In-game messaging works again, and the new NMR-code is disabled as we search for a better fix.

Should be fixed now too...
Lets hope for the best... :-)

Yay. I see we got a new excused turns thing, looks really cool. What else is new?

What's this whole "delays" thing?

Update:
Here's an explanation of what changed:
http://webdiplomacy.net/contrib/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1551

I've read through it, and from what I comprehend about it, I am not in favor of making this change the default behavior for games. Overall, while this system appears to make sense for smaller maps, I am VERY concerned about what it means for the large maps that make vDip such a unique experience.

My biggest concern is that we don't appear to have an option to use the old NMR system, and there's no option for a 0-excuse game. Huge games would become impossible to play given the NMR excuses. Given a game such as Divided States, you NEED the old NMR system to play the map. Games already take a year to complete on that map. Imagine that each time somebody NMRs, there is a 2-day extension. Each time a player goes into Civil Disorder, there's a 2-day extension. Judging by the CD logs for the finished Divided States games, I'd assume an average of 50 missed turns per game, for 3 OVER THREE MONTHS of extra delay just because some players missed their turns. There's a reason why NMR protection is only enabled by default during the first year. My other concern is that in these long games, it's very likely that a player will miss more than one phase. The previous system only booted players if they missed two phases in a row, which meant that it was incredibly unlikely to get a CD just because you overslept or your orders didn't save. I know that I missed several phases in my Kansas Divided States games, and under these new rules, I would have been kicked out of the game long before it reached its conclusion just for missing a short phase here or there, and given how strong the position was, I know someone would have snapped it up quickly. I know that I will be irrationally kicked out of a game at some point due to this system. Unless there's something I'm missing, this new NMR system seems to pose a major threat to the experience of a large map by causing extreme delays and/or unjustly kicking players out of the game.

I agree with Technostar. This is a ok feature for Classic and similarly sized maps, but it is simply unsustainable on large variant maps. WebDip is even having trouble with Chaos.

They however do have an option to turn it off. Also I think it should remain off in all existing games.

I support disabling this feature in all existing games. It should be an option to use, as it can offer security against NMRs in smaller games, but this change will severely mess with a lot of currently active games.

There should be an option for a 0 excuse game. I specifically added that with tobi. If there isn't that's just a mistake on moving it from webdip over here that I'm sure Oli will get soon.

I am considering making a code change on webdip that will default the excuses to 0 for larger maps. But I want to see how it works with people choosing it on their own. The moderator team does have the option to remove excuses in bulk for a game if there are specific games where this is going to cause excess delays.

And about suspending the "feature" in all existing games? I think Technostar and I speak with the interests of the player base when we request it.

That part is up to Oli, I'm not making that change on webdip. Over there it's doing exactly what I wanted it too. Stopping people who NMR hundred's of times a year and stopping games from ever having no orders entered. I personally feel that not letting a game have missed orders is more in line with player interests then allowing people to miss a turn and stay in the game, which negatively impacts everyone's strategy and turns a game of skill into something else. But Oli can do anything with the code here that he wants.

Unless by turn it off you mean reduce the number of excuses in all existing games to 0 vs removing the feature entirely. In that case that'd be a 1 line update statement in sql.

Z+1 Technostar

I will adjust this feature to our site soon (like I did with the new CSS-layout).
There are many new features added to the main webdip code at the moment, and with my limited time it's a bit hard to keep up.

And yes, you have the "old" NMR-system still, but the new one is "in addition" at the moment. I'm still thinking about a way to merge these 2, so you can limit these excused extensions to the first X turns. Or you can choose to use one or the other, as I think 1 or 2 extensions per game and player is quite reasonable for variants < 10 players.

PS:
This will be disabled for all ongoing games for sure. It's for new games only. I just need to stabilize the code and than I will take care of this.

It appears that when all game processing was paused, as noted at the top of this thread, some players were charged with a delay in a game. As far as I can tell, this happened randomly, and without any fault on the part of the player. My guess is that perhaps this happened to the first power in alphabetical order in a game, and possibly this happened in a great many active games.

@KingOfSwords: There was a (already fixed) bug with 2-player and live variants.
I have removed all recorded delays, and once the system is fully integrated I will erase again all records for a clean start.

@Oli: Thanks! Sounds good.

@jmo, yes. I mean reducing the number of excuses in existing games to zero.

That's how it works now (will need to adjust the gamesettings-page the next few days)
These two settings work independent:

1. As long as a player has excused NMRs his country will not be send into CD if there is a NMR.
2. If there are no more excused NMRs the next NMR will send the country in CD ready for a takeover.

3. During the fist X turns (you can set X in the settings page, default will be 2) a NMR will force 1 phase extension.
4. After the first X turns a NMR will not extend the current phase, adn the game will proceede as usual. It does not matter if the country is set CD or if the same player is still in charge of that country.

There was/is a setting how many times there should be a phase extension without all players entering orders. It got rarely used, and will be kept at 1 phase extension hardcoded.

Looks about right. Hopefully with the option to set the NMR Excused Turns to zero by default, but keep the option as it is.

I must ask, will zero-excuse games auto-kick anyone who NMRs and extend the phase (similar to the old Serious NMR protection), or will it just use the old system where players must miss 2 turns in a row to be kicked with no phase extensions?

Yes, zero-excuse games auto-kick anyone who NMRs.
But it only extends the phase the first X turns.

So I don't think zero-excuses are a good idea for large variants.
And if you want a good game esp. on lower player counts it's a good idea to allow for an extension the complete game.
5-player game with 2 excuses = 10-player game with1 excuse

That’s still very problematic. If that 0-excuse setting is the default, going to have a lot of people who get kicked from games simply because they missed a single retreat phase, especially on maps the size of WWIV or Divided States where there are many more turns for players to miss. While NMRs suck, losing your spot in a game that you’ve put 7 months into sucks even more just because you overslept once. What’s worse is that the country will still have no orders for the turn if the phase isn’t extended, completely defeating the point of kicking players out to find a replacement. We NEED the option to use the old NMR system, as while it has its flaws, it doesn’t lead to huge delays and it doesn’t kick everyone out. In fact, as there are several large-size games going on right now, the old system should be the default behavior for any currently-ongoing game. I know the WWIV Sealanes game “Big Day” has already been complaining about the delays caused by this new system, but those complaints will probably grow if players lose their spots over a single missed retreat.

The old system is no longer possible.
You just need to set the excused NMR high enough, so players can NMR a few times during retreats (or whenever).
But keep the phase extension to the first few turns, so the games get not stuck in endless extensions all the time.

I don’t mean to be rude, but I really am not a fan of this new system. Could there at least be an option to still use the old one?

As Oli said, if you disable the extensions and accept to have an NMR-flawed game (which might be especially reasonable for large variants), there is only one difference to the old system: The number of allowed NMRs before being put into Civil Disorder will be absolute. The only advantage of the old system that I see is, that position might be free for takeover already after two consecutive turn, whereas in the new system this might not be the case in the new system if the allowed excuses are set to high. However, the new system also kicks players who NMR a lot but manage to give orders at least every second phase. So that could compensate the previous disadvantage.

Overall the initial intend over on webdip was to remove NMRs completely from this game. The reason for this was, that despite having the reliability rating, NMRs still happened a lot and harmed a lot of games. On the one hand this should be achieved by the extensions, on the other hand by the stricter CD-mechanic. If you now fear to be kicked out of game because you occasionally NMR on a regular basis, that is actually exactly what was tried to achieve with this change. Without intending to be offensive I believe that the game and its members would actually profit if you an unreliable player gets kicked after a certain number of NMRs.

Personally I would advise to not set the excuses too high to avoid the problems of consecutive NMRs, but instead just join games with phase lengths you could actually safely manage. This is the responsible behavior we as a community are actually trying to enforce for ages now.

Despite that, if you have suggestions to improve the system, we are always happy to consider those.
However, going back to the old system is even impossible on the technical site, too, since we want to be as much in line with the webdip codebase as possible. And going back to the old system would revert quite some of the recent changes of webdip which would make it much more difficult to maintain the code as it already is.

I wonder if retooling the personal RSS feed to make reminders about games possible would be a good feature for this new system. I've set up an email reminder via IFTTT that emails me when the RSS updates, but all it does is tell me when moves have happened, which is not very useful if I need to get moves in beforehand.

While penalizing players who NMR relatively frequently seems reasonable, this new system with 0 NMR excuses is still not viable for huge variants. The standard is simply too strict to be reasonable. Take Divided States, which has an average of 56 turns per game. For a player who makes it to the draw, assuming you NMR once every hundred turns (which is a reasonable reliability that’s slightly above my old RR) and that each turn’s risk of NMRing is independent, you have only a 57% chance of making it to the end of the game without losing your spot (as opposed to a 99.5% chance under the old system). For a game you probably spent half a year or more playing, this is an unacceptable level of risk. You would need to miss fewer than 2 out of every 1000 phases to even have a 90% chance of not being booted from a Divided States game. By my guess, only a minuscule number of players on this site are reliable enough to not be booted from these games. And god forbid you need to ask for an extension due to IRL circumstances. That’s already stressful enough as it is due to the risk of NMRing once and I presume it would be much worse knowing that you might lose every single game you’re playing in if you don’t put in orders.

Essentially, for large variants, a 0-excuse instant-kick NMR policy means that even reasonably reliable players are likely to be kicked from the game, while a 1-excuse extension policy means about 3 extra months of game time on a game that’s already extremely long. Only the old system doesn’t have either flaw. And for a map as large as Divided States, I would prefer to be able to both finish the game that I started in and finish it in a reasonable time, even if it means that there are a few impactful NMRs.

That's a tough thing to balance.

"Very large" variants - in other words, Divided States, Chaos, Chaoctopi and the WW4 subvariants - are forced to have a zero-tolerance policy with absolutely reliable players, or pay for its lack of a perfect cast with extra game time. And that's bad.

However, I believe the vast majority of games/variants will greatly benefit from webDip's latest change. I observe a dozen games at any given time and it's pretty common to see a Civil Disorder, let alone irregular players who NMR from time to time.

If keeping both systems as options (the ideal solution!) isn't feasible, then there isn't much that can be done. These are variants bound to have a degree of randomness/very long duration due to their expansive nature. I suppose there are other game settings that help alleviate that duration problem if you want to give people 1 excused turn, like Rulebook press on 24h phases.

Suggestion: bellow is what the game creation page says about excused turns:

>The number of excused delays before a player is removed from the game and can be replaced. If a player is missing orders at a deadline, and the game is in the first few turns the deadline will reset and the player will be charged 1 excused delay. If they are out of excuses they will go into Civil Disorder. The game will only progress with missing orders if no replacement is found within one phase of a player being forced into Civil Disorder. Set this value low to prevent delays to your game, set it higher to be more forgiving to people who might need occasional delays.<

The old system clarified that a "turn" means Spring/Autumn (in most variants) and that a turn can have up to three phases (Movement, Retreats, Adjustments). The new system should have a similar clarification.