[Discuss] Theoretical realistic messaging

[Timothy Collett]

On May 1, 2006, at 9:10 AM, Dorian Gray wrote:

> On 5/1/06, Gloria Santos <gloria.santos at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The delay would mean they would have to log in just before turn  
>> change to make sure all the messages of the turn have arrived,  
>> follow those orders, then wait for the turn change to get scout  
>> reports so that they get to the general in time.
>>
>> So it would only tie people more to turn change time.
>>
>> Some people can only log in once a turn, and it would be hard to  
>> play if at the time they log in orders have not arrived.
>
> I think that's the point... history is rife with examples where  
> battles were won and lost because ordersdidn't arrive in time.

But that's the problem--orders *already* have to be given, in some  
cases, less than an hour after the turn in order for a good chunk of  
people to receive and follow them.  If we can't get current orders  
out until *hours* after the turn, we'll end up with 1/3 of our army  
always being half a day behind, at best.

I also worry about what some people have mentioned: that realms that  
already make heavy use of out-of-game means of communication, such as  
IRC and MSN, will end up sending orders that way, bypassing the  
delays in messages, and gaining an extremely unfair advantage over  
realms that don't use it to that degree, or refuse to use it in such  
an abusive manner.  And there's little to no way to detect this in  
order to punish it.

Timothy Collett
Anaris Family

--

"But what ... is it good for?"
--Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968,  
commenting on the microchip