I'm posting in this thread again because one of the issues with the new NMR system that I had warned about came to pass.
https://vdiplomacy.net/board.php?
gameID=36742Virginia was attempting a solo in this game but missed a single turn. Due to the new NMR system and due to the player having missed a few other phases earlier in the game, he was unjustly kicked, and since everyone had voted draw, the game ended prematurely without the SC leader included in the draw.
I posted about this in the modforum as well because I consider it to be a massive design oversight in the new NMR system, and as the variant developer, I never intended for a game of my variant to have the potential of ending in such a disappointing manner. This particular case is clearly an edge case, as it requires a very specific setup to even happen, but it is nonetheless of great concern to me that this happened and that a game was cut short prematurely because of it. The new NMR system isn't designed for long variants such as Divided States, and as a result, it does not adapt well to these variants. If you set the number of excused turns too high, then people who join a game and then leave the site completely will cause the game to be delayed for weeks, if not months (which has happened in virtually every large game started since the new system was implemented). If you set the number of excused turns too low, players with average reliability could get kicked for missing as little as one turn out of the last 30 in-game years if they accidentally missed a turn or two early-game, which risks causing a situation to happen like the one in the game above.
While I am not certain about the best solution to this major issue, I do have a proposition that would dramatically reduce how often scenarios like the one described above occur.
If a player uses up an excused missed turn, after a set amount of time (I'd suggest 10 in-game years), they should gain back an excused missed turn. This would solve the problem of players being kicked late-game due to an early-game NMR while still allowing truly unreliable players to be kicked early. Even better, this system would still work with the new reliability rating system, which I know is the main issue preventing us from reverting to the old NMR system.