Not to change the subject... but I guess I am...
Have a question on payouts, that I can not deduct from the FAQ... I realize my small footprint it doesn't make much difference, but I am noticing something about the big boys behavior and trying to understand something completely.
Do the shifts have any bearing on the actual payout, other then where the 5N payout starts and where it ends? In other words, does it matter at all if you would mine hard in one shift and hardly nothing in the other, or you were mining in a short shift vs a long one?
The way I see it now, shifts really don't matter at all, everything is just one big average of the total shifts in the 5N.
Thanks for your time.
The only effect the 'shifts' have, is to determine back where the payout starts.
Since each shift is anywhere from a few minutes to 50 minutes (but usually around 40 minutes) the starting shift will begin some point before the 5Nd point back from the block.
So since shifts are groups of shares, the starting 'group' makes it 5Nd + a bit, and that + a bit would average to being half the average length of a shift, so probbaly around 20 minutes (I've not calculated anywhere the exact average length of a shift)
All shares are rewarded the same in the whole 5Nd+
Thus also to refer to your 2nd post, that I mentioned back here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.13099488yes that means that when a payout crosses a difficulty change, the earlier shares are devalued, but more earlier shares are paid since 5Nd is bigger.
If the pool indeed continually doesn't keep up at all with the diff changes I may need to reduce the 5 somewhat.
Though I'll of course ask here for input from miners (and contact the top ones) about what it should go down to.
As I mentioned before, at 5Nd it's expected that a very high % of shares should get at least 1 reward.
As it gets closer to 1Nd, that % drops, and of course variance increases.
Long term (month or so) miners really wont be much affected by it other than the direct normal effect of a difficulty change, short term miners (a few days) will notice that their average payouts are way more affected by luck due to the increased variance.
And aside: although it's not expected, it can actually pay shares again, under the red line, if the next payout length grows back past the previous payout start on a big diff change.