42 replies to this topic

[X a v i e r]

RJF Volkodav, on 11 July 2017 - 08:47 AM, said:

RJF is interested. Will be rolling in and hope you have a solution for problem of overloading units with battles. Sector system did not worked, but switching to monolitic only wont solve it. Hoping for some great NBT actions as your old NBT-HC player ).

In the alpha, the district/march system worked in some ways, but failed in other, significant ways.

We are going to be starting with a monolithic setup but should be migrating to a "command"-based system before long (it was under development last year and is on hold as the person who was working on it took a new job and had little time to work on the automation then), The idea is that a faction's space can be divided up -- by the team who runs the faction -- into "sub-commands", which would each have a measure of autonomy over the space they control (they would be allocated a share of the faction's budget, would be responsible for defenses in their sectors and attacks from them, and so on). The top-level faction would still be responsible for faction politics and diplomacy, overall faction economy, and so on.

What this approach solves is the problem we had where there were huge gaps in, say, Davion space, that due to the march system in place, could not easily be absorbed into the surrounding space. With the "faction/command" system, if a team in a sub-command has to pull out, or that team is swamped and can't handle the load, the team that controls the top-level faction command can step in and take over or lend a hand.

This also makes possible an additional bit of intrigue. As an example, consider the NBT-MWO alpha, where DC was populated by, at one point, (I think) 4 different teams -- LIB, 6RCT, NS and someone else I currently forget. If, say, LIB controlled the overall DC faction and 6RCT and NS had sub-commands in DC, one of those sub-commands could theoretically break away from DC and declare their independence...possibly initiating a civil war. LIB would have to make a choice about trying to bring the rogue command back under DC control, or continue prosecuting war against the Clans. It's something that we had been trying to encourage in NBT as far back as NBT4, as I recall, but in the end, it always seemed that it turned into an IS vs. Clan league. I'm not saying that this makes it any more likely that we see an increase in IS vs. IS action, but it certainly lends a bit more role-play support to some of it.

[X a v i e r]

On the topic of overloading teams -- this is covered in the rules, but I'll repeat it here.

Another problem we had in the NBT-MWO alpha was the activity levels of 15 years ago conflicting with the realities of video gaming today. In 2003, it was very reasonable to require that teams be able to support 9 minor raids and 2 planetary assaults concurrently. In 2015, that was simply ludicrous -- the MW community is not the same as it was then, and there are many other quality options for a player's video gaming time.

In this iteration of NBT, the defend limits are simple: 1 for smaller factions and 2 for larger ones. This makes sense when you consider that all battles are multi-drop battles -- there are only Sector Raids and Sector Assaults now. Each counts the same towards the defend limits. Teams wishing more activity simply need to attack over their defend limit. Or, if they feel that 1 or 2 defends is the right number (considering the 1 or 2 attacks that allows them, respectively), they simply need to keep within those bounds.

Those familiar with NBT in the past may be thinking "that's way too few". When you consider, however, that a large faction with 2 defends and 2 attacks going will be required to schedule 4 nights a week for NBT (and each of those nights for a large faction will be at least 5 drops per night), it starts to sound a bit more reasonable.

I kinda want to call this the "CJF Rule", considering how JFP and RJF bent over backwards in the alpha to handle the non-stop loading of their defend limits (which was partially caused by the march/district system). Removing the many single-drop raids and combining them all into Sector Raids is also part of the "CJF Rule", since opponents would be sitting there click-bombing the refresh button trying to get a single drop in against CJF -- which in turn led to CJF having to schedule with about 14 different teams at a time. Lumping everything into multi-drop battles, and reducing the defend limits to something sensible in 2017, should fix that problem without affecting anyone's ability to fight any one particular faction.

Another thing I am considering is an attack queue. If we get to the point where 15 teams are clicking refresh 100 times a second to try to be the first in a sector when it's unlocked after a battle, we may have to establish a queue for that (similar to how there will be a queue in place for factory purchases -- see the rules for more on that).

So in general, the revamp of the rules is partially to make things simpler (and in some cases, deeper), but primarily to address issues we saw in the alpha -- so everyone should know that the alpha was not a complete waste of time .

Edited by X a v i e r, 11 July 2017 - 10:24 AM.

[poopenshire]

[mod]

Pinned for all its wonderous glory.

[/mod]

[Lukoi Banacek]

Given our current levels of interest in comp play, I am confident SA will field a team for this. Perhaps we can win the bid for CSA and grow it from a minor Clan faction to a major

[Bradleyusm]

Mech The Dane, on 10 July 2017 - 11:30 AM, said:

What! But in the alpha the FRR and her dread-mercs ably defended her realm! Sigh.

i recall at the end of last season one of the goals for this one was reorganizing the major houses (such as th FRR!) in more hierarchical structures; That there would be a clear leader of a faction who would then manage the other units in it and assign territories and stuff. Was all this thrown out? Are we just returning to the old style of 'you get a military district and maybe you work with your other military districts and maybe you don't.'?

If you are going to gut the FRR and leave it for dead, what about the canon ISENGRIM merc unit, can they be added? And if that is a no.. well let's talk about the JarnFolk.

I seem to remember a bit of salt caused by having two 'top tier mercs' aligned with one house. No worries about those mercs joining the FRR this time. Sorry Jarl.

[Jarl Dane]

Bradleyusm, on 12 July 2017 - 08:44 AM, said:

I seem to remember a bit of salt caused by having two 'top tier mercs' aligned with one house. No worries about those mercs joining the FRR this time. Sorry Jarl.

Like tears in the rain, they are.


Perhaps I can find new ones though! Or perhaps we'll be mercs... or periphery pirates this time around.

[X a v i e r]

Mech The Dane, on 12 July 2017 - 09:36 AM, said:

Like tears in the rain, they are.


Perhaps I can find new ones though! Or perhaps we'll be mercs... or periphery pirates this time around.

I think we can all agree that after ISEN's outstanding performance in Div B this season (Div A the next!), you don't need the help.

[Jarl Dane]

X a v i e r, on 12 July 2017 - 11:42 AM, said:

I think we can all agree that after ISEN's outstanding performance in Div B this season (Div A the next!), you don't need the help.

Pride can be a useful tool, but a poor weapon.

[Gwaihir The Windlord]

[img] https://static.comic...99775-Erq98.png [/image]

Edited by Gwaihir The Windlord, 12 July 2017 - 05:54 PM.

[CSA Aceattack]

Lukoi Banacek, on 11 July 2017 - 10:43 AM, said:

Given our current levels of interest in comp play, I am confident SA will field a team for this. Perhaps we can win the bid for CSA and grow it from a minor Clan faction to a major

I'm not sure I can let you do that Lukoi I think you know why

[Lukoi Banacek]

CSA Aceattack, on 12 July 2017 - 06:33 PM, said:

I'm not sure I can let you do that Lukoi I think you know why

I don't get it...but good to see you lurking around man

[Monkey Lover]

Can players be added to the team during the season?
Can people not registered be allowed to play in a team. I did see some rule related to this.
What I'm wondering is how hard it would be to setup a mixed group house team.

Be nice if we could setup a "nbt" room on house-marik to make up teams. Right now it looks like we have lots of half teams from units but no real full teams.

Edited by Monkey Lover, 14 July 2017 - 01:27 PM.

[X a v i e r]

Monkey Lover, on 14 July 2017 - 01:25 PM, said:

Can players be added to the team during the season?

Yes, you can change your roster at will, so long as a player is on the public roster at least an hour before a scheduled drop, they are legal for that and subsequent drops

Quote

Can people not registered be allowed to play in a team. I did see some rule related to this.

Yes, you only need to be registered to apply for a team (only one representative from the team needs to do this), and that individual will be the one that gets the "keys" to the faction if they are given the faction (so you might want that person to be the one responsible for the automation work )

Quote

What I'm wondering is how hard it would be to setup a mixed group house team.

Be nice if we could setup a "nbt" room on house-marik to make up teams. Right now it looks like we have lots of half teams from units but no real full teams.

Lukoi has started a conversation on this topic -- what you describe would probably be somewhat common. You'll want to work out among yourselves who wants to be the one(s) who move things around in the automation and launch and log battles and so on, but who actually is on the faction roster is entirely up to you. For example, at one point I think CWI had 300 pilots from several different teams on the Clan Wolf roster in the alpha we did.

It's important to understand that you can only take mechs on drops that you brought to the battle in the automation, so that could possibly limit your available pilot pool on any given drop (since you may have mechs in the forcedec that only a few of your available pilots have in the game).

[X a v i e r]

The NBT website and automation have shifted to "signup" mode. Please let me know if you experience any issues using the site or with the signup process. The best way to contact me is via PM on either of the NBT Teamspeak or Discord servers. You will find the server information on the NBT website.

[Jarl Dane]

The flood-gates are wide open!

Apply for your favorite faction(s)!



And just a heads up, ISEN will likely not be FRR this go around, so any other units interested in playing them... the way is clear.

Edited by Mech The Dane, 19 July 2017 - 10:50 PM.

[Geg]

Is there a summary somewhere about how matched are scheduled and or announced. A quick skim of the rules didn't illuminate much.

[Lukoi Banacek]

Short version Geg: when a team initiates an attack against another faction, the automation alerts you both and you have a set amount of time to schedule the match between you. I think it's about a week's worth of time for each fight.

Since a "minor team" (under 70 planets) can only be attacked once at any given time (so it has one "mandatory" defense possibly) and can only attack as often as it has assets, and a Major (over 70 planets) two defenses typically, teams can basically determine internally how much of a workload they wish to take on, by increasing/decreasing their attacks as they need to.

[Geg]

Lukoi Banacek, on 25 July 2017 - 08:54 AM, said:

Short version Geg: when a team initiates an attack against another faction, the automation alerts you both and you have a set amount of time to schedule the match between you. I think it's about a week's worth of time for each fight. Since a "minor team" (under 70 planets) can only be attacked once at any given time (so it has one "mandatory" defense possibly) and can only attack as often as it has assets, and a Major (over 70 planets) two defenses typically, teams can basically determine internally how much of a workload they wish to take on, by increasing/decreasing their attacks as they need to.

Thanks that helps a lot... What's the long version? Is this documented anywhere?

[Lukoi Banacek]

In the rules section. I will send a link once home tomorrow if someone doesnt beat me to it here first.

[Greyfoxx]

The rules can be found here: https://automation.n...etech.com/rules