via chat about the "!teambalance" command, when relevant, is enabled
• To activate balancing automatically, set the relevant threshold using the correct convar (check mod.json)
• The thresold value represents a relative score difference, for example, 1.5 would trigger when points are 150 to 100
• The detection is not this simple however, several other checks are in play to reduce false positives
• Even if the threshold is crossed, will only trigger if winning team is snowballing and losing team seems too weak to make a come-back
• Sane values are 1.4-2.2

Auto-PlayerCount-Balance

• Joining players are always pla