Playing turns Faster, analysis and ideas

Impaler[WrG] · December 9, 2003, 07:34

I have done a bit of Counting and have come up with some numbers that show how fast the various factions have been playing their turns. By adding up the time between each posting on the Turn tracking thread I get an average for the whole faction and for the game as a whole.

Hive - They average about 30 hours to play a turn, but if you add in the whole Coup Debacle thing which took almost a week that bumps them up to 60 hours!

University - Is rather consistent at 38 hours average, their last turn though was 50 hours.

Cycon - We averaged 34 hours and that about what our last turn was.

PEACE - Averages nearly 50 hours. They seem to be going over the 48 hour limit routinly and no one has been realy calling them on it, likly because their only rairly exceeding 60 hours which is when a faction is supposed to be penalized.

Drones - By far the lightning faction. They average an amazing 9 hours to play a turn. I would be very interested in how they work internaly.

Over the last 2 months the game averaged about 35 hours a turn if you dont include the whole Hive Coup week (if you do its over about 45). I think this is rather high and that an effort should be made by all factions to speed up their playing. Even if other factions fail to bring up their averages an effort by the Cycons alone could significantly reduce the total time it takes for a turn to come back around to us. If we all had an average like the Drones a whole turn would take 36 hours! Ofocrse this isn't reasonable but I feel a 24 hour average is quite atainable. And a goal of getting a whole turn completed in 5 days rather then the current 7-8 (us eliminating PEACE alone will mean that a turn takes 50 fewer hours to come back to us).

I have come up with some sugjestions for internal procedures that I belive can help accelerate us. Comunicating these tecniques with other factions will likly help them to be more efficient as well.

First off I propose we alter the nature of the Second Function. Rather then playing only if the First Function is unable too, the second function plays as soon as he finds the turn. If no un-expected events or information have come forward then the Second Function is alowed to Post the turn and for it to be official. If the Second Function finds that their is someting unexpected and feels its sufficient to waren't additional Comunication then he seeks out other members of the team and tries to reach a consensus. If a Consensus can be reached he can then play the turn with the chossen response to the unexpected situation without having contacted the Prime Function. If a Consensus can not be reached then the issue is put on Hold untill the Prime Function can be contacted to make an executive desision. If the 48 hour limit is reached without word from the Prime Function then the Second must make any nessary Executive desisions and Post the turn ASAP.

Note that it is possible to have more then one Second Function and that such a thing is desirable as long as they and the Prime Fucntion do 2 things. One always PM all other turn playing functions (Prime and Seconds)and inform them of when they make the turn Post. Two always read their PM boxes before making a turn post. thus their will be no possibility of duplication and the turn can be played as soon as we recive it. If something unexpected comes up and we want to have a discussion on it then we take the extra time to do so but we need not losse time on a turn which is simple and mostly internal in nature. We can also structure our military orders in a Branching way "If they have such and such then do A, but if they do this then dont do that do B instead" so little if anything will have to be desided on the fly.

We then load up the Pre-Sends and start the Post Play analysis. Affairs functions post sugjestions in their Office threads, the sugjestions are reworked a few times, negotiations are conducted with other factions ect ect. Eventualy we distill everything into an Orders thread which is all that a Second Function should need inorder to play. This Post Phase needs to last at most 100 hours if we expect to have everything together in the latter parts of the game when its only 4 factions, one of which the Drones is playing so fast as to bairly count.

Should I contact Goolie with my sugjestions and atempt to start a game-wide effort at improving the games speed? I belive the Hive and Uni could substantialy accelerate themselves by also using this tecnique.

Phenix · December 9, 2003, 10:36

Seems like an idea that's been thought out well

A problem I see is that some factions simply lack the manpower and activity to appoint (the equivalent of) multiple second functions. In my opinion it's faster to have one or two very active players who take care of the turn instead of 5 second fuctions who are offline most of the time and can't coordinate anything

Impaler[WrG] · December 9, 2003, 11:34

Well I wasn't realy thinking 5 second functions. Just 2 would be plenty. At the moment we have none so anything is an improvment. We will ofcorse need more people to make something like this work though, but if Correlion or DBTS become active again they might be willing to take on this type of job.

Any other ideas for incressing our Efficiency are ofcorse welcome.

MrWhereItsAt · December 9, 2003, 19:38

Perhaps it would help US at least if the turnplayers posted more or less exactly what they do when they play - apart from orders, what do they check? This could help the rest of us to understand what needs to be done and give us the confidence to volunteer for positions.

Phenix · December 10, 2003, 07:32

MrWhereItsAt has got a good point there, I myself don't really have the confidence to play a turn (too afraid i'll mess something up

)

Some extra information there could really be usefull for the people who are relatively new to PBEM team games...

Impaler[WrG] · December 10, 2003, 08:30

Well you could always practice with some of the older turns. Go download some turn thats long gone (from the Turn Tracking thread on the Main forum) and check the Orders thread for what we did that turn. Play it as if your the turn player and try to follow all the orders to the T. I think you will find its not that hard. Make a pre-send save and sent save zip them up and make a Post uploading the zipped files to our forum and we can Criticue them. Now you have just done a practice turn play.

We will try to make orders very very stratiforward and easy to interprit. If you have a printer you could likly print the whole thing on 1 sheet and read it when SMAC is open.

Phenix · December 10, 2003, 08:57

All right, trying out some of the olders saves sounds like a good idea

DeathByTheSword · December 10, 2003, 20:46

hi...well...sorry for leaving everone out in the cold like i did...but i had some big problems...still having actually but any ways...just wanted to say: hi, i am checking in from time to time to get up to date and will post thinks some time...but dont count me in for anything with responiblity...and again sorry for all the trouble i caused