[bfprog] autobalance

[ScratchMonkey]

Over on the Icculus server list was mention of a patch to 
admin/standard_admin/autobalance.py to exclude squad members from the 
autobalance decision:

diff -rw 
bf2-linuxded-1.0.2442.0-ORIGINAL/admin/standard_admin/autobalance.py 
bf2-linuxded-1.0.2442.0/admin/standard_admin/autobalance.py
35a36,40
>       # Only balance with un-squadded players
>       if p.isCommander(): return None
>       if p.isSquadLeader(): return None
>       if p.getSquadId() > 0: return None
>

I noticed in looking through the file that that balance policy is based on 
player count, and that each routine separately counts players by iterating 
over the player list. This seems like a good thing to factor. Any 
pythonistas here who know an idiom for a routine that accumulates multiple 
counts from some data and returns the collection? In Perl I'd accumulate 
the team counts in a hash indexed by keys 'team1' and 'team2' and return a 
reference to the hash. What's the Python equivalent?

I'd rather have a policy that balances based on score instead of team size. 
If the weighted scores differ by more than some amount or ratio, the 
balancer kicks in. That way one can always switch to the underdog team.