alot of people on the site like realism in the game, and one of the major things i dont find real is the ability for scores to vary. scores are only based on the values in your seperate captions. In order to be more realistic, i think we should incorporate some more random stuff that could increase or decrease your score a few tenths at most. Some of these things could be penalties, judging errors, etc. I just dont like how our scores are so concrete.

I agree to a point.. maybe for judge scoring, have it so part of the cost for creating a show is also to hire judges.. to more you pay for a judge, the better their judging/scoring will be.. versus a judge who doesn't get paid much will be less experienced and will have a bigger fluctuation in correctly judging the scores.

I think I suggested a randomness back when FMA 2.0 was still in development, but mine was more along the lines of in preseason having an effect randomly bestowed like having a bunch of screamers sign on and giving a slight bonus to music or ge as well as having bad show days (which could crop up during finals) that hurt a unit, but could also give them or take away energy boost depending on if that low score pushed them harder or made them depressed.

i like the judges idea. maybe we could have a list of of people that are available for judging and they could have values for accuracy,bias, stamina, and experience. Then each show could hire a judge for each caption, and if some judges are taken for the day they cant be taken by another show. then we could also advertise for shows, and people could be more selective on choosing shows based on the judges that are there. I also like the fact that there could be bad show days and it could affect the mood of the group for other shows, and i also think there could be the possibility of technical faulties or penalties if a group is on the field too long. although this would probably be quite hard to manage, programming wise?

Why not just make 'Judge Levels' where depending on how much you spend the more accurate their scores will be. Ex. A Level 5 judge would be accurate to about .25 a point while a level 1 judge could very the score by up to 5 pts. Someone who would normally score a 90 could get between 90.25 - 89.75 on a level 5 judge but anywhere between 85.00 and 95.00 on a cheaper level 1 judge.

baritone - that's more along of my thoughts.

I originally had an idea where there was a pool of judges you could pick from for your shows, and each would have very small "preferences" for certain things, like intonation or consistent intervals. The problem is that those items aren't represented in the current rehearsal system, everything just adds up to a total for each caption. In the oldest versions of FMB (fantasy marching band) all of these small categories like intonation, tone, etc. added up to one single caption, but there were like 30 or 40 total categories and you were never exactly sure how they affected your score.

Is it impossible to add a bit of that into the new system? I feel like some of the sections in the rehearsal could have more variety than they do now. And I love cire's idea.

The last version seemed like it was overkill (at least to me, and the 2-3 days I was a member).. just way too many things. The way it is now, it is detailed, you need some strategy, but not overly simplistic or too detailed.. it's just about right.

With my idea, you could either do it with 1 judge to calculate the scores, or several judges each assigned to a caption. You wouldn't have to get so in depth as to score intonation, but just have it affect the overall score.

For example:
--- 1 judge system ---
cheap judge - $100
+/- 5 points on total "correct" score, or even +/- 5 points on each caption
expensive judge - $5,000
+/- .02 points on total "correct" score, or even +/- .02 points on each caption

--- multi judge system ---
cheap caption judge - $100 per judge per caption
+/- 5 points on total "correct" score for their caption
expensive judge - $1000 per judge per caption
+/- .02 points on total "correct" score for their caption

the main difference would be that in a multi judge system, you could have say a cheap judge for brass, but an expensive judge for GE..

you could have medium judges as well

I suppose that would make it so people actually look at the shows they're competing in since we'd want accurate assessments across the board throughout the season. I assume at finals we would revert to the usual formula mode of judging. I am okay with this except, I wish there to be a way for more upsets to happen (especially at finals). Perhaps it's only cause I've been on the edge of these things (Multiple 13th place finishes with the corps and two 4th place finishes this season) but I want a touch of randomness where my units can suddenly perform extremely well or poorly and jump more than energy could pull off for a show.

This system I like a lot, but if we were to do it, i would want to keep it consistent for finals. Maybe finals could just have the best possible judges, but I dont think we should have the option for a "perfect" judge if this were to happen, since nobody is perfect.

The judging might not be "perfect" already.. only Alex knows that for sure.. but I agree, Finals and all FMA regionals should have the "best" judges available.. with the lowest number of fluctuating points as possible.

Variations in judging would be great. As of now it's kind of silly knowing you'll have the exact same score every show if you don't rehearse. lol

having the same exact score even if you dont rehearse doesnt make much sense. I think that groups should have some boost in score from each performance, considering it is a full run through, and each performer would be learning from their experience at each show. In this case, it would make sense that scores rise a little after every performance regardless of rehearsal.