Reliability and player experience

[johnpooch]

Goal

Reduce missed orders and abandoned nations so committed players can reliably find and finish games with other committed players. The platform currently sees a ~41% NMR rate, with abandoned players in ~62% of active games; this work targets the friction that drives thoughtless joins and early abandonment, and makes ghosting harder to do without consequence. Profiles and reliability stats already ship — the remaining work adds the recovery, concede, creator-control, gating, staging, and notification flows that build on them.

Definition of done

This RFC is complete when all of the following are live in production:

• A player in civil disorder can clear it themselves ("I'm back"), and the rest of the game is notified.
• A player can concede once the penalty-free conditions are met, with a conceded state shown distinctly from civil disorder on the public profile.
• A game creator can boot a player from a staging game, from the member list or the player's profile.
• Games can require a minimum reliability tier to join: creators set it on the Create Game form, the requirement is enforced on join, and it is surfaced on the Find Games list before a player attempts to join.
• Staging games use the in-game map layout with Members and Chat tabs; non-gunboat staging games open Public Press on join and require an intro message; players confirm readiness before the first phase, with non-confirmers handled after a deadline.
• Profile notification settings expose an email opt-in with per-event explanations, the join dialog nudges players to enable push when it is off, and new users are prompted to configure notifications after signup.

Out of scope: player replacement and the medal system (Phase 2, not planned).

Context

Supersedes epic #602 and consolidates its remaining sub-issues; full background and community discussion in #581.

Already shipped (profile foundation and Phase 1 backend): public profile stats and reliability tier (#584, #585), civil-disorder-recovery backend (#586), staging-boot backend and auto-removal from staging on civil disorder (#590), and email notification wiring (#596).

Remaining open work consolidated here: #587, #588, #589, #591, #592, #593, #594, #595, #597. Each backend/frontend pair should land backend-first — the UI depends on the endpoint existing.

Reliability-gated games (#592, #593) stay in scope but need tighter product requirements before implementation: exact copy, the gate control itself (no dropdowns or sliders), and how the requirement is surfaced (on cards vs. a greyed-out join with helper text). With the userbase currently skewed toward new players, this is lower priority than the recovery, concede, staging, and notification flows; see #593 for discussion.