DR has been the same since february 2014. There are things I dont like about it but because I can understand it I can make a coherrent arguement as to why and what should be done about it. I have talked to developers about some of these issues and I've more or less realized they won't do anything about them.
Such as the reason for having an unknowable unknown in the variability of the DR halflife dictate my grabbing returns. What if the formula is bugged in some situation? We as players, even if we know 100% of the formulas concerning this, can never actually test them and evaluate them, because we don't actually know what the DR halflife is. I consider this a minor issue.
But by far the worst thing about the way DR works presently is that for most of the active interval, the curve is far too steep, the result being that the more hits a country takes, the less land it loses in total. Yes, not less land per hit only, less land in total. Look at which bots get fattest each set in express! Its always a rainbow bot that gets most land, because its least defended. THIS is a huge flaw in the current DR mechanism.
Fattest bot last set:
https://www.eestats.com/express/oldcountry/2905/57
Total defends 75
Land 13,951 acres
Total land lost 6,975 acres
Total land explored+recieved= 20,926 acres
its a monarchy rainbow with no defence. Why not a republic casher with lots of defence? No, because while the rep casher will explore much more, it will lose all that land and then some more because it gets hit half as much:
Some random rep casher bot last set:
https://www.eestats.com/express/oldcountry/2905/27
Total defends 39
Land 12,243 acres
Total land lost 11,322 acres
Total land explored+recieved= 23,565 acres
PS this is partly exacerbated by NW proximity but if you actually do the math, which I have you will see that I'm right; all other things being equal, more hits mean less land loss.
^^Now if you said this, 'hey look the DR mechanic is bugged/suboptimal, lets change/remove it' then it would have merit. Now all you are saying is you want a key component of the game removed because you dont understand it and you think that players who have taken time to actually understand it and read up about it gain an unfair advantage against you.
And if you just want the TL;DR of this and the last post:
1. The DR number on eestats is WRONG. The real number is lower. DR decays smoothly with time from the time of the hit.
2. Continuous DR formula: DR_MULTIPLIER = DR_HITS<13 ? MIN( 1, 0.1+((DR_HITS-13)^2)/135) : 0.1
(DR under 2 means the hit is unaffected by DR and a DR over 13 means you get 10% of the land you would have if the target had no DR. In between 2 and 13 you get between 10-100% of a 0 DR target, dropping with more DR)
