Accellerating game pace

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Oberlus
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Accellerating game pace

#1 Post by Oberlus »

How can we make game faster per turn, in the sense of requiring less turns to end the game, without altering much its balance?

This is a concern only for slow turn multiplayer games, that can progress quite fast when players can connect several times a day or in the same time period but also can become painfully slow when some players will connect only once a day and not simultaneously. This is the case of current game (11th), with a rate of 2.23 turns per day. A game can last something between 2.5 and 4 months, assuming players will concede when odds are against them and not force the winners to conquer every remaining asset.


Currently we can use the game rules for research and production cost factors (e.g. so that default costs for tech/ship get halved). However that disrupts a bit strategies, because with enough cost reduction you no longer need to decide what to research/produce first, you just do it simultaneously (e.g. instead of having to choose between symb. bio. and laser, you do both, with a bad research species). That messes up differences between species, and reduces strategic choices.

Reducing number of turns instead of (or apart from) PP/RP costs could help to maintain the intended balance but get more things happening each turn, isn't it?

Would you find interesting to script a game rule to factor turns?

Ophiuchus
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Re: Accellerating game pace

#2 Post by Ophiuchus »

Oberlus wrote: Tue Aug 04, 2020 8:54 am Would you find interesting to script a game rule to factor turns?
Guess so. If you double research output it could make sense to cut turns in half.

One main question there is if you how you handle fractional research times (rounding or allow already putting a fraction of the turn into the next tech).

Also we have two-turn techs - if we allow rounding-down and a turn fraction of less than 0.25 we get down to zero turns - what would be the expected result?

For accelerating game pace a guarded auto-turn and better planning tools could also work.
Lets say the bottleneck is a single player only able to connect once per day-that means two turns per day currently.
If everybody plans one single turn extra in advance one could double the number of turns to four per day: bottleneck player plays the turn (turn avances), plays the extra turn (turn advances), plays another turn (no advance), plans an extra turn
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Oberlus
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Re: Accellerating game pace

#3 Post by Oberlus »

Turn durations:
I'd allow only these factors: 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.5 and 2.0.
Turn duration rounded to nearest, .5 rounded up. Allowing x.y turns is the same as x+1 turns in the end.
0.50.751.01.52.0
11122
12234
22356
23468
345810
356912
4571114
4681216
5791418
Plan turns ahead:
Being able to tell the server "I want to auto-turn next X turns" (because I have nothing to worry about, no orders to issue, no combats to resolve...) would be just great. I'll open feature request.

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Re: Accellerating game pace

#4 Post by wobbly »

If we are adding auto-turns can we also have a way to set a destination for ships still in the production queue? Also a travel to this point and colonize command.

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Re: Accellerating game pace

#5 Post by Oberlus »

wobbly wrote: Tue Aug 04, 2020 2:39 pm If we are adding auto-turns can we also have a way to set a destination for ships still in the production queue? Also a travel to this point and colonize command.
You can set rally points for ships in production: select destination system, right-click on the ship(s) in production -> "Rally to <system name>".
Just in case: auto-turns in single-player are a thing, button next to "Turn", but it doesn't work for multiplayer unless you keep the client connected to the server.

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Re: Accellerating game pace

#6 Post by o01eg »

wobbly wrote: Tue Aug 04, 2020 2:39 pm If we are adding auto-turns can we also have a way to set a destination for ships still in the production queue? Also a travel to this point and colonize command.
I have an idea for server auto-turs which could be interrupted if something important happened but no yet implementing it.
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Re: Accellerating game pace

#7 Post by Oberlus »

List of game events that could trigger disabling the autoturn (and sending an email to the empire owner):

- New enemy sighted.
- Previously sighted enemy is moving
- Surplus of PPs or RPs.
- Ships completed orders (fleet arrived to destination and... can't think of any other, but there must be).
- Orders failed (fleet stopped along its way to destination, maybe due blockade, fuel shortage due to monster or supply disruption...).
- ?


Related to this but not limited to speeding slowgames, having a UI way to select a planet to outpost or colonize as the destination of an outpost or colonizer being built would come in handy: select the specific planet in the System panel, then right click on the ship batch in the production queue and select "Colonize/Outpost planet XXX".
Master of Orion had something like that, IIRC.

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Re: Accellerating game pace

#8 Post by wobbly »

Maybe anything that can trigger a sitrep, as long as you can select the ones you care about.

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Re: Accellerating game pace

#9 Post by Oberlus »

wobbly wrote: Sun Jun 06, 2021 10:26 am Maybe anything that can trigger a sitrep, as long as you can select the ones you care about.
Yeah! As simple as that.
For example, right-clicking on the auto-turn button would allow to pop down the list of sitreps and (de)select the ones you want to stop the auto-turn.

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LienRag
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Re: Accellerating game pace

#10 Post by LienRag »

Interesting indeed...

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