I'm down.

what about pause requests for about let's say a week Troodonte?
summer means vacations not just diplomacy :)

but everyone will have vacations at different times and if we accommodate everyone's the tournament would never go anywhere.

it means vaccation for some...not everyone.

yeah. i would like a pretty firm no pause policy. obviously if something comes up and you need to weekend pause, that isnt unreasonable. otherwise, you should get a sitter or not join the tournament.

having said, since it is the summer, and so a lot of us are on the computer less, i think sticking with 36hr games is a good idea

i want in plz... :D

Frank +1

how long are the phazes for these games typically?

@DJ 36 hours - check the post above your first one.

oh, srry. i had not seen it lol

I'm interested. Did not play in the last one since I am new, but any start time would work for me.

I'm interested, provided the bet is relatively small. I just joined the site a few months ago, so I haven't played in any tournaments before. I can't play if the phases are less than 25 hrs; 36 is optimal.

I can't commit to the tournament if no vacation pauses are to be given :P

Unless the games end before the last week of July, I also can't commit not to CD, it's almost certain that I will.

Count me in as well!

Wow! I'm so glad to see this much interest, I think we might definitely reach 49 for a round robin if that's the way we go with it.

On vacation pauses: Where's the smartphone? Unless you're going to some third-world paradise, logging in on public wifi to quickly enter orders shouldn't be too hard. We're talking gunboat here, no press.

I can only see pausing if its for an amount less than a week, and it would have to either be an emergency or a very long notice ahead of time.

If we start first week of May, and we do round robin, and we start one game per week, we're looking at the seventh game starting third week of June, meaning the finals would possibly start in July. The deadline, which I hope we clear easily, is Sept 1st, because the Fall Gunboat starts then.

Hey Geo, how is this shaping up? Some names on the list I thought I would never see playing gunboats. I will play if you need another player, if you have enough I'll wait until fall to get my butt kicked:) I played in the tourney. Do you have an official list & rankings?

No official list yet, though this is likely the unofficial signup sheet.
We're around 30 I think. if we can get ~20 more before May, which I definitely think is reasonable, then we'll do RR and it will be the most epic tournament ever.
Would be glad to have you on board.

Should we start a more official list of this thread? Just add yourself if you're interested? How do you want to to the initial rankings Geo, by points, GR, or we could have it self ranked :-)

SC^2 is a bad system, btw. It encourages SC hunting, which is exactly not what makes good (clever) gunboat play, namely thinking about the board as a hole, and then working around the absence of press keeping diplomacy going.

@gramilaj, there'd be an official sign up nearer the time (we're talking about a month before the tournament starts), for now we just need to know whether we are talking about a really big tournament or just a small one.

I think it encourages clever SC hunting. If you're not smart about it, you're going to let the other side of the board win and alienate your allies and ultimately not do well, but it's not my tourny, so if you don't like it, I guess we're not using it.

Or, I think I would like it with gunboat because it discourages rock solid alliances that race to the SM lines and then sit.

And, if you're SC hunting, you'll do fine for the first rounds, but as the quality of play improves you'll fall to people who can put off those SC hunting impulses until you can pull an effective stab. Not that I've ever seen any set of GBs scored by SC2, have you tried it before?

It would be interesting to see what SC2 would do had it been applied to the last tournament. I may do some pen and paper this weekend and find out.

It's still likely that we'll use something like 60/survivors. I don't like what SC2 would do to players after they know they can't win.

Looks like we're shooting for 35/42 participants, I think we'll definitely get there!

That's true, once you're down to ~4 centers, you're like, we'll, I better throw this game as hard as I can. The weakness of the system, but I think it makes it exciting, less so if people think they're not going to progress, because they throw their centers towards a solo, rather than trying to equalize and minimize a score.

The SC2 scores from this would be terrible, because people we're playing for smaller draws, not bigger ones.

@gramilaj, it isn't my tournament either. SC hunting is bad even if you have to be careful.

I've not seen it applied before, but I've had a look at how people respond to different systems a bit. GFDT was originally played with WTA game types, and people played it as WTA. This year, the game type was PPSC. *The scoring system did not change* and yet the way people played did.

I don't think people will necessarily be as sophisticated as you want, even if you do want people to precisely follow the demands of SC2

@Geofram, I'm not sure that is necessarily useful (but still interesting) since people play differently (and that's what we are interested in, too)

"On vacation pauses: Where's the smartphone? Unless you're going to some third-world paradise"

I don't need no smartphone, my phone's price was 15 bucks last year and I'm perfectly happy with it. And yes, having a base of operations during mountain trekking in a small Tatran salaš pretty much counts as a third-world backwater. But then again, I'm evidently in a minority so it's my problem.

ok i have no clue what any of the recent abbreviations mean so i am completely confused lol. but i hope there is enough people for a tournament.