So what have we learned today?

[Praeceps]

I do not think we can dispute the fact that the large-scale use of puppets got a lot more prominence because of the card farming craze that Araneidae and I started, but I didn't have hundreds of puppets for that, and I still haven't reached 100 active nations today.

Forgive me but I'm quite confused here. Card farms were pretty widespread in use last N-Day as well so this N-Day is not unique to having card farms. Were there more card farms in use this year? I would definitely say so due to the growth of the cards community. And then are you and Araneidae claiming responsibility for people card farming??? I am sorry but I have never heard of that before so that claim kind of has me dumbfounded.

[Indibagion Mer]

I learned to not be a member of the horsemen

[Sail Nation]

I learned that co-ordination of nations onsite can be really useful. I realised (as a non-discord player) that there were many people not on the discord and therefore not receiving orders. So I spent a few hours using the data from the faction page for AA to inform others (mainly the survivors from Atomic) about when attacks were coming, when we were preparing attacks etc. I used the incoming, targeted, targets and launches statistics to tell everyone else when we were under attack, about to be attacked, preparing an attack or launching an attack, and whether to produce nukes, shields etc.

During the few hours in the middle of the event, the Horsemen and AA were basically evenly matched (after Atomic had joined AA), and it took coordinated attacks for strikes to be made. We were just wasting nukes by sending them at random points, and wasting production when building nukes when we should be building shields. Now it didn't make loads of difference, but it helped, and because of that we were prepared for incoming attacks and we were ready for our own attacks. When I wound down my operations for the night, other survivors of Atomic (including some who were in the discord) took over relaying orders to the onsite nations. They also prevented attacks on factions that we were allied to, and probably helped us secure our lead that we had gained.

[Minoa]

I do not think we can dispute the fact that the large-scale use of puppets got a lot more prominence because of the card farming craze that Araneidae and I started, but I didn't have hundreds of puppets for that, and I still haven't reached 100 active nations today.

Forgive me but I'm quite confused here. Card farms were pretty widespread in use last N-Day as well so this N-Day is not unique to having card farms. Were there more card farms in use this year? I would definitely say so due to the growth of the cards community. And then are you and Araneidae claiming responsibility for people card farming??? I am sorry but I have never heard of that before so that claim kind of has me dumbfounded.

That is what I mean (underlined).

Here is the full story about the original cards race: viewtopic.php?t=440246

Neither of us willingly promoted card farming at a scale we see now, and now it is something I no longer do because of timing constraints. The problem with card farming back then was very different to now, because there was no bid matching or TCALs back then: that involved players leaving 0.01 bids in place way longer than necessary to do the transfer.

For those not familiar with the original cards event, you were (at the time) able to effectively transfer cards by placing symbolic offers for 0.01 in order to allow your puppets to transfer cards to your main nation. Then to replenish the bank you sold a low value card to one of your puppets for whatever money you needed back. It was very simple back then, with no waiting time.

[Praeceps]

Forgive me but I'm quite confused here. Card farms were pretty widespread in use last N-Day as well so this N-Day is not unique to having card farms. Were there more card farms in use this year? I would definitely say so due to the growth of the cards community. And then are you and Araneidae claiming responsibility for people card farming??? I am sorry but I have never heard of that before so that claim kind of has me dumbfounded.

That is what I mean (underlined).

Here is the full story about the original cards race: viewtopic.php?t=440246

Neither of us willingly promoted card farming at a scale we see now, and now it is something I no longer do because of timing constraints. The problem with card farming back then was very different to now, because there was no bid matching or TCALs back then: that involved players leaving 0.01 bids in place way longer than necessary to do the transfer.

For those not familiar with the original cards event, you were (at the time) able to effectively transfer cards by placing symbolic offers for 0.01 in order to allow your puppets to transfer cards to your main nation. Then to replenish the bank you sold a low value card to one of your puppets for whatever money you needed back. It was very simple back then, with no waiting time.

Thanks for the link but that's not demonstrating either of yours responsibility for the proliferation of card farming puppets—and really, I do not believe anyone can really claim such. That being said, I do think we are getting off the topic about the use of mass puppets this N-Day and the effect of card farmers on N-Day.

[Mukuro Clan]

Apart from not doing this in real life, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse is honestly the only faction who should learn their lesson this time. Using hundreds of puppets last year was somewhat tolerable, but this year more people felt that there needs to be some limit, even if legal this year: dozens may be fine, but hundreds is sheer overkill.

Apart from not doing this in real life, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse is honestly the only faction who should learn their lesson this time. Using hundreds of puppets last year was somewhat tolerable, but this year more people felt that there needs to be some limit, even if legal this year: dozens may be fine, but hundreds is sheer overkill.

If you can handle the extra work, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to use the puppets. I don't think I could go above the 57 I was using because I do everything manually but if you want to run 2000 puppets then it's on you to try it.

What I learned: The power of the puppets

Lots of puppets can certainly get some major advantages, early game, and there probably does need to be some kind of limitation on it for future N-Day events, and possibly Z-Day as well.

But puppets have limits. A faction primarily composed of puppets versus a somewhat smaller faction that is not primarily composed of puppets (or at the very least, has its puppets spread out across more users instead of all of the puppets being controlled by maybe 5 people) will almost certainly lose to the smaller faction. All it takes is one of the super-users to log off or be AFK for any reason for 10 minutes or longer for a couple hundred nukes to come through unblocked.

Are puppets too powerful? Probably. Should they be limited in some way? Probably. But acting as if they don't have inherent weaknesses is still deceptive. Maybe not to the same extent as those who act like there's nothing outright busted about puppet super-users, but still deceptive.

Source: Was in the Horsemen of the Apocalypse faction myself to witness this exact bloody thing happen to my own faction.

[Refuge Isle]

Apart from not doing this in real life, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse is honestly the only faction who should learn their lesson this time. Using hundreds of puppets last year was somewhat tolerable, but this year more people felt that there needs to be some limit, even if legal this year: dozens may be fine, but hundreds is sheer overkill.

If you can handle the extra work, I see no reason why you shouldn't be able to use the puppets. I don't think I could go above the 57 I was using because I do everything manually but if you want to run 2000 puppets then it's on you to try it.

What I learned: The power of the puppets

Lots of puppets can certainly get some major advantages, early game, and there probably does need to be some kind of limitation on it for future N-Day events, and possibly Z-Day as well.

But puppets have limits. A faction primarily composed of puppets versus a somewhat smaller faction that is not primarily composed of puppets (or at the very least, has its puppets spread out across more users instead of all of the puppets being controlled by maybe 5 people) will almost certainly lose to the smaller faction. All it takes is one of the super-users to log off or be AFK for any reason for 10 minutes or longer for a couple hundred nukes to come through unblocked.

Are puppets too powerful? Probably. Should they be limited in some way? Probably. But acting as if they don't have inherent weaknesses is still deceptive. Maybe not to the same extent as those who act like there's nothing outright busted about puppet super-users, but still deceptive.

Source: Was in the Horsemen of the Apocalypse faction myself to witness this exact bloody thing happen to my own faction.

For what it's worth, a lot of Ba Sing Se's ability to remain rad free was because I stayed up the entire event running a shield wall of 633 puppets. Was that bad for my health? Oh, undoubtedly and I doubt I'll be up for doing it again.

But I got to do what I wanted and I got to do it the way I wanted, and so I'm ultimately highly satisfied.

[Mukuro Clan]

Lots of puppets can certainly get some major advantages, early game, and there probably does need to be some kind of limitation on it for future N-Day events, and possibly Z-Day as well.

But puppets have limits. A faction primarily composed of puppets versus a somewhat smaller faction that is not primarily composed of puppets (or at the very least, has its puppets spread out across more users instead of all of the puppets being controlled by maybe 5 people) will almost certainly lose to the smaller faction. All it takes is one of the super-users to log off or be AFK for any reason for 10 minutes or longer for a couple hundred nukes to come through unblocked.

Are puppets too powerful? Probably. Should they be limited in some way? Probably. But acting as if they don't have inherent weaknesses is still deceptive. Maybe not to the same extent as those who act like there's nothing outright busted about puppet super-users, but still deceptive.

Source: Was in the Horsemen of the Apocalypse faction myself to witness this exact bloody thing happen to my own faction.

For what it's worth, a lot of Ba Sing Se's ability to remain rad free was because I stayed up the entire event running a shield wall of 633 puppets. Was that bad for my health? Oh, undoubtedly and I doubt I'll be up for doing it again.

But I got to do what I wanted and I got to do it the way I wanted, and so I'm ultimately highly satisfied.

How did you go to the bathroom for that event? Did you have piss bottles or something? Because even a bathroom break can allow nukes to get through, and that capacity for them to get through is then compounded when the shield wall in question is hundreds to thousands of accounts manned by only a handful of people.

[Lord Dominator]

For what it's worth, a lot of Ba Sing Se's ability to remain rad free was because I stayed up the entire event running a shield wall of 633 puppets. Was that bad for my health? Oh, undoubtedly and I doubt I'll be up for doing it again.

But I got to do what I wanted and I got to do it the way I wanted, and so I'm ultimately highly satisfied.

How did you go to the bathroom for that event? Did you have piss bottles or something? Because even a bathroom break can allow nukes to get through, and that capacity for them to get through is then compounded when the shield wall in question is hundreds to thousands of accounts manned by only a handful of people.

People being offline isn't obvious if it's not for long, and the large nuke attacks that actually get through the regular people aren't suddenly going to take less time to set up, even if opposition factions magically know when a given person will be offline.

[The Gilded Star]

I think you underestimate how far some of us are willing to go to win an argument on the internet.

Again, I am not underestimating this, I saw it first hand in my own faction.

Obviously, they did not care about winning the argument; they allowed trivial matters like staying alive in real life to distract them from more important matters.

...but no, I'm just joking around. Like you said, while some might have been fortunate enough to man the wheel for the full 24 hours, it's a daunting task that most people can't do, and even those that made the full 24 hours would have reached a breaking point eventually had the event lasted longer, and that's a critical weakness for factions who have a significant amount of their resources bottlenecked behind a single person.

How did you go to the bathroom for that event? Did you have piss bottles or something? Because even a bathroom break can allow nukes to get through, and that capacity for them to get through is then compounded when the shield wall in question is hundreds to thousands of accounts manned by only a handful of people.

Can't speak for Refuge, but as a smaller player on the defence team, the massive several thousand salvos aimed at us usually had enough of a wind-up time (due to all the puppet juggling, I assume), followed by a subsequent cool down time (to rebuild supplies for another huge salvo), that I think we could sorta plan around it and make sure we were available for the important moments. Salvos that wanted to be fast usually also had to be small to pull it off, and we had other people on the defence team that could handle those if Refuge was briefly unavailable for some reason (but to be fair, Refuge got like 95% of those too, and the 5% the rest of us got was probably because one person can only click so fast ).

It was probably a different story for Horsemen, since you had at least 4 major factions at any given time to time yourselves around. At Ba Sing Se, I think the Horsemen were generally the only attacking faction that could put up large enough numbers to call for all hands on deck.

[Refuge Isle]

For what it's worth, a lot of Ba Sing Se's ability to remain rad free was because I stayed up the entire event running a shield wall of 633 puppets. Was that bad for my health? Oh, undoubtedly and I doubt I'll be up for doing it again.

But I got to do what I wanted and I got to do it the way I wanted, and so I'm ultimately highly satisfied.

How did you go to the bathroom for that event? Did you have piss bottles or something? Because even a bathroom break can allow nukes to get through, and that capacity for them to get through is then compounded when the shield wall in question is hundreds to thousands of accounts manned by only a handful of people.

I went to the washroom four times, during which the lovely Sylh Alanor took over neurotically scanning for missiles. As well as watching when I had to go back to more mass shield production. I'm very very lucky to have had her eyes helping out.

How did you go to the bathroom for that event? Did you have piss bottles or something? Because even a bathroom break can allow nukes to get through, and that capacity for them to get through is then compounded when the shield wall in question is hundreds to thousands of accounts manned by only a handful of people.

People being offline isn't obvious if it's not for long, and the large nuke attacks that actually get through the regular people aren't suddenly going to take less time to set up, even if opposition factions magically know when a given person will be offline.

Didn't much help my headnoise of

"if just one gets through..."

"if just one gets through..."

XD

[Dummie]

I learned that the angle of penetration, rather than the explosive charge release, is what really matters..! Ask your mother if I'm not right...

[Absolutly Terrible]

I can now toggle between puppets so fast that I can block 400 strikes using shields from a dozen puppets, in under 2 mins. (note: this allowed me to hold off a constant stream of attacks for two very long, painful, and stressful hours).


0/10 do not recommend being the only human in a faction.

[Broader Confederate States]

I learned I should probably start off with 10 gauge strings.

[Mukuro Clan]

How did you go to the bathroom for that event? Did you have piss bottles or something? Because even a bathroom break can allow nukes to get through, and that capacity for them to get through is then compounded when the shield wall in question is hundreds to thousands of accounts manned by only a handful of people.

People being offline isn't obvious if it's not for long, and the large nuke attacks that actually get through the regular people aren't suddenly going to take less time to set up, even if opposition factions magically know when a given person will be offline.

Can't speak for other factions, but for the Horsemen, that wouldn't have mattered - we were getting 1000+ missiles launched at us pretty regularly. So because there was the constant barrage from basically everyone, disappearing for even a while if you are in charge of that many defenses would mean dooming the whole faction.

Again, I am not underestimating this, I saw it first hand in my own faction.

Obviously, they did not care about winning the argument; they allowed trivial matters like staying alive in real life to distract them from more important matters.

...but no, I'm just joking around. Like you said, while some might have been fortunate enough to man the wheel for the full 24 hours, it's a daunting task that most people can't do, and even those that made the full 24 hours would have reached a breaking point eventually had the event lasted longer, and that's a critical weakness for factions who have a significant amount of their resources bottlenecked behind a single person.

How did you go to the bathroom for that event? Did you have piss bottles or something? Because even a bathroom break can allow nukes to get through, and that capacity for them to get through is then compounded when the shield wall in question is hundreds to thousands of accounts manned by only a handful of people.

Can't speak for Refuge, but as a smaller player on the defence team, the massive several thousand salvos aimed at us usually had enough of a wind-up time (due to all the puppet juggling, I assume), followed by a subsequent cool down time (to rebuild supplies for another huge salvo), that I think we could sorta plan around it and make sure we were available for the important moments. Salvos that wanted to be fast usually also had to be small to pull it off, and we had other people on the defence team that could handle those if Refuge was briefly unavailable for some reason (but to be fair, Refuge got like 95% of those too, and the 5% the rest of us got was probably because one person can only click so fast ).

It was probably a different story for Horsemen, since you had at least 4 major factions at any given time to time yourselves around. At Ba Sing Se, I think the Horsemen were generally the only attacking faction that could put up large enough numbers to call for all hands on deck.

It was a different story. The 1000+ missile salvos came by so regularly you could tell time by it.

How did you go to the bathroom for that event? Did you have piss bottles or something? Because even a bathroom break can allow nukes to get through, and that capacity for them to get through is then compounded when the shield wall in question is hundreds to thousands of accounts manned by only a handful of people.

I went to the washroom four times, during which the lovely Sylh Alanor took over neurotically scanning for missiles. As well as watching when I had to go back to more mass shield production. I'm very very lucky to have had her eyes helping out.

People being offline isn't obvious if it's not for long, and the large nuke attacks that actually get through the regular people aren't suddenly going to take less time to set up, even if opposition factions magically know when a given person will be offline.

Didn't much help my headnoise of

"if just one gets through..."

"if just one gets through..."

XD

That helps having someone available to take over. Yeah, I know that. ^^;

I can now toggle between puppets so fast that I can block 400 strikes using shields from a dozen puppets, in under 2 mins. (note: this allowed me to hold off a constant stream of attacks for two very long, painful, and stressful hours).


0/10 do not recommend being the only human in a faction.

Yeah, for multiple reasons that's not good. One, that's further evidence how broken bringing in a bunch of puppets is, and two, that can't have been good for you at all. I hope you're feeling better.

[Lord Dominator]

People being offline isn't obvious if it's not for long, and the large nuke attacks that actually get through the regular people aren't suddenly going to take less time to set up, even if opposition factions magically know when a given person will be offline.

Can't speak for other factions, but for the Horsemen, that wouldn't have mattered - we were getting 1000+ missiles launched at us pretty regularly. So because there was the constant barrage from basically everyone, disappearing for even a while if you are in charge of that many defenses would mean dooming the whole faction.

Well yes, but Horsemen was in a rather different position compared to the rest of the biggest Factions, what with being constantly targeted by said other large factions.