lower waiting time

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

Moderator: Oberlus

Post Reply
Message
Author
noelte
Juggernaut
Posts: 872
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2003 12:42 pm
Location: Germany, Berlin

lower waiting time

#1 Post by noelte »

I just read about HoMM5. It will use a ghost system in which a player can do something to strongen his normal game. This ghost system in only active as long as he has to wait for other player which haven't completed their turn yet. I guess this way, all players finish their turns as quick as possible. Maybe we will find a smilar way for fo too. For instance we could measure the waiting time of a single player and give him an advantage which goes with the waiting time, maybe a resource bonus
Press any key to continue or any other key to cancel.
Can COWs fly?

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

#2 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Penalizing players for taking longer turns (or bonusing players who take short ones) seems like it would just penalize the players who have larger empires. Granted, we're trying to reduce micromangement, so you won't have to fiddle with a separate building queue for each planet each turn, but still larger empires will likely take more time each turn to play... Is this really what you'd want?

An alternative might be to give a certain number of secods for each planet / fleet / whatever that each player has, and only given penalties or if players take longer than the alloted time per interactable object they control.

If such a penalty were used, it would also have to be a game option that can be turned on or off or configured extensively.

noelte
Juggernaut
Posts: 872
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2003 12:42 pm
Location: Germany, Berlin

#3 Post by noelte »

Do you think penalizing large empires would hurt. To me it rather a good side effect. As greater your power as more your have to do to increase it further. Wasn't it a major concern that for larger empire it get even more easy to get more powerful. And be aware, that way of penalizing would make size differences a little bits less important, small empire get some support, greater lack somewhat.

I'm aware that size does not always matter ;)
Press any key to continue or any other key to cancel.
Can COWs fly?

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

#4 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Slowing down or penalizing large empire is fine in of itself, but it should be done with in-game content or design features, not with UI-dependent time-limit based penalties such as this. UI stuff is to dependent on individual users' setups... and in general, it's good to keep effects such as this independent of eachother.

This is similar to my various suggestions for ways to keep tech progress rates the same across different galaxy sizes. In response, people said "Is this a problem? Having different speeds is good, so why not have different galaxies have different speeds?" to which I reply that yes, having different speeds is good, but it should always be possible to alter the different settings independently... ie. you should be able to change the galaxy size without changing the tech speed, or the tech speed without changing the galaxy size.

In a vaguely similar manner, large empire penalties should be a function of in-game content design, and not dependent on the UI design, so that each can be changed without affection the other, which may screw up balancing or anything else that was designed based on what was the way things worked at the time...

As well, having the UI-dependent stuff have an in-game effect that the actual game is designed around (this would affect balancing obviously) somewhat breaks the conceptual divide between the UI and the "game universe" that the player is controlling. The two should really be separate, so that the UI is only the method by which the player controls the game, not an actual in-game object with some strange an inexplicable (in fluff context) power to affect the game universe...

Also also, if this sort of penalty is UI dependent, which any time-based penalty would be, then it makes any future attempt to have multiple independent client versions in use somewhat difficult. Not that that's a short-term issue, but I believe FreeCiv has various clients which are all compatible with the same server, and eventually FreeOrion might as well... particularly given that different people have different ideas about what makes a good UI.

Trekker
Space Krill
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2006 9:05 am

#5 Post by Trekker »

I'm somewhere in the middle on this one. I know that some people find it anoying to wait for the micro-manager, when they themselfes just want to have a fast-paced game. Other people, on the other hand, want to be able to micro-manage all the way, even if just to test some strange concept. As I see it, the perfect solution would be a highly configureable setup, that would allow peolpe to play as they want. That way everybodys needs are seen to, and peolpe can just play in games, that have the settings they find right.

noelte
Juggernaut
Posts: 872
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2003 12:42 pm
Location: Germany, Berlin

#6 Post by noelte »

@geoff: There is a difference between turn time because of large galaxies and large empires. My suggestion target the difference in turn time between players in one galaxy. The only problem i can see is that size does not equal power. So it might happen that a small is much more powerful than a larger. In this case the smaller would get an additional advantage.

I not completely agree that is a only UI dependent issue.
Press any key to continue or any other key to cancel.
Can COWs fly?

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

noelte wrote:@geoff: There is a difference between turn time because of large galaxies and large empires.
I did not suggest they were the same. I was making an analogy with the other discussion, which was about galaxy size and tech progression rate. This is similar to empire size and necessary turn duration being related. In both cases, we should be able to manipulate one factor without changing the other. That is, change galaxy size without changing tech progression rate and change tech progression rate without changing galaxy size, or penalize long turn takers without penalizing large or powerful empires, or penalize large and powerful empires separately from long turn takers.
I not completely agree that is a only UI dependent issue.
It's not "only" a UI dependent issue, but it would likely be at least partly dependent on the UI, which is enough to make it problematic.

Dreamer
Dyson Forest
Posts: 228
Joined: Sun Mar 13, 2005 6:44 am
Location: Santiago, Chile

#8 Post by Dreamer »

don't like it either

Yoghurt
Programmer
Posts: 376
Joined: Sat Jun 28, 2003 8:17 pm
Location: Heidelberg, Germany

#9 Post by Yoghurt »

You could have a "fleet maneuver" while waiting. You select what ships you want to participate, and the AI plays the enemy for you. You can also select foreign ships that you have encoutered, but these are modelled with some uncertanty (for example, the lasers of your virtual enemy have 70% efficency, while the real have 80% or 50%). The error of these depend on how well you know them (alliance, espionage etc.) and how good the enemy is at fooling you (counterespionage)

This way, you can test if your "SS Big Surprise" really is as effictive against the dreaded "Happy Camper Beam" of the Teel.

Of course, these fights are more useful in late-game, when you other players spend large time on their moves and/or fight each other.

If more than one players have to wait, they can also fight against each other virtually (maybe only if they have an alliance)

The maneuver ends when all players have finished, you get the option of resuming the maneuver or start a new one the next time you wait for other players.

Advantage: you can test your new Ships for effetiveness and train your strategic skill; the other players do not want to give you 5 minutes of training every turn, but your advantage isn't so huge that everyone will try to finish his moves as fast as possible.

Second advantage: Shipfight will already be implemented, not much more added code (what wouldn't be the case for incorporating Tetris or the like ;))

angrygnome
Space Krill
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Apr 20, 2006 12:27 am

Perhaps a timed game could be an option (and other thoughts)

#10 Post by angrygnome »

Clearly there is enough complexity that forcing turns at a particular time might be undesireable for some players, but I found while play testing that even with a large empire I could manage to make all my necessary decisions fairly quickly. The biggest problem that I saw while testing with multiple players was certainly the delay. Since research, production, and moving between planets all take multiple turns you really don't have alot to do on any given turn.

Here are some possible solutions:

-User Defined Time Limit: If you and your boys want to play a quick game so be it. If not, no worries. Presumably this would be a game setting established when the game is created

-Notification: If you are notified that others have completed their turns then you may be more likely to move to the next round rather than reading up on some tech that you can't even research yet. This might be as simple as a count of active and waiting players in the status bar.

-Time bank: Brought to us by the world of online poker, players would have the ability to use additional time if they needed it (and other players would be informed that you were doing so). This way nobody worries that player X has toddled of the to restroom or decided to take a nap.

-Intermediate Actions: Rather than a blank screen saying you are waiting, why not allow a user to plan his next turn (adjust production and research, read up on research, check the status of his planets, etc.) Nobody would be allowed to get more than a turn ahead, but you could busily strategize while patiently waiting.

marhawkman
Large Juggernaut
Posts: 938
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2006 9:34 pm
Location: GA

Re: Perhaps a timed game could be an option (and other thoug

#11 Post by marhawkman »

angrygnome wrote:-Notification: If you are notified that others have completed their turns then you may be more likely to move to the next round rather than reading up on some tech that you can't even research yet. This might be as simple as a count of active and waiting players in the status bar.
I like this idea. I suppose we could borrow from Stars! here as well. :D When doing multiplayer in Stars!, you would submit your turn and then have to wait for the other players to finish. (if playing over email this could take a few weeks, but I don't think we'll be doing that here) During this time you could go back and view the galaxy, planets, ships, etc.... IF you decided to change something the game would require you to resubmit your turn.(which failed if the new turn was already being generated, I think. I never really tested it) Also the game would automatically notify you when the new turn file was available.
Computer programming is fun.

Post Reply