next »

[Please Support Us!]

Please Support Us!

Please help keep (=WDG=) alive

• Server rules
• Forum rules
• Join us
  
• Clan members
• About the clan
• Server stats
• WDG YouTube Channel
• WDG Downloads
• IRC Webchat

Steam groups:

• WDG community
• WDG clan group
• WDG Battlelog Platoon

Our allies:

• [NuB] TF2 clan
• Velocity Gamers Hub
• Destination Gamer

GoG Links:

• Wix Discord
• Wix IRC channel

TF2 Links:

• Official TF2 Blog
• TF2 Steam Forum
• The Fort 2

December 2025

Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa	Su
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

[Teatime]

Has anybody an idea how long it takes before auto-balance kicks in?

[Junta]

hmmm

60 seconds I believe...if the server logs are to be believed.... will check again..

The function does depend on someone dying first, and sometimes that is a longer wait (only dead players can be moved to a new team).

[Mr Chug]

Do you mean from server start, or from the teams becoming unbalanced? If I recall correctly the 'Teams will be autobalanced in 5 seconds' pops up pretty speedily from the moment there's a difference of 2, and once those 5 seconds are up the first player to die gets their ass shifted to the other team in one of those 'who's it gonna be' moments. In other words, the way to guarantee you won't get switched is to not go and get yourself killed.

[Teatime]

Do you mean from server start, or from the teams becoming unbalanced?

The latter.
I don't know, sometimes it appears to me as if it would take quite some time before the system reacts. Might be that the mechanism takes factors into account besides the mere players difference (spectators, newly joined people).

[Terror]

I think it's about a min, but then someone has to die, so if teams are extremely unbalanced (no one dies on the team with more players) it can take a while.

[Junta]

My previous response is based on these two server CVARs active on Server 1:

mp_autoteambalance_delay 60
mp_autoteambalance_warning_delay 30

Coupled with these to switch it on:
mp_autoteambalance 1
mp_teams_unbalance_limit 1

[Teatime]

Code:

mp_autoteambalance 1
// 0 is off and 1 is on. if 1 then should be used in conjunction with the following 3 commands
mp_autoteambalance_delay 60
// Time (in seconds) after the teams become unbalanced to attempt to switch players
mp_autoteambalance_warning_delay 30
// Time (in seconds) after the teams become unbalanced to print a balance warning
mp_teams_unbalance_limit 2
// Teams are unbalanced when one team has this many more players than the other (0 disables)

So if I understand this correctly: After team become unblanaced it takes 30 seconds for the warning to pop up and additional 30 seconds (=60) before attempting to move a player (+ the time a player dies so he can be moved).

Hehe, it's a good thing the WDG servers can usually rely on the good old-fashioned mp_manual_teambalance
Thx a lot, John & all ...

[Junta]

Dave and I could look into reducing the wait if people think its a problem.

On the whole, the clan and our excellent and loyal regulars do a pretty honest job of trying to balance teams (when we see a numerical or skill based difference) .

[Teatime]

No, sorry John if I gave the wrong impression.
I'm researching for an article which mentions autobalance and I just wanted to know how it works. And since I'm lazy I thought I let others do the work and just pick up the knowledge  .

As I said, mp_manual_teambalance works fine on the WDG servers (at least with WDGers and a lot of the regulars).
What you said ...

[Teatime]

Okay, another one (thought I'd rather reuse this thread instead of starting a new one):

Is the scramble option part of TF2 or provided by one of the admin mods?

[Chaos]

admin mod- we use the less popular Beetlesmod but most use sourcemod.. they both offer this feature

[Junta]

Yes - Beetlesmod option used.

[Teatime]

Another one:
What do you consider lame/cheap tactics on a pub game? (Besides respawn camping)

[mark]

Stacking with people you organize very nicely with (used to do this with WTF2, we were very unpopular on some servers)
One of the best examples is medic-heavy combos, I used to have a very good medic (he stopped playing ) and we could basically outgun anyone, problem was the medic never healed anyone but me (unless I was dead and running back to spawn wasn't a choice) and this made us the train, the team could simply not move if we weren't there, so there were two possible scenarios:
1. The other team would feel like they were being cheated out of a good experience because of our "skills" (note that we played pl_goldrush and often had a backing spy (Shout out to my old spy buddy for that one!))
2. Our team would be pushed into spawn.

[Teatime]

Now I'm usually very anal about cheap tactics, but I fail to see how this qualifies!?

(Besides the "the medic never healed anyone but me"-part, but that's a very different matter)