How to approach potential S01 NMR?

[celaph]

I recently joined a standard game and sent off my opening messages at my soonest convenience. The game had a reliability requirement so I had hoped that I could enjoy some decent gameplay for at least a few years, but that appears to not be the case. At least one country has yet to respond to my messages and "At least 1 country still needs to enter orders!" (there is not much time left in the phase). The game is still in S01 and I am curious what you all would do in this situation or in similar situations in the future.
For context, I don't really care about my GR as it is crap already; I am just looking to have fun.

As I see it, I could contact the mods (privately of course) and request a pause to avoid the possible NMR. The alternative is to let the unfortunate opening play itself out. I worry that neither path will lead to an enjoyable game.
What would you do?


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I should note that the game in question is anonymous hence my intentional vagueness above. I don't think that I have broken any rules, but if the mods feel differently then it is not my place to disagree.

[VillageIdiot]

Yeah, that’s a super lame way to start a game. I like how they do it at playdip where a first round NMR punts out the player and resets the game to waiting for players. We should do that here.

[peterwiggin]

I still think we should punt all players who miss the deadline without processing the game. Doing it for S01 seems like a no-brainer. It would require some serious dev work though.

For OP, I'd suggest emailing the mods. If they don't see it in time and there's an NMR, I'd try to get everybody to cancel, but sometimes people don't want to.

[Mercy]

It would require some serious dev work though.

This is already implemented on vDiplomacy for years.

[VillageIdiot]

[quote=peterwiggin post_id=26680 time=<a href="tel:1533017353">1533017353</a> user_id=55]It would require some serious dev work though.

This is already implemented on vDiplomacy for years.
[/quote]
Really? That’s gotta be an easy adoption then, no? Sounds like a nice easy feature upgrade we should definitely throw into an upcoming release.

[Mercy]

Definitely. Though I am no programmer, I would guess too that the fact that the code already exists on vDiplomacy makes it way easier to implement it here.

I will briefly explain how the feature works on vDiplomacy.

If a player does not enter orders in one of the first x turns of the game, that player goes into Civil Disorder immediately and the turn gets extended by one phase length. If after that time, that power is still in CD, the turn gets extended again, etc., until either someone has taken over the CD position or y phase lengths have past. Players with less than 3 supply centers are never sent into Civil Disorder in this way, in order to not hold up the game too much. An exception is on the variant Classic - Chaos and, I presume, other variants where players start with less than 3 supply centers anyway.

As a default, x = 2 and y = 1, but players can choose their own values for these numbers when creating a game. Players can also choose to set values to 0 or infinity. If x is set to 0, that gives the same situation as on webDiplomacy. If x and y are set to infinity, then no power will ever miss a phase (except players with less than 3 supply centers).

I don't know exactly for how long this feature exists on vDiplomacy, but it should be at least five years.

[Claesar]

In that case, it would have to be modified before we port the code. We prefer to keep the game-creation system simple (i.e. not too many options) and we definitely don't want to let users create games with WFO.

[Mercy]

It isn't really WFO if players are kicked. :p But if you want to keep it simple, you could import the default settings (x = 2, y = 1) without giving the option to modify them.

[Claesar]

When they're kicked, I suppose this doesn't count as a CD in their profile?

Does this also work for live games? I've often seen players miss only the first turn in a live game..

[Mercy]

Yes, it works for live games too, but on vDiplomacy there are played barely any live games. Speaking about live games, joinable live games should be displayed at the top left of the homepage in addition to upcoming live games. That is a feature request!

If you CD in this way, the CD will appear on your profile. This may be the reason that the setting to increase the value of x on vDiplomacy is quite unpopular. You make a good point that this maybe shouldn't be the case for live games. I believe it is already the case that NMRs in live games do not appear on your profile (but NMRs do) so I guess this should be possible to program.

To give you an idea of how this feature works in practise, I will tell you my experience when I created a game where I set the value of x to infinity and set the minimum RR requirements to 80. It was on a variant for 12 players. A couple of times someone missed a turn, but most of the time, that player took over their own CD a couple hours later, before someone else did (and hence the CD did not appear on their profile - just an NMR). Only one CD position in the game got ever taken over, and that was from a player who also CD'd in a couple of other games with softer CD settings. I think the best explanation why not that many CD's were taken over was because of the RR requirements to take over and because of the fact that on vDiplomacy, one is required to pay a small number of to take over a position. Positions on vDiplomacy usually get taken over eventually, but not at that fast of a rate. It was a good experience to play under these settings, as we literally only had one single real NMR in the entire game (an unimportant retreat from a 1 center power) and I didn't feel any player got undeserved CD's on their profile.

[Claesar]

That sounds pretty good.

Wrong forum for feature requests though

[jollycream]

So far, only two games I have played here have not had an NMR in the first or second turn, and one of the two had an NMR in 02 instead.


Is it other peoples' experiences? For an old FtF player where there never is an NMR, it takes almost all the pleasure of playing away.

[Claesar]

I see a lot less NMRs. I've also seen one in FtF..

That said, if it's close to the deadline (1hour or something) and you see the message "at least one player still has to submit orders" feel free to email the mods [email protected] so we can try to prevent the NMR (if we're online).

[Greg_the_republican]

Stupid question here, what’s an NMR?

[Deeply_Dippy]

NMR means No Moves Received.

Having said that, some players do intentionally leave their orders to the last moment.

At the point that the thread started there had been no NMR.

I'd be interested to know if orders got entered or not?

[Claesar]

I paused the game to prevent the NMR.

[Claesar]

Which would have been easier to achieve with an email to the mods ([email protected]) rather than this thread, because we check the mail more often than the forum

[celaph]

Which would have been easier to achieve with an email to the mods ([email protected]) rather than this thread, because we check the mail more often than the forum

I assume this message is directed at me as I did start this thread and I don't see who else it may be targeted to, but given that you sent the message almost 20 days after my initial post I am not sure.

I do thank you (and the rest of the mods) for the work you do making this sure run smoothly. I started this thread less as a plea for a pause and more to see if the community has any recommendations for dealing with NMRs especially early on.

[Claesar]

No, it's directed at everyone reading this thread :) I'm trying to make sure everyone understands it's a good idea to email the moda about this as we can and will (if available) try to prevent NMRs.