Forcing & Queueing

Bowls can be made to start a matchup in a specific Tier, of a specific duration, or even of a specific eligible track. The command !taylorbowl tier length track can be used to do so, e.g. !taylorbowl 6 8 Never Grow Up. If you wish to force Bowl just of a specific Tier, you may omit the length and track parameters, e.g. !taylorbowl 6. However, if you wish to specify duration, the prior parameter must be specified, e.g. !taylorbowl 6 8. Bowls can also be queued using the command !queue tier duration track which adds the Bowl to the Queue. Queued Bowls automatically start after the previous one is over, and happen in the order in which they were queued.

Users can force a TaylorBowl using the command !taylorbowl tier duration track. The same Bowl Start Cooldown applies to forcing and queueing, where users may not start or force a Bowl if they started either of the previous two. You can check who cannot start Bowls using the command !recentstarters, which also shows the number of Bowls that must elapse for the respective user to start one. This number decreases at the start of every Bowl.
Price
The price of forcing a Bowl depends on its Tier, duration, and whether there is a specified track.

The cheapest Bowl is a Tier 6, 11 minute Bowl, which costs the Base Price. For every increase or decrease in Tier from Tier 6, the price doubles, i.e. a Tier 5 or 7 Bowl costs twice that of a Tier 6, a Tier 4 or 8 Bowl costs four times that of a Tier 6, and so on. The exception is Tier 0 Bowls which cost an addition four times of what this rule suggests, or 8 times that of a Tier 1 Bowl. The price of a Bowl similarly increases for every increase or decrease in duration from 11 minutes. See the Calculations section for the formula. Finally, if a track is specified, the cost of the Bowl is multiplied by the number of matchups in that Tier. This means specifying a track in a Tier with 1 matchup will cost the same as not specifying. All three of these stack multiplicatively.

You may use the command !bowlcost tier duration to check the cost of a specific Bowl. Note that it cannot calculate the price for forcing specific tracks. You may use the command !prices to see the prices for forcing an Bowl at its default duration at each Tier.
Parameters
If any parameter is specified, all previous ones must be specified too. For example, !taylorbowl 8 6 Stay Beautiful and !queue 6 10 are valid commands, while !taylorbowl 3 this is me trying and !queue You Are In Love are not. Forced Bowls can only be between 2 and 22 minutes long. If the track specified is in a different Tier than specified, the command will fail.

Instead of forcing a Bowl when the cooldown has elapsed, you may instead queue a bowl using the command !queue tier duration track. The parameters follow the same rules as forcing, and there is no additional cost to queueing compared to forcing. In addition, you may not queue a Bowl if you started either of the previous two, nor if you have a Bowl already queued.
Minimum Price
Queueing a Bowl updates the minimum price of forcing or queueing another Bowl immediately after it. This minimum price is the cost of the Bowl that was queued. However, forcing a Bowl will not update this minimum price, even though the price of that forced Bowl must be above the minimum price. It is unknown if this is intended behaviour. If many Bowls are queued in a row, the price will continue to increase until no one is willing to queue or force another Bowl. The next Bowl will then be a natural start, which also updates the minimum price, but to 90% of its equivalent price if it was forced or queued instead of 100%.

It is also possible that two Bowls of the same Tier and duration can be queued successively. This is because the Base Price may increase between the queueing, which can make the second Bowl slightly more expensive than the first. This will result in both Bowls being started given there are available matchups.

You may view the queue using the command !squeue, which also shows the minimum price of the next Bowl that can be queued. You may use the EsteBot command !whatsnext to find the next Bowl in a pre-determined order of price. This may be inaccurate sometimes because of the aforementioned changes in Base Price, allowing users to queue identical Bowls back to back. Alternatively, you may use the EsteBot command /nextcheapestbowl to determine the cheapest Bowl that can be queued, given the current minimum price and current Base Price. Note that neither of these account for specifying tracks.
Removal
Once queued, a Bowl cannot be removed from the queue unless a Bot Restart occurs, in which case the queue is completely reset.

If a Bowl is queued in an empty queue after the cooldown has already elapsed, the queued Bowl will not start until the end of the next cooldown. Thus, a natural Bowl can be started next. However, the minimum price to queue after the natural Bowl starts is based on the natural Bowl and not the queued Bowl.

Multiple Bowls of the same Tier can be queued as long as there is at least one available matchup. However, if a queued Bowl attempts to start with no available matchup, it is skipped. Credits used to queue Bowls are only consumed when the Bowl starts, thus none are lost in this scenario.

The user must have sufficient credits to start a Bowl when it is queued. If a user successfully queues a Bowl, but loses credits before it begins, the Bowl will be skipped. If a user has insufficient on-hand credits, but has credits in the Farm, those will be used to supplement the on-hand credits and start the Bowl.

List of Commands
Command Description
!baseprice Displays the Base Price and its components.
!bowlcost tier duration Calculates the cost of forcing or queueing a Bowl at a specified Tier and duration.
tier is a mandatory parameter that refers to the Tier.
duration is an optional parameter that refers to the duration, defaults to 22 for Tier 0 and 11 otherwise.
/nextcheapestbowl Calculates the cheapest possible Bowl that can be queued.
!prices Displays the cost of queueing an 11-minute Bowl at each tier.
!queue tier duration track Adds a queued Bowl to the current queue.
tier is an optional parameter that refers to the Tier, omission makes the command function like !squeue.
duration is an optional parameter that refers to the duration.
track is an optional parameter that refers to the track.
!squeue Shows the current queue.
!taylorbowl tier duration track Forces a Bowl.
tier is an optional parameter that refers to the Tier, omission makes the command function like !taylorbowl.
duration is an optional parameter that refers to the duration.
track is an optional parameter that refers to the track.
List of Formulae
1.1   Cost of forcing or queueing a Bowl:

$$\text{Cost}=\text{Base Price}\cdot m_{T} \cdot m_{D} \cdot n$$

where \(m_{T}\) is the Tier muliplier, \(m_{D}\) is the duration multiplier, and \(n\) is the number of Bowls in the specified Tier. \(m_{D}\) and \(n\) are only applicable if the duration is modified or a track is forced respectively, otherwise they are equal to 1.

1.2   Tier multiplier:

$$m_{\text{T}}=2^{|T-6|}$$

where \(m_{T}\) is the Tier multiplier and \(T\) is the specified Tier.

1.3   Duration multiplier:

$$m_{D}=1.2+\cfrac{|D-D_{0}|^{3.25}}{25}$$

where \(m_{D}\) is the duration multiplier, \(D\) is the specified duration, and \(D_{0}\) is the default duration.

1.4   Default duration:

$$D_{0}=\begin{cases} 22 & \text{for Tier 0} \\ 11 & \text{otherwise} \end{cases}$$

List of Terms
Term Definition
Deviation Difference from the default.
Natural Start Starting a TaylorBowl without queueing it.
Updated for BowlBot Version 17.2.5