@tobi1
Thank you for clarifying! The no-extension excuses should avoid both of the problems I had specified prior, as they don't slow down the game and have a degree of leniency built in. I see that the default setting is 2 excuses with NMR protection on for the first 3 turns, which seems reasonable.

Thanks for the explanation @tobi1. A few more questions if you may:

1) Do "turns" still have the same meaning as it used to before the code merger? So if the default is 3 turns, that means (using Classic as example) Spring 1901, Fall 1901 and Spring 1902?

2) The Create game page says that "The game will only progress with missing orders if no replacement is found within one phase of a player being forced into Civil Disorder." Does that still apply to each and every time a player goes into Civil Disorder, or just within the "Reset deadline" limit?

Are we sure we don't want to keep the old RRs in a data cache somewhere? I was pretty fond of my R95.

The old RR stats are still in the old tables that housed them, the new formula though has replaced the formula previously used. The new breakdown page explains in a lot of detail how RR works now so it should be a lot easier for everyone to understand where the penalties are coming from. And RR is now based on a 1 year cutoff which adds forgiveness which was previously missing for people who changed to be more reliable. It also has harsher penalties for 4 weeks after an NMR but then half's the penalty for it to make it easier to redeem your RR.

The new RR is much easier and cleaner. So sorry, your old RR stats are gone...
I will change the "defaults" for "normal-sized" (7 players or lower) new games to 1 excused turn with 1-phase-extension always on to see how this works, as it should improve the quality of many games.

Hi Oli! There are some issues for me due to the recent update: I've seen several "Error while sending message" on the day the updates came online, and a few today, although I can still occasionally get messages through (I basically have to resort to praying that a message may make it through). Also, even while I can watch youtube on 1.5 speed, some parts of vDip is taking me several minutes to load (some just now refuse to load at all, such as me attempting to make a comment in another thread, as well as attempting to make a modforum post, Idk if this one will even make it through). I really think that, given the previous version didn't have serious issues (I think everyone can agree that details on pot distribution and RR pale in comparison to ability to access this site at all). If this persists I may have to give up on vDip simply due to the technical issues (I'm not prepared to sit and wait and pray for messages and orders to go through). Is there any possibility of reverting to the old version?

The "Error while sending message"-bug was resolved some days ago (there was a problem during pregame chat). Please use the modforum to report bugs. We have a bugtracker there.
It was first reported some days ago, fixed, and it looks like there are no more problems with the chat for anybody else (and no errors in the logfiles).

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=36742
Virginia 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.

Thanks for your suggestion, Technostar. That might indeed be a good solution for large variants without the risk of being stuck endlessly in the first phase of a game.
I will discuss it with jmo who is currently tweaking the NMR system on webdip.

This would also benefit players who pop in after CD's, as they don't receive extra excused NMRs after joining.

There's a million ways to address this. The most targeted would probably be automatically giving someone an additional excused missed turn for each X supply centers they get in a game. Maybe for X% of total supply centers. I wouldn't want to do this for classic or smaller variants but it wouldn't be hard to limit that to saying if totalCentersOnBoard > 50? then apply this new rule.

I have a development schedule set for the next couple weeks on webdip, but I'd be happy to review a PR from tobi or Oli to this effect or other possible other solutions.

Did you discuss this on WebDip too? Are there preferred solutions already in discussion? Would be stupid to make a fast implementation without an in depth discussion about the available options.

Some people on webDip are complaining that the new NMR system doesn't work well on the larger variants as well. They have World Diplomacy (17 players) and Chaos (34 players).

It works as it is intended, especially on the larger variants. Unreliable players are gone early and replaced. World games used to be decided by which continents had missing players and who got there the fastest to climb into double digit SCs. Now you have to actually play the game. The blame for the delays needs to be aimed at those who constantly miss phases, not the project that serves to stop them from ruining the game in doing so, and by setting higher RR requirements for entrance into games and setting the excused miss turns lower we can actually take advantage of its benefits without being delayed for any more time than is necessary to fill the openings that unreliable players create. Both of those options have been made available on both sites recently and yet I see very few games set up to be as efficient and fluid as most of the vocal opponents of these changes claim to want their games to be.

@bo_sox48
While I can't speak for WebDip as I don't play over there often, larger variants on this site have not worked particularly well with the new NMR system. Sure, unreliable/vanishing players are gone and replaced early, although the process for removing them tends to take at least 50% longer than the system that was previously in place. Unfortunately, vDip lacks the active player base necessary to reliably start 30+ player games with RR requirements enabled, so early dropouts and the subsequent replacement cycle are a fact of life on larger maps.

However, the biggest problem with the new NMR system on larger maps is that longtime players are kicked after missing less than 5% of all turns, sometimes with game-destroying consequences like the example cited above. This is not a problem that WebDip experiences, as WebDip's largest maps are still much smaller than vDip's large maps. World Diplomacy IX games rarely exceed 25 years and tend to average around 15-20 years, while Chaos games only go slightly longer than Classic games. Compare this to WWIV (6.2), which averages just under 25 years and often gets to 40 years, and Divided States, which averages around 30 years and has reached 40 years several times as well. I expect Europa Renovatio games to last about as long as or slightly shorter than Divided States games. Over such a long duration, it's far more likely that someone will be kicked even if they have above-average reliability. However, these maps also suffer significantly less when an NMR does happen. I once had a case where someone didn't submit orders for several turns before finally CDing, but they only lost about a dozen SCs out of about 80 that they originally controlled. A single NMR is even less impactful. In a combat zone, one NMR is just a slight setback for the NMRing player, while one NMR on a stalemate line often leads to no change. On these very large maps, NMRs only become a significant issue when the player is relatively small (<30 SCs, usually during the early game) and there are many NMRs in a short timeframe.

This is why I suggest refunding excused missed turns after a set timeframe, as this would cut back on players being kicked during the late-game while also still kicking players who NMR several times in a row. This change also wouldn't have much of an impact on the smaller maps that the new NMR system is optimized for, as classic-sized games often don't even last 10 years.

I conncur with Technostar. Big games need some slack, and vDip rules these big games. They are great and need some exceptions or adjustments.

Here is a smaller game where the same situation occurred. https://vdiplomacy.com/board.php?gameID=38937

This NMR was totally my fault, I should have prepared properly to avoid it, but it happened and I was booted from a game that I had subbed in to.

The excused NMR should be dependent on the user, not on the country.

Though I like the new NMR system, I fully agree with Technostar that his suggestion is needed to make it work on the larger variants.

@Oli: I completely agree.

I also agree with Oli.

Could a system for gaining or regaing excuses be an option within a game? What I mean is after period of 5 years maybe 10 and an excused NMR could be granted or earned. This would allow for real life to happen and not penalise nor distrup play overly much.

Posting this here because the topic is relevant. I’m off in college now, which has made it far more difficult to maintain the number of games I was originally signed up for, as I have a lot more things that demand my attention and I occasionally forget to put in orders. Unfortunately, with this draconian NMR system, I missed enough phases that it completely banned me from rejoining one of my games, a scenario that I had feared would happen. Had the old NMR system been in place, I would have never gone into civil disorder in the first place.

With that said, I believe that I am no longer able to be reliable enough to play Diplomacy on this website, at least not with this cursed new system. I’ll be taking a break from this game for the time being. I’ll need some people to do country swap with me, so PM me if you’re interested in taking over some positions. They’re not particularly strong positions because the game I got banned from rejoining was by far my strongest position, but I nonetheless don’t want them to go into CD either.

Yes, tweaking NMR system is still high up on my TODO list. But as life outside this hobby is demanding my attention, too, such things will take some time ...

Until then: If you believe that you do not deserve an unexcused NMR or a temporary ban, you can make an appeal in the mod forum and we might remove the unexcused NMR or lift the temporary ban.
And if you want to permanently give games away to other users, send us a message, too, please. The Country Swap is not intended for permanent swaps as the replacement does not get any rewards when the game finishes.

Glad to hear that a solution is in the works. Hopefully I'll have enough time on hand to rejoin the site later on, but for now, I feel a break would be best for me.