OpenFront Overtime Yolo Fullsend: Time the Bet to the Falling Threshold

Direct answer: send the bet at the latest moment that still leaves you above the line

In a public FFA that has gone into Overtime, the win threshold is no longer a fixed 80%. It starts descending from 80% at the 30:00 mark at two percentage points per minute, with no floor, until it reaches 0 around the 70:00 mark. Your job as the player holding the largest share is to find the latest moment that still leaves you strictly above the line after the rival has had time to retake one tile, and then commit the whole bet at that moment. Concretely: keep a real reserve until your share minus a plausible retake is still above the current line, dump your accumulated gold into a single bunker island that sits on the rival’s weakest approach, and then fullsend the most-bordered rival. If your share at 55:00 is 34% and the line is at 30%, you are four points above the line, which is usually enough to absorb one tile retake and still be above 30% when the check fires. If your share is 31% and the line is 30%, you are one point above the line and one tile away from losing. The difference between those two games is whether you sent the bet at the right moment. This is the Win conditions page expressed as a single decision: the threshold is a moving line, and the yolo fullsend is the tool that lets a leading player convert a narrow, time-dependent lead into a finished match before the line keeps falling. The rest of this page turns that sentence into a repeatable routine you can run in the final ten minutes of any public FFA.

Run that routine as a six-second check every time the line steps down. The line only moves on whole half-minute boundaries, so you do not need to watch it every tick; you need to re-evaluate once every thirty seconds. At each step, answer three yes-or-no questions in order: is my share minus a plausible retake still above the current line, is the rival I want to send not already committing their own gold, and is my anchor bunker still holding enough troops to trade the rival’s counterattack. If all three are yes and the margin has just dropped low enough that waiting would make the retake bigger, you send. If any one is no, you hold the bunker and let the next step come. The send is a single committed action, not a sliding scale of gradually more aggressive play, which is why the discipline is about the moment and not about how hard you push. When you do send, say it out loud in your own callout with the three numbers that justified it, because a send you cannot restate as a margin, a border, and a reserve is a send you are not ready to make. That one habit separates the yolo that finishes the match from the yolo that spends your gold and still loses.

The version boundary matters. The older Winning Overtime guide is pinned to v33, when Overtime was rolled into only about a quarter of public FFA games. In v34.24 the MapPlaylist builder turns Overtime on for every public FFA game, so the mechanic is no longer a coin flip you have to survive; it is a clock you have to read. Everything below assumes the v34.24 rule set and the strict-greater-than FFA win check, where you win the instant your tilesOwned * 100 strictly exceeds nonFalloutTiles * currentThreshold. Read the Endgame commit page for the broader last-reserve decision; this page is the specific answer for the Overtime yolo.

How the threshold line actually descends

The v34.24 source fixes three numbers. PERCENT_TILES_OWNED_TO_WIN is 80, so a game that never reaches Overtime is won at strictly more than 80% of the non-fallout tiles. The Overtime defaults that MapPlaylist applies to the FFA slot are startMinutes: 30 and dropPercentPerMinute: 2. The percentageTilesOwnedToWin function only starts counting once whole seconds past 30:00 are positive, and it drops by Math.floor(secondsPastStart * 2 / 60) percentage points, floored at 0. Because the drop rate is 2 points per minute, the line loses one whole point every 30 seconds. The integer floor means the bar only moves on those half-minute boundaries, so the HUD shows exactly the value the server checks. This is the whole mechanic: a line that starts at 80% and slides down at 2% per minute until it hits 0 at roughly 70:00.

The practical table for a public FFA that entered Overtime at 30:00:

Game time	Current threshold	Points dropped since 30:00
30:00	80%	0
35:00	70%	10
40:00	60%	20
45:00	50%	30
50:00	40%	40
55:00	30%	50
60:00	20%	60
65:00	10%	70
70:00	0%	80

Read the table as a budget, not as a countdown. At 40:00 the line is at 60%, so a player holding 63% is three points above it; at 60:00 the line is at 20%, so the same 63% share is forty-three points above it. The lead in points did not shrink at all, yet the danger did, because the distance to the floor is what a retake eats. A rival retaking twelve tiles removes the same twelve tiles whether the line is at 60% or at 20%, but at 20% those twelve tiles are a far larger fraction of the gap you need to stay above the line. So the falling line does not make your lead safer in the way players feel; it makes the margin you are betting on larger in points while the absolute number of tiles you can afford to lose also grows. The yolo is worth making precisely when that margin has grown large enough that a fullsend, which itself loses some tiles in the exchange, still leaves you above the line. Two consequences follow. First, the line is falling faster than most players’ territory is changing, so a lead that was comfortable at 45:00 is the same lead at 60:00 in relative terms but far closer to the floor in absolute points. Second, because the floor is 0, a game that reaches 70:00 is effectively decided by who still owns the most tiles, not by a percentage. The yolo fullsend is most valuable in the 50:00 to 65:00 window, where the line has fallen far enough that a 10-to-20 point lead is no longer required, but not so far that the match has already collapsed into a pure tile-count race.

The three numbers that decide the bet

You need exactly three live numbers before you commit, and you should read them in this order because each one gates the next. The first is your share: your tilesOwned as a percentage of the non-fallout tiles, not of the whole map. Fallout tiles are removed from the denominator, so a bombed capital shrinks the pie and can lift your share even when you gain nothing. Read the share off the same tile basis the win check uses, because the check multiplies tilesOwned and the non-fallout tile count and compares the product against the threshold; a share you computed on the full map will be too low in a fallout-heavy endgame. The second number is the border: how many tiles the rival you are about to send shares with you, and how thin their defense on that border is. A long border with one or two defense posts is a border you can cross in a single fullsend; a long border with a full line of defense posts is a border where the fullsend just burns your gold. The third number is the margin: your share minus the current threshold, minus the amount of territory you estimate the rival can retake in the time it takes your attack to settle. The bet is good only if the margin is positive after the retake.

Work the three numbers on a real example. Suppose it is 58:00, the line is at 24%, you hold 33% of the non-fallout tiles, and the rival you want to send has a 45-tile border with you and two defense posts on it. Your raw margin is 33% minus 24%, which is nine points. You estimate the rival can retake about two points of the tiles you take in the few ticks before the check fires, so your usable margin is seven points. Seven points after a retake is comfortably above zero, so the bet is live. Now compare that to 50:00, where the line is at 40%: your 33% share is seven points below the line, so the same gold and the same border are a losing send at 50:00 and a winning send at 58:00. That is the entire discipline in one comparison. The margin is the number that actually decides the moment. If the margin is large, you can send the bet early and still finish above the line even if the rival retakes a chunk; the cost is that you spend gold you might have wanted to hold. If the margin is small, sending early is a coin flip that loses when the rival retakes even a little. If the margin is zero or negative, you are already below the line after a retake and the yolo is a surrender, not a finish. The whole discipline of the yolo is to keep your eye on the margin and only pull the trigger when it is comfortably positive. This is why the bet is a timing decision and not just a commitment decision: the same gold and the same border can be a winning send at 58:00 and a losing send at 50:00, purely because the threshold line sat higher at the earlier time.

Which rival to send: the most-bordered rule

The community rule that repeats across the endgame threads is not “betray the biggest rival” but “betray the rival on your longest border with the thinnest defense.” These are often different players, and confusing them is the most common way the yolo fails. The biggest land-holder is usually the one with the widest ring of territory, which means the longest shared border with you, but their defense on that border may be thick precisely because it is their main front. The thinnest defense on your longest border is usually a rival who has stretched too far on one approach and left the flank open, even if that rival’s total land is smaller than the leader’s. The fullsend wins by crossing a border in one push, and the border it should cross is the one where the push is shortest and the thinnest.

Turn the rule into a short ranking you can do in under a minute. List every rival you border. For each, note the shared-border tile count and the defense-post count on that border. Score each rival by border length divided by defense density: a 40-tile border with 2 defense posts beats a 60-tile border with 8 defense posts, because the first is a fullsend and the second is a war. Concretely, if rival A shares 30 tiles with you and has 1 defense post on that border, and rival B shares 50 tiles and has 6 posts, the ratio for A is thirty times better and A is the send, even though B has more land and a longer border. The player with the best score is the one you send. If two rivals are close on the ratio, send the one whose retake reserve is smaller, because a rival who has already spent their gold cannot retake the tiles you take, so the margin you computed is real. This is the targeting step of the routine, and it is separate from the timing step: you choose the rival from the border map, and you choose the moment from the threshold line. Mixing the two is how players end up sending the wrong player at the right time, or the right player at the wrong time. The Reacting to ally betrayal page is the defensive mirror of this decision; read it for what to do when the roles reverse and you are the one being sent. The border ranking is a living thing, not a one-time call, because a rival who spends gold on defense early in the Overtime window improves their ratio exactly when you are deciding, so re-rank the border map once every couple of minutes as the defense posts come up, and treat a rival whose ratio suddenly improved as a rival you should stop sending. A rival who has just been bombed is the opposite signal: their retake reserve just shrank, so the margin you computed against them just got safer, and that is the moment the targeting step and the timing step line up.

Where the gold goes: one bunker island, and why

The yolo fullsend is not a broad front; it is a single point. You take the gold you have been holding and put it into one bunker island that sits at the weak approach you identified, and from that island you launch the fullsend. The reason the gold concentrates on one island rather than spread across your border is that the fullsend needs to win a local war. A border is made of many tiles, and you cannot win every tile; you only need to win enough tiles in one concentrated push to tip the tile count past the threshold before the rival retakes. Spreading the gold across the border buys you a little on every tile and nothing on any tile; concentrating it buys you a decisive push on the tiles that matter. The bunker is the anchor: it holds the troops, it is the last thing you defend if the rival counterattacks, and it is the island that retakes the tiles you lose in the first exchange.

The island choice follows the border choice. Put the bunker on the island adjacent to the weakest approach, the one with the fewest defense posts and the shortest route to the rival’s open flank. If the rival’s core is an island chain, the bunker goes on your island that borders the chain’s end, not its middle, because the end is where a retake is slowest and the rival has to send fresh troops from farther away. Keep the bunker defended with enough troops that one counterattack does not take it, because a lost bunker means you have spent your gold and your anchor at the same time and the fullsend becomes a gift. The number to hold is the retake reserve: the troops left on the bunker after the fullsend, sized so that even if the rival pulls back and re-attacks, the bunker still holds and the tiles you took stay yours. A practical check is to count the rival’s troops on the flank you are about to open and keep at least as many on the bunker as they can bring, plus a buffer for the next exchange. That reserve is not waste; it is the part of the bet that makes the margin in the previous section real instead of theoretical, and it is the same reserve you use to abort if the exchange goes wrong. The island is also where you keep your boats if the approach is partly water, so the bunker choice and the boat placement are the same decision: the island you can reach fast is the island you can reinforce when the retake lands, and the island you can only reach by a long boat route is the island you will lose on the next tick, so it should never be the bunker. If the weak approach runs through a choke point, the bunker goes just behind the choke so the rival’s counterattack has to push through it to reach you, which buys you the ticks the win check needs to run before the retake arrives.

The retake reserve: keep a counter-punch

The single most common failure of the yolo fullsend is the player who sends everything and leaves a zero-troop core. The moment the fullsend crosses the border, the rival’s remaining troops see an open flank and retake the tiles you just took. If you have no troops on the anchor island, the retake goes clean, your tile count falls, and the margin you calculated evaporates before the win check even fires. The counter-punch is the reserve you keep on the bunker specifically to stop that retake. It is the difference between “I took twelve tiles and kept them” and “I took twelve tiles and gave them back on the next tick.” A fullsend that wins the tiles but loses them again in the retake is no better than not sending, except that it has spent your gold and weakened your anchor, so the reserve is not optional insurance; it is the thing that turns the take into a permanent take.

Size the reserve from the rival’s retake capacity, not from comfort. Estimate how many troops the rival can field on the flank you are about to open. If they can field forty, your reserve on the bunker should be enough to trade above forty on that approach, plus enough to hold the line for the few ticks it takes the win check to run. If you are the one with the larger army, the reserve can be smaller because the rival’s counterattack is the weaker of the two pushes; if the rival is near your size, the reserve has to be real, which is exactly why the margin section above is so important and why a thin-margin send should be delayed until the line drops further. A player who is only one point above the line and has no reserve is not leading the game; they are one counterattack away from losing it. The reserve is also your decision to abort: if, as the fullsend settles, the rival is clearly going to retake more than your reserve can trade, you have one choice, which is to stop pushing and fall back to the bunker and hold the line, because the bet has failed and the line is still falling under you. Do not chase the retake with a second wave of gold you have already spent; the discipline of the yolo includes the discipline of standing still when the margin closes.

When NOT to yolo: the failure cases

The yolo is a timing bet, and a timing bet is wrong whenever the numbers do not line up. The first failure case is the negative margin: your share is at or below the current threshold after a plausible retake. In that case the fullsend is not a finish, it is a way to lose faster, because you spend the gold that would have been your hold and you still do not clear the line. The second failure case is the thick border: the rival’s defense on the border you want to cross is a full line of defense posts. The fullsend buys you tiles at the cost of your gold and your anchor, and a defense-post line makes each tile so expensive that you spend everything and take nothing. The third failure case is the early line: it is 45:00 and the threshold is still at 50%, and your lead is not large enough to clear a 50% line even after the bet. The line has not fallen enough, so the bet is just an ordinary overcommit, not an Overtime exploit, and the honest answer is to hold your reserve and wait for the line to drop a few more points before the send is actually cheap.

There is also a structural failure case that the threshold math makes more real every minute: the rival who is also falling. In a public FFA the same clock is moving for every player, and the rival you are about to send may be making the same call. If both of you dump gold at 55:00, the match becomes a race between the two fullsends and the threshold is irrelevant, because the line has already fallen to 30% and whoever still owns more tiles at the end wins. The yolo only works against a rival who is not committing, because a non-committing rival is the one whose retake is bounded and whose flank is open. Read the rival’s gold, their border posture, and their recent spending before you pull the trigger. If the rival is also concentrating gold on their weakest approach to you, you are in a race, not a yolo, and the honest answer is usually to hold the bunker and let the line fall, not to send into a fullsend you will lose. The fourth failure case is the no-anchor case: you have no defensible island near the weak approach, so the fullsend has no base to hold the tiles from. In that situation the bet cannot be made safely at all, and the right move is to keep playing the normal game and let the line fall to the point where a simple tile-count lead is enough, rather than force a fullsend with nothing behind it.

Mode and map adjustments

The routine above assumes a standard public FFA on a default-size map, and the adjustments start with the FFA size. In a 4-player FFA the shares are large and the line falls fast relative to the pie, so the yolo window is wide and the margin is easier to hold; in an 8-player FFA the shares are thin and a single retake from any of three rivals can drag you under the line, so the margin has to be bigger and the reserve has to be bigger, and the bet is more often a mistake. The rule of thumb: the more players, the later and more conservative the send, because the retake risk is distributed across more rivals and the per-player share is smaller. On a 6-player FFA the typical working window is 55:00 to 65:00, on a 4-player FFA it opens closer to 50:00, and on an 8-player FFA you should expect to send only if the margin is comfortably double what a 4-player game would need. On maps with a lot of water, the bunker island has to be reachable by land route or by a boat you are willing to sink, which moves the island choice and can rule out the weak approach entirely; on land-dense maps the bunker has more options and the border choice is cleaner, so the send is easier to make.

Fallout changes the denominator and therefore every share you computed. A capital that has been bombed removes its tiles from the non-fallout pie, which lifts the share of everyone still holding land and can make the line fall in effective terms even when the clock is not at 30:00. Read the share on the current non-fallout basis at the moment you send, not on the basis from ten minutes ago, because a single nuke on a rival’s capital can add two or three points to your share overnight. Two-mode note: this page is FFA-only. Team-mode victory sums the team’s territory against the same strict share and only follows a falling threshold when the host enables it, so the yolo logic does not transfer to a Team match where the host has left Overtime off; check the host setting before you assume the line is moving. The Team victory threshold page covers that case. For the full Overtime mechanics and the older v33 behavior, the Winning Overtime page is the reference; this page is the v34 decision built on top of it. If the map has a single central island with all players bordering it, the bunker and the most-bordered rival both point at the center, and the send collapses into a clean call: take the center, keep the flank reserve, and let the line do the rest.