Liberations are now literally impossible

[New Vedan]

Wait you got 90 updaters for one op?!? Dang m8 that's a true accomplishment. Hate to hear it was a waste.

[Red Maw]

Not the problem. The problem is that, if used to its full potential, update bending could effectively make some occupations liberation-proof if raiders hold the perfect update bend region (which again, they have the advantage in terms of securing it). I'm not aware of any other game mechanic that has the potential to give one side a guaranteed win, and combined with BC ROs it is even more OP.

Ultra-tight triggers may become harder on large occupations, perhaps, but I doubt it will be “liberation proof”.

Bold - Technically speaking, the 1 ban per second throttle gives the side with the numbers the guaranteed win - if you have an advantage by 10, and you set your trigger at 8 seconds and everyone makes it in, you win, without the BC ROs being able to do much about it. I get your point, but I don’t buy it - you have at least a bigger chance with this tactic, whereas the mathematic impossibility of beating the odds in my cited example does not leave any options for raiders... except by changing the trigger length.

Not sure if you're deliberately missing the point here. The whole point was that tight triggers are unusable and Refuge was suggesting defenders should jump before the update bend region (i.e. use super-wide triggers). Its not a worse-case scenario per se, its assuming that raiders will refine this tactic to a greater extent and considering what that progression looks like in terms of r/d gameplay.

Perhaps I’m missing something (I promise I don't do it on purpose), but could you not use that wide trigger, calculate how long the bend takes, and estimate when you call the go based on that? Is an ultra-tight trigger possible then? No, but if you had planned an ultra-tight trigger on this occasion, with an army of newbies behind you, you’d have presumably lost anyway.

The fact of the matter is that triggering would become so unreliable that the best tactic for liberations would just be wild guesses - which isn't an option a defender culture built on refinement and improvement would embrace.

I do apologise for the confusion, but this sounds like you're saying the defender culture is unwilling to adapt to the options they’re given? I don’t think that’s what you’re trying to say, it just sounds confusing.

Probably not a perfect analogy, but its like us telling you that if you don't like how fast we have got at chasing, maybe you should jump into regions outside of update and hope we don't spot you.

That's worked a few times, so not perfect, no

Personally I won't be training any new officers to do all of the above, I'll be training them to infiltrate and sabotage because it will have a higher chance of success.

That’s implying you don’t employ such tactics already, so that really doesn't matter.

[Mingulay Isle]

First, the likelihood of finding an acceptable region is much lower. In the situation described in OP, the raiders owned two bender regions, one of which was exactly before the target region. Given just over 23k regions in the world and assuming an even, linear distribution of whatever hash is used to calculate position (a generous assumption), that requires ~17k regions to be founded after every big raid to have only a 50% chance of finding an appropriate bender region. That's 170 defenders using 100 puppets each for a 50-50 "maybe we'll find one".

Can we leave the disingenuous arguments out of Technical, please?
Leaving aside Refuge's point that the bending region was a good four regions out, rather than immediately before- which would bring the listed odds down *drastically*, even being merely four regions out is far from guaranteed for any given op unless raiders were to mass-found regions themselves in search of a suitable fit.

Unlike defenders raiders don't need to find a suitable fit for a specific region being attacked. They pick the time and place of engagements, and any active founderless region is acceptable. That brings the chance of finding a decent bender region up from the thousands to the hundreds, and since they're not racing a pile they don't need to find a suitable region within any time limit before having a trigger is academic. They can do it at their leisure and start an op when one of their members finds one.

I'm unaware of the rule ever having been enforced in such a manner.

As far as I know there's rarely ever been a case of this, so that's not surprising. After all;

First off, this isn't a technical question. It's a moderation question.

Puppet flooding is one of those nebulous rules that's hard to define. Since we added Regional Officers and gave them ejection and suppression powers, we've not been enforcing puppet flooding rules so much.

• If you move ten or a hundred puppets into your own puppet dump region, no one cares. Have fun with your puppet army.
• If you move ten or a hundred puppets into a region you share with like-minded friends and no one complains, we don't care.
• If you move ten or twenty puppets into an active region over a 5 minute period without talking to anyone first, we'll probably get complaints. We'll send a Voice of Mod to what we think is your main nation (usually, your current WA member).
• If you move four puppets a day into an active region without ever talking to anyone, without responding to telegrams, without responding to VOM telegrams, abandoning the nations and never logging in to them again ... in short, generally being a nuisance ... we start puppetsweeping until you take the hint. (and yes, this is a current case)

It's situational. Stay out of situations where people complain, and you're fine.

This is an edge case, where players have found a use for moving puppets between their own regions affects other regions, and where other people do care about it and have cause to complain.

Not the problem. The problem is that, if used to its full potential, update bending could effectively make some occupations liberation-proof if raiders hold the perfect update bend region (which again, they have the advantage in terms of securing it). I'm not aware of any other game mechanic that has the potential to give one side a guaranteed win, and combined with BC ROs it is even more OP.

Ultra-tight triggers may become harder on large occupations, perhaps, but I doubt it will be “liberation proof”.

ultra tight triggers are useless when occupiers can introduce variance to basically say "fuck you, we update when we say so"

[Refuge Isle]

The joke is I could have stopped that Nazi refound in 2009 lawfully if I had just asked a few friends to help me. I didn't know the rules, so I puppet bombed illegally instead. The ethical difference between these two scenarios is if I had asked for help I'd have been relying on the cooperation of players versus one player nuisancing a region disproportionately.

This is also the fundamental difference between raiding and multi-ing.

[Dawn Denac]

This thread is flabbergasting. Defenders can use "update bending" but as soon as raiders utilize it, it must be solved by the technical staff or the raiders need to be puppet swept or etc etc.

Like, really? What needs to be technically solved here? Is the site being damaged or harmed, or is its functionality being hampered actively? Is it being used to give an unfair advantage while breaking site rules?

If this was something as bad as another Predator (or something similar) being deployed, I'd get the concern, but I really don't get the concern here.

Edit: Last sentence.

[Kuriko]

There's one huge downside to this "update bending" technique that I myself want to point out, that nobody here has yet dug into. This is causing, and will cause, thousands upon thousands of nations to be created in order to do. We saw that at least 3,100 nations were created by the raiders in the South Pacific raid, and now we're seeing a bigger increase due to both sides jumping on nation creation.

Some months ago we brought up update length once again, due to it being roughly 2 hours long at major and 1:30 at minor. I'm not sure about current lengths, due to not being in most of the time. We were told by Ballo that update length would not go back to its usual 45 minute minor and 1 hour major until the world pop dropped below 200,000 nations.

Due to this, the world pop is once again increasing and that 200,000 nation mark is getting farther away. This is extremely detrimental to those of us who live in parts of the world where we're either sleeping, or working, or doing chores etc etc during the time update occurs. I myself live in the eastern US, and I can't stay up for two whole hours of update because then it'd be 2am and I'd get no sleep. If it were an hour, sure I could do it. But not 2.

[Refuge Isle]

There's one huge downside to this "update bending" technique that I myself want to point out, that nobody here has yet dug into. This is causing, and will cause, thousands upon thousands of nations to be created in order to do. We saw that at least 3,100 nations were created by the raiders in the South Pacific raid, and now we're seeing a bigger increase due to both sides jumping on nation creation.

Almost all of my 1,500 nations used, which would account for slightly less than half that number, were pre-existing switchers built up for more than a year's time.

Oaks and Maples, being card farms and TBH puppets
Snow intended to be EPSA puppets, still a little inactive, alas
Nebula being Trieltics puppets
A variety of joke puppets made for those purposes.

So the only odd one out is Ocean which was made for an entirely different reason, but convenient to use in order to contribute to this project

[Kuriko]

There's one huge downside to this "update bending" technique that I myself want to point out, that nobody here has yet dug into. This is causing, and will cause, thousands upon thousands of nations to be created in order to do. We saw that at least 3,100 nations were created by the raiders in the South Pacific raid, and now we're seeing a bigger increase due to both sides jumping on nation creation.

Almost all of my 1,500 nations used, which would account for slightly less than half that number, were pre-existing switchers built up for more than a year's time.

Oaks and Maples, being card farms and TBH puppets
Snow intended to be EPSA puppets, still a little inactive, alas
Nebula being Trieltics puppets
A variety of joke puppets made for those purposes.

So the only odd one out is Ocean which was made for an entirely different reason, but convenient to use in order to contribute to this project

That doesn't discount the fact that nation creation is just going to keep going up due to this, since many players don't have the same amount of puppets as you or Sakana. I still want to partake in R/D, but with a two hour major update I can't. I'm sure a lot of people are in the same boat as I, on both sides.

[Refuge Isle]

That doesn't discount the fact that nation creation is just going to keep going up due to this, since many players don't have the same amount of puppets as you or Sakana. I still want to partake in R/D, but with a two hour major update I can't. I'm sure a lot of people are in the same boat as I, on both sides.

Granted Saka creates puppets for any reason as well as no reason at all, I think all of the ones that she used in this event were created for the purposes of card farming (in this case, for our Pergamon pull event). In my opinion the vast number of puppets created to exploit the card system is far more to blame for the large world nation populations -- and a great deal to do with my departure from that area of the game. 9003's spreadsheet of puppets and their relative tallies can provide insight to this issue.

[Kuriko]

That doesn't discount the fact that nation creation is just going to keep going up due to this, since many players don't have the same amount of puppets as you or Sakana. I still want to partake in R/D, but with a two hour major update I can't. I'm sure a lot of people are in the same boat as I, on both sides.

Granted Saka creates puppets for any reason as well as no reason at all, I think all of the ones that she used in this event were created for the purposes of card farming (in this case, for our Pergamon pull event). In my opinion the vast number of puppets created to exploit the card system is far more to blame for the large world nation populations -- and a great deal to do with my departure from that area of the game. 9003's spreadsheet of puppets and their relative tallies can provide insight to this issue.

I don't think you're getting my point. Card farmers aside, those who don't hold large amounts of puppets in the R/D game will be creating them to either cause, or counter, update bending. Which will increase world population further, which will make admin keep the update length longer. Which will prevent players from participating, on both sides.

[Miss Bad Life Choices]

Granted Saka creates puppets for any reason as well as no reason at all, I think all of the ones that she used in this event were created for the purposes of card farming (in this case, for our Pergamon pull event). In my opinion the vast number of puppets created to exploit the card system is far more to blame for the large world nation populations -- and a great deal to do with my departure from that area of the game. 9003's spreadsheet of puppets and their relative tallies can provide insight to this issue.

I don't think you're getting my point. Card farmers aside, those who don't hold large amounts of puppets in the R/D game will be creating them to either cause, or counter, update bending. Which will increase world population further, which will make admin keep the update length longer. Which will prevent players from participating, on both sides.

Artificial Solar System - 2202
The Allied Nations of Egalaria - 1356
Frozen Circle (EPSA) - 200 before the Snow puppet series was moved back into.
Birb (NPA) - 3,105
HC Metalurg (former NPA)- 282
Shinka (TITO) - 156

This is over 7k nations from various jumppoints on the orgs that jumped against us with South Pacific. For update bending, you guys have the nations needed without needing to create more ;p

[RiderSyl]

I don't think you're getting my point. Card farmers aside, those who don't hold large amounts of puppets in the R/D game will be creating them to either cause, or counter, update bending. Which will increase world population further, which will make admin keep the update length longer. Which will prevent players from participating, on both sides.

nassa employee: oh hey u guys are back early

defender: update is 10 days

nassa employee: what?

defender: *reloading breeze and getting back on the rocket-ship* 10 days

[Praeceps]

Birb (NPA) - 3,105

Many of these nations are not used for military purposes—off the top of my head, at least half of them have not been used for R/D.

I'm open to being bribed though.

[Miss Bad Life Choices]

Birb (NPA) - 3,105

Many of these nations are not used for military purposes—off the top of my head, at least half of them have not been used for R/D.

I'm open to being bribed though. ;)

Always could be used one day maybe, but my bad xD

Either way, there's still thousands of other nations that could be used. You don't need 3k to bend update effectively, just we had the nations and thought to use them here since this update bend was trial and error for us. We created that 47 second trigger with little over 2,000 nations which could be covered with ASS ;P

Point remains that nations needed to effectively bend exist~

[Aurum Raider]

It's already an uphill battle for defenders, for a number of reasons (pilers vs. updaters, BC ROs, etc.); there is no longer a way to have acceptably accurate/precise moves into a region.

My apologies if I don't cry you a river. Raiders relentlessly fight an uphill battle on this site - the game literally changes around you to make raiding more difficult. ROs were introduced to give regions better ways to defend themselves, you lose WA Delegate when you resign, etc, etc.

Update bending takes literal hours of moving puppets around in preparation for less than a half second of payoff.

What on earth makes you think that something on the site should change?

[Mingulay Isle]

It's already an uphill battle for defenders, for a number of reasons (pilers vs. updaters, BC ROs, etc.); there is no longer a way to have acceptably accurate/precise moves into a region.

My apologies if I don't cry you a river. Raiders relentlessly fight an uphill battle on this site - the game literally changes around you to make raiding more difficult. ROs were introduced to give regions better ways to defend themselves, you lose WA Delegate when you resign, etc, etc.

Update bending takes literal hours of moving puppets around in preparation for less than a half second of payoff.

What on earth makes you think that something on the site should change?

We shouldn't have to spend literal hours just to get a trigger. It is fundamentally absurd and unreasonable to ask anyone to invest that kind of time unless you're offering them a paid staff position.

[Dawn Denac]

My apologies if I don't cry you a river. Raiders relentlessly fight an uphill battle on this site - the game literally changes around you to make raiding more difficult. ROs were introduced to give regions better ways to defend themselves, you lose WA Delegate when you resign, etc, etc.

Update bending takes literal hours of moving puppets around in preparation for less than a half second of payoff.

What on earth makes you think that something on the site should change?

We shouldn't have to spend literal hours just to get a trigger. It is fundamentally absurd and unreasonable to ask anyone to invest that kind of time unless you're offering them a paid staff position.

Didn't Roavin point out Defenders exploited this in the past? But now that raiders use it, it's unfair?

[Refuge Isle]

We shouldn't have to spend literal hours just to get a trigger. It is fundamentally absurd and unreasonable to ask anyone to invest that kind of time unless you're offering them a paid staff position.

It was, admittedly, an absurd amount of time invested to identify and prepare the trigger nations to be moved out of the region, let alone to stock it originally. That one side should have a maximum amount of time that they may prepare a r/d strategy is very silly.

In this case it may make more sense to not trigger off of nations controlled by an enemy faction, but to locate or create a trigger that is under defender control.

[Unibot III]

It's already an uphill battle for defenders, for a number of reasons (pilers vs. updaters, BC ROs, etc.); there is no longer a way to have acceptably accurate/precise moves into a region.

My apologies if I don't cry you a river. Raiders relentlessly fight an uphill battle on this site - the game literally changes around you to make raiding more difficult. ROs were introduced to give regions better ways to defend themselves, you lose WA Delegate when you resign, etc, etc.

Update bending takes literal hours of moving puppets around in preparation for less than a half second of payoff.

What on earth makes you think that something on the site should change?

Are you equating the work it takes to organize ninety updaters with moving puppets? I find this "uphill battle" framing bizarre. Regional Officers also came as a great advantage to invaders with little advantage for defenders.

[Mingulay Isle]

We shouldn't have to spend literal hours just to get a trigger. It is fundamentally absurd and unreasonable to ask anyone to invest that kind of time unless you're offering them a paid staff position.

Didn't Roavin point out Defenders exploited this in the past? But now that raiders use it, it's unfair?

I don't know the details of past uses, but there some fundamental differences between liberations and occupations. Namely:

• scale: To use this strategy regularly Raiders only need to invest enough to bend a suitable region, but defenders need to invest in it enough to bend any potential target. That is a significant disparity in a game with dozens of suitable candidates.
• investment: raiders effectively pick and choose the time, place and manner of engagements, meaning they only need to invest the time in implementing these strategies when they're doing an op that calls for it, while defenders need to be ready to respond at any time. Asking someone to invest four hours a day for an op is still unreasonable, but its's damn more reasonable then asking people to do that twice day up, just on the off chance the other guys show up.
• stake: When raiders ops fail, no biggie. They can simply switch to a backup target, and if they fail all of them oh well; you can try again in a few hours. Defenders on the other hand go in knowing that a failing OPs like that may very well mean the region gets destroyed.

It shouldn't be surprising that when you raise the scale investment and stakes of a tactic that you might realize it's a Pandora's box. With the amount of investment we'd need to "unbend" a trigger we might as well just fuck the entire update every night so raiders can't use tight triggers. It would take just as much time.

[Aurum Raider]

Are you equating the work it takes to organize ninety updaters with moving puppets? I find this "uphill battle" framing bizarre.

No, I'm not. Re-read my post more carefully.

I am saying that changing the game to invalidate something that takes hours of work just because you don't like it is foolish.
If defenders spent 7+ hours shifting puppets around, making their triggers more accurate, there would be nobody complaining that the game needs to change.

Regional Officers also came as a great advantage to invaders with little advantage for defenders.

How it worked out in practice is completely irrelevant, Unibot. The change was not made with raiders in mind.
All it proves is that Raiders can adapt to changes to gameplay far more effectively than defenders can.

We shouldn't have to spend literal hours just to get a trigger. It is fundamentally absurd and unreasonable to ask anyone to invest that kind of time unless you're offering them a paid staff position.

Cry me a river, raiders spend weeks refining triggers for stealth raids, and hours every day preparing triggers for tag raids.
The only thing that's changed is that variance isn't on the side of defenders anymore.

[Iris and Metis]

In this case it may make more sense to not trigger off of nations controlled by an enemy faction, but to locate or create a trigger that is under defender control.

Oh you mean like we usually do? I wonder why we didn't do that in this case. Ohh, because of U P D A T E B E N D I N G

Sorry but I'm completely tired of going in circles on this one. If all the control is in raider hands then 'creating a trigger that is under defender control' isn't possible/useful.

Perhaps I’m missing something (I promise I don't do it on purpose), but could you not use that wide trigger, calculate how long the bend takes, and estimate when you call the go based on that?

That would be fine in the right environment, but not in the circumstances we are referring to. We managed to trigger a liberation four hours into a ridiculously random and broken update (it was ultratight and unsuccessful but we still figured it out). If it was possible to calculate an accurate trigger we'd do it. As Roavin says, this post is because of an update where we applied numerous workarounds and calculations but "the brutality of the bending (combined with just ridiculous early-update variance) killed another jump, there was just nothing I could point to. Absolutely nothing, for the first time ever. And that's basically what brought out this post."

Defenders can use "update bending" but as soon as raiders utilize it, it must be solved by the technical staff or the raiders need to be puppet swept or etc etc.

As far as I am aware defenders have only ever used it to give themselves a controlled and accurate trigger, not to fuck up other peoples triggering. The raider use of it goes a step further.

Defenders could use it more aggressively, some are very prepared to. I personally think its gross way for r/d to go, and will ultimately make it much more unfulfilling for both sides and exclude/deter a lot of people. We know from experience that someone will push every tactic to its extremity. The extremity of this is basically breaking update for the other side - it may well not happen, but I'm just trying to shine a light on this and suggest that maybe none of us want that going forward and now is the time to nip it in the bud.

raiders spend weeks refining triggers for stealth raids, and hours every day preparing triggers for tag raids.

This just sounds like gross incompetence to me, why would you spend 'weeks' 'refining triggers'

[Dawn Denac]

In this case it may make more sense to not trigger off of nations controlled by an enemy faction, but to locate or create a trigger that is under defender control.

Oh you mean like we usually do? I wonder why we didn't do that in this case. Ohh, because of U P D A T E B E N D I N G

Sorry but I'm completely tired of going in circles on this one. If all the control is in raider hands then 'creating a trigger that is under defender control' isn't possible/useful.

Perhaps I’m missing something (I promise I don't do it on purpose), but could you not use that wide trigger, calculate how long the bend takes, and estimate when you call the go based on that?

That would be fine in the right environment, but not in the circumstances we are referring to. We managed to trigger a liberation four hours into a ridiculously random and broken update (it was ultratight and unsuccessful but we still figured it out). If it was possible to calculate an accurate trigger we'd do it. As Roavin says, this post is because of an update where we applied numerous workarounds and calculations but "the brutality of the bending (combined with just ridiculous early-update variance) killed another jump, there was just nothing I could point to. Absolutely nothing, for the first time ever. And that's basically what brought out this post."

Defenders can use "update bending" but as soon as raiders utilize it, it must be solved by the technical staff or the raiders need to be puppet swept or etc etc.

As far as I am aware defenders have only ever used it to give themselves a controlled and accurate trigger, not to fuck up other peoples triggering. The raider use of it goes a step further.

Defenders could use it more aggressively, some are very prepared to. I personally think its gross way for r/d to go, and will ultimately make it much more unfulfilling for both sides and exclude/deter a lot of people. We know from experience that someone will push every tactic to its extremity. The extremity of this is basically breaking update for the other side - it may well not happen, but I'm just trying to shine a light on this and suggest that maybe none of us want that going forward and now is the time to nip it in the bud.

raiders spend weeks refining triggers for stealth raids, and hours every day preparing triggers for tag raids.

This just sounds like gross incompetence to me, why would you spend 'weeks' 'refining triggers'

Can't tell if you're trolling or not. You lost one lib to being update bent, not a technical problem. Again ironic that once raiders use something defenders employ, it suddenly needs to change and gameplay is broken, and the evil raider scum we are need to be punished for our insolence.

Also, why would you spend weeks refining triggers? So you can adapt for variance and incase stuff like this happens. It's called practice makes perfect. Regardless, glad to see the usual feud between raiders and defenders has utterly derailed Roavin's original post requesitng a technical solution for a problem that apparently, according to the staff that have already posted here, doesn't need a technical solution or a moderator solution.

[Mingulay Isle]

Can't tell if you're trolling or not. You lost one lib to being update bent, not a technical problem. Again ironic that once raiders use something defenders employ, it suddenly needs to change and gameplay is broken, and the evil raider scum we are need to be punished for our insolence.

Yes, it's a lot easier to see how toxic this is now that it's going to be an arms race(also very few of us were even around for that. I certainly would not have allowed it if it were suggested).

Also, in any other game you'd be thrice banned for exploiting, griefing and spam. So, can you stop acting so put upon when people come to suggest that maybe, just maybe asking people to spend four hours spamming moves is simply unreasonable?

[Aurum Raider]

Also, in any other game you'd be thrice banned for exploiting, griefing and spam. So, can you stop acting so put upon when people come to suggest that maybe, just maybe asking people to spend four hours spamming moves is simply unreasonable?

This isn't any other game, and until moderation says otherwise, you probably shouldn't try act like it is.