RULES & SCHEDULE

[zidane]

RULES

TWDT Head Op: Zidane
Contributors: Wirah, Qan
Hot or Not Writer: None yet, will talk to people


Schedule

Dates:

October 13 -- Draft (3:00PM EDT)
October 20 -- Game 1/2
October 27 -- Game 3/4
November 3 -- Games 5/6
November 10 -- Games 7/8 (FA Draft, 2:00 PM EDT)
November 15 - Trading Deadline (11:59 PM EDT)
November 17 -- Games 9/10
November 24 -- Games 11/12
December 1 -- Games 13/14
December 8 -- Semi-Finals
December 15 -- Finals

Teams will compete against every other team twice in each league throughout the regular season.


Regular Season Timeslots:

TWDT-D -- 3:00PM EDT
TWDT-D -- 3:30PM EDT
TWDT-J -- 4:00PM EDT
TWDT-J -- 4:30PM EDT
TWDT-B -- 5:00PM EDT
TWDT-B -- 5:30PM EDT

Playoff Timeslots:

TWDT-D -- 2:00PM EDT
TWDT-J -- 3:30PM EDT
TWDT-B -- 5:00PM EDT

TWDT-D starts one hour early in the playoffs, while TWDT-J starts thirty minutes early, to ensure games finish on-time for our European players who are up very late and have work the next day.

Lineups

Restrictions

TWDT-D: Not to exceed 40* total per lineup. Any lineup added that is 40* or below is valid.
TWDT-J: Not to exceed 40* total per lineup. Any lineup added that is 40* or below is valid.
TWDT-B: Not to exceed 67* total per lineup. Any lineup added that is 67* or below is valid.

These lineup restrictions apply at all times. You are not allowed, at any point of a live match, to exceed the maximum * total per lineup. This will apply to subs as well. If a player dies out in TWDT-D/J, his or her star value remains as part of your team's total. Captains should advise themselves and their assistants to have a calculator ready and to have valid substitutions mapped out before matches begin.

If there is an honest mistake such as subbing two players in quick succession and going over the cap for a short moment before quickly fixing it, you must have reasonable evidence that the player who made the lineup invalid did not impact the game (i.e. shoot, repel, attach, burst), for as long as the lineup was invalid. If an appeal is proposed about this error and the captain is unable to absolve himself with evidence, he will be forced to forfeit the game 50-0 or 15:00-0:00.

Borrowing

TWDT-D/TWDT-J:

• Only players already rated in the draft are eligible to be borrowed.
• Teams are permitted ONE 7* or below borrow per game if they're unable to field a valid lineup from their own roster. The player's star value in the specific league they are being borrowed for is what counts. A player may exceed 7* in another league but still qualify as a borrow.
• A borrowed player must be confirmed by a League Op before he's considered eligible to play. If a player is not confirmed eligible for borrowing, the team who added the ineligible player will forfeit the match 50-0. Captains and League Ops should always have ?log running to verify a borrow agreement in the case of potential appeals.
• Borrowed players are only eligible before the start of the game. Subbing in a borrowed player is not permitted and will result in a forfeit.

TWDT-B:

• Only players already rated in the draft are eligible to be borrowed.
• Teams are permitted TWO 7* or below borrows per game if they're unable to field a valid lineup from their own roster. The player's star value in the specific league they are being borrowed for is what counts. A player may exceed 7* in another league but still qualify as a borrow.
• Borrowed players must be confirmed by a League Op before they're considered eligible to play. If a player has not been confirmed for borrowing and is added, the team borrowing the ineligible player(s) will forfeit the match 15-0. Captains and League Ops should always have ?log running to verify the agreement in case of potential appeals.
• Borrowed players are only eligible before the start of the game. Subbing in a borrowed player is not permitted and will result in a forfeit.

Borrowing in the Playoffs:

• The same borrowing rules apply from the regular season, but the pool of potential borrows will be limited to rated players who have been eliminated from playoff contention.

Trades

For the first few weeks of the tournament, trading will be open from Sunday at 6:00PM EDT until the next Friday at 3:00PM EDT. This allows 48 hours for league ops to approve or deny proposed trades before the matches begin the following Sunday.

There will be no limit to trades this season.

The final trading deadline will be November 15, 2019 at 11:59 PM EST.

Trading pick order in the main draft will be possible this season.

Trading FA picks will be possible, but the value of the potential pick will be determined by the quality of player(s) who are expected to be available at the specific drafting position.

Before being official, all trades must be proposed on the forums under the TWDT Summer 2019 Trades thread and must be approved by the TWDT League Op team.

League Ops also have the right to veto any trades that are obviously one-sided or questionable due to malicious reasons (i.e. sabotaging their own team.)

All trades must be approved/denied within 48 hours by the league op team with an explanation of their reasoning behind the decision.

Bans

Players are subjected to bans or other punishments, to be decided by league ops on a case-by-case, common sense basis. Some cases will absolutely not be tolerated or negotiated:

• Trading names without notifying league ops or logging on someone else's name during a match is an auto-ban from participating in TWDT for a minimum of (2) seasons.
• Playing under an alias that is immune to proper alias checking while not providing your real alias. The league team can only properly rate a player if they've been identified. Overpowered players who abuse this will forfeit their opportunity to participate with a season long ban.
• Threatening a captain prior to the draft of not showing or refusing to play for them after being picked will constitute an immediate warning. If the behavior continues, the player will be banned for a minimum of (2) seasons. Be an adult and ask for a trade. If that doesn't work, be a bigger adult and soldier through for the sake of the community and your future in TWDT.

Appeals

Every captain will have a maximum of three appeals per league throughout the regular season. Every playoff match will be eligible to be appealed.

Appeals must be submitted within 24 hours of the incident on the TW forums. A detailed account of the situation and the argument for the appeal should be provided in the thread. Failure to submit an appeal within 24 hours will deem the appeal invalid and the results of the game in question will be considered final.

The league op team will respond to appeals within 72 hours after the appeal was posted with a verdict and an explanation of their reasoning behind the decision.

If an appeal is granted, the game will be replayed at an agreed time that works for both teams involved. If the opposing team is unwilling to reschedule their match at a reasonable date, they will forfeit the replay.

Note: If something unforeseen happens that isn't accounted for in the rules or has no precedence, league ops are responsible for coming up with a common sense, rational, and fair ruling on the situation.

Emergency Scenarios:

In the unlikely event that something catastrophic or completely unforeseen happens that has the potential to ruin the season, the league operators will do their best to solve the issue with the best interest of the TWDT season as a whole in mind. TWDT captains will all be consulted and play a role in handling such a critical decision.

Playoffs

• The four teams with the most total wins throughout the regular season will qualify for the playoff bracket in all leagues.
• Once in semi-finals, the four remaining teams will be reseeded based on the win totals in each respective league. Seed #1 will play seed #4, and seed #2 will play seed #3.

Example: (Wins are in WB/Jav/Base order.)

Thunder 4/10/10 (24 total), Sk8 12/9/2 (23 total), Disoblige 5/9/7 (21 total), Melee 6/6/9 (21 total), Onix 5/7/6 (18 total), Syndicate 8/5/8 (21 total), Pallies 7/4/7 (18 total), Elusive 9/6/7 (22 total)

Semi-finals = Sk8 #1 seed with 12 wins, #2 seed next highest wb win total, #3 seed next highest wb win total, Thunder #4 seed with 4 wins. Sk8 (#1 seed) plays Thunder (#4 seed), and #2 seed plays #3 seed.

The same applies for jav and base.

• For purposes of tiebreak for seeds #1/2 and for determining which teams make the playoffs, the overall head-to-head record will be taken into account across all three leagues between the tied teams. If the teams are tied (3-3), the team with the highest amount of kills in wb, jav, and base (base minutes will be converted into kills, with 15 minutes equal to 50 kills) among the tied teams will rank higher for bye purposes, or for entrance into the playoffs. If for some reason the tied teams are tied in overall kills in wb, jav, and base against each other (with minutes converted into kills), the tiebreak will then shift to highest amount of kills in wb, jav, and base (base minutes converted into kills) across ALL teams. If still tied, randomly selected (via twitch stream).
• For tiebreaks among seeds #3 through #6 in quarter-finals and for reseeding in semi-finals in each individual league (with win totals separated by league), it will first be head-to-head record between the tied teams for each specific league. If the teams are 1-1 against each other in a league, it will then go to highest amount of kills between the tied teams in that league. If the teams are both 1-1 against each other, and tied in overall kills in that league from their two head-to-head games, it will then go to total number of kills in that league against ALL teams. If still tied, randomly selected (via twitch stream).
• When converting base minutes into kills, with 15 minutes equal to 50 kills, any decimal .5 or above will be rounded up, and any decimal .499999 and below will be rounded down.
• Star Cap Limits remain in place for the playoffs
• Only players who have been eliminated from playoff contention are eligible to be borrowed
• Borrowed players who play a full game in the Semis or Finals earn a medal for their contributions.
• Playoffs Format is is a Best of 3 in TWDT-D, TWDT-J, and TWDT-B. All warbird and javelin games are to 50, and all basing games are to 15 minutes.

Playoff Schedule

As mentioned earlier, to account for the best of three format, TWDT-D matches will begin an hour early and TWDT-J matches will begin 30 minutes early.

TWDT-D -- 2:00PM EDT
TWDT-J -- 3:30PM EDT
TWDT-B -- 5:00PM EDT

Main Draft

The draft will take place on October 13, 2019 at 3:00PM EDT. The draft will snake until the last player is selected.

Round 1: 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> 6 -> 7 -> 8
Round 2: 8 -> 7 -> 6 -> 5 -> 4 -> 3 -> 2 -> 1
Ad infinitum


Free Agency Draft

The FA draft will take place on November 10 at 2:00PM EDT, 1 hour before the Week 4 games begin. The picking order will be based on the current standings before the Week 4 matches. The lowest ranked team will have the first pick in free agency, and then so on and so forth. If there are any ties between teams, it will be randomized to determine who picks first. This will provide teams that are struggling to have a better chance at turning their season around, while also giving returning players an opportunity to play a good amount of the season.

FA Players are immediately eligible to play all Week 4 games after being drafted.

Schedule:

1:00PM EDT: FA Draft Signups are locked. Players can no longer signup for TWDT.
2:00PM EDT: FA Draft
3:00PM EDT: Week 4 Games Start

Players asking to sign up after 1:59PM EDT may be allowed entry to the FA Draft at the TWDT Head Ops discretion, but is under no obligation to do so.

Signups

Main Draft:

Players must sign up by 2:59 PM EDT on October 13, 2019 to be eligible for selection in the main draft, as captains must have adequate time to consider all prospects and adjust their draft sheets.

All signups after 2:59 PM EDT on October 13, 2019 will be added to the FA draft pool.

The FA deadline is 1:59PM EDT on November 3, 2019.

Message From The League Op Team

Thanks for participating in one of the two premier leagues of Trench Wars, the Summer 2019 Season of TWDT!

As a player, it's expected you conduct yourself like an adult throughout your time in the league. You're playing with a community full of other adults with jobs, social lives, families, and other commitments outside of trench wars. Acting childish and throwing temper tantrums, while not a bannable offense, will not go unnoticed by the community. Do not waste other people's valuable time with unnecessary bullshit. Learn to play with other people, it's really not that difficult.

If you're interested in contributing to TWDT in any way, reach out to Zidane, Major Crisis, or Turban. If you enjoy creating content or want to help out with league work or staff duties, we would gladly use your services to help make this season as enjoyable as possible.

We also appreciate the recent herculean effort by the community that brought this game back to life. It's because of that effort that we're able to run another season of TWDT.

Welcome back, good luck and thanks for participating.

-TWDT 2019 League Op Team

[kado]

Thank you for stepping up zid!!!!! u love ss!!!!!

[afghan]

These were long overdue. Nice updates zid.

• Playing under an alias that is immune to proper alias checking while not providing your real alias. The league team can only properly rate a player if they've been identified. Overpowered players who abuse this will forfeit their opportunity to participate with a season long ban.
• Threatening a captain prior to the draft of not showing or refusing to play for them after being picked will constitute an immediate warning. If the behavior continues, the player will be banned for a minimum of (2) seasons. Be an adult and ask for a trade. If that doesn't work, be a bigger adult and soldier through for the sake of the community and your future in TWDT.

[MHz]

Thx Zid.

Could we also consider a res cap in TWDT-D so it's actually enjoyable.

[Rab]

Could we also consider a res cap in TWDT-D so it's actually enjoyable.

Should not be done IMO. But if done, must change the ratings of players excluded by res limit to indicate they can't actually play.

[Tiny]

Any way you can get a list of players, like twd, and what res they are playing on?

[Rab]

I could scrape it all off the twd site given a couple of days to write a program to do it. But f doing that when someone with database access could just write a query, or better yet add a page to the twd site to display the result. It's kinda nuts that we capture this data and then do nothing with it.

[zidane]

Was the limit in twld last season 1920? I'm not a huge fan of no res but I wouldn't want to make a rule that limits a large amount of players. Rab, if you can provide some info on the people using resolutions larger than 1920, let me know. I'll talk to some players in game to get an idea as I'm not too familiar with WB res history

[Rab]

A quick resolution 101:
- Resolution is the width and height of your monitor in pixels
- "1080p" is 1920x1080
- "1440p" is 2560x1440
- "4K" is 3840x2160

A quick resolution history of what was mostly purchased:
~20 years ago: 1024x768 / 1280x1024
~10 years ago: 1920x1080 / 1920x1200
~Now: 1920x1080 / 2560x1440

A quick resolution history of TWLD:
- I don't know what the limit was and when, but there are clues in these threads:
https://forums.trenchwars.com/forum/...-limit-in-twld
https://forums.trenchwars.com/forum/...s-in-twdd-twjd
https://forums.trenchwars.com/forum/...-in-twd?39329=
https://forums.trenchwars.com/forum/...olution-limits
https://forums.trenchwars.com/forum/...mum-resolution
- Doesn't look like there's a limit on TWLD now, so it's at least my resolution, which is 1440p

What's used now?
One way for you to get a feeling for what people use, without me/anyone having to do any work, is to use the Steam Hardware Survey as a proxy.



The take away from that is as follows:
- Most people still use 1080p
- Old laptop users use lower than 1080p
- Today's purchases are between 1080p and 4K. 1080p is the budget purchase, 1440p (144hz) is the gamer purchase, 3440x1440 is the ultra-wide high-roller purchase, 4K is mostly people using steam on their TV.

Your choices:
A) Limit to 1920x1200, which excludes about 8% of people and counting.
B) Limit to 1440p, which excludes hardly anyone.
C) No Limit, which excludes nobody.

I should probably also mention that the performance of this game is dogshit at 1440p compared to 1080p, so I bet it's way worse at 4K. It may be that Continuum doesn't even work properly at 4K.

Pub Resolution Data
And after writing all that I find this link to a page on tw.org showing resolutions used in pub: http://www.trenchwars.org/?v=pubstat...ing&x=resgraph

[Rab]

I'll have a look into scraping it from the TWD website over the next few days anyway, just because it might be fun, unless someone with database access provides it tonight. Someone was discussing resetting TWD, if that happens there'll be no data to scrape.

Here's a starting point for your query:

SELECT     [PlayerName],
    (
        SELECT TOP 1 [Resolution]
        FROM [RoundsTable]
        WHERE [RoundsTable].[PlayerId] = [PlayersTable].[Id]
        ORDER BY [RoundsTable].[Id] DESC
    ) As [Resolution]
FROM [PlayersTable]
ORDER BY [PlayerName]

[Lock]

I would just leave it with no res cap. There are like 10 people that use larger than 1920. It doesn't make them any better, it's just that most people can't figure out how to adjust to a longer range game. Just push as a team and res makes no difference at all.

[Rab]

I've written all the code for scraping the resolutions, gonna leave it until the morning to run the full thing, rather than hammering it at peak hours.

Note there's still the flaw in the TWD site I reported ages ago that it only shows players who are in squads on the Statistics page, i.e. not me who borrows all the time. I could get it by scraping every single scorebox ever, or by scraping Find Player > Countries, or by settling for just the ones I find along the way, but I'm not going to bother because it would be quite a lot of hassle for a small number of players.

[beam]

use twl resolutions so the 10 people who use bigger ones can learn to play in a competitive environment

[Rab]

Resolutions from TWD website
Run Time: 2 minutes
Pages Loaded: 1,076
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing
zidane

[zidane]

Update - free agency rules have changed for this upcoming season, details are above