Faction Benching System

The problem

Many warring factions do so on a biweekly schedule, and to help with members not being able to attend the RW, those members voluntarily leave the faction before matchmaking (Tuesday, 12:00 TCT) happens.

Every 2 weeks some poor people have to suffer from being faction-less for 4-6+ days, and after that enjoy another 3 day of  "recruit" status when they come back to the faction. Additionally, discord bots will often yeet your roles from the faction's server, so you lose the social aspect of the game as well.

Upon doing some research I came across this thread by Nova which further pointed out the issue with trying to get people in between a RW and the next enlistment period,

This is quite frankly a sh*t implementation and causes lots of friction at the bottom of the foodchain: constant leaving of members, as well at the top: impossible to onboard new members.

The bench

The solution is quite simple, I present: the bench!

[image: i.dailymail.co.uk]

When a faction enlists for faction warfare all members are automatically added to the enlistment roster. During this enlistment period members would be able to move themselves voluntarily to the bench. Members who are on the bench automatically get assigned the rank of "benchsitter (original rank)" when they swap to this. Benchsitters are straight up excluded from the upcoming ranked war and do not count in any way, shape, or form for the upcoming ranked war. Hits against them count as outside hits, hits from them count as outside hits, etc. For all sakes of the war they count as being factionless. There's an argument to even exclude them from faction chat for the period of the war. 

Benchsitters keep all of the faction's perks up until 24h before the war begins, including OCs, item access, steadfast, etc. When the war ends, they are promoted back to their original rank. Upon receiving your original rank, the faction perks would still lag an additional 24h behind (steadfast, etc.).

The default for any faction which has gone through matchmaking, right up until the end of the war, has its faction page display only the non-bench members (aka the ones participating in the RW). Probably would need to add a dropdown for viewing the benchsitters, but this only a "FYI" part. 

So to recap, benchsitters adhere to the following: 

• No effect on the war, basically count as outside the faction for all RW interactions
• 24h before the war you lose your faction perks
• After the war you regain your original rank
• 24h after the war you regain your faction's perks
• When a benchsitter loses the faction's perks (-24h..war..+24h) all items are returned to the armory

The "what about..."s

Firstly, if a recruit joins and has the 72h recruit status as the matchmaking is happening, the recruit is automatically transferred to the bench and cannot partake in the war. However, 72h after joining his rank would automatically be increased to the one right above recruit, thus granting access to all the perks it has from that role. 

When the war ends, the recruit / benchsitter is than instantly promoted to the rank just above recruit, and thus eligible for the next RW if he/she so chooses. 

Secondly, I am OK with keeping the kicking / joining rules as they are now, but utilizing this system they could become more flexible as it could be done in such a way that people can join and instantly slide on the bench, or be kicked from the bench. This is due the fact that benchsitters do not interact with the RW. 

OCs. I'm inclined to state that a team cannot complete an OC when a member is a benchsitter, however with OC 2.0 these things might change drastically, so I'll simply leave this in the middle.

Total member count of the faction is unaffected by benchsitters, aka, they count out of the total maximum members. 

Text is boring, show more images

So first is your run of the mill soldier rank who decides to actually attend his own wedding, so he opts to sign out of the upcoming RW:

[image: i.imgur.com]

Next up is our lovely new recruit who joined on Monday before the RW:

[image: i.imgur.com]

Thoughts?

As I said, open to input on the status of what should be done with OCs, or we just agree to move it to: "OC 2.0 will figure it out". 

Finally, are the 24h before and after too lenient? Should they be extended to 48h? Should a user instantly lose all perks whenever matchmaking has taken place? Open to suggestions and numerical changes / implementations are up to the dev team ultimately. 

Why R+?

Simplifies life for everybody partaking in RWs, from first timers to seasoned vets. Removes unneeded friction. Saves a hassle for discord bots which link users to their respective factions. 

the best idea ever 10/10

as someone who hates ranked wars and isn't in a fac because of it this would be sexy asf

My only thought is how much coding would be involved in setting up bench sitters, seems like quite a bit . But would be nice if it was possible 

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b is for bench

up

bumping because this would still only be upsides!

You would still count towards the total amount of faction members (xx/100), and if your faction is happy that a person sits out 5 wars in a row, that's something for them to deal with. 

If it would lead to longer wars, due to everybody being "on their sh*t" and staying longer in the hospital I think Torn should take a look at that as well. 

The benching idea is quite flexible in that numbers / benefits / etc, all can be tweaked, but ultimately it reduces a huge amount of friction between faction and joining members & members that have IRL obligations. 

Faction has 12 members. They enlist. Then 3 bench. They no longer have enough people to enlist.

What happens?

That is a good question. The moment the final person unlists to get on the bench they are removed from enlisting. 

Since this all happens right before the actual matchmaking, and you cannot go to the bench when matchmaking has been done there shouldn't be that many issues in either way around it.

Bump for bench

bump

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bumperino