Ticker order

[mist]

Another game mechanics point for people to give views on:

Should production tick before or after combat?

Arguments for before include that it gives you an extra tick of building ships for defence - useful early on in the round. Arguments for after include that it means your ships you ordered before you got attacked don't get killed.

thoughts?

-mist

[DrNick152]

Hmm good question, I think I would prefer to have production before combat so my fleet is larger for defense.

[Karmulian]

i'm a fan of after
means any ships i have building aren't going to get trashed

[wakey]

Yes I think it really has to be Production and then Combat. I also used to like it when there was a big gap between them. I know for some of the later pre p2p rounds that was simply due to the time it took to tick but I do seem to recall that in the first round it was also a case of Production tick on the hour and combat tick at :30. It built up the tension in battles because you know they have landed but have to wait for the results

[Gerbie]

Production before combat sometimes gives attackers a nice surprise. Funny to keep that option open.

[Neferti]

plus dont you have the option to cancel production orders now?

[pablissimo]

As an encouragement to attackers I would personally have it before the production tick, since if you're attacking you're not getting a nasty surprise and if you're defending then you have at least some ships available straight after a crippling attack to defend yourself with.

Having combat second seems to be a disadvantage to both sides; it might make you more wary of attacking (seems unlikely but I needed at least some kind of argument), and if you're defending and planning on holding your ground then those ships are going to get '****ed up'.

Can you cancel a production run yet? So if it was the case that you were going to have ships output just before the combat tick you could cancel them? Or even pause them? A pause option would make this a moot point.

[Gerbie]

There currently is a cancel option. I don't know if that will stay.

[Kal]

i say have production tick before combat tick, but have the ability to pause produciton as mentioned in another thread.

[Nskel]

Originally Posted by Gerbie

Production before combat sometimes gives attackers a nice surprise. Funny to keep that option open.

imho it should stay, can be anasty shock to be attacking a terran with 500meds, land and he has 1000or so. Can damage afleet horribly, and always has the attacker wondering if hes built anything.

[Oghy]

afaik, (round 7 and before), it has always been BEFORE, and for the very good reason that you can build more defence. I know lots of people used to build tons eta 4 ships when you had eta 4 incoming, and that was and still is a good thing.
It should definetly stay that way.

[Tactitus]

I don't see a compelling reason to change it from the historical production-before-combat order.

[Chax]

Separate it even more!
Back in r2 and first half of r3 it was production - movement - combat.
ships get built and you have incoming? move them

[mist]

interesting idea chax, does mean you've got to be online in the couple of minutes it takes to tick, but i guess activity needs to be rewarded somehow :P

-mist

[Appocomaster]

I think Chax was meaning 10-15 minute intervals between ticks. On the plus side, it'd mean the whole which ticks first (production or combat) thing is irrelevant, and also it'd reduce the ticker load

[mist]

ah, wasn't about r2/early r3 so was a lil lost on me. certainly something to discuss. were the tick times seperate on purpose or was the ticker just insanely slow? was there a reason that the events were brought together?

i can see it being useful, and the load distribution couldn't do any harm, but people having to be infront of the computer every 40 minutes rather than 2 hours might be a little pants

-mist

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by mist

ah, wasn't about r2/early r3 so was a lil lost on me. certainly something to discuss. were the tick times seperate on purpose or was the ticker just insanely slow? was there a reason that the events were brought together?

I never knew why they were brought together. Maybe it was more efficient to do everything at once? I dunno. HQ was always doing tweaks like that. :/

i can see it being useful, and the load distribution couldn't do any harm, but people having to be infront of the computer every 40 minutes rather than 2 hours might be a little pants

You only had to be in front of the computer if/when you had incoming (that you weren't going to defend against) and needed to move a fleet (either ships coming out of production or a fleet returning home). The former required an available fleet slot, of course.

It also meant you couldn't fleet-catch an active player. I think most players would consider that a Good Thing, but I'm sure some don't (I guess it depends if you're the catcher or the catchee ).

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

I never knew why they were brought together. Maybe it was more efficient to do everything at once? I dunno. HQ was always doing tweaks like that. :/
You only had to be in front of the computer if/when you had incoming (that you weren't going to defend against) and needed to move a fleet (either ships coming out of production or a fleet returning home). The former required an available fleet slot, of course.

It also meant you couldn't fleet-catch an active player. I think most players would consider that a Good Thing, but I'm sure some don't (I guess it depends if you're the catcher or the catchee ).

imo fleet atahces are an important part of the game - people get board very quickly if u can't actually kill an active enemy. Last stands at a planet being fleet caught are allways fun

[mist]

agree with kal, fleet catches are important

-mist

[Appocomaster]

have all the combat/fleet movement ticking at once, and production (and maybe research and construction?) ticking as the other one. then, it's still possible to fleet catch, but it's possible to run ships in production that would have otherwise been killed if necessary.

[Kal]

that could work

[mist]

hmmm

should be possible - only problem would be if giving fleets new orders before they return is implimented, and not throughly bounds checked. will note for further dicussion. having said that, not sure how a "dual tick ticker" would work in speed games, while it sounds ok for hourly ticks, wouldn't it get rather confusing for 2 minute ticks or some, particularly on the getting the timing right (poor coders )

-mist

[wakey]

Originally Posted by mist

ah, wasn't about r2/early r3 so was a lil lost on me. certainly something to discuss. were the tick times seperate on purpose or was the ticker just insanely slow? was there a reason that the events were brought together?

i can see it being useful, and the load distribution couldn't do any harm, but people having to be infront of the computer every 40 minutes rather than 2 hours might be a little pants

-mist

It certainly became because of the ticker being slow (and i'm guessing it was why it was combined, it was taking about 1:15 on some of the really busy ticks to tick , I would imagine its marginly quicker per planet to do them at once than it is to run the mutliple passes that there was) but the fact that ticker speed wasnt a problem at the start I'd have to guess it was initially like that for gameplay reasons, either that or they actually planned ahead for having so many players later on

[mist]

i don't really see any advantage to ticking one planet at a time, rather than one phase at a time... each of the differet phases would use significantly different data... combat doesn't care what your resource income is for instance

-mist

[wakey]

I would personally imagine there was atleast some 'repeated' db calls that had to be done at each stage which when combined wouldnt be required. Would certainly shave a bit off the time id have thought

[xtothez]

Combat after production to allow for gal fund borrowing as a nice surprise for the attacker.
Damn I love doing that.