Liberations are now literally impossible

[Dawn Denac]

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?

The "arms race" ended about 5 years ago when defenders first discovered the tactic asking around the more veteran members of TBH.

Also, what Aurum just said.

[Roavin]

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.

That's nonsensical. Defenders don't benefit from ROs in a Liberation situation. Raiders benefit in an occupation scenario. That has nothing to do with inventiveness and we're pretty damn inventive - see below.

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.

To clarify this for accuracy (and I can only state this authoritatively starting about mid-2016, somebody else will have to jump in regarding prior uses):

I sort of independently "invented" it in IIRC late 2016 during a time when there was a dearth of more experienced leadership. It was used in a few select cases to widen triggers for likely raid targets and/or known raid targets for which we didn't want to let on that we got prior intel. I wasn't aware that there was prior usage (though it doesn't surprise me). It ended up not being used often for multiple reasons, one of which being that the prospect of the other side seeing all the moves, catching wind of it, and using the technique for itself was horrifying (and, well, quod erad demonstrandum).

We never needed to update bend to provide better triggers, because at the same time we also came up with a much less situationally dependent method for triggering that served us extremely well without fail whenever it wasn't as easy as "move a nation to a backwater and wait for influence change"; that newer method became a standard component of advanced officer training. That, by the way, is the same technique we were using for all of the SP jumps.

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'

As I understand it, it's for the most part just an alternative (and more ritualistic) way of doing the statistical approach that we do for the big ones, except rather than just looking at the past week to compare and contrast an actual trigger is set every update to see how it lands. More effort than how we do it, but it's effectively the same kind of thing.

The "arms race" ended about 5 years ago when defenders first discovered the tactic asking around the more veteran members of TBH.

What are you talking about?

[Dawn Denac]

The "arms race" ended about 5 years ago when defenders first discovered the tactic asking around the more veteran members of TBH.

What are you talking about?

Not overly sure why you're asking me about the arms race when I didn't bring it up, but it was mainly in reply to what Mingulay said (regarding what I assume to be "update bending").

Also, is there a point to this thread considering how hard it's derailed, Roavin?

[Roavin]

What are you talking about?

Not overly sure why you're asking me about the arms race when I didn't bring it up, but it was mainly in reply to what Mingulay said (regarding what I assume to be "update bending").

No I mean what are you referring to wrt "asking around the more veteran members of TBH"?

Also, is there a point to this thread considering how hard it's derailed, Roavin?

I might edit the thread title a bit but I still think it's insightful anyhow.

[Dawn Denac]

Not overly sure why you're asking me about the arms race when I didn't bring it up, but it was mainly in reply to what Mingulay said (regarding what I assume to be "update bending").

No I mean what are you referring to wrt "asking around the more veteran members of TBH"?

Also, is there a point to this thread considering how hard it's derailed, Roavin?

I might edit the thread title a bit but I still think it's insightful anyhow.

Clarifying on the first question, asked about update bending when this thread was made, remembered someone mentioning it was discovered roughly 5 years back and used by defenders. /shrug

And kay, I guess.

[Roavin]

Okay but again I came up with that independently about 4 years ago, not knowing that it had been used before by whoever.

[Chingis]

The issue with this mechanic is not so much that it is unbeatable in the form that the raiders used it for this particular liberation. I personally think this current run was in fact, while entirely unbalanced to a ridiculous degree, still possible to account for with enough preparation.

The issue is that in its worst form, this technique is entirely unbeatable, and the absolutely laughable suggestions from Refuge show exactly how far we are to any genuine solutions to this issue. The reality is that given that raiders are able to move large amounts of puppets in incredibly small periods of time, there are only 3 realistic solutions to this problem that won't get beaten by incredibly easy tricks, which I won't list here in the fragile hope that I'm the only one who has thought of them, which is highly unlikely given the relative ingenuity of TBH members historically, and given how much time Sakana has spent around me.

The first is to simply bite the bullet and jump early. This is just absurd for a plethora of reasons. Don't buy Refuge's claims about how it's not possible to shift the trigger by that much. They're being entirely untruthful - just to illustrate I hopped on very quickly to move some pups into Egalaria. Note that if I actually tried I could probably go about a second faster since I was eating my cornflakes with my free hand at the time but on average I can move one nation every 4 seconds. I'm specifically a good example since I live in New Zealand and hence have the absolute worst page loads of possibly any NS region with the exception of maybe Central Europe.


Now if we were to assume that its reasonable to expect the raiders to at least somewhat match the defenders in effort, then in 2 minutes 80 people can move 15*80*2 = 2400 nations, which is also incidentally the amount of time that it actually takes for a region with that amount of people to update +/- 7 seconds. In other words, it is perfectly realistic to shift a trigger by an entire minute *just* by moving nations. Moreso, 12 BC RO's can easily banject 720 nations every minute, so in two minutes a region the size of a small sinker can be emptied by 90 people - the same manpower fielded by the defenders on that update.

This is without even mentioning the reality that raider endorsements are *not* active updaters, while almost every defender endorsement is expected to come from someone who actually jumps on the liberation. This is also without even mentioning the fact that even just one raider BC RO can eject 10 nations on a 10-second trigger, which frankly is realistic given the variance of update - the so-called "week-refined" trigger of TBH was I believe 8 seconds with absolutely 0 fuckery with the update. This means that defenders don't only need to pull 90 updaters against 90 randoms that have to click a button at any point during their week and never check that nation again, they have to pull 90 + one for every RO * every second of the trigger.

Trying to symmetrise this to raiding is entirely absurd - raiders know exactly what target out of the 20,000 existing regions they are hitting and have weeks if not months to plan for this beforehand. Once inside the region, they then have 12 hours to find people to pile, vs. the 30-odd minutes that defenders have to find updaters, that then also need to be able to chase (which is already imbalanced compared to triggered jumps), within an 8-second trigger, and match the updater count pulled by raiders, who have had weeks to find people for the update. This, however, was up until now still possible to win for defenders, given enough updaters were found. However for the reasons pointed out above, triggered jumps now only work in one direction unless you can get a region between the 'bend' region and the target.

The second solution is as mentioned above, finding a region between the bend region and the target. This comes with its own set of disadvantages for defending, as large regions screw with update variance like there is no tomorrow, and given the banning power wielded by raider ROs this does stack up, but that's whatever. The real question is the feasibility of actually getting said region. While I'll agree with Derps that talking about founding 17k regions *after* a raid is entirely disingenuous, it is, however, the case that it is possible to found regions in advance, and if we were to assume the same level of effort from both raiders and defenders, it should in theory then boil down to a 50/50 of whether the raiders *instantly* win, or the defenders get a chance to then possibly have a stab at matching inactive pilers with active jumpers into a banjecting RO.

Obviously there is also the flip side of refounds, which I would argue is entirely imbalanced to the raider side - they have weeks to trawl through past regions to match specifically their one target out of 23000, and most importantly they can literally found all the possible candidate regions well before the raid ever happens.

Thirdly, there is, of course, the option of not even needing to jump. This would require keeping around 100-120 sleepers in every raidable region which could then be given out to people (as far as I am aware this is a plausible game mechanic, but I may be wrong). Not only does it seem ridiculous that this would need to be a strategy, it is also probably straying on the wrong side of puppet flooding rules.

In conclusion, the issue with this strategy isn't that is undefeatable in its current form - its that it in its nature presents an insurmountable wall that raiders could erect at any point to just (best case fenda scenario) win instantly 50% of the time with minimal effort. There is no need to talk about the 'one-off nature' of this tactic - its mere existence is enough to pose a clear threat to the viability of liberations. This game has historically been absurdly imbalanced against defenders (I heavily doubt anyone believed anything Ata was saying, but just in case - don't, since it's all not true from the uphill battle to the "7+" hours), but this isn't a question of disbalance now, its simply a tactic that isn't beatable by any reasonable counter, in the same way, that in a game of chess having 15 queens is unbeatable in a game between two decently talented opponents - you don't need to lose 100 times to prove it, it's just clear as day.

Note that I would be just as likely to object to a game-breaking mechanic used by defenders to stunt raiding - operations are endless fun on the other side of the divide too. The issue here is probably more that the game is significantly more focussed on non R/D related mechanics which by nature exist to lock out raiders, but that's just how it is, as we can see the way things currently stand raiding is entirely possible with virtually no unreasonable effort.

[Raionitu]

Moreso, 12 BC RO's can easily banject 720 nations every minute, so in two minutes a region the size of a small sinker can be emptied by 90 people - the same manpower fielded by the defenders on that update.

Not gonna take the time to reply to the entire post right now, but as far as I know the 1 ejection per second limit is per region, not per RO. So even with an ejection being done the instant it becomes possible, you are still looking at a mechanical max of 60 per minute, even with 12 BC ROs.

Even if its per officer, the idea that they would 'easily' get 720 is laughable unless they had a script doing it for them so it was one ejection every second on the second with no accidental overlap between people. 720 would be a perfect minute if it is 1 eject per second per person.

Either way, the issue seems to be that that many nations with how unpredictable variance is early on in update seems to be that the issue is more with variance being too high. If variance was more predictable, then using the number of nations between a trigger and target would allow for a (albeit looser than preferred) trigger.

[Chingis]

Not gonna take the time to reply to the entire post right now, but as far as I know the 1 ejection per second limit is per region, not per RO. So even with an ejection being done the instant it becomes possible, you are still looking at a mechanical max of 60 per minute, even with 12 BC ROs.

That's my bad, I didn't know that it was a regional limit. I did, however, write the rest of my post with only one BCed RO in mind, excluding the stuff about the 'bend region' ejections. That being said this just means that instead of 2400 + 1440, we get 2400 + 11*15*2 + 120 = 2850 nations which are about 2-2.5 minutes worth of update time.

Even if its per officer, the idea that they would 'easily' get 720 is laughable unless they had a script doing it for them so it was one ejection every second on the second with no accidental overlap between people. 720 would be a perfect minute if it is 1 eject per second per person.

Now, this is specifically an example of how raiders in this thread are missing the point - its not a question of "well here's what we don't really do", its a question of game mechanics allowing things that aren't just possible to do - they're actually very very easy to do. Just because TBH doesn't use ejecting scripts, doesn't mean something as easy as a (legal) ejecting script that ejects at exactly 1 per second on the users input isn't child's play to write.

[Eluvatar]

Just because TBH doesn't use ejecting scripts, doesn't mean something as easy as a (legal) ejecting script that ejects at exactly 1 per second on the users input isn't child's play to write.

I wouldn't be too confident in that. But it's somewhat tangential to your argument, isn't it? Just agree to supposing an ejection every 1.2 seconds, 50/minute, and go from there, no?

---

I don't intend to comment on artificial variance. But I will say that I haven't seen a quantitative case for how it affected matters here in the invaders favor.

[Chingis]

I wouldn't be too confident in that. But it's somewhat tangential to your argument, isn't it? Just agree to supposing an ejection every 1.2 seconds, 50/minute, and go from there, no?

Yeah so that was my bad - discounting pageloads* it's easy to eject at one per second. Given a stable connection it should be possible to pull that limit maximally close to one with a little math. However, yes - my point was more in terms of scale - it's realistic to kick 6 nations in 7 seconds if you have Sakana speed page loads.

[Flanderlion]

If the order shuffled each update, with Estimated Update Times displayed, this wouldn't be an issue.

[Devi]

If the order shuffled each update, with Estimated Update Times displayed, this wouldn't be an issue.

With more defenders than ever being able to land 0s chases, that proposal's even more patently ridiculous than when it first circulated

[Roavin]

If the order shuffled each update, with Estimated Update Times displayed, this wouldn't be an issue.

With more defenders than ever being able to land 0s chases, that proposal's even more patently ridiculous than when it first circulated

Yeah that doesn't help anyone, especially given that the current meta has evolved so much toward quick reaction times across the board. (unless the point is to counteract that, but that'd require other changes as well)

While it doesn't address the bending per se, I'm principally not opposed to Rai's suggestion to reduce the variance, because I know both sides of the aisle have had trouble with huge spikes particularly in early update with these long update times. Maybe just a small tweak that adds an upper bound to the "variance velocity"?

Also +1 on Chingis explaining all of this much more eloquently than I could have. To add my own example calculation to it: 3 people being able to move a nation every 2 seconds (slow for North American standards), starting with the 2 minute warning, can move 180 nations in that time. The update rate varies wildly but is usually something between 20 and 50 nations per second; ergo it shifts a trigger by 3-9 seconds. That's not a lot, but consider how easy it is to scale. For its big operations, TBH alone can easily get 15ish people online at update. Let's say there's a big liberation; 5 of those are watching for incoming nations to eject them (ergo 10 are bending) and let's lower the speed to an average of 3 seconds per move (North Americans will be faster, New Zealanders slower, Europeans somewhere inbetween). That still means 400 nations in those 2 minutes, which means 8-20(!) seconds of shift in either direction. Assuming the 1.2/s ejection rate Elu mentioned earlier, that's an additional 7-17 updaters gone. That's a huge margin - one that simply doesn't exist for big liberations.

[Ballotonia]

Greetings,

Has anyone actually tested some of these assumptions?

Let's suppose one measures the update time of a 2000 nation region. Then the next day after the region has started updating again one quickly moves out 200 nations. What's the actual difference in time it takes for the update to process that region?

I see a lot of math based on a presumption of how the update works, but no actual measured data.
(note that due to variance one would have to perform this experiment a few times to get useful data)

Ballotonia

[Unibot III]

Greetings,

Has anyone actually tested some of these assumptions?

Let's suppose one measures the update time of a 2000 nation region. Then the next day after the region has started updating again one quickly moves out 200 nations. What's the actual difference in time it takes for the update to process that region?

I see a lot of math based on a presumption of how the update works, but no actual measured data.

Ballotonia

Do you mean before the region has started updating, Ballo?

[Ballotonia]

Do you mean before the region has started updating, Ballo?

I wrote 'after'. That is what I meant. If you move nations out only before it updates, then nations left inside can be used as a trigger per usual.

Ballotonia

[Unibot III]

Do you mean before the region has started updating, Ballo?

I wrote 'after'. That is what I meant. If you move nations out only before it updates, then nations left inside can be used as a trigger per usual.

Ballotonia

Ahaha. I love you man. Never change!

[Old Hope]

There`s good reason for this one to be a bad change.
Some of you treat R/D as symmetrical warfare. It is not.
Raiders pick the target. Defenders react.
Raiders can attack whenever they want to, which means that they can prepare as long as necessary. Defenders have a limited amount of time to prepare, they are fighting against a deadline.
Raiders can infiltrate regions to be raided beforehand. Defenders do not infiltrate peaceful regions because they are not raiders(and because they do not know the target in advance). It is impossible for defenders to infiltrate raided regions unless they have infiltrated the raider region.
Raiders and defenders alike can infiltrate enemy regions. However, any leak will make counterintelligence efforts easier. And defenders need operational leaks whilst raiders only need counterintelligence.
Defenders can easily pass a liberation resolution but that one does not mitigate the damage done to the community of the invaded nation due to destruction of links in the factbook for prolonged time, missed recruitment and other negative influences on the region.

This update-bending significantly influences regions:
-that are password protected without raiders knowing the password
-with an active founder
or both.
What raiders often forget... the damage starts the second you mess up the regions recruitment efforts and factbook. And it massively grows if the invasion is not repelled quickly. And with update-bending, defense actions will be more unreliable, giving raiders more time to cripple regions, on average. That is not good.

Another unrelated aspect that has not been spelled out directly, in this fashion, albeit indirectly:
Update-bending with more than one nation simply breaks the R/D game by letting NON-WA nations influence R/D on a grand scale. Any forces in R/D have been restricted by the actual amount of players behind them. You cannot invade a region with 20 endorsements if you have 19 updaters and no one who infiltrated the region. You cannot defend a region if you don`t have enough updaters. With update bending, one player with 100 puppets has more influence than 20 players with 2 puppet nations each. Sure, skill and avaliability might tweak this a bit, due to errors and such, but this here can be totally out of proportion.

[Refuge Isle]

Defenders do not infiltrate peaceful regions because they are not raiders

While this is very amusing, it's also very naive.

This update-bending significantly influences regions:
-that are password protected without raiders knowing the password
-with an active founder
or both.

Wh- what? The only way it influences other regions is by causing them to update very slightly later than they otherwise would. I would guess 95% of regions are not even aware of their update times, let alone care about them.

Update-bending with more than one nation simply breaks the R/D game by letting NON-WA nations influence R/D on a grand scale. Any forces in R/D have been restricted by the actual amount of players behind them. You cannot invade a region with 20 endorsements if you have 19 updaters and no one who infiltrated the region. You cannot defend a region if you don`t have enough updaters. With update bending, one player with 100 puppets has more influence than 20 players with 2 puppet nations each. Sure, skill and avaliability might tweak this a bit, due to errors and such, but this here can be totally out of proportion.

I...don't think you know what's being discussed in this thread. Update bending does not allow you to capture regions without the requisite number of endorsements. Additionally the puppets in question are not used in the target region, and their influence is irrelevant. This topic discusses how they are placed in a region nearby and adjust the time until the actual target region updates.

[Old Hope]

Defenders do not infiltrate peaceful regions because they are not raiders

While this is very amusing, it's also very naive.

This update-bending significantly influences regions:
-that are password protected without raiders knowing the password
-with an active founder
or both.

Wh- what? The only way it influences other regions is by causing them to update very slightly later than they otherwise would. I would guess 95% of regions are not even aware of their update times, let alone care about them.

Update-bending with more than one nation simply breaks the R/D game by letting NON-WA nations influence R/D on a grand scale. Any forces in R/D have been restricted by the actual amount of players behind them. You cannot invade a region with 20 endorsements if you have 19 updaters and no one who infiltrated the region. You cannot defend a region if you don`t have enough updaters. With update bending, one player with 100 puppets has more influence than 20 players with 2 puppet nations each. Sure, skill and avaliability might tweak this a bit, due to errors and such, but this here can be totally out of proportion.

I...don't think you know what's being discussed in this thread. Update bending does not allow you to capture regions without the requisite number of endorsements. Additionally the puppets in question are not used in the target region, and their influence is irrelevant. This topic discusses how they are placed in a region nearby and adjust the time until the actual target region updates.

No, but update bending does allow you to PREVENT the capture or re-capture of regions. And because raiders are aware of being targets but their targets are not, in advance...