Why the six hour s of dead time on Sundays, It makes no since and kills the fun. Can't even hit bots, But they can keep going up in NW
? Please explain this.

Holy fluff, this has been explained dozens of times, most recent being week before last FFS, read announcements, or scroll down express talk and you'll see it, bro!

Please explain why you still run a rainbow and spend over 300 turns bombing bot banks?

wow dude i've even explained this to you on discord personally.. :/

I agree that it does take some fun away, if I battle an opponent the only thing stopping me is 0 turns. But I believe it is meant to prevent griefer/suicides from trashing finishes by launching attacks strictly to lower NW.
I'm not sure why access to bots is restricted. Maybe Celphi could take a look. No reason we can't keep smacking them around, they don't care about rank or fairness.

Long ago before the bots there were sometimes 100 players or more in Express. Mostly the players were new and inexperienced, and experienced players would farm them. I was a noob back then myself, but I kept trying and learning, and I really didn't like these bottom feeders. One of the best players was named Oldman, and one time he hit me and over 100 other players on his way to what he hoped would be a record high score. But unlike 99% of the noobs, I built a country that could retal, and I hit Oldman in the last few hours of the set and wrecked his high score country.

Here is one of my countries from round 111:
111 33 Bottomfeeding scum (#65) 16,565 $10,337,160 IG

You have probably never heard such crying and whining! Oldman complained so much and for so long that finally the game was changed so that you couldn't hit in the last few hours. Thats my recollection of why the restriction on hits in the last few hours was implemented anyways.

Wrong. You can still retal in the last 6 hours. Only if you hit him unprovoked in the last 6 hours, that is what the GDI rules aim to prevent, because people with small pee pee and tiny countries have always been jealous of those with big ones. And so they've stocked to go all jetter and hit people who stocked to finish with high NW meaning that winning is not about skill it is about not being targeted by someone with small pee pee. Admin sought to make the deciding factor not be about who can blow most small pee pee, so as to not get hit.

It's interesting... I was playing 1b (primary) back in E2025 in the early 2000s, maybe I even started in 1999 or something. Sure I had a learning phase, but by 2002 or something I was competetive with the best in the game on all servers, including primary. Yet from 2002-2006 when I quit I only have one unsuicided t10 finish in primary. Such was the way of old GDI, there just was enough time that someone would always get you. I'm sure a lot of that was actually multies that suicided their competition, because multies were so frequent and it was so rare anyone got deleted over it back then, theres no way to know really... But the reason doesnt really matter, the problem was that the game not only allowed it, but that it was so easy to suicide that it was almost encouraged by game formulas.

Those game formulas that make it so are more or less the same now, but the GDI rules in primary/express offer a well needed crutch that allows a fighting chance for netters to actually compete over something else than trying to appease all the small pee pee suiciders out there.

I can't find the changeset information, but it seems to me that the rules on late retals were tightened up around that time.. I agree that the main problem with the game is suiciders, not people making legit retals. People playing crappy jetter topfeeders have always been a problem. Remember Temple? All you can do is kill them when you see them.

fluffing Temple lol

Maybe you are confusing the 6 hour GDI rule with the endgame humanitarians. They generally only matter when people have already jumped, so you shouldnt want to nor fear a retal that late even without them. They start creeping up 2 hours before the end in express, and for practical SS/PS retals they dont matter til last hour or even later.
I have a couple times saved my retal for then on people I know will ROR me, because I get saved from the ROR I don't deserve by the engame humanitarians.
Only thing I dislike about them is that they are not explained ingame so they cause so much confusion to the player base. Theres this dude in AT who quits every other set when he rediscovers this mechanic (that only for about 0.7% of the reset in alliance). :)

Yes, its the end of set "humanitarian" rules that I was thinking of. Here is my country for set 113

113 8 Humanitarian Avenger (#27) 14,912 $20,185,349 DG

I think the Humanitarians are supposed to protect clueless noobs, not huge bottomfeeders from the small clique of people at the top all with big DA's. But that was back when there was an endless supply of clueless noobs to beat up on. Today there are few noobs and the game has changed quite a lot.

It was to counteract a form of suiciding where a country would get max mil tech as a dict and do repeated failed SSes against someone who already jumped in NW.

I just wanted more play time on Sundays, give us 4 hours more before GDI kicks in and kills all hunting.

Good old Temple. Last time he came back we both went after him, I think he stayed in protection most of the round and hasn't been seen since.

Did you chase out all of the noobs by farming them out of the game LaF style? Asking for a friend of course....

Matched NW retals used to be my favorite strategy back when there were a lot more people and no bots. But yes, we have all farmed some noobs, no doubt about that. But I was never someone who did multiple hits on people trying to provoke them into breaking GDI.

that would be because there was no GDI to protect them back in the day. You would declear war on them, farm them and maim them with ABs or something until you could declare peace.

Same strategy that we use on our personal GDI bot farms in 1a now days :)

Bonus post