Add an Optional Turn Timer to Lobby Games

Hepps

@general_zod How did the timer take battles into consideration? Was it ignored? Since one player nation could have 1 or 2 attacks to resolve while another could have many? And in such situations the responsiveness of both/multiple players is a factor.

Seems to me you would only need a timer for: Combat moves, Non Combat moves, Purchase, and Placement phases. Ignoring any all other game phases.

prastle

@general_zod to clarify I could care less about a timer truthfully. I just know it is something that has often been requested. I like your ideas bro.

redrum

So I'm open to this idea but would want to have a pretty solid understanding of how it worked at GTO and if that is what folks want or if they want something slightly different.

General_Zod

@hepps

It's been a few years, but I'm pretty sure the timer wasn't timing the actual combat phase.

General_Zod

@redrum
Yes, hopefully some GTO players respond with their opinions. Or perhaps even a poll would be helpfull?

taplayerzz

Thx for replies. When AA was released for PC by Milton Bradley around '97 or '98, it had a timer. I see no reason why TripleA can't have this feature also. It would be optional just like the PC version. But for more experienced players, it would make the game more fun. It will also keep players from stalling for saves that they might never finish.

taplayerzz

Also, the timer is just for moves and not actual combat.

Deltium

Hi All - a good topic indeed. I played for years at GTO. I can give a little detail which may be helpful:

the timer was optional & both players had to agree to it and the time therein.
it did have a range, but I don't remember the parameters, but we had a choice therein.
when the timer ran out of time, the turn was over -- full stop.
it did start flashing when you approached under 30 seconds, I recall.

It was indeed a very popular mechanism at GTO because players did want to enforce a regular turn speed from their opponents, and the binary nature of the timer (turn over) was very harsh, but very effective; similar comparison to speed chess and same concept.

As it was optional, one could opt in or opt out. Hope this helps. Cheers.

General_Zod

@LaFayette

The purchase planner and move planner sounds intriguing . How would they work?

@lafayette said in Please add a timer to this game:

One way to approach this is to make player turns shorter, add things like purchase planners and move planners so both can be planned beforehand and quickly executed.

taplayerzz

What I'm asking is for a variable timer to be added for every phase. This is the same as adding any feature the players request. The players can then give feedback as to what works and what doesn't. I'm not playing this game much if at all until there is a timer to prevent players from stalling or afk'ing to duck out of the game and then changing their name to avoid the loss. As players have stated, AA had a timer feature in the past, but it didn't make it to triplea for some reason.

LaFayette

The purchase planner and move planner sounds intriguing . How would they work?

Purchase would let you open a purchase screen when it is not your turn, select a nation and click 'save' button. Then when it's your turn there would be a 'load' button that would become available to load the saved purchase.

Move planner would be a bit similar but the game would be in an edit mode for combat and noncombat moves, click save and then load during your turn.

taplayerzz
What I'm asking is for a variable timer to be added for every phase.

Makes sense. Game loss I suspect is the only real consequence that can be enforced. Eg: "I have no PUs left to give". There certainly are different styles of game play, timer is good way to enforce and set an expectation.

General_Zod

@lafayette You should make a feature request for the planners.

General_Zod

Some more thoughts on timer.

In addition to the other ideas.

Would be cool to have count down timer which can be set with any time and which should be custom to map itself after thorough testing. And then the players can use as much time as they like per turn, and on a as needed basis. But will need to adjust their game speed somewhere else to make up for time. Pretty much like they use in chess tournaments. So in early game all moves should be made as quickly as possible to save time for later more complex moves.

"A chess clock consists of two adjacent clocks with buttons to stop one clock while starting the other, so that the two clocks never run simultaneously. Chess clocks are used in chess and other two-player games where the players move in turn. The purpose is to keep track of the total time each player takes for his or her own moves, and ensure that neither player overly delays the game."

If we had this we can experiment with how our tournaments are played. Since a game with or without a official time limit require two very different strategies. We could try a simple scoring system as well.

"Each win is worth three points, while a draw is only worth one, and losses are still worth zero. The major difference in this scoring system is that players who score a win and a loss are ranked above those who have scored two draws (three points vs. two), so fighting play is encouraged."

LaFayette

@general_zod Good recommendation. I've seen in for example online go timers that add a fixed amount per turn. The idea being there is that you can extend a long running game and not be forced to end the game in say round 3 or 4 because both players are low on time.