I'd like to hear others' thoughts on the "Pending Takeover" after just one NMR idea, two posts above?

Also, thoughts on free takeovers for 3 or fewer units??

In addition to the previous requested changes to the press module that make it easier to scroll up and view previous press instead of having to go through the entire linear message history; I have one more request:
Any way to 'star' selected press messages from games and save them for posterity would be amazing and great fun for players to come back to and recount.

I have had time to read through everything but I did see something about... "Interestingly enough, it says on page 4 that all players with units, not SC, share equally in a draw." I think the intent of this is that if you have 1 SC (but not a home center) and 1 unit. And then your unit gets disbanded. You now have no way of ever rebuilding it and thus no chance of winning. Therefore, (I guess) the rules state if you can't win you can't draw either?

One other item I thought should at least be thought about is chating during the retreat and build phases. The game rules state that this is not to be done. However, the site allows it. What do others think about disabling the the ability to send any message during this phase of the game. You could still get around it in none anon games by PMing the person but it would at least make you "cheat" a little bit more. I've had games (with my friends) where I know they were discussing it and the game dragged on because of this.

I love the idea of "Pending Take over" where you submit moves only if the other player doesn't. Also, how do take over affect ones stats? If they are included just like normal games I feel this "may" deter people from doing so. You stats were divided into full games and take over games. More people "may" be willing to do so.... just a thought.

Put orders in unit types and then in alpha order. Like Modern Dip.

We've having discussed separate stats for takeover games- one meaningful objection is that we don't want to clutter the profile page too much. Maybe long term we could have a "detail" page as well (could also include draw size for the draws), but I don't think it's likely to make it to the top of the todo list for a while.

The takeover idea is interesting. For press games, I think it'd be better if it extended the phase and seated you in the game. I definitely would be against it if it were possible on the first NMR- I'd want to see the automated takeovers happening at the same time as the CD would have happened, not before. I think the feature is probably quite a bit of work, and I'm not sure how often it would get used. Maybe it's something to reevaluate once we have watch lists for games.

I'm not sure about starring messages for after the game (how would that work with our current interface?) but a useful related feature that vDip has is the "mark message as unread" button. I think we should probably add that.

~webDip development team

I second "mark as unread" feature request

Yeah, the Pending Takeover would be for the 2ndNMR/CD move rather than the 1st NMR. I think its a great proposal by chluke though.

Even for 1st NMRs - we can have a different system - (this would require a lot of coding work though) - every player gets to designate a sitter for all games that he/she plays - something like designate a person with your power of attorney. The person with the power of attorney does not have access to press but gets to input orders for their friend who is about to NMR.
The POA person's orders go through *only* if the main player's orders are not submitted in time.

Essentially if I had ATC's POA, I would have access to all of ATCs games in gunboat style. If I thought ATC was in danger of NMRing in any game, I could input a secondary set of orders that would go through if and only if ATC actually ended up NMRing.

I'm not sure I like that. A player without access to the press might make moves that are not diplomatically favourable- which THEN leads to "sorry, my sitter must have entered these" after a stab. I don't think new site features should add new options for deception.

Actually, a lot of the pending takeover functionality could be achieved if the CD mechanic changed from "phase processes with NMR, and position is put up for takeover" to "phase extends by one length without processing, and position is put up for takeover". Hmm. (I am not saying we'll do this). Thoughts?

I would like to see 2 players per country possibly come back. The webdipdummy games was a lot of fun, and it would be a great learning tool, for the site in SoW and such. It also allows for tremendous collaboration between people.

My (excellent) teammate and I were really disappointed with the commitment to that game. We had good discussions with you, and abge's team had been pretty responsive too, but I felt like the others were pretty awol. I'd like to try it again once we have watchlists- maybe it'd be better then.

It'd be best if any NMRs knocked through to the actual player's RR, though.

It would be cool to have it as a site feature, but it seems like a lot of work for what is essentially an experiment.

My gut feeling is that we'd want something a little different for the SoW- I'm not sure I want TAs able to write press or enter moves directly ;) I think the current system encourages a lot of discussion, which is good. Again, watch lists are going to be a huge help there.

1. Going back and forth between accounts I think led to the frustration of the game, and it should just be an available feature on site here.
2. I think SoW TAs should be able to keep it in their pants, and not make moves or write press. The game is not about them.
It would however, allow them(TA) to read the press, and not have the student try to articulate to the TA what they think is going on

Also in higher GR level games, I could only imagine what would happen, and the conversations that would take place.

Ah, but part of the challenge of SoW is to get your student to understand what's important enough to be passed on to your TA verbatim, and what can be summarised.

Anyway, I actually agree with you- this is a cool feature, and it would be great to have. I really enjoyed that game, and I'd love to do it again. It's just a lot of work to implement, which means it will likely be overshadowed by more important features.

I'm not sure if it was because we had two heads or not, but as Italy we attacked France, Austria AND Turkey all in the same phase in that game. Fun times!

Well , if it ever could find its way back that would be great. I would look forward to playing against you and uclabb again.

@Tin_Can. I like your suggestion:
"if the CD mechanic changed from "phase processes with NMR, and position is put up for takeover" to "phase extends by one length without processing, and position is put up for takeover"

This would be a great alternative if it is easier to program it this way, as long as the person CD'ing is kicked out first, so that it doesn't just create an extra grace period for a person who just missed two turns in a row.

Takeovers may also be more attractive since they are then 'definite' instead of 'pending'.

I second Tin_Can's suggestion:

"if the CD mechanic changed from "phase processes with NMR, and position is put up for takeover" to "phase extends by one length without processing, and position is put up for takeover"

And also support chluke's addition/clarification:

"This would be a great alternative if it is easier to program it this way, as long as the person CD'ing is kicked out first, so that it doesn't just create an extra grace period for a person who just missed two turns in a row."

Another idea for the CD mechanic:

0) Player has NMR in previous phase.
1) Player has NMR in 2nd consecutive phase.
2) Kick out/CD player with 2nd NMR; do not process phase.
3) Automatically set game status to Paused with expiration time of 1 phase length.

This way the remaining players have a bit of control about how their game proceeds. If the CD player was unimportant, they could all vote to Unpause and quickly get on with things. If the CD player was important enough for one player, the Pause could be left on until a replacement is found.

This is how it works on vDip:
If there is a NMR in the first turn (all phases) the country in question is send in CD immediately, and the phase is extended for 1 phase-length to find a replacement.

During game-creation you can define for how many turns this should be done (for example you can set this to 5, so it's not possible to get an unexpected NMR during the first 5 turns), and you can select how many times it should wait for a valid order from that country (it extends phase after phase again x-times if you want).

The default is 1 turn, and 1 extend.

I think a spring 01 NMR should be an instant cxl. On play dip, right before the game can start all players must ping in that they're ready. This allows you to know everyone's there before game starts.

What @Sleepcap says would help be a nice fix for so many games that start badly with a NMR and either continue with a flawed start or have to be cancelled and re-created from scratch (which often loses some of the other players as well):

"This is how it works on vDip: If there is a NMR in the first turn (all phases) the country in question is send in CD immediately, and the phase is extended for 1 phase-length to find a replacement."

Here's another little suggestion to add to the ever growing list.

I think it would be nice if player points were shown as [available points] / [total points], instead of just [available points]. This way you can see what someone has available for new games, but can also see the total points that player has earned.

For example, mine would show as 860 / 1100 , instead of only 860 . (Yeah, watch out Split. I'll prob be at 90,000 by April! haha)

Oddly, user profile "rank" is shown by available points, but I would expect that to be by total points, since a user's rank should not drop for joining games.

By the way, why do some player profiles show NEGATIVE "points in play"? How is that possible??

I think it would be cool if by taking over a country that went into civil disorder you negate one of your own CD's this would give more incentive to taking over a losing nation, as it would naturally improve your reliability rating.

@chluke: the total points are displayed on every profile page. the negative points in play comes from being in many anonymous games, i think, but i could be mistaken.

CommanderByron: We discussed that at length, but ultimately decided not to go for it at this time. One important reason is that taking over a CD doesn't necessarily mean that you're any more reliable now. The way to improve your reliability rating is to play lots of games without CDing or NMRing - ie, to demonstrate that you're reliable.

I'm a fan of incentivising takeovers by other means, though.

@ATC- But what incentive could you offer short of rewarding players with points for a takeover. I mean if I see a game that a player went CD ad has oly 3 sc left while the lead player has 13 I would never join... even if its free because it would hurt my W/L ratio.

How about ordering the drop-down lists alphabetically to make it easier to find the place you want to move to? This would be especially useful in variants like the world one, where there are dozens of possible convoy orders and it's hard to find the one you want along this seemingly random list.

Many times I look at join-able games where someone is obviously or even just mathematically gonna get eliminated if they join, and it'd be nice to have someone ready up the phases and shit, or even just defend themselves, but

There's a serious dis-incentive for taking over lost positions due to GR (correct me if I'm wrong but GR considers who ended the game not who started it). But letting people win without letting people lose is fairly obviously not the way to go, and even making it so people can't gain or lose GR or point doesn't seem correct either (especially for having people actually try in took-over positions). Not to mention it's not trivial to distinguish between "totally lost positions I'm taking over to help facilitate the rest of the game and then get eliminated in" and "legit positions where someone CD'd because of things outside their control not because they were losing". Even if we wanted to.

Its a tough problem. I don't have a solution, just putting my thoughts / the obvious out there.