Default real-time is 1 tick per 30 mins, with 20 ticks per production, which means 10 hours for production cycles which is obviously just over two cycles per day.
Default turn-based is 6 ticks per turn, with 20 ticks per production, which is 3.3 turns per production. There is also a 24 hour “max turn wait”. If all turns are at 75% max waiting time then that is 18 hours * 3.3 = 60 hours per production.
I wonder if you can have best of both worlds. Turn based, so everyone reacts at the same time. But a shorter max turn wait (down from 24 to 12 hours) so the game advances twice per day, with more ticks per turn (up from 6 to 10) so production comes a little more often.
The result would be engaging with it twice per day (or more if people get turns in faster), and each day has at least one production cycle. And if people miss a 12 hour max timer, too bad, the game advances by 10 ticks. (But it plays great on mobile devices, so its easy to play anywhere.)
Research is super super important, mostly for good Weapons. Low research and low weapons score means you will lose. I like the tension vs industry and economy, its hard to get the perfect balance.
People will need to check in before most ticks if they are gonna compete. So I’d say 4 ticks per 12 hour production would be a much easier game for most people to handle.
Do you mean shorter as in more frequent? If so no, I do not think it would be less time consuming. Fair is certainly a goal. I don’t think you can get to fair aside playing it completely in real time with completely invested people.
I probably misunderstand how those factors work. I would want a game with big long ticks, since to be competitive you are going to have to babysit those tick boundaries. Does the turn based game wait for players to respond to each tick? I thought it waited for each production.
The exact settings are what I listed. The turn advances when all players submit their turn (click a green mark check in the web UI). The game then moves ahead by the tick count (6 by default). If the “max waiting time” expires, the game advances by the tick count even if a player has not yet confirmed their turn.
So if all N players have submitted, then game moves ahead by tick count
Or if max waiting time expires, then game moves ahead by tick count
As we know, it may take 30 ticks for a ship to arrive at a system. If you did not confirm a turn that whole time, the ship still moves. So the max turn timer does not impact previously queued turns.
However, if you ignore a few turns (which is more ticks) and when you come back your opponent has already set a course for you and will arrive soon (in ticks, not time), then you are in trouble.
Production is the exact same as normal real time, it happens every 20 (or configured) ticks. I am loathe to change that since I think its a core game balance.
Ah, ok, I get it now. 10 ticks per turn with a 12 hour turn time limit and 20 ticks per production sounds like the config that I was trying to describe. :)
Hi, by the time I logged in again yesterday, my capitol had fallen, and all my stars were lost.
This went by a bit faster than I thought it would…so I doubt I can pay attention well enough for this game.
In the dark game, I saw no other stars to go to, and got bored, sorry :(
I kind of wish there was an option to trade map information. I have no idea what’s going on with the rest of the galaxy outside my little area and a bit of my surrounding players’ planets.
BTW I’m kind of enjoying this game but would also like to do something similar in spurts according to my own timeline. Any recommendations for something similar as a single player game?
10 ticks worth of travel time before an opponent can react is a big first-mover advantage. I can imagine a situation where you simply never catch that hostile fleet rampaging around your star systems.
Honestly I don’t know. You’d have to play game or two to work out the implications. Personally I feel like I’d be frustrated with that game setup, but that doesn’t mean that anyone else will be.
So I’m not enjoying this at all, it’s a complete drag. I keep having to check in on constant war instead of doing things with my kids for Halloween. But I’m reluctant to just quit because I feel like that wouldn’t be fair to everyone else. With Mark (who was a complete shit to me) attacking me the way he is the second I give up he’ll end up winning the game 2-4 days later after overwhelming my replacement AI and my ally. Well, maybe not that quick 'cause game is snail, but the writing will be on the wall.
Edit: Also it’s kind of funny because I know people are strategizing pretty hard but at this point I’m making bad moves just so that it doesn’t drag out and/or to give myself a break from constant standoffs. The game really is going to be won by the person who is most committed and gets the least sleep with a bit of mixed in luck of starting position.
On the one hand, due to my personality flaws, I cannot not get invested in this sort of stuff, to the point where I’m keeping track of times that I need to check in to make X happen and disrupting real life things that I actually enjoy.
On the other hand, even with maximal investment, you don’t have a ton of control over how you do in the game. Bad starting spot? Neighbors decide they don’t like the color of your empire? One player leaves, and their neighbor gobbles them up and get huuge? Game over man, it doesn’t matter what you do, your empire will be mathematically steamrolled. And as pointed out above by @Canuck , you are making decisions in the game without a whole lot of information, since you can’t even tell the size/extents of other empires much less their ships/production/etc. Compare it to something like Dominions, where you at least had graphs to go by, plus a ton of in-game ways to gain scouting info on distant provinces.
So it’s this system that asks you to get super invested in it, but then just sort of randomly rewards or punishes you.
Anyway! If other people are up for it I’d be fine with just declaring that we’re all winners here.
