These changes will roll in as resets occur, starting with FFA which starts tomorrow.

1) Restart Aid Tweaks & Bugfixes

    i) Difference between servers with multi_allowed and not (Max still 95%)
        a) multies allowed (FFA,AI,AlphaFFA)
                20% + 0.06% / defend
        b) single country servers
                40% + 0.06% / defend        (from 70% + 0.02% / defend)

    ii) Minimum's lowered
        a) minimum land halved to total_turns/2
        b) minimum CS lowered to total_turns*1/50 from total_turns*3/40
        c) minimum reverted to total_turns*3000 from total_turns*4000

    iii) Bugfix: Defends are properly calculated now (for some reason d_tot actually was only ss/ps)

    iv) Bugfix: PS'd units are now counted in totals for restarting

    v) Bugfix: Can sell when out of protection and below turn 100

    vi) Bugfix: Can send/receive FA when out of protection and below turn 100

2) AB & BR Adjustments
    a) Reduce AB & BR building destruction from (unmodified) 0.4343% to 0.33%
    b) Reduce AB & BR minimum CS destruction to 0 from 1

3) Implement Half-Life DR using 72 hour news
    a) Half life of 18 hours * Relative Hit Strength, minimum of 12 hours, maximum of 24 hours (see d for EXPRESS)
        i) ex1. If you hit with an attacking force of 110% of a targets defence, the half-life is 19.8 hours
        ii) ex2. If you fail with 90% the halflife is 16.2
    b) Continuous DR formula: DR_MULTIPLIER = DR_HITS<13 ? MIN( 1, 0.1+((DR_HITS-13)^2)/135) : 0.1
        i) This is a simple smoothed approximation of the existing DR schedule
    c) Hits older than 72 hours are IGNORED
        i) With the exception of ALL-SET COUNTRY:COUNTRY DR, which is calculated with a 168 hour halflife (1 week)
    d) EXPRESS HALF LIFE IS DIFFERENT:
        i) 8 hour half-life (base) for Express (min 6, max 12); 72 hour ALL-SET COUNTRY:COUNTRY DR halflife
    e) Reintroducing the 1/10th chance hits for specials
        i) These was only removed for performance reasons in the past

EXAMPLE OF NUMBER 3

	
Hit Time (hours ago)		DR, assuming 110% oversend
0.1				0.9965053771
0.1				0.9965053771
0.1				0.9965053771
9				0.7297400528
9				0.7297400528
12				0.6569882136
12				0.6569882136
12				0.6569882136
12				0.6569882136
24				0.4316335128
24				0.4316335128
24				0.4316335128
24				0.4316335128
36				0.2835781305
36				0.2835781305
36				0.2835781305
48				0.1863074894
48				0.1863074894
48				0.1863074894
48				0.1863074894
54				0.1510111806
54				0.1510111806
54				0.1510111806
54				0.1510111806
54				0.1510111806
72				0.0804165561
72				0.0804165561
72				0.0804165561
72				0.0804165561
TOTAL:				11.48

So, currently this would be 9 DR, but now it is 11.48.

Alternately, if you are in war, and survived a KR with 100 hits 72 hours ago where attackers were sending more than 133% of the break, with no hits since, you would be at 12.5 DR still, assuming you'd made no hits. Your attacking would reduce those, again based on time.

--------------------------------



Reasoning:

The advanced restart is being adjusted downwards in response to this reset's version.
The AB & BR changes are balancing adjustments based on average usage over the past several resets.
The DR changes are something we have discussed off and on for quite some time; it will remove DR camping, will allow targets in war to be less brutalized by farming after an unsuccessful killrun, and will, we hope, make things slightly more interesting.



As always, please post your thoughts or concerns below.


Regards,

qzjul & the EE Development Team

Was there any discussion on buffing GS kill runs or not so much?

There is, though it didn't quite make the cutoff for this set; I might get it in before alliance resets, maybe not, depending on how things go

I think we should increase the stealing percentage :)

Questions about the DR:

1. So, it is no longer possible top calculate the DR of a country from looking at a news, since you don't know how much players oversend, yes? You can only approximate based on 110% oversend or whatever?


2. Continuous DR formula: DR_MULTIPLIER = DR_HITS<13 ? MIN( 1, 0.1+((DR_HITS-13)^2)/DR_HITS : 0.1

I'm not understanding this formula. If DR_HITS is 3.14 from summing up the various halflifes, then
DR_MULTIPLIER = MIN( 1, 0.1+((3.14-13)^2)/3.14)
which is MIN(1, 31.06) which is just 1?

DR_HITS would have to be 10 to give a DR_MULTIPLIER of exactly 1, so a country needs to have taken more than 10 hits to start entering DR for the multiplier to be just less than 1?

Restarting isn't reduced nearly enough. We'll see at least 50% returned on quick 200 hit kills and 70% returned on basic walling kills of 500 defends. With all the bug fixes that were limited them restarts will be nearly as overpowered as they were this set.

Reducing buildings destroyed is probably fine but I would return the min CS destroyed back to 1.

Regarding the above, is there a cap of the 95% like the previous change? If there is no cap, it takes walling 1000 hits to reach 100%, or 917 hits to reach 95% on single country servers.

Walling successfully even just once (raising a kill from 250 hits to 500 hits) would increase the restart percentage from about 55% to 70%, which still sounds a bit too high. Perhaps the 0.06 multiplier per hit is too big?

The more walling is done, the less reason there is to kill said country since it will restart with nearly it's original country size. If this is the intent and to encourage walling, then I suppose the overall change and 0.06 multiplier is ok, but this will serve to have kill runs try to rush a country as fast as possible (especially since the Fast DR Type II was removed). Then again, people already try to kill countries as fast as possible, so in this area, I suppose nothing has changed.

Sounds good Qzjul. I just think right now GS'ing is far inferior... i would suggest the stealing percent raised as well. because its like if you kill someone with a GS they lose their troops.. and a small small percentage of their stock and tech.. and the come back fully built up.


Also i was curious about reducing the CS thing as well. I would think it should stay at 1.. and maybe slow down the front end CS loss if thats the goal.. i mean if someone wastes 1 or 2 turns hitting you.. you should at least need to use 1 turn to build back up.

I have no idea what #3 is talking about. I hope it's not going to make it too confusing to determine who is in DR and who is able to be grabbed.

That's exactly the point of the change.

You're making a joke, right? It's hard to tell

It's going to add some guesswork and slight randomness to the DR equation.

Why do we not want to know how much DR people are in when we're just 1x single tapping for land? I would say this seems solely aimed at Alliance for DR camping, to the major detriment of other servers, but looks like there's some special Express stuff also included (8 hour DR? would be a major change)...

Can someone tell me what it means, in practical terms, if a guy in Primary was grabbed twice yesterday and twice today and the ones from yesterday just ticked past an hour ago so his DR would normally be 2? Now it's going to be like 2.8 something or possibly more? Why would we want this in any other server?

Good catch Xin; I mis-transcribed my excel sheet -- it's actually:
DR_MULTIPLIER = DR_HITS<13 ? MIN( 1, 0.1+((DR_HITS-13)^2)/135) : 0.1

Yep, sorry, should have clarified that

basically, if they just ticked by; normally you'd be 2, but now each of yesterdays will be 0.4 approx, yea, so about 2.8

We were talking about a halflife of 24 hours originally, which is easier to count in your head, but it's a little *too* conservative for grabbing i think, 18 hours means it's reduced quite a bit faster

One of the big reasons for this is that it opens up a way to change the times per-server if we want to. If FFA wants more grabbing, we can make it 12 hours, that sort of idea, and obviously we can now make express different; much more tweakable

Hits that are 48 hours old are still adding roughly .2 DR depending on oversends. 72 hours still another .1. I get why you may want this in Alliance but any explanation for why we'd want it on other servers - I mean not the changing of DR windows, but all the added complications? Couldn't you just change Express to 8 hours or FFA to 16 hours or whatever and leave it at that?

It's going to make finding targets a major headache. Every country we consider attacking now will demand an involved process of adding up attacks for the past 3+ days trying to figure out what the DR might be, having to check back against a big table like you posted here and adding up all the sums, wow. Why?

Also, before if you were the third person to hit a country, 100% returns. Fourth person, 80% returns. Now, the DR when you go in to make a hit might be 2.21224328239847982, where would that fall? .21224328239847982 of the regular 20% drop between hits, so a reduction of 4.2448656479695964 for a 95.7551343520304036% return?

O...M...G


Why so freakin difficult.. ?! Man, not every one has a background with computer html type stuff. Basic laymen terms, for the technologically impaired. You know me, i will hunt you down on irc, you'll show me lines of code, i will say what. What the fluff is that..then you break it down...

Lets save the hassle and break it down to stupid terms for some of us please. I some how have to explain this shut to others in my alliance

One thing I was thinking about was doing a Miltiary Spy to give exact current DR.... :)

for the most part you can round them in your head if you like:

Age
First 12 hours, count down 0.1 per 3 hours
0h => 1
3h => 0.9
6h => 0.8
9h => 0.7
12h => 0.6

Second 24 hours, count down 0.1 per 6 hours
18h => 0.5
24h => 0.4
30h => 0.3

36h => 0.25
48h => 0.15
54h => 0.125
72h => 0.0625


The effect of the DR is very similar to before, just smoothed somewhat, so that you can have in-between hits.



Kindof, but it makes DR camping really weird if it's something like that -- if it's 16 hours, you have to play at all hours of the day if you want to protect yourself appropriately....

Smoothing it actually is somewhat logical, just saying, you don't want it to be a major fluff to figure out.

There needs to be some way you can find out what DR someone is in. I'd say just add it to the current spy ops.

Adding it into mil spies is a good idea, also those need to be made to auto upload.

Agree with many above. You just hosed the DR tools on all the major hosting sites. Adding it to a military op would be helpful. I would hope that auto-upload of the military op would be helpful but I am skeptical that our hosting site (Boxcar) would get any new code to receive it...

Dragon better get coding on GHQ...

Well, you can only estimate DR at best, since the Half-Lifes are based on how much players oversend or undersend by. The minimum and maximum caps are using 12 and 24 hour half-lifes, with ~19.8 hours as the minimum if all attacks broke.

I assume this applies for all attack types, qzjul? What would be the DR for an AB attack with the attacking sending 10k tanks vs a defender with 1k tanks? The maximum of 24 hours since the attack factor is 10x, and you only need 1.5x to max it to 24 hours?

iv) Bugfix: PS'd units are now counted in totals for restarting



v) Bugfix: Can sell when out of protection and below turn 100



vi) Bugfix: Can send/receive FA when out of protection and below turn 100

You just "fixed" the only thing that was good about the changes.... but who cares I'm gonna ride the netting train now, omega are you accepting apps? :>

Yeah qz, what if you oversend 2x? 3x? 5x? 10x?

1) i) b)
so at 750 hits you get just as much stuff back as before, thats 85% and it now takes 917 to hit instead of 1250 (except it was bugged so a 500 hit wall which only actually got a bit over 70% would be very close to what a 500 hit waller will come back with next set)

thats a lot more likely

why you dont invert the formula to make hits decrease the amount of stuff you get back, and make the hits only count since you were at max pop (whichever way you want the formula going)

1) ii)
sounds ok, at least it provides the possibility for a lot of damage done to a country to actually matter

1) iii)
this is very worrying and shows that the current reset could have been worse if it wasnt bugged which means next reset might not be much better

1) iv)
more buffs to restarts, not ideal, at least before protecting/using your jets you risked losing them

1) v) vi)
should be a quality of life improvement

2) a)
seems needed, at least this is something which will actually weaken suiciding, making crippling stronger and killing weaker at the same time this set had a bigger effect together so hopefully doing both the other way should make next set not so bad

2) b)
might cause it to be impossible to knock down a countries cs completely before killing them but the level will probably still be below the cs restart minimum floor so it shouldnt matter

might lead to a situation where you lose a lot less csites with lowish bpt on high building count if you rebuild quickly

3)
half life dr is a good idea, camping is definately something which should be discouraged or managed

not sure that making it random is the right way to go though, all you really need to do is make it smooth so that theres no advantage to hitting instantly but rather a tradeoff between waiting and risking losing it and not waiting but geting lower returns

perhaps just let dr show in ingame country searches as well as mil spy, would even give a reason to allow 25 searches which showed that a day for a retro touch

how does the pang factor effect the randomness, if you send 110% and the pang factor was 0% do you get higher dr than if you send 110% and the pang factor was 10%?

3) d)
much needed change for express, those countries who tried to get in huge dr and stay there should be weaker now

3) e)
reduces the desirability of killing which if the other nerfs to restarts havnt been enough is a bad thing, perhaps the wrong set to implement this

do goods on the market when you're killed also get 40%'ed?

Missile kills are going to be KING!

Corrrect.


Yea, the attacks apply the same way as they did before; that is, DR only counts for Special defends that Break, and subtracts for all attacks.

And yes, it wouild be 24h HL for a 10k tanks vs 1k tanks. (1.5x 18h)

Yes :)

QZ will you have a DR counter on one of the spy ops before this set starts? I personally think it should be in the standard op. I dont see why you would make people do an extra op to determine DR when the top grabbers probably wont do it anyways.

I dont really do much grabbing outside of trading anyways so it wont likely matter I guess but yah..

it would make sense to have a DR counter for spyops as well as long as your adding one for attacks

Even having to spy at all without knowing if they're a target first is adding an extra step. Could be spying on targets that you have to dismiss for DR reasons

Btw I would hypothesize that in Alliance this will make land trading more powerful in comparison. Because DR camping has been flattened out, the returns from those untaggeds will be spread out more evenly amongst all the bottom feeding attackers, rather than distributed directly into the hands of a few successful DR campers. This will add land for the people that don't spend a lot of time doing that DR camping crap, but lower land for those who do.

The entire game should be turn based and not time based.

I THINK I LIKE MOST OF THESE CHANGES.

40% RETURNED TO A RESTART MAY PROVE TO BE A REASONABLE AMOUNT. HOWEVER, 0.06% ADDED PER DEFEND IS STILL PROBABLY A BIT TOO MUCH (AS OTHERS HAVE ALREADY STATED). ALLOWING PEOPLE TO RESTART WITH 70% OF THEIR PREVIOUS COUNTRY JUST FOR SURVIVING AN EXTRA 250 HITS PAST WHAT A NORMAL NON-STONEWALLED KILL WOULD TAKE... SEEMS A BIT HIGH TO ME. SURVIVING 250 MORE GS ATTACKS ONCE YOUR ASSAILANTS HAVE YOU DOWN TO MINIMUM RETURNS ONLY REQUIRES THAT YOU RUN 32 MORE TURNS. 62 MORE TURNS TO SURVIVE 250 HITS OF A BR KILL AT MIINIMUM RETURNS.

EVEN A NORMAL, NON-STONEWALLED RUN WILL RESULT IN ENOUGH DEFENDS FOR THE RESTART COUNTRY TO HAVE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF 55% OF THE KILLED COUNTRY. AND THAT'S JUST FOR DOING NOTHING BUT GETTING KILLED.

ONE OF THE THINGS WE NOTICED THIS RESET WAS THAT IT SEEMED LIKE STONE WALLING (FOR THE SMALLER PARTY IN A WAR) WAS FAIRLY WORTHLESS.. SPEND YOUR CASH ON TURRETS WHICH THE ENEMY WILL TAKE OUT, OR HANG ONTO THE CASH, LET THE KILL HAPPEN, AND RETURN WITH 75% OF YOUR CASH. THE INCREASE OF THE PERCENTAGE PER DEFEND KEEPS THIS DYNAMIC IN EFFECT. DON'T TRY TO STOP YOUR COUNTRY FROM GETTING KILLED, DON'T WASTE YOUR RESOURCES FIGHTHING.... RUN 32 TURNS (OR 62) NEAR THE END OF THE KILL RUN, AND COME BACK WITH A VERY STRONG RESTART.

THE DR THING SOUNDS LIKE IT WILL BE QUITE A PAIN.. AND I'M NOT EVEN CERTAIN I UNDERSTAND IT YET, BUT INTRODUCING A BIT OF UNKNOWN BACK INTO THE GAME COULD PERHAPS BE A GOOD THING. I'M THE TYPE WHO LIKES TO CALCULATE EVERYTHING DOWN TO THE TINIEST DETAIL WHENEVER I CAN... NOT ALWAYS BEING ABLE TO KNOW THE EXACT ANSWER COULD BE GOOD EVEN FOR ME :)

A COUPLE PEOPLE HERE MENTIONED INCREASING THE AMOUNTS STOLEN BY GS, WHICH I THINK IS A GOOD IDEA. RIGHT NOW THE AMOUNTS TAKEN SEEM TINY ENOUGH TO NOT EVEN BE CONSIDERED. HOWEVER, I DON'T THINK THEY SHOULD BE INCREASED BY A LOT. GS ALREADY IS THE EASIEST WAY TO KILL SOMEBODY (BECAUSE OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE CAUSE DISSENSION OP) AND AS SUCH SHOULD BE CONSIDERABLY WEAKER THAN A BR KILL.

I HAVE ONE SUGGESTION, IF WE'RE GOING TO STICK WITH THE CONCEPT OF PEOPLE BEING ABLE TO RESTART WITH X% OF THEIR FORMER COUNTRY: CREATE SOMETHING (MISSILE ATTACK, SPY OP) WHICH TARGETS GOODS STORED ON THE MARKET. RIGHT NOW THEY'RE COMPLETELY INVULNERABLE. ALLOW THOSE WHO WISH TO DISMANTLE A COUNTRY SOME WAY TO DO IT. RIGHT NOW THERE IS NONE, EXCEPT FOR A SWIFT KILL, WHICH CAN NEVER BE GUARANTEED.

I STILL THINK THE RAMPING UP SOLUTION OF A YEAR AGO WAS BETTER THAN WHAT WE HAVE NOW, BUT AT LEAST AT 40%, ITS A LITTLE MORE REASONABLE THAN LAST RESET.

Thank you for continually tweaking this game. (Even if we complain about them) it keeps the game from becoming stagnate.

Making changes to the game are good, when they are properly considered and understood before implementation.

What I don't understand how you can go a whole reset seeing how negative the impact the changes you made last set were and come out this set and amend it so slightly that it is almost laughable. I've said it before, but i'll say it again, the people you're consulting about changes don't understand game mechanics, everything that was wrong last set will continue to be wrong this coming reset.

its basically gone from 70 to 55

that isnt some sort of huge drop, im expecting next set to be only somewhat less messed up

@qzjul Do _attacks made_ by a country reduce its DR by exactly 1, and for how long 24 or 72 hours? Or does this also follow the half life decay like attacks taken?


Also Enshula, it's more like 75 to 55.

It hasn't been since at least 1997. Sanctions/GDI/dr were/are all time based. Same with planned strikes.

They also follow the same HL decay schedule :)

Is this a simple naive summation of all DRs, or does this work like previously where you cannot go into negative DR by adding DRs chronologically and checking against 0 after each addition?

You can't go below 0, checking against 0 after each addition....

basically it's the same code as before, except it multiplies by *dr_halflife each addition/subtraction

iii) Bugfix: Defends are properly calculated now (for some reason d_tot actually was only ss/ps)

xin this bit meant only grabs were counting, so last set would have been even worse if it wasnt bugged

Oh.

wow i miss a lot of stuff. this explains a lot :/

qz - is it possible to setup email alerts to new announcement threads?

qz - why would this happen when I do ABs?

2014-02-07 15:12:11 AB perinthia (#86) TURD life (#61) 108B
2014-02-07 15:12:10 AB perinthia (#86) TURD life (#61) 109B
2014-02-07 15:12:09 AB perinthia (#86) TURD life (#61) 110B
-->2014-02-07 15:12:09 AB perinthia (#86) TURD life (#61) 37B
2014-02-07 15:12:08 AB perinthia (#86) TURD life (#61) 113B
2014-02-07 15:12:05 AB perinthia (#86) TURD life (#61) 116B

That's the 10% chance hit for specials.