Perhaps, there should be a soft deadline where if everyone has entered order but not finalized, that the game moves forward. And, then, a hard deadline(twice the soft deadline), at which the game moves forward and anyone that hasn't entered orders is forced into CD. Once you are past the soft deadline, and you log into the site, you can not join or enter orders on any other games until you enter the orders on your past soft deadline games(in order of the shortest to hard deadline).

Sorry, I may have responded to this badly. Whole different idea, and all...

As for the things above:
Strict would be useful in league type games, though, we have had drop outs for CD'ing, and that would mean having to get in contact with them somehow to get them to agree to dropping out. If nothing else, strict with force CD on the people that haven't entered orders might be nice.

I fear all of these others, since this means that in any game the losing players can stop the winner from winning.

The last one (strict) is just the same as removing the phase time limit?

Need to consider how to save players pause votes as well. If a game auto-pauses, then a mod removes this pause then everyones pause votes will have been lost.

How about completely separating it from the standard pause? This is just a theory, and someone will soon show why I'm wrong, but if its just to deal with the site crashing maybe if there is an issue with the orders, then anyone can click to confirm everything is ok.

As another issue, at what point should the mods hit the panic mode pause option?

"one/both of which suggested this"

"which"? lol :P

strict should give the player some sort of warning at the end of the phaselength, and reset the phase. Then, if they haven't entered moves again, they get CDed.

Re Panic mode, I'll talk to you on MSN, figle.

I like the idea of auto-pause when a player NMR's, but how about you simplify the system, and put it in as an option, for example: if player(s) NMR for X amount of turns, auto-pause. Otherwise, the game follows the rules normally. I assume this would be set by the person creating the game, rather than making it a site thing...

What Onar said.

@Onar/gjdip:
I think all of these were meant to be settings when the game is created. As of right now, if a player NMR for 2 turns in a row, they are removed from the game.

Exactly. So, make it an option when a game is created whether a game should be paused without processing the turn when a player hasn't issued orders at the deadline. 0, 1 and 2 turns should be enough.

That's just what Kestas is asking about: what should the options be?

What I'd do for strict:
Strict: If any player hasn't entered moves at the end of a phase, pause and CD that player.

I disagree about CDing the player as that would open up tournaments for potential abuse. The mods can force someone into CD, so if it is paused and the person is deemed to not be coming back, they could then put the position in CD and send the URL and password to the replacement. I like the idea of forcibly pausing the game if orders are missing on strict (you could even call it "tournament mode". In fact, I'd pause it before the turn processes so that it wouldn't screw up tourney and league games.

As far as the rest, why not make it a selectable set of percentages at set up. And you could make it be "% of players nmr" or "% of total owned SCs nmr" or both. I know it is a bit more work, but I would play in general games where someone (or a group of someones) with more than X% of the owned SCs NMRs, then the game pauses. That way you get in a three way situation (2 holding against one), the leader NMRing could cause a pause, even though he is only 1/3 of the players if he had more than 1/3 of the SCs. the more flexible, the better in terms of allowing your site residents to feel they can choose how they want to select the games.

However, if you do want to lock the percentages, make them an "or" based set of rules, not an "and" based set. In other words...

Loose: >1/2 of players NMR, OR those players represent >1/3 of the units on the board, then the game is paused.

Normal: >2/7 players NMR or are incomplete, OR those players represent >1/7 of the units on the board, and the game is paused.

Additionally, it could be as simple as a switch that says "Pause if NMR discovered" and another that says "Pause if incomplete orders discovered" although I doubt many would select the latter.

The system is really about adapting to stability issues, so that people can set a threshold above which things are probably going wrong. I don't think these changes will help stop people going CD, just let people customize what happens so that in critical games a CD is assumed to be a mistake and the game stops, and in non-critical games CDs won't hold things up as now

>strict with force CD on the people that haven't entered orders might be nice.
In strict mode if someone went CD the game wouldn't process until a mod stepped in and manually CDed them. The point of strict would be that at no point is there a situation where a country hasn't entered orders; the game stops until the person or a mod&replacement player is found, to prevent critical tournament and high point games from getting screwed up if an accident happens

> I fear all of these others, since this means that in any game the losing players can stop
> the winner from winning.
The number of NMR units has to be above a certain %, in addition to the number of NMR players, and this is supposed to make it harder for people to block games like that

> The last one (strict) is just the same as removing the phase time limit?
Quite a few people will use all the time they can get, and don't finalize ever. In the new system there are flags which set whether a player has no orders, has submitted orders, has completed all orders, and is ready for the next turn.
Strict would let people complete their orders and not finalize, letting the phase go on as long as usual, but when the phase ends it moves on only if they all entered complete orders. So although it lets any player hold the game up until a mod shows up it's not like requiring finalization exactly

> "which"? lol :P
bah, whom

> strict should give the player some sort of warning at the end of the phaselength, and
> reset the phase. Then, if they haven't entered moves again, they get CDed.
That seems a bit similar to doubling the phase length, I can see where you're coming from but hmm, this system is intended to halt games which are having an unusual number of NMRs, letting the game creator define how many NMRs is unusual, it's not really supposed to change how players fall into CD

>at what point should the mods hit the panic mode pause option?
When the **** hits the fan, hard to give a specific example but if someone is attacking the server or people are experiencing corrupt games, something like that would prompt using the panic button

>if player(s) NMR for X amount of turns, auto-pause
Interesting idea, but it wouldnt be very flexible. X could be 1, 2, maybe 3, but after that a player could be NMR for so long a pause after that wouldn't be very helpful, and the player either won't be back or will come back and the game will be too far past to be salvageable

I think in Live Games this is especially important. 2 examples:
1. sometimes you wait a while and no one joins, you go to the bathroom and oops, the game has started and there are only 3minutes left til deadline or worse, you missed the first turn. In that instance, there should be an automatic pause or rewind or something so it can start properly with all 7 people.
2.Everyone wants to pause except 1 unethical player who refuses to pause when everyone else wants to , so they just wait until everyone else NMRs becasue it is 2 AM. Or even worse, someone CDs and then they return at the last minute to steal the game or be part of Draw that was meant to exlude them.

These might be tough problems to fix. Good luck trying to fix them!

bump

Why not a blind draw of some sort. If a player NMRs then the active players supply orders in an extended deadline of X hours. The computer program ranks the orders by unit and the order that has the highest number is used. Ties = hold. Example: France NMRs in Spring 01. The 6 other players get to issue orders within a X hour window of the deadline. 5 of the 6 issue Par-Pic, 4 of 6 issue Bre-MAO, 3 of 6 issue Mar-Bur and 3 of 6 issue Mar-Spa. That gives someone who takes over (hopefully) a fighting chance. Also, as the game progresses, most will issue orders to stop the winner (I would hope). Just a thought. I know it means more programming, but it is a solution for NMRs until a replacement is found and it keeps the game moving.

Too confusing...