Receiving all turns takes now up to 1h15 which means that players can start doing their turns at 19.30UK or even later. I don't know about you, but processing my turns takes at least an hour and thats not doing massive amount of warturns.. If people get their turns at 20.00 or later.. I doubt it will be really possible to do some serious work on it and organize some things... Part of the fun of playng Phoenix is the talking with the other players about today turns and planning ahead.. well, this is going into the drain with the current time-table.
So, I am curious whats is happening that the game is getting run later and later??
Personally I read through my daily turns quickly and see if anything is urgent then do the rest at work the next day.
Okay so you lose a day but normally that doesn't matter thanks to the the 300tu thingy.
I agree it's annoying they are late but from kjc's point of view they can't start processing before 9ish when they get in, and if we aren't getting them till gone 6/7 they must have been there for hours.
I must admit the late turns are starting to annoy me a bit.
A lot of my evenings I have to go out at around 7 pm UK time and I don't get back until very late.
I like to see what the days turns produce before I send in the next lot,just in case I have to alter some.
The last couple of weeks I've had a quiet time and the late turns although frustrating hasn't affected my game.
But I'm soon to be back to normal and have to attend meeting most evenings.This means I won't be able to play the game as I want!
I don't know the work routine at KJC and how feasible this suggestion is, but I think the following would be a boost to Phoenix (and probably get KJC more revenue!). My suggestion is to invent different priorities for special actions:
1) Bulk: The SA result will not affect the processing of the position and can therefore be delayed without problems. Result is emailed separately when the SA has been processed. Suggested cost: 1,50 GBP.
Useful for: Informational/research/exploration SAs and OOC game administration stuff such as bug reports or another SA request to swap around mass production lines.
2) Priority: SA result must occurr as soon as possible and will have an impact on follow-up orders of this position, or otherwise create an effect on other positions on this game day. Regular SA as we know them now, as part of the order sequence of a position and possibly a turn sequence. Suggested cost: 2,50 GPB.
Useful for: SAs on enemy ship positions which might move away later on the same turn or SAs which will determine the actions of this position later on the same day.
Only a small fraction of SAs is likely to be Priority SAs; the increased cost will help players to decide if their SA is important enough to hold up everybody else's turns
The obvious idea is that Bulk SAs will be skipped during processing.
This would allow for Mica having to do only a few SAs, then send out turn results and work through the Bulk SA results only after the regular turns have been sent out.
I haven't had a SA delayed before so I don't know how that works, does the entire turn go on hold?
| QUOTE (Wraith @ May 8 2006, 11:01 PM) |
| That sounds like a good idea. I haven't had a SA delayed before so I don't know how that works, does the entire turn go on hold? |
Yes, you get a message telling you that the SA has been delayed and no turn for the position until it is run. I had one delayed two days running a few weeks ago.
Geoff
The run starts around 6.30am and special action processing begins around 9am. Depending on the number of phonecalls, emails and other unavoidable interuptions - this can lead to a very long day.
I try to avoid delaying special actions and implement a policy of processing the most possible in a day - this can lead to the longer or more complicated ones taking second place to a handful of simpler ones, though I try to be a fair as possible.
I think the game is just very complicated, which is why i had two question SAs, both things i could not see any other answers too, perhaps a way to weed out the same questions would be to have a Q and A on the phoenix website.
No mention of names, just a Q. Can this (action) be done, A. no because bla bla, ofc a bit more info then that, but so you could do a search in Q&A to find out, if others have asked it, before they send a question SA, that would cut down on those.
Only problem is too many are power mongers and they want to keep most stuff secret, so might be that they will want the answer secret, but then they should perhaps pay a 1.50 and since you get alot of phone calls, why not ask payment there as well, depending on what they want, especially if its something they could do in the game with their political anyway
| QUOTE (Garg @ May 9 2006, 12:45 PM) |
| Only problem is too many are power mongers and they want to keep most stuff secret. |
I've found if it's a game mechanic query or something with how x/y/z works then people on the yahoo list are very helpful. (or the ones on here)
Unless it covers senstive materials or locations I tend to just post here with queries to Mica/David too, just for the very reason you state it's nice to have q/a stuff.
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ May 9 2006, 12:16 PM) |
| I try to avoid delaying special actions and implement a policy of processing the most possible in a day - this can lead to the longer or more complicated ones taking second place to a handful of simpler ones, though I try to be a fair as possible. |
So... do you think it could be hard-coded that SAs are delayed by default and their results sent back after turn processing, unless the player indicates (and pays for) a priority action that gets immediate attention during turn processing?
As I said above, if turns could be back around noon every day it would dramatically increase the time I have to do turns (from 8 hours overnight to some 20 hours, i.e. half a day).
If SA results trickle in after the regular printouts in separate emails, that would not be a problem for me.
Questions, explorations, research, does turn processing really have to wait until all of these have been answered?
| QUOTE (Frabby @ May 9 2006, 01:54 PM) |
| Questions, explorations, research, does turn processing really have to wait until all of these have been answered? |
But what if a special action not prioritized by a player should have some effect on a turns processing (assume it wasn't forseen by the player)?
Although to be fair I can't think of one that couldn't be delayed.
A Q&A would help mica in less SAs about questions on the game, if they have already been answered, he just have to make sure that if he changes something, that those nolonger valid bits are gone
| QUOTE (Frabby @ May 9 2006, 12:54 PM) |
If SA results trickle in after the regular printouts in separate emails, that would not be a problem for me. |
I like the sound of this idea a lot. A LOT!
Dan
| QUOTE |
| As a pilot of the idea, perhaps you could make a start by applying this to surface explorations? I can't see those impacting on much else and they have a different order code, so should be possible to separate relatively easily (I hope....) |
If not so already, these might be fairly easily semi-automated. I'm assuming here that a surface exploration will produce the same result for anyone who runs it in the same spot. As soon as the blurb for each terrain on a planet has been written it's probably a fairly simple job to cut and paste the necessary result in to the turn. I might be wrong, but I don't see these as taking up that much time to deal with.
The problem SAs, that take all the time and therfore create the delays, are more likely the ones that do something completely new or have impacts on other parts of the game model that need to be checked, reviewed and implemented.
... Not all surface explorations are equal...
We have the Officer skill of 'Exploration' available to us.
This should mean a slightly different result for those ships with a skilled officer on board.
There are 4 levels of 'Exploration' available... therefore potentially 5 results for any Surface exploration ... even those carried out before.
Standard
+1 Exploration
+2 Exploration
+3 Exploration
+4 Exploration
Of course, all the above is assuming I am not getting the skill wrong...
(Doug removes his devil's advocate hat...)
Brilliant idea... should help things out massively...
Doug
| QUOTE (Mica Goldstone @ May 9 2006, 04:00 PM) |
| So do I. I am not sure on the amount of work needed though. |
Wouldn't the easiest way be to make a new order and use the current one for priority special actions (as it already is setup to stop orders or whatever) then the new one can be for the bulk special actions.
In terms of Priority SAs, could a tick box be added to the SA to make it a priority and charge the higher amount?
Then assume that all SAs are low priority unless the box is checked. This would automatically flag up all the high priority SAs (PAs = Priority Actions ???)
| QUOTE (Wraith @ May 10 2006, 09:06 AM) |
| Surface explorations are fairly low on detail so probably don't need ot be affected by skills. |
But... the skill exists...
I have one officer at level 2 exploration at the mo...
The skill was designed to have some impact...
So maybe we should have two levels of Surface Exploration.
Surface Exploration - Unskilled.
Surface Exploration - Skilled.
Every time an exploration is issued the program checks to see if you have a skilled officer on board and if so it flags it as a non-standard exploration which removes it from the list of easy to do SAs.
Doug.
Doesn't having or not having an Exploration Module on board your ship also affect results?
(Phil passes the hat back
) | QUOTE (Sees With Knowledge @ May 10 2006, 02:06 PM) |
| (Phil borrows devil's advocate hat from Doug...) Doesn't having or not having an Exploration Module on board your ship also affect results? (Phil passes the hat back ) |
Nope, exploration modules are for prospecting. Of course there is no reason why you couldn't do a special action to use some unique property of the exploration module.
| QUOTE (ptb @ May 10 2006, 03:07 PM) |
| Nope, exploration modules are for prospecting. |
Are you sure that they are only for prospecting? I was certainly under the impression that for exploration of planets to work properly, you needed to have an exploration module installed...
Richard
AFT
The description implies only prospecting however.