The Ducati Board is pleased to announce official 5 v 5 matches effective immediately.

The Ducati League Board is pleased to announce that all match servers will have standardized acceleration settings. All servers will have -a 45 38 settings.

The Ducati League Board is pleased to announce the implementation of 20 minute matches in the Ducati League. Now players will have the ability to choose between 15-, 20- and 30-minute matches. Before beginning /countdown, set the match length with "/timelimit 15", "/timelimit 20" or "/timelimit 30".

When you are reporting a match, be sure to specify: Teams, score, time (in GMT) that the match ended and match length.

The Ducati League Board is pleased to announce, effective immediately, the implementation of a seasonal ladder for the Ducati League. The information that follows will describe the seasonal ladder features along with a discussion of other effects on the existing system. We would also like to provide special thanks to mistake/foo for his hard work in putting together the code for the seasonal ladder, without which, it never could have been finished so quickly.

Seasons will have a duration of 3 months. There will be a one month break in between each season. The first season will run from September 1 through November 30th. Teams will earn points for each match played: 4 points for a win, 2 points for a tie, and 1 point for a loss. The more matches you play, the more points you will have.

You will notice there is now a new button on the menu bar of the league site, called "Ladder". If you click that button, you can see the primary statistics and standings for each team that has been active during that season. The following information is displayed there:

1. Position - this is the team's position on the ladder. The more points you have, the higher you reach on the ladder. Note that if a team is tied, it will be listed at the same position as the teams it is tied with. The team with the most points at the end of the season will be declared the winner of that season. The team in first place will be awarded 3 points, second will be awarded 2 points and third will be awarded 1 point. The first-, second- and third-place teams will be tracked over the course of multiple seasons to provide a picture of overall performance across multiple seasons, but more on that in a few months time.

2. Team - this is the team name

3. Leader - name of the leader of the team

4. - the number of matches played by that team during the season you are viewing.

5. Score - the team's score based on how many points it has earned on the ladder. So, for example, if a team has won 3 matches (4 points x 3 = 12), tied one match (2 x 1 = 2) and lost 4 matches (4 x 1 = 4), then its score would be listed as 18 points (12+2+4=18). The ladder will be sorted by score.

6. W/L/T - shows the number of wins, losses and ties by that team during the season. By multiplying those numbers by the points earned for W/L/T (4/1/2), you will be able to calculate the score (see 5. above)

7. Rating|Season - this displays the ELO you have only for the current season, presuming everyone starts with a baseline ELO of 1200 at the beginning of the season. In other words, this will provide an idea of how much your ELO changed during the course of a single season.

8. Rating|Overall - this displays your overall ELO, during the entire life of the ducati league. It is exactly the same number that you are used to viewing on the Teams page

9. Activity - this displays your team's activity rating calculated over a 45-day period. It is the same rating that is displayed on the Teams Page and your team's individual page

Any matches played during a current season will automatically be displayed in that season. For referees and those reporting matches, you will continue to do as you have always done (report teams, score, date, time and match length).

To clarify, this is supplemental to the existing features of the league. ELO will continue to be calculated in the same manner as before. The Teams Page still displays the same data as always, as do the other pages. The seasonal ladder simply provides an additional manner of tracking, and allows teams to make shorter term goals.

Effective immediately, Ducati League match servers require all players to be registered on http://my.bzflag.org/bb/ ("bzbb") in order to spawn on the match server. It is highly recommended that the name you register on bzbb is the same name you plan to match under in order to eliminate confusion. This will not effect the public servers whatsoever.