[Discuss] Delays using in game time

[Thomas Dalton]

I suggested this in the other thread but it seems to have been lost in
amongst everything else, so I'll start a new thread for it:

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There is another was of handling sub-turn delays.  Don't make it
depend on real time, make it depend on how many hours you've spent
that turn.  If I spend 5 hours scouting and then send it to my
general, he won't receive the reports until after he's spent 5 hours
doing something (maybe plus an extra couple of hours for the messenger
to get there, as in the previous idea, just with game hours, not real
hours). (A "wait" option would need to be added for people without
units [so you can't rest your men to kill time])

That would completely remove the OOC issues as it doesn't matter when
you log on, just how many hours you spend, would be more realistic and
more annoying (so people might use OOC means more).

It would require people to take more care about what order they do
things in, which would add a whole new element to the game.

Long distances, like between realms, would take real life time simply
because you get a limited number of hours per turn.  If it takes 15
hours for a message to get from one ruler to the other, it will take
at least 2 turns to arrive.

This could be done by doing all the message timing using an IC clock,
and the current time depends on how many hours you've spent.  What
happens with the 8 hours you never see (or more if you're old), I'm
not quite sure...

Aditional changes would be needed to make this work:

1) Activities that take more than an hour (ie. most) should be broken
down into one hour blocks so you can recieve messages after each hour
of police work, or whatever, and decide whether or not to continue
working or stop and do something else.  The current benefits of
working for longer could be continued by having the 2nd hour in a row
of the same work be more effective than the 1st, the 3rd more
effective still, and so on.

2) (more like 1a)) Travel would need to be broken down into one hour
blocks as well.  Rather than clicking "Travel to XYZ" and waiting
until the turn change, you'd click "Travel towards XYZ for one hour",
then read your messages and click again.  It would be best if you
don't actually count as having arrived until the turn change though -
you'd still count as being inbetween regions, even though you have 0
hours travelling to go.

This would allow turning around half way through the journey when the
messenger finally reaches you to say you're need somewhere else.

Now, this is all getting rather complicated and completely changes the
way BM works, so, I think it would be best if all this waits until
West Continent is made and only works there (and maybe on other new
islands in future).  Just as time in the Colonies works differently,
time on WC would.  I think the changes are too drastic to be added to
existing continents.

Of course, SEI should be reset soon, so the new time could be added
there.  It would probably delay the reset a bit, as it's a lot of
coding, but I certainly wouldn't mind, and I'm sure most other people
wouldn't.
----

I think this solves a lot of the problems people have been coming up
with while still keeping the realism of delays - in fact, more
realistic.  What's the point of delaying a message a few hours if you
can choose what to do with those hours after reading the message?


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