Advanced Team Balance

Team balancing plugin for CS2 servers running CounterStrikeSharp. It keeps team sizes in check, evens out skill differences, scrambles teams when one side runs away with the game.

Features

• Balances by K/D, KDA, scoreboard score or round win rate
• Hard team size limit that is always enforced
• Skill balancing through player swaps, applied at round start so nobody gets yanked mid-fight
• Team scramble (random or skill based): automatically after a win streak, at halftime, or on demand with css_scramble
• Losing streak boost: after a team loses several rounds in a row, the next balance hands them the better end of the swaps
• Blocks team joins that would make teams uneven and puts the joining player on the right team instead
• Admin exemption from automatic switching
• Translations: en, de, es, fr, pl, pt, ru, tr
• Spectators and AFK players are never moved onto a team and never count toward player limits

How it works

The plugin does not keep its own copy of team assignments. Every decision starts from the live server state.

• Full balancing (size moves plus skill swaps) happens at round start, before players spawn. Moves never kill anyone and never flip someone to the other side mid-round.
• When a player joins or leaves mid-round, only team sizes are corrected, and only dead players are moved. Skill swaps wait for the next round.
• Scrambles are queued and applied at the next round start.
• Players in spectator are ignored completely. They are not balanced, not scrambled and do not count toward MinimumPlayers.

Priority order: the team size limit always wins, then the skill difference threshold decides whether swaps happen, and the losing streak boost shapes which players get swapped.

Installation

1. Install CounterStrikeSharp
2. Download the latest release and extract it into game/csgo/addons/counterstrikesharp/plugins/
3. Configure the plugin at addons/counterstrikesharp/configs/plugins/Mesharsky_AdvancedTeamBalance/Mesharsky_AdvancedTeamBalance.toml. A commented example ships with the repository.

Recommended server settings so the game's own balancer does not fight the plugin:

mp_autoteambalance 0
mp_limitteams 0

Configuration

General

Option	Default	Description
PluginTag	{red}[TeamBalance]{default}	Chat prefix, supports color tags
MinimumPlayers	6	Players needed on teams before skill balancing kicks in
EnableDebug	false	Verbose logging

TeamSwitch

Option	Default	Description
BalanceTriggers	["OnRoundStart", "OnPlayerJoin"]	See below
MaxTeamSizeDifference	1	Hard cap on the size difference between teams
AlwaysEnforceTeamSizes	true	Keep enforcing the size cap even below MinimumPlayers
MinRoundsBeforeSwitch	2	Rounds a player stays on a team before qualifying for a switch
SwitchImmunityTime	60	Seconds of immunity after being switched by the plugin
MaxSkillSwapsPerRound	2	Cap on skill swap pairs per balance pass
BalanceDuringWarmup	false	Whether to balance during warmup

Triggers: OnRoundStart and OnRoundEnd both mean a full balance at the next round start. OnPlayerJoin and OnPlayerDisconnect additionally correct team sizes right away, moving dead players only.

If eligible players are not enough to satisfy the size cap, the plugin overrides MinRoundsBeforeSwitch and SwitchImmunityTime for the size correction. Admin exemption is never overridden.

Balancing

Option	Default	Description
BalanceMode	KDA	KD, KDA, Score or WinRate
SkillDifferenceThreshold	0.2	Relative strength gap that triggers swaps (0.2 = 20%)
OnlyBalanceByTeamSize	false	Skip skill swaps entirely
BoostAfterLoseStreak	5	Lost rounds in a row before the boost activates, 0 disables
BoostPercentage	20	How much stronger the losing team may end up
ProgressiveBoost	false	Scale the boost with the streak length
BoostTiers	3=10, 5=20, 7=30	Streak length to boost percentage

Scramble

Option	Default	Description
Mode	Random	Random shuffles, Skill deals players out evenly by rating
AfterWinStreak	5	Scramble after one team wins this many rounds in a row, 0 disables
AfterHalftime	false	Scramble when sides swap at halftime
ResetStats	true	Reset tracked stats after a scramble

Messages

Option	Default	Description
AnnounceBalancing	true	Announce balance operations in chat
NotifySwitchedPlayers	true	Tell moved players they were switched
ExplainBalanceReason	true	Include the reason in announcements

Admin

Option	Default	Description
ExcludeAdmins	true	Exempt admins from automatic switching
AdminExemptFlag	@css/ban	Flag that grants the exemption
AdminCommandFlag	@css/generic	Flag required for the admin commands

Commands

Command	Access	Description
css_tbstats	everyone	Shows the stats the plugin tracks about you
css_balancepreview	admin	Dry run: shows what the next balance would do without changing anything
css_scramble	admin or console	Queues a scramble for the next round
css_tbreset	admin or console	Resets tracked stats and win streaks

Upgrading from 5.x

Version 6.0.0 is a rewrite of the balancing logic. Config changes:

• BalanceMode = "ScrambleRandom" / "ScrambleSkill" no longer exist. Scramble has its own [Scramble] section. Old values are mapped automatically and a warning is logged.
• AutoScrambleAfterWinStreak and ResetStatsAfterScramble moved to [Scramble] as AfterWinStreak and ResetStats.
• SwitchImmunityTime now actually counts seconds. It used to count rounds despite the name, so 60 meant 60 rounds.
• SkillDifferenceThreshold is now relative to team strength, so it behaves the same for every balance mode.
• EnableBalanceHistory and ShowBoostOnApplication were removed.
• New options: AlwaysEnforceTeamSizes, MaxSkillSwapsPerRound, Scramble.Mode, Scramble.AfterHalftime, Admin.AdminCommandFlag.

Notable fixes in 6.0.0:

• Scrambles work now. They used to only reassign dead players and the changes were silently reverted a round later.
• Spectators can no longer be pulled onto a team by a scramble and no longer count toward MinimumPlayers.
• Score mode works now. The score was never actually tracked before, so it compared zeros.
• The balance preview no longer corrupts player state when you run it.

Translations

Language files live in the lang folder. To add a language, copy en.json, translate the values and name the file after the language code.

Building

dotnet publish -c Release

The plugin lands in bin/Mesharsky_AdvancedTeamBalance/.

Support

Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue on GitHub.

If you like my work and want to support me by donating you can do it here:

• Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/mesharsky
• PayPal: https://paypal.me/mesharskyh2k