I would like more options for boot times than 2 days / 15 minutes. How about 1 day? 12 hours? 6 hours? 18 hours? 1 hour? I'm in a few large games with one player who consistently takes nearly all of his 2-day time limit, and his average turn time is 21 hours. Folks like him shouldn't be allowed to join large games.

Kjeld wrote: Well, if we want to introduce something like timed chess, then we should allot each player an amount of time that they can use for the entire game. That way you have to weigh the time you spend on all of your turns very carefully, as extra time spent in the beginning of the game will mean less time at the end. Thoughts?

Without really thinking about it, I like this idea. Hourglass icon for the win. Good luck figuring out how much time is the right amount of time, though. I'd hate to see a lot of games ended just because the board takes more turns to play than people have minutes.

Jazz, there were discussions ad-naseum about what the boot time should be. i think it was decided on that those two would be the options for the time being, and let tom get working on getting more of the site ready (like tourneys and simulplay) before we all went back and re-opened the discussion about them.

Makes sense to me.

What about the option for one person being able to play more than one position in a game?

There are plenty of team maps I've played where I would love to be able to control multiple parts of a team. If this were somewhere that has A&A for instance that would be fun to try ;)

But there are likely scenarios that could be dreamt up where you want someone to have a high bonus, but want to restrict how that bonus can be placed (for those who recall A&A gambits, this can be quite important). Or this could create some sort of reinforcement phase, units can be placed and transferred by one "team mate" you control to another "team mate" that you control, which can then be utilized.

I don't know, I just think it would be cool sometimes. The zombie map I recall was difficult to win as the humans when you had even one part of the team not working properly, this allows you to take control of that fact.

JazzEmperor wrote: I would like more options for boot times than 2 days / 15 minutes. How about 1 day? 12 hours? 6 hours? 18 hours? 1 hour? I'm in a few large games with one player who consistently takes nearly all of his 2-day time limit, and his average turn time is 21 hours. Folks like him shouldn't be allowed to join large games.

I've been on other sites that take much longer than this.  If someone logs on every day to take their turns (which is about right if they have an average 21 hour turn-span) then that's fine.  I would rather someone take their turns a few times a day (I do) but to say someone shouldn't be allowed to join a game because they only check once a day is a bit extreme.

On the subject of turn-times however, I think 2 days is a bit short.  I don't want to be booted or skipped simply because I went away for the week-end.  I'm transitioning to this site, and take my turns quite regularly now but I do often go where there is limited/no computer access on Friday and don't want to find myself screwed on Monday.

that's why we've got the auto-skip instead of the auto-boot.

Auto-skip saves you once, but you still lose your turn. This is why I want the players to be able to exert control over the boot-process.

Having your turn skipped isn't AS bad as losing, but having your turn skipped will often translate to a loss anyways. I don't think auto-skip is a solution to the week-end dilemma.

I agree with Andernut and most anyone who might suggest finer gradations in the autoskip times (on a similar note, I'd like to once again say that 15 minute lightning is neither functional nor lightning).

There's always Vacation, and the ability to set it (ie for Sunday or Monday, the day you would probably be skipped) and Cancel it if it's not needed.
(15 minutes is more Lightning than 2 days though.)

I still think there should be more options, maybe even just an open clock, where you can set the turn time and it displays a turn timer where the lightning bolt is.

Yertle wrote: There's always Vacation, and the ability to set it (ie for Sunday or Monday, the day you would probably be skipped) and Cancel it if it's not needed.
(15 minutes is more Lightning than 2 days though.)

This site only offers vacation to premium members.  If it does this might allow me to play larger maps without fear of being booted. 

Either way, 2 days shouldn't be mandatory for everything.  If I want to start a game with 3-day boot time, then people are free to not join it.   I guess I dislike that somebody can take turns once every two days, but that I may take turns 4,5 or 10 times in a day but go away for a week-end and be skipped or booted.

This is especially frustrating, because it seems the reason for short boot intervals is that people don't want a game held up for more than 2 days, which I very rarely would do - yet vacation completely over-rides it anyways, so why limit it to 2 days?

I guess if you pay money you can hold the site up in as many games as you like for a week at a time and it's okay.  Forbid that I might go away Friday and not make it to the games in time for Sunday causing mass boot-age and skippage.  I wouldn't consider myself a casual player, but the boot/skip times cause me not to join games. 

Simply having a longer boot/skip time doesn't mean games will take longer, it just means when the odd circumstance comes up it doesn't throw off the game by taking someone out of it.  I'm speaking not only of myself missing a turn/booted, but the frustration of a good game getting skewed because somebody was embroiled in a war with another opponent and all of a sudden dissappears.

Yertle wrote: There's always Vacation, and the ability to set it (ie for Sunday or Monday, the day you would probably be skipped) and Cancel it if it's not needed.
(15 minutes is more Lightning than 2 days though.)

I'd assume people would prefer to use vacation time for vacation, though that is a creative way around it.  

The thing about 15 minutes is that in a multiplayer game on a reasonably small board you still need about 3 hours to spare.  I've had some duels be quick with lightning and one 3-player game worked nicely, but I've had this happen too many times (twice? thrice?):  Two of the four players skip their first turn, the other player is around, but 7 or 8 minutes elapse, I take a turn, 40 minutes have elapsed, then another 40 minutes elapse to boot the two missing players, and then the one on one goes where my opponent is regularly hitting 5 to 10 minutes per turn, causing a very lengthy 1 on 1 that was supposed to be a short 4 player game.  4 players sitting at their terminals taking turns can finish a game much much quicker than that.  

I agree that 3 hours is quicker than days, and I'm sure some folks have had better experiences than me, but I mainly object to the terminology.  In chess terminology, a game that lasts 10 minutes (each player gets 5 minutes for the whole game) is called "blitz".  A game that lasts 2 minutes is called "lightning".  3 hour games do not get an adjective indicating "fast game".

Not complaining or campaigning for immediate change or anything like that - just pointing out that many probably expected a different experience out of lightning than what actually occurs.

I think there's a strong argument for dropping the lightning turn time down to 10 minutes - unless there are any objections I'll change this today.

Other than lightning games (sorry Hugh it's just a convenient name, it could be 'real time' I suppose but LandGrab uses this terminology), I don't think there should a turn timer < 2 days - we tried this when the site started and it led to a lot of people being booted when they didn't expect to be, especially the 12 hour and 1 day turn limits which were a disaster area. This is mostly because of the presence of the autoskip/boot script which is a lot harsher (i.e. quicker) than manual booting happened on TOS.

I also think public games should always have some form of autoskip / boot to ensure that games keep moving - I think this is working well so far.

The reason for dropping all the boot time options was to make it more friendly to newcomers to the site and I want to retain this simplicity if possible. Perhaps we could have 3 turn limit options:

10 mins (lightning)
2 days (default)
5 days (extended)

What do you think?

You only get a set number of Vacation days, so you do run the risk of using them all up, then you would be in the same boat as not having Vacation.
I do like the Auto-Skip feature, and think it works nice, but I do see the point of Andernut and Hugh (and others) in regards to weekends.

I think the 10 mins/2 days/5 days would work and don't see a problem with it.

I still would like to see a chess-style timing system, where players are allotted a set a amount of time in which to play the entire game, as opposed to a set amount of time for each individual turn. Such a system might also set the site apart from competitors...

ps - 200th post!

ditto i guess as long as default is still 2days (which i see is the case...)

tom wrote: 
Perhaps we could have 3 turn limit options:

10 mins (lightning)
2 days (default)
5 days (extended)

What do you think?

sounds good to me.

maby another option: 2 mins (true play)

if you set the page to auto refresh at say 5 seconds then you could have turns set at 2 minuets. have it set to only skip a player not boot. you could have a "auto place troops" when a player gets skipped or not.

OK all done. Let's see how we go from here. At some point I would like to implement a true chess-like lightning mode game.

tom wrote: OK all done. Let's see how we go from here. At some point I would like to implement a true chess-like lightning mode game.

Some wacky icon stuff with Extended/Lightning:

http://www.wargear.net/games/view/12178

Then:

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Global%20Warfare/Games%20List

Lightning appears to be displaying the Extended icon, perhaps this is only for old games (don't think I've seen any today), but wacky for sure.