Relaunch of ODC

[ColonelApricot]

Too late to start a new game for round 1.

Inevitably there will be about 10% dropout rate going forward.

Use the players that missed out to quickly plug the gaps going forward and give them an adjusted score to keep them motivated.

.. CA

[Wargamer]

I'm also not sure how many round 1 games actually happened but I'd be totally okay just ignoring all of them entirely and just starting fresh for everyone now. The game I just finished was absolute trash. Shoutout to Tanjian for actually showing up but that did not feel like a game of any sort of reasonable quality for a tournament like this.

well that's rather two-faced Yonni, you didn't mention anything like that in your after game chat!

I didn't stab Italy because he was a buffer against your eastward progression and we had a strong alliance since 1902. Neither of us trusted you as you had been working very closely with England throughout. It was always destined to be a four-way draw unless you and England started fighting. Please don't get annoyed just because your diplomacy didn't work on this occasion.

Despite that little rant (sorry for hijacking the thread everybody) I hope we get to play together again soon

[Yonni]

Sorry, wargamer, I wasn't speaking about your play there at all. Happy to chat about it elsewhere if you like though.

I was talking about the fact that Austria surrendered and, for all intents and purposes, Germany did too. On top of that, getting press from the rest of the board was like drawing blood from a stone. I really would have expected more engagement from people playing in the tournament.

[formless]

My vote is to keep the tournament structure as laid out in the beginning, and to what structure we all agreed to play. That means accept any delays while subs are found, but don't change the structure and don't put some people in two round 2 games.

[HardAcre]

Evening All,

Just keeping on top of communications.

Thanks for all the feedback.

My current plan is

1) round one scores will stand, apologies if that came across any other way
2) round two will have fewer boards, that may help with player retention and quality of boards
3) currently I plan to re-run the missing round 1 ASAP but it will overrun into round 2 to keep the tournament moving.
4) I'll have a cunning plan for the seeding of round 2 around the missing round one game

I have had several queries around how we incentivise players to complete games and prevent nmrs. I'll be honest with you all, these are going to prove more difficult to implement given no one has successfully solved them before! I hope a diplomatically based charm offensive and fewer players in round 2 help us here.

As always thanks for your patience,

HardAcre

[GameKat]

Evening All,

Just keeping on top of communications.

Thanks for all the feedback.

My current plan is

1) round one scores will stand, apologies if that came across any other way
2) round two will have fewer boards, that may help with player retention and quality of boards
3) currently I plan to re-run the missing round 1 ASAP but it will overrun into round 2 to keep the tournament moving.
4) I'll have a cunning plan for the seeding of round 2 around the missing round one game

I have had several queries around how we incentivise players to complete games and prevent nmrs. I'll be honest with you all, these are going to prove more difficult to implement given no one has successfully solved them before! I hope a diplomatically based charm offensive and fewer players in round 2 help us here.

As always thanks for your patience,

HardAcre

The original rules included how to handle the scoring of subs:

5. Points awarded in any game in which a substitute features will be modified based on the percentage of completed turns in a game:
- If an entrant plays more than 60% of all turns in a game, the Raw Score for the game will be scored at 100%.
- If an entrant plays between 40 and 60% of all turns in a game, the Raw Score for the game will be scored at 90%.
- If an entrant plays less than 40% of all turns in a game, the Raw Score for the game will be scored at 75%. If this game results in a loss, it will not be included in the rounds played.

That doesn't directly address the issue of players in two games in the same round, but might nevertheless help. I confess I find the lack of enthusiasm a bit baffling. It's hard to find a good pick-up game in online Dip. Subbing in to a tournament game from the start, even as a non-scoring combatant, strikes me as likely to produce a more interesting challenge than the average game here and on BS.

Any multi-round, long-cadence Dip tourney suffers from NMRs and auto-surrenders. The only palliative is to have people ready to sub in. I'd also suggest that, in a 72-hour resolution period, the typical Dip player will not be overburdened by playing two games simultaneously.

[knilgau]

HardAcre,

I think your plans are sensible. Someone also stated that it would be good to simply adhere to the published rules we all agreed to play under. I think this makes sense as well, even though it means the tournament will run longer than originally planned.

I do wish to point something out: I believe it is around 3 that is seeded based on Round 1. I don’t have the rules handy, but I think around 2 was going to be mostly random (I think with mixing the players up, or something like that). Since Round 3 doesn’t start until Round 1 ends, there should be no seeding problems unless the missing game never happens. If subs are found, it sounds like it will happen. If not, maybe cross that bridge when we get to it?

knilgau

[TheFlyingBoat]

Evening All,

Just keeping on top of communications.

Thanks for all the feedback.

My current plan is

1) round one scores will stand, apologies if that came across any other way
2) round two will have fewer boards, that may help with player retention and quality of boards
3) currently I plan to re-run the missing round 1 ASAP but it will overrun into round 2 to keep the tournament moving.
4) I'll have a cunning plan for the seeding of round 2 around the missing round one game

I have had several queries around how we incentivise players to complete games and prevent nmrs. I'll be honest with you all, these are going to prove more difficult to implement given no one has successfully solved them before! I hope a diplomatically based charm offensive and fewer players in round 2 help us here.

As always thanks for your patience,

HardAcre

Awesome. I think this is a reasonable plan

[Jensen]

Rounds 1 and 2 were supposed to be played concurrently with a 1 month stagger. So asking players to play 2 tournament games at a time is fine, we all agreed to that when we signed up.

Round 2 had no seeding, but there was a requirement that no player gets the same power twice.

For round 2 I would use a system where players from Rnd 1 board 1 are randomly assigned to boards 1 to 7 of round 2. Players from Rnd 1 board 2 are randomly assigned to boards 2 to 8 of round 2, etc. That way, no 2 players will rematch in round 2.

If you are reducing the number of Rnd 2 boards to 8, this still works. If any Round 2 board has more than 1 vacany, move a player from a board with 7 players who hasnt played with any of the current players. Repeat until no end 2 board has more than 1 vacancy. Then use players from Rnd1 board 9 and randomly assigned to the vacancies in the 8 Rnd 2 boards.

[Pootleflump]

I'm detecting some loss of confidence about continuation of ODC across my game with lack of updates and timescales.

It might be a good idea to get r2 going soon to prevent more drop-out.