Annual Public Report Release #6

South Pacific Special Forces

22/10/2017 - 30/11/2017

Dispatch version
 

The time has come for another ruthless attempt at propagating subtle propaganda disguised as numeric analysis. SPSF has continued to maintain its performance and policies under the new leadership of Minister of Military Affairs Escade, who assumed the position on 22^nd October, 2017. We certainly have lots of interesting things to talk about, such as a failed but rather interesting liberation and a member probably helped breaking the 2 person single-team tag record. Also, we have recently implemented a point system to encourage activity and good gameplay practices so finally, we get a statistical look at individual's performance and not just some lame general statement. The raw data is below for anyone who is interested.

Activity
The usual level of activity has been maintained during the past month. The SPSF saw 549 successful operations, with tagging and chasing remained the dominant types of operations due to their overall unique properties. 549 was an usual number for the SPSF, but still, it was a major drop from last month, when it had been at 734. That was a 134% drop. A general explanation for this is that military gameplay in general, was not as active as before so there was a notable drop in update attendance. Also, the taggers have really stepped up their game, so tag defense count, one of SPSF's major operation count contributor, took a hard hit.

Operations
The ideology of defender-leaning independence was still be kept under the new leadership according to the number, as shown with 35 updates whose objective was defending and 10 updates whose objective was raiding.



Percentage-wise, this has not made any notable change compare to the previous month, as the percentage of updates when we raided was changed by just 0.6%. Now, for the operation type diversity side, tag raids continued to have the largest quantity due to their batch-executable nature, accounted for over 48% of the total successful operation count. Tag defenses fell to the third position and just accounted for 18% of the total operation count. Surprisingly, the second position was taken by detags, at over 154 of them, accounted for 28% of the total successful operation count. 



Tagging
We did over 268 tag raids with the organization Lily. Although that was plenty, the figure took a 143% drop from previous month due to the fact that active taggers were no longer active, predominantly Yuno due to her political business in The East Pacific and Serres due to real-life matters. The whole tag raiding segment of the SPSF only had one active individual: USoVietnam, in the last month. However, look on the bright side, SPSF's jump point: Versailles Isle managed to hit 400+ tag embassy count, momentarily placed it in the second position for the military gameplay organization with the most tag embassies until The Roman Empire, a dedicated raiding organization, took the position. At the time this article was written, the number had dropped to under 350, due to ruthless detag attempts of defenders and re-tags by other raider organizations. On the performance side, a success rate of 72% with 45 hits and 14 fails per tag session was a tremendous improvement compare to the previous month, when the figure had been at 62%. One notable event in the area of tag raiding was the possible breaking of the two-person single team tag record. On the major update of 13^rd November, with unbelievable help from Lily and its lead member Liliarchy, SPSF managed to hit 88 regions, therefore, possibly broke the record of tag hits performed by a two-person tagging team. The possible record before this was 79 hits performed by the now-deceased raider organization DEN. The conditions that made this a thing were the lengthened major update due to game-side's server performance anomalies, lack of defenders, everyone was having 100+ puppets prepared, and the fact that we were jumping on incredibly short cadence of under 15s, with usually 5s to spare between the target order and the GO command. A whooping 90+ puppets were burned for the event, along with some mouses and track-pads. Also, since the tags were triggered by a bot that is legal, this means legal bots can perform as good as illegal ones (stares at the Predator). More here from Lily's NationStates forum thread.


Cadence and trigger length

Click to read...

In the environment of modern gameplay, not only trigger length matters but the cadence of jumping also matters for tagging considering defenders have significantly boosted up their chase speed via the support of tools, the most commonly used one is Breeze++. A very short trigger length of under 3s is sufficient most of the time to protect your tags from getting screwed but since chasers can easily obtain the move speed of 1-2s these days, having short trigger length isn't enough, cadence revealed itself during these periods as an important ingredient for a successful tag run. Chasers are known to have slower preparation speed than taggers, because it requires a lot more steps for a chaser to prepare for the second move than a tagger.

Comparison between taggers' and chasers' operational sequence:
                                                                                         

Tagger	Chaser
Admit WA puppet	Admit WA puppet
Endorse point nation	Endorse perma-cross
Wait for GO command	Cross-endorse nations that endorse perma-cross
Move on GO command	Find taggers via Activity page
Resign from WA	Add taggers to dossier
	Constantly refresh report page to wait for taggers' move
	Move when taggers move
	Resign from WA

As seen above, it took significantly more steps for a chaser to do a tag defense than a tagger does a tag raid, not to mention the difficulty and time consumption of many steps of chasers are higher than taggers. Having high cadence means that chasers will miss a few taggers' jumps because chasers consume more time to do the preparation than taggers. A cadence of under 20s is terrific at ensuring an higher-than-50% success rate and an hit count of 30 and above for a tag run.

Comparison of preparation time between a chaser and a tagger:

Detagging
Around 154 regions received free janitor work as some really epic efforts at detagging were carried out during the past month during updates when raiders weren't around. One of the most epic runs was the run on 11^st November, when an amazing amount of 64 regions got detagged by a few defenders. 

Chasing
Chasing performance saw a notable drop number-wise and success-rate-wise. We defended 97 regions from tag raids with friends from The Grey Wardens and a few other organizations that possess chasing-capable members. On the quantity aspect, this was a 2 times reduction from the previous month. On the quality side, success rate also got a big drop. The success rate plummeted from 58% down to only 41% for the past month, with 7 defenses and 11 fails per chase run. The convincing explanation would be the fact that fast chasers were inactive in the past month, and the raider organization The Roman Empire dominated the tag field in November, with unseen trigger accuracy, speed, skill, and dedication. They managed to put the chasers in nausea with constant under 3s triggers and a cadence of under 20s. This challenges even the most recognized chasers in the defenderdom. Better yet, all of these were led and triggered manually, not through any mean of automation, so the cup of the best tagging organization definitely belonged to this organization in November. 



Liberation
16 liberations against noob raiders were carried out in the past month. We had one big liberation attempt, although it was a painful failure, it left us with many fun experience and helped bind the community further. On the night of 26^th October, a wave of raiders from several raider and independent organizations such as The Black Hawks and The West Pacific, led by Osiris, poured into the region Socialist Alliance of Eurasia. Although the region was small, a series of liberation attempts were organized by the defenders, whose purpose was probably not to protect the natives but rather to make sure the tight ship of liberators stay intact after a period of inactivity. The first hit was a siege, a liberation attempt that is designed to fail in order to cripple raiders' influence gain, a necessary resource for them to reach their final objective of emptying the target region then password it and re-found it to turn it into a trophy.

The mechanic behind a siege

Click to read...

Sieges, also known as attrition runs, are operations that are designed to defeat the occupiers by destroying their influence gain rather than taking the delegacy and are utilized in the situation when the occupiers out-number the liberators and their objective are putting a password or re-founding a region. Setting password or purging a region to re-found it require a vast amount of influence. It took a minimum of 400 influence points just to put an hidden password and an amount of influence equals to the target nation for banjecting. This poses a significant time and human resource issue to the occupiers. A lot of time and a lot of man-power must be spent to add enough influence to the occupiers' delegate to do the tasks. In a siege, a bunch of nations that endorse each other rush into the target region. After doing so, these nations will gain influence when they update. Because they are endorsing each other, the cumulative amount of influence gained is huge, the occupiers will try to banject these nations and waste their influence which should have been used into completing the objectives of the occupation. If did often enough with enough man-power, a series of siege could stretch the time for completing the final objectives a few times more than had been planned and could put a big mental impact on the occupiers and prompted them to stop the occupation. The strategy can knock down an occupation that is a few times larger in term of endorsements than the liberators. The strategy has been used extensively during the winter months of 2016, when defenders were low on head-count. The major downside of this, of course, is fatigue. Having to constantly jump into a region update after update in order to ensure effectiveness causes unbelievable fatigue for both the jumpers and the commanders. The strategy faded out during the spring and summer months of 2017, when it was possible for the defenders to outright liberate a region via taking delegacy, because a surge in available man-power. This strategic was based on its real-life counterpart: Attrition warfare.

12 people was on for the siege and all of them got into the region successfully without any got banjected by the raider delegate. Cumulative influence gain of the group made any attempt at banjection by next update impossible. The team got reinforced 12 hours later, when the main liberation force of 24 people rushed into the region on the official liberation event. Again, with no raider banjection, all of them successfully made it in. Although failed due to lack of endorsements, this liberation attempt provided tremendous cumulative influence boost, further secured the stronghold from the previous siege. Two additional attempts followed afterward, each of them had more than 15 participants. The endorsement gap between defender lead and raider lead reached to the level as short as 4 endorsements and was always under 10 for all attempts, we were seriously and dangerously close. Assume an ideal condition when everyone has endorsed each other properly, each jump would collect more than 400 influence points, severely extending the time of the occupation. The influence collected by defenders plus the influence of native nations costed raiders nearly 3 weeks to purge the entire region. Defenders unfortunately gave up after a few tries due to the fact that the overall value of the region wasn't high enough to pour in more efforts. A successful re-found attempt by raiders was carried out nearly 3 weeks after that and the region is now a trophy of the coalition of several regions that raided it. 

Summary of the event (Animated GIF):



(Click to view the full-resolution image of each frame for anyone who likes to explore the maps)

The ultimate reason of failure is rather deep and important: Rule-breaking founder. The founder of the target region was deleted on the ground of game's-rule-breaking. This prompted one of defenderdom's key human resource providers: 10000 Islands to exclude themselves from the liberation attempts, removed as much as 10 endorsements for the event. Had they joined, the first liberation attempt would have been a success because the defenders were just under 10 endorsements to reaching the delegate-couping point. Defenders should be glad that the cause of failure wasn't the lack of personnel of the entire defenderdom. 
And oh, the life lesson for every native who wishes their region not to be wiped out of existence:

"Thou shalt not break game's rules"

Raid
On minor update of November 8^th, the SPSF sent some troops to help one of our most important strategic allies: The North Pacific raided the far-right region of Potestates enim Axem Lentis. The region was small, so a force of 9 people plus 1 day of occupation were enough to gain the amount of influence necessary to password and re-found the region. The region is now under ownership of the North Pacific Army. One more fash shot down! It is really just a matter of time for every region that promotes hatefulness to fade into the night. 

Piling
The past month was a very active month when it comes to piling for the SPSF and the defenderdom. A two-weeks-long pile happened in Socialist Alliance of Eurasia with pilers were the liberators been able to make it into the region without getting banjected by raiders. Around 9 pilers from the SPSF were in the region as part of the defender stronghold against raiders. The pilers helped each other gained influence to make raiders' banjection operation became more difficult.
Another big piling operation was the support of Boston. Boston was originally raided by a group of noob raiders, a small liberation attempt was carried out as usual 12 hours after the raid on major update of November 30^th. It had come to the realization that the raider lead had a tremendously high amount of influence, on the level of hundreds, because the lead nation had stayed in the region as a sleeper for a long period of time. An huge piler force was called into action in an effort to minimize the time needed to gather enough influence for a total purging of raiders. Just after 24 hours, the pile jumped from 6 to an impressive 45 endorsement count, in which there were 9 pilers from the SPSF. Just after one week, the hundreds-of-influence-packed raid lead was kicked from the region. Considering that it took only 6 endorsements to liberate the region but the piler force was on 45 endorsement count, this easily takes the cake for the most dramatic pile for a small liberation in this year. This operation has caused some gameplay drama (link for any drama queen who wishes to get entertained).

Speed
Here comes the show-off sections for fast-bois and fast-girls in the SPSF.

Chasing
Roavin continued to remain at the 1^st position in the past month in term of chase speed, at an average of 2s and maximum of 1s. Stands at the same position is Nineteen Lights, with the maximum speed of 2s. At the second position, we have USoVietnam (United States of Vietnam), Pikasistan with an average of 4s and maximums of 2s for USoVietnam and 3s for Pikasistan. Hovers at the third position, we have Escade and Nakari (Nakarisaune) at an average of 5s and maximums of 3s for Escade and 4s for Nakari. 

Move+Endorsement
Since we only got 1 operation that requires move+endo (Socialist Alliance of Eurasia), the data points for this section weren't many but still, better than nothing. Somyrion (Aumeltopia) holds the 1^st position for fastest move+endorsement speed, at 1s. The 2^nd position belongs to Escade, USoVietnam, and Roavin at the speed of 3s. Finally, the 3^rd position is hold by Pikasistan at 4s. 

Chase+Endorsement
Since no chase-defensible raid has happened in the past month (Because all the raiders focused on passworded regions), there were no chase+endorsement speed data unfortunately. 

Members' points
For activity encouraging reason, the SPSF decided to implement a system that gives members points based on the operations they joined and some of the personal indices such as chase speed and update count. (Read this to understand how the system works) Below is the result.









Roavin has the highest points, an impressive 114000, due to his 47 tag defenses and 9 liberations, the highest in the SPSF, a blazing fast 2s chase speed, and an update count of 15, the 2^nd in the team. USoVietnam stands at the 2^nd, at 102230 points, due to his commitment to tag raiding, at 269 tag raids, leading all major liberation attempts except for the first on Socialist Alliance of Eurasia, and has been the most active member in the SPSF at 21 update count. Escade's 72200 points put her at the 3^rd position, due to her 2^nd highest tag defense and update count. To all members in the SPSF, no matter what your points are, you have contributed greatly to SPSF's activities and competence, the South Pacific's position on the military gameplay field, and the world of NationStates military gameplay in general. Kudo to all SPSF members who took parts in various operations during the past month: Roavin, Escade, Nakari (Nakarisaune), Pikasistan, Somyrion (Aumeltopia), South Asians, Nineteen Lights, Neu Hundland, Thatcher (The Noble Thatcherites), Serres (The Serres Republic), Unplannedland, Wynken Blynken (Witchcraft and Sorcery), USoVietnam (United States of Vietnam), and Aav Whitehall. 

Military-related foreign affairs
The foreign affairs side of the SPSF during the past month has been like it had always been before. It worked the most with defender organizations, which The Grey Wardens took the top spot at 37 updates, The Rejected Realms took the second spot at 25 updates, Union of Democratic States got the third spot at 13 updates, and finally, with 10 updates, Lily belongs to the fourth position. Of course, we cannot forget our most important treaty-bind ally: The North Pacific for inviting us on the fash-bash raid. Big thanks to all of the named friends above along with 10000 Islands, Renegade Islands Alliance, Caer Sidi, League of Conservative Nations, The Order of Pheonix, Dragon Knights Of Aenaroth,... The full list is on the following chart.



The defender subversion stories have been practically extinct in the past month, and most criticism of the South Pacific usually aimed at the government and its members regard to bad internal institutional and diplomatic problems, no major criticism aimed directly at the SPSF has been found so far. That is a good sign that the Minister of Military Affairs Escade has proved herself to be competent at keeping the military running smoothly and non-scandalous as much as possible. 
And of course, great scandalous events come great satirical journalism.

Conclusion
Merry Christmas 

Read the statistical report here

Chief Supervising Armchair

(This post was last modified: 12-17-2017, 09:53 AM by USoVietnam.)

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A fantastic report as always, Viet! 

Big shoutout to all the SPSFers putting in the hard work. Y'all are awesome!

[Image: Lj1SunN.png]
Formerly Banned For Still Unspecified "OOC Toxicity"

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Amazing report!

~ Aumeltopia ~

Raccoons are bandits! First they steal your food . . . and then your heart/identity!

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Absolutely wonderful report.

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This is so epic! Love the GIF and just all the data and analysis I'm pretty sure we are the only military who has this level of expertise on this! <3

Escade

~ Positions Held in TSP ~
Delegate | Vice Delegate 
Minister of Regional Affairs, | Minister of Foreign Affairs | Minister of Military Affairs
~ The Sparkly One ~

My Pinterest

 

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This level of pure numbers is amazing! Fantastic report!

Marius Rahl

Fortitudine Vincimus!

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