After the thread about timing, I'm considering updating the timing rules to be on the victory cheer during the last mission or deathmatch round, as it feels a bit more natural. Does anybody have an objection to that?

Additionally, somebody mentioned that due to the 3.8 update allowing for physics and game engine speed to be tweaked, the rules should be shown before runs. As far I can tell, though, changes made to this setting in the multiplayer game options don't affect single-player mode. If it is possible to change the physics within single player modes, please let me know. Otherwise, the rule doesn't seem necessary.

Just tried to play with all thoes options, they do seem to be for online only - it didn't do anything in Deathmatch Mode for sure. And honestly the current rules and the proposed change seem both quite reasonable. The final victory chear did seem to be the point where i called the end as that is the point at which you can take no more actions that would speed the finish up, In theory your last action could kill 2 teams and initiate a longer animation, so the team falling off is bareley relevent as opposed to stopping time at the point of the last shot being initiated + retreat time.

Also I might be bias here, but I'd like to remove the word 'New' from the bit about starting off with a team at the rank of Absolute Beginner.

".. with a #new# team at "Absolute Beginner" rank"

I know I am guilty of having a not-fresh team, but the run was started at the correct point at round 1 at the right rank. Reasons I would have to remove it is 1) My run doesn't actually use a new team, 2) When putting in for fast restarts for runs sometimes it would take me about 30 restarts to hit a 'run' that I didn't just toss out within the first 2 rounds. Creating a new team for each restart represents a tedium that'd achive nothing but frustrate anyone running it (provided the team is still Absolute Beginner) 3) The team being new/old represents no advantage as long as its rank is correct at Absolute Beginner. If all that above is agreeable, then removeing the word 'New' would just be a disambiguation.

ah yeah, "new team" was regarding playing basic training in mission runs. if there's no difference for deathmatch then ofc it doesn't matter.

The only reason I would advise against measuring the end by the victory cheer is that I believe if you do an Alt+F4 reset during the cheer at the end of the Elite battle you would still be demoted to Superstar. Measuring it by the congratulations message afterwards is at least a firm confirmation that the battle has 'finished' in that regard and the only way you could drop a rank then would be to start and fail another battle. I'll check the reset thing though just to be sure.

Just wanted to weigh in on this point, having done a few Deathmatch runs myself:

"3) The team being new/old represents no advantage as long as its rank is correct at Absolute Beginner. If all that above is agreeable, then removeing the word 'New' would just be a disambiguation."

This depends on how you've reset to Absolute Beginner. If you reset whilst on the Absolute Beginner battle then I see no need to create a new team, as this doesn't appear to affect the reset dynamic.

However, for all battles between Absolute Beginner and Elite, the game will (as far as I can tell) demote you for every odd-numbered reset you do and retain rank for every even-numbered reset. So by that reckoning you would potentially have an advantage if you reset a run whilst on Beginner battle, as this means you would then have a demotion-free reset ready to go that you could use in the run tactically (for example, if you got a map that just looked too difficult and decided to gamble on a better one).

That said, I guess if you submitted a run with no failed battles or resets in it then this wouldn't be an issue.

I actually never knew about that re-try thing. That really does need to not happen in runs, unless someone ever wanted to do a werid version of New Game+ that would allow that.. I imagine that'l never happen

Also the congrats screen does still make sense too thinking about it, just makes it easier to examine for non-tampering and it grants no advantages to anyone and its just a reasonable metric too - its always there at the same time, everytime after a run.