Ranked War Payouts Improvement Proposal

Absolutely agree with you on this. By anchoring payouts to energy spent in a ranked war you are rewarding the actual activity and even then if people want to rig the system BOTH teams have to keep attacking each other to reach the required thresholds for payouts and bonuses on top of that. Right now those thresholds are very low and they simply let the wars time out. 

It is very unlikely big changes like this can be made fast and suddenly before any testing is made, but I am sure by doing a little tweaks here and there, such as lowering the points by a few thousand to win at D3, putting a pretty generous point threshold say 50-60k to unlock a potential bonus cash payout to compensate the higher war costs - with a safety net that checks for activity, revives, retaliations, assists, war time elapsed and so on, we may have our solution for encouraging proper warring without bankrupting factions who can't afford it right now.

Another thing that came to mind is if both teams aren't actively hitting each other over a certain period, the point decay to win can speed up, punishing the turtling faction and making it easier to win for the other faction. This can further encourage factions to be more creative with their warring strategies.

The reason they don't do this is because of a notorious SMTH vs. SMTH war in Gold that had like 100k score on both sides. It would allow factions to print respect.

https://www.torn.com/war.php?step=rankreport&rankID=18888

This is the top scoring war logged in Torn Stats.

https://www.tornstats.com/caches

Winners sorted by Loser score:

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Losers sorted by Loser score:

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You assume SMTH will only match SMTH, I do not think this was the case before and I do not think this will be the case going forward with the new matchmaking system. Logically in my head a system awarding more activity makes more sense, compared to one that rewards you to do nothing, time out and get paid handsomely for it.

My only respect farming extended decay war (previously linked) was also with SMTH.

If you don't think I wouldn't term for an extended decay 100k+ score respect farming war with SMTH you would be wrong. I would slap that "YES I ACCEPT THESE TERMS" button so hard my phone would shoot across the room.

Again terming is perfectly fine and widely used, if people want to play torn this way, they can do so.

This is about the rest of us who want to war competitively. We want to be able to go all out and risk our hard earned faction money to win in a real competitive war without worrying it will bankrupt us if we lose, especially if we end up having to do it week after week, after week. I am not suggesting we get a full reimbursement or huge payout bonus, here, more like a slight, helpful financial bonus, reflecting the extra effort, time and energy wasted in a longer drawn out war. In fact if Ched is reluctant to make it financial, why not give a week long buff to factions that fight in these epic long wars that buffs their training steadfasts or extra nerve for crimes, racing skill etc, can be a whole bunch of things that provide a meaningful reward to players in recognition of their efforts.

I have 41 members in happy jump range. You have zero. Could you perhaps see why non monetary buffs are not super enticing to me.

Mine is one of the factions on that list (sadly, the losers one). At the time, our war against Twisted was, if my memory hasn't failed me, the 2nd-highest total score. Even though we lost, our effort in Platinum I rewarded us with $5.8B in caches. It wasn't quite enough to cover expenses, but our net loss was less than $200M. Not too shabby for 3+ days of absolute fun, and an amount that most viable factions should easily be able to handle. Unfortunately, rewards have not kept up with expenses. In this recent war against NS4, we were on the losing side again. This time, our Diamond I rewards were only $3.7B, about $500M less than our actual expenses. Fortunately for our members, we pay out 85% BEFORE expenses, so the faction absorbed the net loss, which also happened to be about $3.7B.

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In short, both wars were equally fun for the members, but the value of the rewards against Twisted is sustainable whereas the value of the rewards against NS 4 is not. With all the real data that Torn devs have, surely there is a valuation that can be applied which encourages more wars like these and fewer termed wars. There is no system that will prevent termed wars entirely, so discarding a potential solution simply because some wars will still be termed is narrow-minded. If you can decrease the number of termed wars by any percentage, that's a win in my book.

I don't track expenses except bounties, it just comes out of the faction cut. For bad losses I don't take a cut.

War expenses in Silver include:

• Xanax
• Bounties
• Temps (not steroids)
• Meds (including ipecac bc noobs don't have IV therapy)
• Warlord weapons - one time purchases
• Combat armor & gray weapons - one time purchases
• A couple of overseas revives (in total over 1 year+ of warring)

If devs would like to look at our war pay in Silver and a couple of Gold/Bronze wars for our past 3 shells (over 1 year of pay sheets) I can provide them.

Any of our wars with loser score over 50% of the initial lead to win has utter crap war pay.... and only untermed wars have loser scores over 50% (barring the odd respect farming wars).

Any loss with under 40% of the initial lead to win also has garbage war pay for the loser and only mildly better war pay for the winner. These are also all untermed wars (except for the first few wars we fought when I misread the advice I was given regarding target loser scores).

Since I feel like a terrible person if I stomp others I do try to term all wars (as we are purposely under ranked), with at least racing conditions to determine the winner and loser. My racing conditions boilerplate (available on the forums as part of my terms boilerplate) allow for the loser to not concede if they get the max loser caches.

Only one faction has taken us up on a (small) bit of respect farming after a racing conditions war terms were met due to the knowledge that any respect farming will be a pay cut.

Silver wars just simply don't pay enough to be doing all the expensive stuff you do in Diamond. We are in two completely different worlds and trying to apply the same rules to lower metals as are applied to Diamond will never be fair to either.

I mean hell we don't even have a halo on our faction tag. If devs can't even be bothered to put a gray halo on us why should I be willing to consider any changes to war pay that affects us? I am already running this faction at a net loss at worse, net neutral at best because I don't hoard war hits and pay everyone fairly to support their happy jumps and banking merits.

My faction specializes in noobs. Noobs are expensive, if you're not just using them as interchangeable fodder - you can look at our war history to see our new player retention and war participation which is pretty good for primarily recruiting new players. I won't change my focus away from noobs, because noobs keep me engaged in the game. I run my whole account around supporting noob growth. It's my special interest if you will.

Just an idea. How about diamond ranks get what they want in real wars by enforcing a hit must be made within an hour in order to not forfeit the war. No caches earned if kicked from match up. Just spit balling really, all other leagues can continue as is. 

A few things: despite smaller pay, lower rank wars are more profitable because they simply don't put in as much. Mercs, rev services, FHCs, SEDs, Flight Delays, gear rentals, etc. Some of these start to disappear at platinum, and probably almost all in any given war by gold. Then add to that way less hits in general and way lower war goals. 

I dislike 10k races as they massively favor the weaker stat factions due to fair fight bonuses. Making them official is something I'm not a fan of. 

Also, for those calculating costs, they're often failing to take into account individual costs which are most common at diamond. My fac can say they spent 10b on a war, but if half of us as individuals spent 200m that adds up to an additional 10b

Our last war (termed win) averaged $20m per member and $27m per member who made at least 1 hit. Costs were limited to med kits and temps (not steroids). Faction cut paid for Xanax, temps and med kits.

I'm trying to find the "more profitable" you're talking about... We gained 10k respect.

I'm not the last 50 people you were arguing about, I take costs into account if you read the whole thing, and that means negative income.

That's fair, I would like to know what some average numbers are for take home pay per war hit? I'm fairly open about my pay. I've also been told by many that "less than $1m per hit is THEFT!!!" But we don't really have any costs applied to that 1 Xanax per war hit. 1 Xanax *is* the take home pay.

Well last war, I think the faction-end costs were around 7-10b if I had to guess. Individual costs averaged probably around 150m each. So a total cost of around 15b+. We're still trying to locate some costs, though not looking too deep into individuals. The reward was 6.2b

I only got super rough estimates at the moment unfortunately, but it's very clear we're far into the negative to the tune of billions.

Is that a typical war for you? How do you afford a such a large loss to your wallet on every war...?

Yes, last war was also bad but we lost quicker, though since it was a loss we got 3b not 6.2 I've always lost money in real wars. The profit comes mostly from stock investing and the fake wars. DA used to refuse to fake war at all for a very long time, but at some point, the costs add up to too much while your peers are building their networth, armory, and reserves.

Our wars pay the same whether termed or not, unless it's a stomp. $20m average pay that goes towards happy jumping isn't exactly going to be getting stock blocks since it goes directly into stats.

So if you didn't have the termed wars and stocks how would you be able to afford all real wars?

What type of termed wars are we talking here? Low score extended decay cache splits?

When I talk termed wars I mean 50% loser and winner ends war by matchup, so max 3 days of decay. What do you mean by termed war?

No. Termed wars are fine, they also lose money. Our last war I mentioned was termed. Termed just means you agree to some minor (or in some cases major) restrictions.

Stocks and FAKE wars are where the money comes from. I want to make that very clear. Fake as in winner, points, and occasionally reward splits are decided beforehand.

However, yes, real wars would drive us broke and eventually out of Diamond without those alternate sources of income.

What does Fake wars mean to you? Just the predetermined winner or score caps/decay to give rewards for reduced participation?

Yes.