This thread is intended to clear up some questions about INSS bonus systems and why the 5.08 update breaks them. For clarification, these are the pertinent items from the 5.08 change log:
- Idle levels 14: Removed a duplicate bonus in Reconquest and Rise and Fall levels.
- Map design: If a new map has multiple bonuses that define the exact same territories, it will now notify you of this and let you fix it before submitting.
So, to clear things up, this means that, if your map has
Bonus 1 and
Bonus 2 and
both bonuses have the same set of territories (say territories A, B, C, D, and E), you will no longer be able to submit that map. This change happened because such bonuses caused trouble for Idle.
Why is this a problem? Why would you ever need two bonuses that map to the same territories? Why can't you just combine the two? Shouldn't this always be an accident if it happens? No.
To understand why, let's look at an actual map with intentional duplicate bonuses, Gotham City (
https://www.warzone.com/Map/32203-Gotham-City). This map has an innovative bonus system called INSS, short for Issander's New Strategic System. In INSS, you can get (positive or negative) income for having
partial control of a bonus. For example, if you control 3 territories in a Riddler bonus on Gotham City, you get +1 income. It doesn't matter which two!:
Okay, so we have 194 territories in Gotham... and 699 bonuses! Why? Because that's how INSS is implemented behind the scenes. It uses some clever math to make its bonus system work without being unbearably tedious to create- basically, the actual income you get comes from the
sum of bonuses you own. Don't worry too much about the details, just know that the INSS bonuses look like this under the hood:
Clear? INSS has an innovative bonus system that works behind the scenes by creating clever combination bonuses that add up together to give you the actual income benefits- the one that the table shows. So if you follow this system and you're building a bonus of say, 5 territories, you will have a 5-territory bonus with a
weird number that handles the INSS behind-the-scenes mechanics. In Gotham City, one example of this is Amusement full:
Notice that it's worth -15 income! That's an INSS behind-the-scenes number. Why is it not just +3? It's a Mr. Freeze territory, after all, and a full Mr. Freeze bonus is 3. Well, because you can't capture it without also holding all the bonuses for 1, 2, 3, and 4 territories
within Amusement Mile! So you need it to all
add up to 3. And that's why the actual value of those 5 territories is -12 (-15 in Amusement full, +3 in Amusement Mile), so that it all adds up to 3, once you factor in the Amusement sub-bonuses you also own if you own Amusement Mile in full.
But it'd really confuse players if you had a bonus link of -15 there... so we also have another Amusement Mile bonus:
Notice something?
It's the same territories as Amusement full!
On purpose!
See, INSS is a hack that works on top of Warzone's built-in bonus system to create something new and clever and brilliant. But the internals of this hack are ugly and shouldn't be exposed to players. So while Amusement full exists to actually implement the bonus mechanics, Amusement Mile exists to create a clickable, reasonable, highlightable bonus-link for players to use!
And that's why you might have someone
deliberately create a duplicate bonus! And why the 5.08 restriction on these ruined a beloved feature. Thanks to this restriction, new INSS maps- including one PapaMarsh is working on- can't be submitted. And what's even worse- old ones can't be updated!
Please sign the Change.org petition to fix this:
https://www.change.org/p/fizzer-allow-duplicate-bonuses-for-wz-maps-that-require-them-such-as-inss-mapsThanks for your time!
Thanks to Kenghis Ghan for explaining this to me yesterday. And thanks to Fizzer for hopefully reading this to understand what the issue with your new restriction is.
Edited 3/16/2021 23:08:53
