[Region Locking] Something needs to be changed.

[Tramiar]

It feels weird agreeing with Wordy on something, but the idea that seems most like it could fix it (and isn't going to happen anyway) is taking away the update order list and scrambling it. Its certainly not the best idea, but it at least seems to more... "fix" the problem than blocks. Yes, I realize it's not gonna happen. And I'm not saying it should. Just that its the most reasonable solution.

Information should be freely available for everyone to use to the best of their ability. There are already enough things in the game that you need a CS degree to do and adding another to the list would be counterproductive. Besides the second someone got a decent facsimile of the currently public list, we would be back here.

Don't worry Gest, Im not trying to take your list away. Simply saying its a better solution to our problem than blocks or locking Anyway, finding region times without the update order list doesn't require scripts or a degree in anything. It's a little more difficult/time consuming, but it certainly isn't the end of the world. As for the update order, people might get an idea, but if the order was shuffled, no one is going to know all of the regions in the correct order. Well.. I can't think of any way besides putting a nation in each and every region, but that'd be ridiculous. Not to mention the list would be out of date the next day.

[[violet]]

All of these suggestions are meant to make it harder for raiders to successfully take over a region, right?

Good question! It is always useful in these discussions to occasionally return to consider the primary goal.

I think our goal isn't to make invasions harder in general, but rather to eliminate unbeatable invasions. An "unbeatable" invasion is where a group can tell exactly when a region will update, and they move in, pre-endorsed, a few seconds in advance, leaving no time for defenders or natives to respond. This is challenging to pull off, sure, so it's interesting for invaders, but it wipes out a good portion of the invasion game, because there's nothing defenders can do about it.

Our ideal invasion game, I think, gives both sides have a chance, and the winner is whoever is better organized, attentive, and clever about it. (There's an argument that the initial invasion is just step one, and defenders get their chance when they try to liberate the region; I think there's some merit in this, but well-organized defenders should have a shot at preventing invasions, not just undoing them.)

And no, this won't make it raiders vs. defenders. it'll be raiders vs. the clock and chance. Defenders wouldn't even have to bother to move on them, unless we took the safe side and moved really early every single time. Blocks aren't going to solve a thing. It'll be the way it is now, except more raider loss.

This is a good criticism. If we have a system where unbeatable invasions are still possible (e.g. by waiting through update after update until the target region is falling late in the uncertainty window), then that's probably what everyone will try to pull off. It would still be invaders vs the clock, not invaders/liberators vs defenders/occupiers.

Currently, it seems to me that invaders most need clock skills: they do well if they can accurately predict when a region will update, and arrive just in time. The other, more political skills, like misdirection and subterfuge, are still important, but less so, because great timing is unbeatable. I would like to shift that a little, so we reward clock skill less and political skill more.

And just to throw in yet another possibility to consider and discuss:

Suggestion: If a nation moves into a (non-GCR) region less than Y seconds before it updates, that region is deemed 'under contention'. The update of that region is postponed for a MINIMUM of X seconds allowing other nations some time to respond.

This is an intriguing concept, because it lets us set a floor under all invasions. If no-one can beat the floor, there's less reason to spend time figuring out update timings and more reason to spend time figuring out how to misdirect opponents.

Considerations: if the update were to pause for X seconds, it would make update last longer. Players could even influence update length by triggering a pause for lots of regions (bad players, bad BAD players! ). If the update would instead process the next region instead, then if the next region is a large one the delay of the update moment of the region under contention could be large. This could be solved by the prior mentioned sorting by region size, with the same drawbacks / side-effects as mentioned before.

One could also wonder whether the 'delay' should be cumulative. If nations keep moving in, should the update for that one region be delayed over and over or should there be just a one-time delay?

When the end of the update is reached, the region under contention will have to go through update. The update cycle can wait a few seconds at that moment, but not indefinitely.

Most update time is spent on the nations within a region, processing issues, etc, not on the region itself. So possibly a region that's "under contention" could postpone its delegate election, but otherwise update its residents normally, and this would not be very disruptive to the rest of the update order.

We would probably need some new code around endorsement tracking, so a postponed region wouldn't need to reload every resident to check its endos, but that seems doable.

[Unibot II]

I don't even think it's important for update order to be completely hidden. If the Daily Dumps were to no longer show the order tommorow, with everyday that passed. information previously obtained would age.. and triggering would get more difficult. You could still trigger though even without the daily dumps, it'd just be way harder to find a good place to put your trigger-nation and probably require most missions to use more inaccurate triggers (say five minutes away from the target or more). I think that would solve our problems right there.

[Mahaj]

I have always thought the easiest way would be to just change the dump order or completely shuffle update order + change the dump so it doesn't list regions in order.

it would fix, well... most everything.

[[violet]]

The dumps aren't the only source of region update order information, though. You can just watch the game. Looking at dumps is probably the easiest way to get started, but without that, you can still figure out the numbers. It's just more tedious; i.e. requires even more clock skill.

[Kshrlmnt]

Just because someone figures out a way to use what they've got doesn't make it abuse, even if it happens to be the other side that's figured it out. And no, this won't make it raiders vs. defenders. it'll be raiders vs. the clock and chance. Defenders wouldn't even have to bother to move on them, unless we took the safe side and moved really early every single time. Blocks aren't going to solve a thing. It'll be the way it is now, except more raider loss.

Being able to figure out update time with an accuracy of a couple of seconds is abuse. That's not how Gameplay has been played for the last God knows how long.

I can generally figure them out to within a few seconds, without the data dump, without fancy tools, using methods that have been available for years. My accuracy varies a little depending on the region and the update, but it's quite possible to be very accurate. Explain how that's abuse?

An "unbeatable" invasion is where a group can tell exactly when a region will update, and they move in, pre-endorsed, a few seconds in advance, leaving no time for defenders or natives to respond. This is challenging to pull off, sure, so it's interesting for invaders, but it wipes out a good portion of the invasion game, because there's nothing defenders can do about it.

All right, so simpler way to go would be to make pre-endos impossible. Sure, it's a pain for a lot of raiders, but at least it's a pain to liberators as well. (I am biased; I usually prefer stealth over pre-endos, so this would only affect me in a positive way: when liberation attempts come.)

[Guy]

All I want is an invasion game in which invaders jump with some time left on the clock, so that defenders can actually, you know, defend.

I know that certain groups are very good at being stealthy, and I have absolutely no problem with that. It's something which, with skill, may be stopped.

[Eist]

There is no doubt that raiders have skill in jumping based on extremely accurate estimations of a region's update time. But, like the skilful "waggle dance", there is almost no intelligence involved. The R/D game is currently at moronic levels of stupidity. To improve the game, we need to come to a resolution that will force the game to require users to use more intelligence.

I much preferred this game when I was monitoring unusual endorsement patterns between updates. It took intelligence to work out whether it was a threat or not. Now, nobody uses intelligence, and the game has suffered because of that. As Kshrlmnt says, masking the API won't help; it was still pretty easy to get a pretty accurate update time. It was just more of a pain. I believe that if the API is masked, raiders will still attempt to jump in a second before, but will miss more and attempt less. While this would help innocent natives, this would not help the R/D game at all.

I disagree with Guy regarding abuse. There are rules and there are tactics. Good games always have players that take the game to its maximum threshold. This is not abuse; it's skilful gaming. Why particularly TBH and TBR find the need to do these incredibly boring flash-raids night after night after night rather than doing something more interesting is a different question. One could argue that they are abusing a broken system, I guess.

Excuse the funky analogy

[Crushing Our Enemies]

One could argue that they are abusing a broken system, I guess.

Yeah, I would say that's about the size of it. However, I would add that our abuse of that broken system helps us train new recruits faster, and give everyone a chance to be point.

[Mahaj]

I wonder if we're going to see something happen on this?

[Crushing Our Enemies]

I think most everyone is in agreement that something needs to happen, but nothing viable has been suggested yet.

[Mahaj]

I think most everyone is in agreement that something needs to happen, but nothing viable has been suggested yet.

Violet suggested the update lock, which is better than nothing.

I still like Riemstagrad's suggestion.

[Ananke II]

The way raiding is working right now, the raiders are playing against the server, not defenders. Even when we spot invasions right as they occur we can't do anything when we're only left with a 5-10 sec. window to move in defenders before the region updates.

[Eist]

...we're only left with a 5-10 sec. window to move...

I think you mean 1-3 sec. If we had 10 seconds there would hardly be a problem. We physically can't move and endorse if necessary in this time.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

Yeah, I remember well the time when before a raid, there was uncertainty regarding our success. Fingers were crossed, wood was knocked on, and we hoped hard that our time was close enough that when the defenders showed up, they wouldn't have enough time to beat us.

I haven't been in a raid like that in years. It was more fun. I kinda wish those days were back- I might still be raiding. The update lock is an OK idea. It sucks that we can't come up with anything that makes the game more skill-based, instead of luck-based, though.

[Unibot II]

What if update counted when people moved into the region and if they moved in during update, the proximity of this move to the beginning of update would penalize the speed of update.

I'm not entirely sure of the specifics, but it would slow down update on the basis of (increased region size during update) x (proximity of this change to the exact time of update). So the larger the raid or liberation and the closer it is to update, the slower update would become.

There would have to be a cap on the effect of the penalization, so it wasn't like abused to the point that someone could make update three times as long or something like that. -_-

So then it would be a matter of balancing your movement, probably doing some math to find the optimum movement would be best, something like.. 5 seconds before update instead of 3 or 2, might become "better". Then it's no longer a race to the quickest times nor necessarily a very slow environment.

--

Some other changes would have to made to make this viable. Update would have to start counting people who move into the region once update has begun but not finished. However, I recommend not changing the fact that if people are ejected and banned after update has begun their endos can still count -- since this would seriously screw up feeder liberations and large UCR libs.

Likewise, I'd have to recommend the removal of the ban and eject tools on nation pages -- it really only serves raiders and is a newer addition which seems to have increased the speed at which raiders can baneject defenders. If liberation-times were slowed down (as much as raids are), it would be better to have the ability to eject and ban slowed down too, since at the moment, it's fairly even in that regard.

[Improving Wordiness]

A very simple fix has always been to remove the update order list. Shuffle the regions.
There is no way to count out the timing and variance without it. Why do it the hard way? It worked before that was added and was balanced.
I realize Violet does not wish to remove it but who does it serve other that invaders or defenders wanting to liberate?

[Belschaft]

A very simple fix has always been to remove the update order list. Shuffle the regions.
There is no way to count out the timing and variance without it. Why do it the hard way? It worked before that was added and was balanced.
I realize Violet does not wish to remove it but who does it serve other that invaders or defenders wanting to liberate?

Your simple fix would destroy gameplay. It would become impossible to take a region any way other than stealth or luck, as you would have no idea when it updated; you'd have to move in at the start of update, hope the delegate isn't on, and hope to god that you can get more troops than the other guys. R/D is reduced to piling inactive regions.

[Improving Wordiness]

It worked before the region list was added. I do not mean a shuffle every day of regions. I mean a shuffle when the order list is removed.
Invaders were very good at estimating a regions update time prior to the list. If you had no list right now I am reasonably sure you could estimate when a region is going to update simply by observing it.

[Belschaft]

I have a couple of suggestions;

1. Change the way influence works. Instead of the current way, where each endo is worth the same amount of influence, make it so that the first X number of endorsements are worth more than the rest, which are worth considerably less. That makes piling less valuable, and also means that a smaller number of people cross-endorsing would be able to gain sufficient influence to not all be ejected by a delegate. That makes attritional gameplay over multiple updates more viable, rather than the current system where everything is decided in about ten seconds. It also makes the GCR's influence pools less viable, and thus forces them to be more proactive in their own defence, which is a good thing.

2. Make it so that a new delegate doesn't have access to the ban/eject buttons till the next update. That provides a 12 hour window for more people from both sides to move in and try and get ahead, and could extend the fight for much longer, rather than the afore mentioned 10 seconds. That way you have to be able to hold the region for two updates if you want to ban/eject anyone. Of course, if the other side manages to take it at the next update, you then have another 12 hour window to try and get more people in, and so on and so forth.


Either of these suggestions would have the effect of making the gameplay conflict last longer than the current 10 second bursts at update, which I think would be a nice thing. Instead of isolated spurts of activity, we could see multi-update battles as the tide ebs and flows between multiple factions.

[Improving Wordiness]

I actually do not mind the sound of either of those ideas.
It opens the window to a lot of nations excluded from gameplay at the moment simply due to time constraints. I believe you would see some interesting tactics being involved and that is a good thing.

[Jamie Anumia]

I have a couple of suggestions;
2. Make it so that a new delegate doesn't have access to the ban/eject buttons till the next update. That provides a 12 hour window for more people from both sides to move in and try and get ahead, and could extend the fight for much longer, rather than the afore mentioned 10 seconds. That way you have to be able to hold the region for two updates if you want to ban/eject anyone. Of course, if the other side manages to take it at the next update, you then have another 12 hour window to try and get more people in, and so on and so forth.

Bel, that idea is being discussed in a separate thread:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=184224
I personally think that something just needs to be done to make update times less exact and/or predictable. Whether it's update blocks, updating in order of size or region locking.

[Belschaft]

I have a couple of suggestions;
2. Make it so that a new delegate doesn't have access to the ban/eject buttons till the next update. That provides a 12 hour window for more people from both sides to move in and try and get ahead, and could extend the fight for much longer, rather than the afore mentioned 10 seconds. That way you have to be able to hold the region for two updates if you want to ban/eject anyone. Of course, if the other side manages to take it at the next update, you then have another 12 hour window to try and get more people in, and so on and so forth.

Bel, that idea is being discussed in a separate thread:
viewtopic.php?f=15&t=184224
I personally think that something just needs to be done to make update times less exact and/or predictable. Whether it's update blocks, updating in order of size or region locking.

I know, I just wanted to bring it up again, as it's an awesome idea

[Improving Wordiness]

How is this looking? More comments needed? As it stands regional delegates cannot defend against less than a second raids let along regions without a delegate.
I realize you are making the Taggers happy but a very large part of this game is not being catered to. The people that would like the ability to defend and the nations that reside in the regions without any way to protect themselves.
I know change if any is slow but I did try to address this problem a very long time ago.

[Unibot II]

Actually, I'm back on a good internet connection and having an okay time getting into regions before the Delegacy changes occur -usually-. When a group of defenders who know what they're doing, outnumber the raiders.. they can make a dent in raider attacks, tagging or not. It's a matter of getting a group of trained soldiers online for update to spot.

I stand by my previous position that switching should be safer.

Furthermore, I'd like to suggest that '/template-overall=none/', be made a game-skin that can be set. I'd have all my defender puppets set to use it. Raiders could also use this tactic for faster ejection/banning speeds.