Server Glitch Disrupts Gameplay

by **Liorra** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 12:13 am

I'd like to bring the situation in The Mountains to the East to admin/moderator attention.

The region was invaded by the Black Riders two months ago. They deployed their whole army there and spent a large amount of effort to make all updates for two months in a row to guard against defender attacks.

Then 2 days ago, when they kicked everyone out and attempted to refound, the NS server encountered an error of some sort and Mountains to the East was not deleted even though there were no nations inside, so the Black Riders were not able to refound the region. At the following update defenders moved in and secured the delegacy.

I think this is a situation that requires admin intervention because 2+ months of work by 40+ people was flushed down the drain because of a server glitch.

During the update when the Black Riders attempted to refound, defenders could have hawked the region. It was a fair game. the Black Riders worked 2 months to get this opportunity. Then a sudden technical problem gave defenders an unfair advantage. I don't think this should be allowed to stand.

In my opinion the fairest thing to do in the current situation is to eject all the nations currently inside The Mountains to the East, lock the region with a password, and allow it to get deleted at the next update. This would give both the Black Riders and the defenders an equal chance to refound the region, as was initially the case before the server glitch mixed things up.

by **Land filled with People** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:49 am

It's not uncommon for events on the regional happenings/activity pages to be out of the order they occurred (particularly when the events happen very close together). So it's entirely possible no glitch happened.

TBR didn't even try to reclaim the delegacy the next update, despite having 12 hours notice to deploy, and an array of allies to call upon (there was at least 15 raiders online that update already!). TBR giving up did give defenders an "advantage", but it wasn't an unfair one.

by **Imperializt Russia** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:51 am

Griefing dickbaggery disrupted by random chance.

Sounds like karma to me, but w/e

by **The Blaatschapen** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:56 am

This is not a thread to gripe about raiders.

Liorra, can you tell exactly which update it was 2 days ago, major or minor?

by **Land filled with People** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 4:02 am

The Blaatschapen wrote:This is not a thread to gripe about raiders.

Liorra, can you tell exactly which update it was 2 days ago, major or minor?

It was major update

by **Liorra** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 9:10 am

It was the Wednesday major update. 21:27:57, according to the RSS feed. Sadko lost the delegacy, and his influence amount was updated, but the region was not deleted for some reason.

by **Nephmir** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 10:18 am

Liorra wrote:It was the Wednesday major update. 21:27:57, according to the RSS feed. Sadko lost the delegacy, and his influence amount was updated, but the region was not deleted for some reason.

If the influence was updated, then the nation updated in the region before it left, meaning that the region already updated.

by **Ring of Gaxx** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 11:00 am

You can see the time diffrence in the activity page:

2015-01-08 00:27:57: Sadko lost WA Delegate status in The Mountains to the East. -> Lost delegacy on update but the region didn't CTE.
2015-01-08 00:27:30: Sadko relocated from The Mountains to the East to The Black Riders. (At that time it was the last nation in the region).

To answer Land filled with people, Why would TBR have to reconquer the region, spend weeks again holding it just to get a chance at refounding it? That's not fair.

by **New Brussels** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 12:21 pm

Ring of Gaxx wrote:You can see the time diffrence in the activity page:

2015-01-08 00:27:57: Sadko lost WA Delegate status in The Mountains to the East. -> Lost delegacy on update but the region didn't CTE.
2015-01-08 00:27:30: Sadko relocated from The Mountains to the East to The Black Riders. (At that time it was the last nation in the region).

To answer Land filled with people, Why would TBR have to reconquer the region, spend weeks again holding it just to get a chance at refounding it? That's not fair.

1/7/2015, 11:29:39 PM: Sadko relocated from The Black Riders to The Mountains to the East.
1/7/2015, 11:27:57 PM: Sadko lost WA Delegate status in The Mountains to the East.

You do realize that a region requires time to CTE after the delegacy is lost (as the update makes its way through the region)? Is it possible that Sadko panicked that the region was not ceasing-to-exist and went back into the region again - before it had the time to do so? The update might have been laggy, or maybe the times were a little sketchy.

by **Ravania Ultra** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 12:25 pm

What strikes me is that he ejected 32 nations and moved out himself in 6 seconds...

Maybe his own actions caused the glitch.

by **Ever-Wandering Souls** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 1:17 pm

New Brussels wrote:
Ring of Gaxx wrote:You can see the time diffrence in the activity page:

2015-01-08 00:27:57: Sadko lost WA Delegate status in The Mountains to the East. -> Lost delegacy on update but the region didn't CTE.
2015-01-08 00:27:30: Sadko relocated from The Mountains to the East to The Black Riders. (At that time it was the last nation in the region).

To answer Land filled with people, Why would TBR have to reconquer the region, spend weeks again holding it just to get a chance at refounding it? That's not fair.

1/7/2015, 11:29:39 PM: Sadko relocated from The Black Riders to The Mountains to the East.
1/7/2015, 11:27:57 PM: Sadko lost WA Delegate status in The Mountains to the East.

You do realize that a region requires time to CTE after the delegacy is lost (as the update makes its way through the region)? Is it possible that Sadko panicked that the region was not ceasing-to-exist and went back into the region again - before it had the time to do so? The update might have been laggy, or maybe the times were a little sketchy.

TO answer someone earlier - they can be listed out of order, but these time stamps are pretty far off

Almost thirty seconds!

Also Thursday morning EST Major.

He didn't move back for a minute or two after it registered as him having lost delegacy. Trust me, we kept spamming the found buttons just in case, while someone went and found the next few regions after it in the order, and made sure that they'd actually updated as well.

I wondered if perhaps the timestamp for him losing delegacy was somehow off of the time it updated, but...27 seconds is very far off for the update.

member · by **Eluvatar** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 1:34 pm

Ever-Wandering Souls wrote:He didn't move back for a minute or two after it registered as him having lost delegacy. Trust me, we kept spamming the found buttons just in case, while someone went and found the next few regions after it in the order, and made sure that they'd actually updated as well.

I wondered if perhaps the timestamp for him losing delegacy was somehow off of the time it updated, but...27 seconds is very far off for the update.

I see you are not replying to Ravania.

I verified it for myself: the first ejection was 12:27:24 (EST) and the last ejection, as well as departure from the region, was at 12:27:30 (EST).

Some curiosity is excited as to how this was accomplished.

by **Ever-Wandering Souls** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 1:40 pm

Eluvatar wrote:
Ever-Wandering Souls wrote:He didn't move back for a minute or two after it registered as him having lost delegacy. Trust me, we kept spamming the found buttons just in case, while someone went and found the next few regions after it in the order, and made sure that they'd actually updated as well.

I wondered if perhaps the timestamp for him losing delegacy was somehow off of the time it updated, but...27 seconds is very far off for the update.
I see you are not replying to Ravania.

I verified it for myself: the first ejection was 12:27:24 (EST) and the last ejection, as well as departure from the region, was at 12:27:30 (EST).

Some curiosity is excited as to how this was accomplished.

I'm not sure. I was just there to help spam the refound button

That's something to ask TBR GS, probably.

If I had to take a guess? Well, you could manually tile 36 nation pages across your screen, scrolled to the banject button, and just run across it fairly quickly. Or have them all open in tabs and scrolled to the bottom of the page - Click <ctrl+w> click - real fast. Im not sure if Bob uses NS++ as well, but the NS++ banjection page lists as the nations and has banjection buttons - and entries disappear when you've ejected them, meaning not even moving the mouse is necessary. I think 5 and third clicks per second isn't too insane for that. Could also be a similar effect done in another script or extension. As long as it's one click, one action, it's legal, yes?

by **Sedgistan** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 1:59 pm

Ever-Wandering Souls wrote:As long as it's one click, one action, it's legal, yes?

No - see:

Script Rules wrote:A tool may never execute restricted actions simultaneously. It must wait for the completion of each command--a complete response from the NationStates server--before issuing the next one. A tool should never spawn background processes to enable multiple simultaneous server connections that each perform a restricted action.

by **Ever-Wandering Souls** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 2:16 pm

Ah. Thanks Sedge. Regardless, I don't code or script (yet!), and I don't use anything besides NS++ to add to my gameplay experience, so it's not something I've been overly concerned with

Sicarius used no fancy tools, and TBH doesn't use much beyond a glorified region data dump sorter as far as I've seen. Manual trigger is best trigger!

TBR GS might be willing to answer that question, but the rest of us aren't likely to be even able to. Excuse my lack of knowledge, again, but how might that be a factor in the error? Are you thinking something like (this may be an oversimplification) the happenings and timestamp show up when the eject request is sent, but the nations were not all physically ejected according to the server until after the update had passed, even though everything gameside appeared that way? Or am I totally off...

by **Sedgistan** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 3:22 pm

I don't think the extremely speedy banjections were necessarily a factor in the "glitch" (assuming such a glitch even happened), but I think now it's been brought up, it is worth looking into by whichever admin investigates this.

by **Technological Optics** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 6:20 pm

For everyone's reference, this is what it looked like (with timestamps):

As you can see, the Black Rider delegate moved back into the region.

Ergo, it is his fault not anyone else. Why would you move back into the region?

by **New Brussels** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 6:46 pm

Technological Optics wrote:For everyone's reference, this is what it looked like (with timestamps):

(Image)

As you can see, the Black Rider delegate moved back into the region.

Ergo, it is his fault not anyone else. Why would you move back into the region?

Damn fast clicking. But that's what you gotta do when you can't set a password

I'd say he moved back because he saw the region was not CTE'ing.

by **Ever-Wandering Souls** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 7:03 pm

He moved back a minute or two after he had lost delegate status/region after it update/it presumably updated.

by **Technological Optics** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 7:25 pm

Ever-Wandering Souls wrote:He moved back a minute or two after he had lost delegate status/region after it update/it presumably updated.

Well maybe the OP could clarify...

by **Ever-Wandering Souls** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 7:42 pm

Liorra wrote:Then 2 days ago, when they kicked everyone out and attempted to refound, the NS server encountered an error of some sort and Mountains to the East was not deleted even though there were no nations inside, so the Black Riders were not able to refound the region.

That, and I noted that about halfway down. If you look at right.

And here's this.

1 minute, 42 seconds after he lost the seat and the region therefore should have been updated.

by **Liorra** » Sat Jan 10, 2015 11:35 pm

Eluvatar wrote:
Ever-Wandering Souls wrote:He didn't move back for a minute or two after it registered as him having lost delegacy. Trust me, we kept spamming the found buttons just in case, while someone went and found the next few regions after it in the order, and made sure that they'd actually updated as well.

I wondered if perhaps the timestamp for him losing delegacy was somehow off of the time it updated, but...27 seconds is very far off for the update.
I see you are not replying to Ravania.

I verified it for myself: the first ejection was 12:27:24 (EST) and the last ejection, as well as departure from the region, was at 12:27:30 (EST).

Some curiosity is excited as to how this was accomplished.

It's not that big of a deal when you have practice repelling lib attempts. Just a matter of clicking and cycling through tabs quickly.

by **Ravania Ultra** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 4:35 am

Liorra wrote:
It's not that big of a deal when you have practice repelling lib attempts. Just a matter of clicking and cycling through tabs quickly.

I've been in enough lib-attempts to safely say I never seen this speed, 1 maybe 2 per second by the best raider-leads in history and those weren't controlling Sadko. I actually dare you to click your mouse-button 33 times in 6 seconds, without even moving it it's hard to do.

by **Ballotonia** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 7:28 am

This is indeed a bug: the speedy ejections caused the region to update so fast that the system got confused. It thought 'Never Forgetti' was still in the region when it wasn't. This was fixed as part of the region being updated (the system discovers that a nation it tries to update in the region isn't actually there), and so the region finished updating with 0 nations in it but it didn't delete the region as it started the update with (allegedly) one nation in it.

Note this has been standard system behavior for a long time: if the last nation CTEs in a region then the region remains with 0 nations for one whole update cycle before it actually is deleted. I will not change this behavior as it allows others players to prepare a response if the nation CTEing / the region becoming available is relevant to their play, and the owner of the deleted nation gets a last chance to refound and return (by for instance noticing it having CTEd in the dossier of another nation).

Defenders have a similar problem: whenever they jump into a region en-masse, a nation may end up thinking it is in the region when the region itself is convinced it isn't. The result is that the nation doesn't update in the region and its endorsement does not count (in fact, the endorsement is actively removed by the system during the update).

Since we've never retroactively fixed these situation for defenders, not even when it was to them a really important liberation, we shall not retroactively fix it here for the other team either. Lesson learned: when you swamp the system with calls to do stuff, not everything may function as you want it to.

Note that the bug is a long-existing one. It has to do with timing and the fact that we store data in files on disk. A possible solution would be to create a 'lock' mechanism, but note that would greatly reduce ejection speed. I doubt invaders will welcome a limit of one ejection per second.

Which leaves the issue of the ejection speed itself.

Ballotonia

by **Laanvia** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 9:33 am

I love it when TBR don't get their way.

Server Glitch Disrupts Gameplay

Server Glitch Disrupts Gameplay

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