well, he isn't saying an unpause shouldn't be unanimous.

Pausing would be majority vote, but unpausing would be full vote. Of course mods would retain ability to pause/unpause if required.

yeah i suppose that wouldnt be a bad idea, especially because i was going to say something about if a player would be close to defeat and the game gets paused they could just refuse to unpause and try and get the game canceld but the mods having the ability to unpause/pause games solves that problem. i would be in favor of a majority vote for pauses

Pausing could be used to get more time to negotiate. And considering that refusing to unpause is considered metagaming, it would be very unfair to allow majority rules on a pause and not on an unpause. Yet, as has been pointed out, majority rule on an unpause is frought with abuse potential..

Pausing can still be used for more time for negotiations. It is only more difficult right now. I don't quite see how unpausing would be considered metagaming.

maybe it would be better to have 2 pause options, one that remains as it is now and a 2nd one that is majority vote but if that one is used there can be no messages sent between players in game or through PM to players in that game until it is unpaused again

Now that you brougt it up, why do we have chat during pause? We could perhaps view messages (if mods post for some odd reason), but I don't really see a reason for chat during pause.

@Situation

Because there's no way to keep people from communicating outside the game.

@OP

I think majority pause is something worth considering, but it seems to me that unanimous unpausing is necessary.

Well, having the chat allows the primary player for whom the pause was instantiated to tell people when he returned.

As far as unpausiong and metagaming. It has happened in the past that a draw was forced by players refusing to unpause. I know cause I'm one of the guilty parties where we forced the third nation to draw as he wanted the game to end and we refused to unpause. He wanted the pause so we used it against him. After that incicdent, the mods declared it against the rules and metagaming should it ever happen again.

The mods will only intervene if someone tries to use unpausing as a diplomatic tool. If, let's say, someone asks for a 3 day pause before the first phase, but doesn't return for a week, a player could ask to cancel the game. Right, Draugnar :)

@abgemacht
Perhaps, but then we run into the same problem with non-anonymous gunboats.

@Draugnar
Perhaps, but then you could attempt to employ a mod to unpause it.

* refuse to unpause and ask for a cancel

@Situation

Yes, but just because there's a problem doesn't mean you need to make it worse.

@abgemacht
Removing chat from the game during a pause wouldn't really worsen a problem. Anyhow, it was just a side suggestion vaguely related to the thread topic.

I do wonder how one person refusing to unpause can be meta-gaming.

@TS: if the game was anon and the player who asked to pause didn't come back, how would the other players be able to communicate, or know who to communicate with.

@trip - metagaming is using anything ourside the game for a strategic advantage. Pasues aren't part of the game and the mods have declared unpausing to not be part of the game. Therefore refusing to unpause *is* outside the game. Metagaming does not require collusion between multiple players.

Thanks.