Permutation of sort ... creating team proposals

[Mike C. Fletcher]

Here's a simple algo that gives you balanced teams (using skill as the 
primary criteria):

sort all players into levels by experience level
for each level
	for each player
		if current_skill of team1 =< current_skill of team2
			add to team 1
		else
			add to team 2

i.e. aggregate skill will always be fairly close to balanced, but player 
numbers may vary considerably if you have a wide gap between experience 
levels (so, for instance, my friends Alexei, Shane and I playing newbies 
would always be split across two teams, but one of us would be hampered 
with up to 5 mewling newbies and would lose horribly as those newbies 
were used as BFG fodder by the other team :) ).

The basic approach here is, fit the hard-to-fit items first (large skill 
ratings), then fit in the less bulky ones, then the "filler" items.

To get permutations, you shuffle the levels before you run the algo. 
Note, however, that this leaves all your teams basically having the same 
"balanced design", a few strong players, a few medium players, and a few 
weak players.  For fun gameplay, it's often nice to have teams such as 2 
or 3 strong players versus all the medium and weak players (who get a 
charge out of killing the strong players once in a while, and get a lot 
of work on their cooperation etceteras), or strong+weak versus medium. 
Of course, those balances normally arise from challenges among players, 
so not as much point auto-creating them.

Have fun,
Mike

Thomas Weholt wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've planned to host a lanparty soon and want help to determine what teams
> we should go with. We need two teams and I've put together a list of players
> and given each a rating of experience from newbie to hardcore with some gray
> areas inbetween. Now I'd like to use python to generate team proposals,
> using all players, each team balanced both in terms of experience and number
> of players.
> 
> Take this list :
> 
> players = [('thomas', 5), ('john', 4), ('joe', 3), ('gary', 4'), ('jonas',
> 2), ('eirik', 1), ('anders', 5), ('rune', 5), ('shirley', 2), ('jedi', 3) ]
> 
> Rating goes from 1 = newbie to 5 = hardcore. Each team should have aprox.
> equal  number of players and equal sum of experience, but number of players
> may vary if sum of experience stays the same.
> 
> How can I use python generate some team-proposals ?? I was thinking of using
> some sort of permutation, but cannot get the hang of it. Haven't even got
> one line of code to show you.
> 
> Any help you might have would be highly appreciated.
> 
> Best regards,
> Thomas
> 
> 
_______________________________________
   Mike C. Fletcher
   Designer, VR Plumber, Coder
   http://members.rogers.com/mcfletch/