Fight Timer Extending

Please bear with me, my English isn't very good. 

In a recent fight I had while chaining, the fight did not auto end after 30 seconds but rather 38 seconds, causing me to lose the chain. 

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My faction mate made chain hit 11

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As you can see the timer for leaving them was at 03:39:00

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My next hit was not counted as a chain hit

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My final hit was at 03:43:26, which should have left 4 seconds spare in the chain, however it ended 8 seconds later at 03:44:04, a full 4 seconds after my chain had expired. 

With the auto leave timer always being 30 seconds, this seems logically impossible to me therefore I assume it is a glitch? I am unsure however wanted to bring it to the attention of people wiser than myself. 

The hit gets added to the chain when you click leave, mug or hosp, or the game auto leaves after the 30 seconds not when you do the finishing hit

It isn't a guaranteed 30 seconds for the auto-leave.

This method is not a "safe" way to make sure your fight finishes within the chain timer.

If you are trying to leave in the last few seconds of the chain cooldown, always click the "leave" (or whatever) button manually.

They know that - they are saying that if the auto-leave had happened at 30 seconds it would have been 03:43:56 which was 4 seconds before the 5 minutes since the last attack was left on the street. But because the auto-leave happened at 38 seconds, it was 4 seconds AFTER the 5 minutes.

The issue here is not about a lack of understanding about the final hit vs the leaving on the street, but that they believed the auto-leave was a GUARANTEED 30 seconds delay (which is not the case)

Ahhh ok I got it wrong then. Anyways pretty sure chains do not get restored if the person was completely relying on the auto leave timer unless there are "extreme circumstances"

have you been leaving it to auto complete everytime?

Is it known under what circumstances it can last longer than 30 seconds, or is it just unstable, in general? This isn't good...

Quoting CJ:

The auto-leave system is not meant to save your chains, it is an emergency system that finishes your attack in case there was an issue with the attacking system. It can take auto-leave system extra seconds if there was an issue in the backend, if you drop your chain because you were relying on auto-leave system to save it for you, it will never be restored unless there are extreme circumstances.

https://www.torn.com/forums.php#/p=threads&f=19&t=16474739&b=0&a=0&start=0&to=26027714

It is "usually" 30 seconds, but it all depends on server load at the time, its just an additional background process that runs - so if anything else more important is happening or there is heavy server load or other issues, then it gets bumped to a back seat and will start again when it can.

Think of it as a "you will have a guaranteed 30 second window to choose exactly when to leave them" because it will always wait at least 30 seconds. If you are trying to keep a chain alive, or going for the chain saver merit, always click the button yourself.