[Mzyxptlk]

I've thought a bit about this the last few days and I'm leaning in favour of the sleep mode proponents.

Originally Posted by Gio2k

A game that requires you to be online at odd hours in order to be sucessful is flawed in my opinion.

You hit the nail on the head here. It's not the activity requirements that are problematic. Just look at WoW, look at Eve Online, or any other MMORPG. There are millions of people who are quite willing to spend an eternity playing a game. But look at it from the other side: what if all the interesting aspects of these game were only available between 2 and 8 o'clock? Would you play a game like that? Of course not, that's just dumb.

There are a few caveats, of course. No analogy is perfect and this one is no exception. The unique selling point of Planetarion is the very fact that it's a real-time game. Whereas in WoW you can easily choose to play only 5 minutes a day without suffering any penalties (other than level speed), a certain minimum amount of activity is required in PA to survive, let alone grow.

Even the concessions that are made leave little room for doubt: PA is a game to be played continuously. Vacation mode was not added until round 11 (if I read the pawiki correctly), far past its peak, and has always come with a serious downside: you're safe, but you don't grow, while everyone else does.

It would be foolish to throw the out the very thing that made (past-perfect) PA successful. I believe there is still a market for a good real-time browser game, but no game, no matter how good, can afford to let all the action in it take place during periods when most people aren't around to experience them.

Originally Posted by Gio2k

With night protection in place, i would also consider 30 min ticks to make the game more action packed during the day.

This sounds like a dangerous change, but it's easy to predict how it'd work out. PA has always needed a certain minimum time between launch and land, because people require 7-9 hours of sleep a day. With sleep mode, that restriction no longer applies. There are still certain requirements, such as allowing enough time for defenders to marshall their forces, but even now tag defenders only have 2 hours, much of which is not actually used in most cases. With sleep mode, I'd probably support a switch to 30 minute ticks (or other measures that amount to same).

Originally Posted by Gio2k

I also welcome any sound argument against the suggestion, but "I won't land if I don't launch when most sane people are sleeping!" is not one.

That is a valid argument, actually, but not one that can't be overcome. For one, the rate at which attacks land is not a fundamental aspect of PA, unlike other constants like as the time between launch and land, which below a certain threshold potentially destroy playability. However, in the larger scheme of things, it makes absolutely no difference whether your land rate is 25% or 75%. We've had enjoyable rounds both with defensive and offensive stats.

In any case, there are valid objections to overly defensive stats and sleep protection would indeed swing the balance a bit in favour of defense. If that's considered undesirable, it can be corrected in the stats. There are also other alternatives, like changing salvage rates or init costs.