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Unread 21 Sep 2014, 06:37   #1
iBorg
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The game takes too L O N G...

Hi just putting it out there to see if you have ever considered reducing the game to 4 or 5 weeks. 7 weeks seems a bit long, especially if you are trying to juggle real life with the game life... activities like dcing are very intensive and to do that on a 7 week stretch takes a lot of sanity out of you. I don't know if this has been brought up before but I would like you to see if maybe you could reduce ticks down to 30 mins and make the length of the game 4 or 5 weeks long...

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Unread 21 Sep 2014, 06:50   #2
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

30 min ticks for a couple weeks destroys your sanity nicely too

Some varied round options would be interesting though.
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Unread 21 Sep 2014, 07:11   #3
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

I agree with the shorter round length. every round we play it seems to drag out for a week or 2 to long.

at least test out some 6 week rounds.

Dont agree with the 30 minute ticks tho. That just turns the normal round into a speedround/havoc.

TLDR: Try out 6 week rounds. Keep ticks the same.
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Unread 21 Sep 2014, 07:11   #4
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

how about double travel time and 30 min ticks! ...

rounds are def too long, for such a small uni ... way too long.
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Unread 21 Sep 2014, 08:07   #5
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

We discussed it about a year ago at length and their were some impassioned reasons for keeping 7 weeks. It's a tricky one cos you get an occassional awesome round.

Probably need it tho, just to return some sanity and keep more players.
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Unread 21 Sep 2014, 12:17   #6
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

Most of the action happens during the last 3 weeks of the round. Shortening the round will pull that forwards a little, but I still fear it will ultimately lead to a significant reduction of the already fairly low-effort and short-term warfare that we're seeing today. This is unfortunate, because I agree that the round length is somewhat problematic and we cannot reduce the length of the round without compensating for its downsides. We would require some changes to make warfare profitable earlier first. I don't have any ideas for this.

As for the tick length, I feel like ticks in general are an artifact of an age gone by. Many (but not all!) of the actions in the game do not need to happen on the hour, every hour. For starters, everything that involves only a single planet could be done in real time: constructions, income, research, ship building, cov ops, etc. The same goes for most things that involve multiple people but only requires action from one side: alliance NAPs, planet rankings, scanning, exiling, etc. That leaves the very few things that require action from multiple sides: combat and launching fleets are by far the most important. Even there, I am not convinced we could not come up with some mechanism that would do away with ticks in general.

As an intermediate step, increasing the amount of time everything takes by a factor 2 or 4 while moving to 30 or 15 minute ticks seems like a fairly simple thing to do, with only a few side effects, again mostly related to combat and launching fleets.
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Unread 21 Sep 2014, 16:15   #7
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

I for one like ticks, and I like the 1hour format as its easy to remember when constructions finish when fleets land etc.
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Unread 21 Sep 2014, 18:43   #8
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

i'd personally like longer rounds :P but for that we'd need a much larger player base, tbh the current length to me is pretty spot on considering how long it takes to get up to a decent value and how long it takes for "wars" to kick in. As mz alluded to other changes in game mechanics would be required for shorter rounds to be viable.
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Unread 21 Sep 2014, 21:42   #9
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

Rather than repeating the arguments that we've had many times on the subject of shorter rounds I'll just ask people to go here.........
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showthread.php?t=197523
My final thoughts on this subject are that shorter rounds = more caution = less enjoyment.

We've also discussed shorter ticks many times. With 1 hour ticks it's at least possible to nap for an hour and 55 minutes without missing anything significant. Anything shorter than that would mean that "serious" players would (finally) have to quit ... or burn out.
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Unread 22 Sep 2014, 09:59   #10
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

I don't really mind the round length, what I would like is a day when PA goes into vac mode entirely and we can all catch a break. I think this would make it more accessible to players, since they don't need to be on standby every day of the bloody week for 7 whole weeks if they want to compete.
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Unread 24 Sep 2014, 20:15   #11
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

actually ... now you are on to someething ... vacation mode for uni every thur/fri omg ... id actually consider keep playing for a 1 or 2 day break each week
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Unread 25 Sep 2014, 05:01   #12
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

maybe not every week but im not opposed to say a mid round break 3 or 4 days off half way thru, we could call it some sort of universal peace treaty
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Unread 25 Sep 2014, 06:36   #13
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

We might aswell end the round right now since people think its abit long
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Unread 25 Sep 2014, 07:42   #14
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

I'd love shorter rounds personally - I get bored rather quickly regardless of my performance (my highest ranking, 5th, I barely played the last 3 weeks), though that is partly to blame on my love for stats and how fast the universe shows all of its facets.

In a perfect world with 100k players, I'd say split the universe into three: 3 servers, 30 minute ticks with 8 hour downtime each day - one for NA, one for EU and one for Asia/Aus (roughly). Applying this to current PA though would heavily favour the playerbase's majority aka Europeans.

At the very least we can have some experimentation going with shorter/longer rounds. Many times before people have suggested variable round lengths where, if an alliance would be on top for a certain period of time, say two weeks, the round would end. I'd certainly be willing to give something like that a test run, this could lead to some interesting 'forced politics'.

The biggest issue though with 'long' rounds lies with crashing. Not everyone can be vigilant 24/7, and PA is absolutely unforgiving to crashers. That's not to say you can't come back; plenty of planets with low value are currently doing quite well, but those are the exception rather than the rule. Crash your fleet two weeks into the game? You're playing catch-up for 5+ weeks, waiting for another chance in the next round.

Realizing that we do have a calender to work around (holidays and such), what are PA Team's stances on round lengths?
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Unread 25 Sep 2014, 11:11   #15
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

Perhaps doing something with the tech tree is a better option.
The round past pt400 for me is painkilling, due to the goverment changes and the fast research time
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Unread 25 Sep 2014, 20:09   #16
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

Folk only really play the last two weeks if they have something to play for, otherwise they usually go inactive. Seven weeks is too long, especially because people get burnt out.
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Unread 25 Sep 2014, 22:17   #17
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Re: The game takes too L O N G...

Well look at the older rounds of planetarion.
I think it took like 700 odd ticks to get all the travel times and ships.
Atleast you had some planet Development.
Now days you have all this shit by pt200, and every day after that is a just a race for NAPs and roids.
I think the time when it took time to get travel time, or took time to get ships, it seemed like the fun lasted longer.
But i dunno, maybe its just me beliving everything was better in the past
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