Some random thoughts on balance and randomness

First off, thanks for a great game!

During my teewars career I've found what I believe is some flaws.

They concern the balance between the teams in TDM and especially CTF.

Firstly when a player is joining a game it seem like the server puts the joining player in the team with least players and if the teams are equal in numbers he's put in the red team. This however have the effect that an already powerful team get another player and of course the teams get more unbalanced. Therefore I suggest that the server, on the event of a player joining the game, calculates which team has been the most powerful during the last couple of minutes and puts the player in the other team (maybe with some exceptions, like team difference can't exceed 2 players).

Secondly when the server change map the server even the team out numerical but other then that it seems to try to preserve the current team. This also preserve any team unbalance. The problem with team unbalance is not only that it makes the gameplay less stimulating (one team will find it too easy and the other too hard). It also lead to futher unbalance. When one team get too powerful the players in the other team will too greater degree then the others find the game boring and will either change teams or disconnect, which will make the other team even more powerful (atleast relatively). How could one solve this? The simplest solution would probably be to completly mix the teams when the map changes. This would of course introduce an element of randomness, which I've understood is not something the developers like to have in their game. I agree that randomness in the gameplay makes the gameplay less based on skill. However this would not effect the actual gameplay just the prerequisites of the gameplay, and one could argue that the current system is just as random (and that most user influence is unwanted). Another way of solving this, which don't include randomness, could be that the server in som way evaluates each players performance in the last match (maybe just the scoreboard score divided but the timeplayed in the match) and try to create as even teams a possible out of that information.

As said; a great game but due to that the teams get unbalanced quite often some of the experience is lost.

p.s. Of course this needs to be a voluntary function (which could be turned off in the server configuration). Otherwise clan-matches would be a real fuss... d.s.