[Discuss] Theoretical realistic messaging

[Thomas Dalton]

> It will make distant talk more meaningless or slow it down. Darka to
> Abington, 'back away from ASI or we'll come a kick your butt' would
> effectively take time to say and perhaps in the meantime Abby and ASI
> already closed a CF.  But it messed up Darka's plans because their
> forces already moved beyond their borders towards Abby, thus the
> anticipation.

There are two levels at which this could work.  Delays of less than a
turn over short distances makes military organisation difficult for
OOC reasons (people not logging on at the right time).  Delays of a
few days over long distances makes politics far more interesting, but
increases the risk of OOC methods of communication being used.

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...