As promised, my preliminary notes on the rules of Splinterz, plus some other stuff.
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The Drones
The precise make, model and technology of each drone is flexible, but must fall within tightly-controlled parameters, dictated by the sport's governing body and enforced by engineering referees who tour each team's stable prior to a match and examine performance metrics from shield harmonic efficiency and armour thickness through to thrust/weight ratios and on-board CPU clock speeds.
Each drone is equipped with a number of modular hardpoints similar to those found in starships and dropsuits, which come in weapon, performance and utility slots.
Regulation Splinterz drones fall into three weight categories – light, medium and heavy, each of which is further subdivided by role, which in turn may come in either airborne or ground-based variants, with airborne drones typically being faster and more fragile, while ground drones are usually sturdier and have a larger fitting allowance.
Light
Striker – striker drones are fragile, extremely fast, and hit hard. Their function is to harass enemy positions with hit-and-run tactics. In a stand-up fight, they will be destroyed very quickly. Striker pilots are typically the most glamorous individuals on the team, as their role involves arguably the greatest piloting skill. Slots: Two weapon, one performance.
Disruption – designed to slow enemy drones, confuse their sensors, or make them easier targets for allied drones, disruption drones are usually the smallest part of any team, but also one of the most potentially influentially. Slots: Two utility, one performance.
Medium
Combat - the core of any team, combat drones strike a straightforward balance between agility, durability, and firepower. Slots: two weapon, three performance, one utility.
Support – Capable of remote-repairing allied drones or enhancing their performance via modules such as tracking links, support drones are a vital part of the team's main lineup. Slots: One weapon, two performance, three utility.
Heavy
Blitz – Striker drones on steroids. Blitz drones are much slower than their light counterparts, but vastly more heavily armed. They are, however, comparatively fragile and can be quickly overwhelmed if they are not supported. Slots: five weapon, three performance, one utility.
Brawler – Durable but slow, Brawler drones form the dangerous core of any steady advance. While not as dangerous as a Blitz drone, they are still perfectly deadly, and have the shielding and armour to take a serious beating. Slots: three weapon, five performance, one utility.
Every drone, and every module that the drone is carrying, costs points, and again the performance of the modules that are available for use is tightly regulated. Typically there will be multiple “tiers” of module performance, with higher-tier modules costing more points, but offering better performance in accordance with their cost. Once a drone frame has been fully outfitted with all of its modules, the total points value of the frame and its fitting become important in the match. A team may have no more than 500 points of drones on the field at any given time.
Depending on whether the match is a League game or a Division game, the specifics of drone control may vary.
In League games, every drone on the field is controlled by a pilot, from a control booth located in a bunker behind the team's endzone. Often, a pilot will control multiple drones at once, in formation.
In Division games, only three pilots are involved, and all the other drones are controlled by AI scripts, with the team captain swapping out scripts in response to the situation on the battlefield. The human pilots serve as focal points in these battles, bringing their superior skill to bear at critical points in the fight.
Arena
A regulation Splinterz battlefield is a rectangle 350m long by 200m wide. Each team has an endzone extending 50 meters beyond the limits of the battlefield which serves as a mustering and launch zone, and also as an objective. The arena is surrounded by double-redundant starship grade shielding systems to prevent weapons fire from the battle inside from causing damage to spectator structures or the surrounding landscape, and to enforce the playing field boundary. In regulation matches, especially in built-up areas and cities, any sign that the arena shielding may fail results in every drone on the field being immediately disabled. Arena staff take great pride in ensuring that this never happens.
The battlefield is divided into several Zones, the precise configuration of which may vary from arena to arena, and from match to match. Each Zone has a hard limit on how large a value in points may be within it from any given team at any given time. Outlying zones on the flank may have tight points limits that prevent the larger or best-equipped drones from entering them, while important zones in the middle of the battlefield may allow for the deployment of multiple heavy drones equipped with the best modules. This points allowance is clearly displayed in each zone, and the arena's tracking computer keeps a careful watch for violations
When a team has more points in a zone than is permitted, they are given a fifteen second timer to move or self-destruct a drone. If this deadline is not met, they are given a yellow penalty and the offending pilot is given a time-out for 150 seconds. Three yellow penalties results in a red penalty and the offending pilot is removed from the game entirely, and typically will be fined a percentage of their match fee. In Division games, the AI scripts used by the captain are not capable of exceeding the points budget of any zone.
Game variants
There are three major variants of Splinterz played competitively: Bombing Run, Conquest, and Carnage.
Bombing Run: Each team has a “bomb” which can only be carried by drones that are equipped with a specific module, which fills a weapon slot. The objective for each team is to deliver the bomb into the enemy team's endzone, and prevent them from achieving the same. The bomb carrier module is capable of passing the bomb between drones with extreme precision. If the bomb is intercepted, or if the drone carrying the bomb is destroyed without passing the bomb, then the bomb is lost and a new one is delivered to the controlling team, appearing in their endzone. If a team successfully bombs the other team's endzone, then play is reset, with both teams returning to their starting positions. The game lasts for four quarters of 20 minutes, and the winner is the team which successfully completed the most bombing runs. In the event of a draw, the team which completed a bombing run first is the winner. Should no bombing runs have been completed, the match goes into “sudden death” and the first team to successfully complete a bombing run wins. To date, the longest sudden death overtime was three hours and twelve minutes in a match between the Jita Double-Fours and the Border Zone Wardens, which the Wardens won less than half a second before the Double-Fours also bombed them. The match has since gone down in legend among Splinterz fans as the most exciting twelve seconds in Splinterz history.
Conquest: In Conquest, the objective is to take and hold zones. This game mode consists of five-minute “plays”. In order to claim a zone, a team must have a drone move into it. Once thus claimed, the zone remains under the control of that team until a hostile drone moves into it, in which case it changes hands. If there is a drone from each team in a zone, then that zone is contested. At the end of each play, both teams receive a number of points equal to the combined points allowance of all of the zones they control, plus the total points value of any drones they have in a contested zone. The match lasts for twenty plays, and the team with the most points at the end of the 20th play is the winner. In the event of a draw, overtime plays are played until one team has a higher points total than the other, at which point they are declared the winner. Conquest is usually fast, frantic, and exhausting for the teams, and attracts an enormous amount of spot-betting.
Carnage: The simplest variant of Splinterz, Carnage is a simple war of attrition. Teams score points equal to the value of any drone they destroy. Play continues for four 20-minute quarters, and the team with the higher points value at the end of the final quarter are the winners. In the event of a draw, play enters “sudden death” where both teams are given 200 points of drones with no reinforcements, and the team with the last drone left alive are declared the winners. While this format is easily the most spectacular, and the most popular with the crowds, it is also the most expensive for the teams, who will lose a great many drones per battle. As such, Carnage is least commonly played format, and attracts huge viewing figures..
Teams
Splinterz Teams are one of the rare cases where the State is not organised along megacorporate lines. The megacorporations make money off the sport by owning drone brands, arenas and broadcast rights, but by and large they prefer to sponsor teams. Most Splinterz teams instead represent constellations, which is not a level of organisation that otherwise plays much of a role in Caldari society.
The reason for this is that Splinterz teams are for-profit organisations which promise a return on investment to their paying fans should the team perform well. The running costs of these teams are usually in the tens of millions of ISK however, and accruing that kind of sum of money requires a very large base of paying members. Some exceptionally populous and prosperous star systems can afford their own individual teams – notable examples being Jita, New Caldari and Perimeter – and wealthy patrons can found a team of their own to represent a system, as happened with the Todaki Accelerators, who are sponsored by a capsuleer. At the other end of the spectrum are the Black Rise Rockjacks, who represent an entire region.
Furthermore, because they are for-profit, it is possible for teams to go bankrupt and disband, which explains why not every constellation in the State has one.
At the time of writing, the ten top-ranked domestic teams in the State are:
The Jita Double-Fours
Karnola Galaxy
The Sela Sentinels
The Perimeter Hawkeyes
The New Caldari Patriots
The Border Zone Wardens
The Okela Ironbacks
The Koichi Immortals
The Black Rise Rockjacks
The Todaki Accelerators
International teams
Splinterz does not enjoy the popularity elsewhere in New Eden that it does in the State, and there are only a handful of teams from foreign nations, all of which represent corporations, especially those who can benefit in some way from the sport. During the Executorship of Tibus Heth, Gallentean and Minmatar teams were denied access to the State, and so there has not been an international match involving either of those powers for five years. The dissolution of the CPD has led to much speculation that international matches may make a return.
Notable foreign teams include:
Gallente Federation
The CreoDron Cryos.
The Quafe Cavaliers
The Duvolle Corvettes
Minmatar Republic
The Sebiestor Tribe Einherjar
The Six Kin Tribals
Amarr Empire and affiliates
The Carthum Visionaries
The Khanid Royals – Captained by a niece of King Khanid.
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Topic: The Rules of Splinterz (Read 3883 times)