Re: Olympia Turn Length

From: hauck@cs.washington.edu (Scott Hauck)

Date: Sat, 30 May 1992 07:30:35 +0000

On the idea of daily turn reports for players:
	Although personally I'd like it, since I read and respond to
email several times a day, I don't think it's a good idea.  The reason is
that it gives an advantage to those people who can respond daily.
	This is actually a more pervasive factor than just attacks - in
general the quicker you can respond to a situation the better I'll do.
It's obvious in the case of attacks - If I'm attacked, the sooner I know
about it the sooner I can re-route men to defend or flee.  Also, the sooner
I know the location of a target, the sooner my men are in hot persuit, and the
more accurate the midcourse tracking becomes.  For unique opportunities, like
a monster appearing or the discovery of a new land, the same thing happens -
the sooner you know, the sooner you can capitalize, and the more likely it is
you'll be the first toget a benefit, which in many cases means you'll be the
only one to benefit (Oleg and his ship, Dr. Pain and his Castle).  Also,
finer control means I need to leave less buffer in men, money, and materials.
Instead of not spending my last 100 gold to make sure my men are paid, I can
instead use it for the first 3 weeks of a month, and only regain the margin
for the last week.  There are many other eamples (just think of the amount of
times a server bug has ruined your entire month), but I hope this shows the
general truth of the claim.
	Now, the same can be argued about the current system - someone with
once a month email access is very handicapped in the current scheme.  What
this means is that turn must be spaced such that all players can be expected
to respond at each and every order submission opportunity.  One week seems
to fit that criteria (anyone out there not able to respond weekly most of
the time?)  I personally think twice a week also works, but that's open for
debate.  However, even with me on the computer 8 hours a day 5 days a week or
more (grad school, what fun!), I still couldn't do daily turns.
	One possibility is that once Olympia becomes a real program and not
a playtest (will it ever, or will the day it stops being a playtest be the day
it is abandoned?), there could be a weekly turn game and a "warp" daily
universe.

Scott Hauck
hauck@cs.washington.edu

References

Re: Olympia Turn Length
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Sat, 30 May 1992 04:39:28 +0000
Re: Olympia Turn Length
cedman@714-725-3177.nts.uci.edu (Carl Edman)
Sat, 30 May 1992 06:46:14 +0000