Banjection rates

[Sedgistan]

I'd like us to look at the rate that nations can be ejected from a region again. This is a mainly invading/defending focused matter that comes into affect at update, generally during defender liberations attempts against an invasion. The "Bad Faith" standard is in effect in this thread - i.e. posts are expected to be made in good faith, and bad faith posts will be removed. Threads on R/D mechanics have had a tendency to descend into partisan sniping, and that won't be tolerated.

Currently the ejection limit is as follows:

Regions shall be unable to eject more than one nation per second. Nations that attempt an ejection in excess of this will see an error message.

If you click onto that post you can see the context for that being implemented - the introduction of Regional Officers with Border Control that meant that invaders could have multiple people banning nations from a region, which made liberations at the time near-impossible.

Things have evolved since then. Players are capable of reliably jumping into a region much closer to update time than they were 5 years ago, meaning the one ban per second limit has gone from balancing things out to potentially causing an imbalance of its own in the other direction.

My initial suggestion is that we look to move the limit from the region to the nation - i.e. each nation (with Border Control powers) can ban one nation per second. Because of the unique mechanics of appointing Border Control Officers (see here for details) this makes no difference immediately after an invasion, but every 26 hours will increase the effectiveness of raiders to ban attempted liberators from the region.

However, I am open to other solutions, and of course to it being argued that there is no need for any change at all.

[Wormfodder Delivery]

Well, not very experienced with the gameplay there themselves, but shouldn't things like adding those who are too fast to queues instead be a better idea?
Error messages from my opinion cause more frustration.

[Altmoras]

This you?

I do not view the current D/R imbalance as something that needs a technical solution - it's a reversal of the situation last year and unrelated to anything admin has done; however I would like to see the system changed to favour occupations, with those made more meaningful (and yes I mean with a chance of permanent conquest). But that would be tricky to balance against the wants of those uninterested in participating in this side of things.

As R/D exists right now, Raiders have ~12 hours to deploy troops into region unopposed while Defenders have X seconds to deploy even more. And whatever X is is also the amount of potential liberators that can be banned by invaders before update. To guarantee success defenders have to deploy The Entire Raider Pile +1 (to break the tie) +X (to account for bans). The mechanics of occupations already favor the occupier, I'm not sure what justification there is for saying that the mechanics of R/D are in any way causing " -an imbalance of its own in the other direction".

Things have evolved since then. Players are capable of reliably jumping into a region much closer to update time than they were 5 years ago, meaning the one ban per second limit has gone from balancing things out to potentially causing an imbalance of its own in the other direction.

Do you have data for that? Because I became a defender a few months after ROs were introduced, and I've been one ever since, and as far as I know our liberation trigger lengths haven't really changed. Sure a trigger might be shorter if we aren't endorsing a nation in-region, or if variance drastically alters it, but most major liberations have been operating on 8-16s triggers for the 5 years I've been a defender. I'd be very surprised if this assertion had any strong pattern of evidence behind it, recently we liberated Chaylia on a 4s jump, but it was supposed to be 11s so that was pure variance.

My initial suggestion is that we look to move the limit from the region to the nation - i.e. each nation (with Border Control powers) can ban one nation per second. Because of the unique mechanics of appointing Border Control Officers (see here for details) this makes no difference immediately after an invasion, but every 26 hours will increase the effectiveness of raiders to ban attempted liberators from the region.

This is already the case since individual raiders are rarely capable of individually getting a perfect 1 nation per second ban rate. Many hands make for light work and their bans get more effective the more people are manning the hammers. However I can kind of see where this point is coming from, regional suppression/ban resources aren't very intuitive and it might feel better to make them operate on a national basis.

[Sedgistan]

This you?

I do not view the current D/R imbalance as something that needs a technical solution - it's a reversal of the situation last year and unrelated to anything admin has done; however I would like to see the system changed to favour occupations, with those made more meaningful (and yes I mean with a chance of permanent conquest). But that would be tricky to balance against the wants of those uninterested in participating in this side of things.

Well yes, but you can also probably find me saying pretty much everything over 30,000+ posts spread over 10 years That particular post was 3 months ago; my views and priorities change over time, and a few people have approached me about this in the meantime.

There was some discussion on the NSGP Discord about this. There's a lot of flexibility over what we could do - that could be things like different ejection rates for Delegate / BC ROs, removing ejection rates for Delegates entirely (that wasn't popular), changing the rate limit to be x ejections over y time period instead (where x isn't 1) so ROs don't run into each other so often, or to have a "queue" that ejection requests go into. Or, as someone else said, leave ejection rates alone and instead consider the time delays for BC ROs being appointed.

It may be that the end result is that we decide that nothing needs to change. But it is also over 5 years since ejection rates were looked at, so it's a topic worth revisiting.

[Xoriet]

This change would theoretically be hurtful, considering the potential of what could be. The rate limit applies to all ROs at the same time as well as the delegate and the founder. One second per ban for every single RO plus the delegate and a founder is the current state, while the proposed change seems to be remove the rate limit from delegates. Would this also apply to founder nations? Removing the ban rate limit entirely on the delegate would definitely hurt R/D long-term since defenders have to make it through a delegate for two updates before even one RO can be appointed. Most raiders who are good average 2-3 seconds per ban, not consistent 1 per second bans. The best raider banner of whom I am aware does not have a consistent 1 second per ban ability. Even if you removed it, without an improvement in raider skill, it would make no change. If they managed to get leadership who could ban at the rate that got this rate limit implemented in the first place (which was more than 1 per second), it would become a massive disadvantage to defenders who have to pull even more massive numbers to combat raider piles which are beginning to increase in numbers again.

Is admin going to make changes to the ban rate limit every time one side has an advantage now? It is a bad precedent to keep fiddling with something they already changed at the protest of defenders every time one side is at a disadvantage. I personally hate the ban rate limit and changing the rate for the delegate would not disadvantage me at this time, but it would certainly lead to future issues that were initially addressed when admin first nerfed banning ability because it was declared that 12 immediately-appointed BC ROs with unrestricted banning ability was unfair. A skilled banner who could hit more than one nation per second as delegate repelling liberations pre-RO and then ROs added (with their rate limit still intact), would make liberations extremely difficult in a time where raider numbers had once again increased.

The problem with the state of R/D is almost entirely on the shoulders of the raider sphere. Political differences have divided groups that were previous allies and lethargic leadership in major orgs has led to a decline in activity and motivation. The other aspect is that defenders have experienced a meteoric rise in motivation and numbers comparatively. However, everyone is aware that R/D is a fluctuating dynamic. Raiders hold the ascendancy for a year or two, then defenders rise and stomp them repeatedly. Raiders are already started to show flashes of a far less underwhelming performance. The ban rate limit has certainly not stopped periods of raider supremacy before now, so that is not the issue here.

Half of the defender agendaposting on the entire affair is to make fun of the unmotivated and somnolent major raiders, who have also managed to offend their own former allies repeatedly and thus incurred penalties that are summed up as a refusal to cooperate with them, not just the fact that their numbers are far superior. In fact, the last liberation only succeeded by a few endorsements, not by a vast margin that a competent banner could not have stopped. The point was new to that aspect of R/D and thus the liberation succeeded.

Changing the ban rate limit would ultimately disadvantage defenders should the raiders manage to obtain people who can ban at the rates of more than 1 per second that led to this change. Even without the change, as long as the raiders lack the ability to ban quickly enough to halt a liberation, changing it for the delegate would not alter the current situation. The onus for changing the current dynamics is entirely reliant on raiders and the basic ability to politic and motivate members while having an active and engaged leadership.

[Karputsk]

While I'm glad some consideration is being given to making R/D more consequential than it has been for years, and that you're obviously interested in encouraging the viability of operations, this change is unnecessary.

The issue for Raiders right now is that they're in a rut, especially in comparison to Defenders. It isn't an issue of banjections, it's an issue of pilers (or more generally, numbers) and a lack of leadership.

To put this change into perspective you're better off looking at the longer sieges from earlier in the year/last year (when both factions were arguably competitive) than the current state of R/D. In South Pacific and Smol Fur Empire, Raiders and their allies amassed over 100 pilers to repel well over 100 updaters across the course of several updates. Even with us swapping delegates to try and limit the amount of BC ROs they had access to, the Raiders still swatted away liberation attempt after liberation in spite of an unprecedented amount of updaters on such short notice.

The fact of the matter is that Defenders have felt, and often complained for years that R/D is unbalanced, and short of a change to ROs following their implementation, Admin has been hesitant to make any changes to address that. Why then is this change being proposed when the issue with Raiding at the moment isn't mechanical at all? There is no need to make liberations more difficult than they already are, and there is a real risk that it Raiding were to make a resurgence that Liberations would be near impossible. You just need to look at the stats when it comes to large holds over the last few years. Until recently the last major pile that was liberated by Defenders was Anontia, in mid-2019 (and arguably Raiding was also in a rut when we pulled this off), and before that it was years again.

I'm not here to doomsday this change and the viability of liberations as has been done in the past (looking at you Roavin ), and there is obviously an argument that Liberations *should* be difficult given that Defenders have already failed to protect the region in the first instance, but I don't think there's much ground to make them more difficult than they already are, especially when the recent viability of Raider operations in recent months has not been mechanical in nature.

[Sedgistan]

It's been 12 days, with no support at all for changing the status quo, so this suggestion is being taken out the back and disposed of like Old Yeller.

That's not to say it can't be revisited in the future if someone wants to bring it up again (or some other variation of changing banjection rates), but we'd need to see arguments in Technical for any change to be considered.