plus, for whatever time length phase you sign up for, you just have to assume it will take that long ... abgemacht is right, use the time to diplome

it's on the todo liust, and why don't you look at the source and edit it yourself, as it's all open?

i'm sure it's be brought up on the developers forum, but nobody has done anything about it yet. I don't know if kestas would like a hand, but you're free to implement your own solution...

the only contrary position isthat you want the player to know what happened to his unit, which requires a notification - this is less than ideal.

I can see potential issues with automatic disbands. Some players are going to wonder where their unit disappeared too, while others are going to assume that they have time until the next phase (thus they might not login, and thus NMR).

Auto-disbands like this are a common issue. In a strictly classical sense, there should be no diplomacy during retreat and build phases, of course, so perhaps the argument that the time can be used for diplomacy is a weak one. As such, automatic disbands, were there are no options, possibly should happen. But the web game is different to the ftf game. Players expect phase deadlines of certain length. It probably isn't so much that an NMR would occur but more the loss of time in move phase diplomacy should a player expect a certain amount of time on retreats. I also agree that, whilst waiting for a player to confirm the obvious, joining a game with a set deadline should mean expecting the phase to last that long.

This would be nice, but since kestas has a career to pursue, it isn't going to happen unless someone else steps up to the plate to code it.

isn't going to happen soon*

>You are posting too frequently, please slow down.


No I'm not

darn! should be automatic ;-)

Arguably, this situation when applied to retreats has nothing to do with the phase length. After all, hed no one had to retreat, the phase would have been instantaneous, so the argument that someone may have expected the phase to last that long is bogus. Build and retreat phases get skipped when nothing changes hands, no one gets dislodged, and no one has any builds or disbands. anyone who expects there to be a phase time is a fool waiting to NMR.

Draug,

I am cognizant of this. What I'm saying it's nice to have that "Bonus" diplomacy time every so often.

I was talking about spymans comment.

"I can see potential issues with automatic disbands. Some players are going to wonder where their unit disappeared too, while others are going to assume that they have time until the next phase (thus they might not login, and thus NMR)."

That is a bogus argument as if there were no retreats or build orders, the phases would be skipped anyhow.

unless they know there will be a disband, but don't know it will be skipped.

I will say this - traditional rules of Diplomacy allow no negotiations during retreats and build phases.

@abge - it might be a problem for a short while, but once everyone got used to it (and we put in place a notification system), I bet it would cease to be a concern.

We already get phase change notifications, and since you never really know whether you'll be dislodged or not, who is going to assume there will be a retreat phase? I could see adding a notification saying your unit was automatically disbanded.

The real issue is that currently the code is simple. Did anyone get dislodged? If so, have a retreat phase. If not, move on to the next phase. Adding code that determines if any of the dislodged units have anywhere to retreat to is more complicated.

The build/disband phase is similar in that it checks if anyone has more or less units than centers. What I don't know is whether it checks to see if anyone that has less units than centers has an open home center. I would guess that potentially you could have a build phase where no one could build. But maybe it does check for that.

@Draug

Yeah, that is a good point.

The reality is, though, that it's a lot of work for little reward. My point is that instead fo complaining about it, you should be happy that you get a little extra diploming time.

@Alderian

The javascript has to calculate the legal retreats anyways to generate the dropdown boxes. I don't think it would be very difficult to have it check to see if every dislodged unit has no choice but to disband, but then again, I've never looked at the code.

I know BOUNCED automatically disbands dislodged units with no legal retreats, and it's never been a problem. However, their default map also does a better job of showing which units have been dislodged than webdip's. For me, it's a minor thing, however. What I'd really like to see is the ability to send true partial press, that is, not just individual and broadcast presses, but press to any combination of the other powers, but that'd probably be a bit more difficult to implement.

Sending to multiple people wouldn't necessarily be too tricky. Of course I'm speaking from the perspective of a programmer that is not familiar with the webdip code. If I were to design it, I'd put check boxes above the chat box where if you are on England's tab and check the check box for France, then France will get copied on the message you send to England. Changing chat tabs would clear the check boxes. On the receiving side it would need to indicate in a way that a user could not mimic, that the message was sent to the multiple countries. For example, in black text instead of the country colored text. Also the message should go to each chat tab that has a country included in it so you don't have to keep switching back and forth.

The fact is that there are lots of things that could be done to make this great site even better. But it takes time and effort and people need to step up. I would really like to, but need to spend some more time learning php.

@Alderian - why does the recipient have to know there were other recipients? They don't have to on the judges or in real life. BCC?

What you could have is one chat tab with a TO set of check boxes (included an ALL option) and a BCC set. If you select ALL on TO, then all the other check boxes get disabled. If you select a specific country on TO or BCC, then it's equivalent check box gets disabled in the other field. Then you could have a series of message tabs like we presently have to see who sent you what and tweak the messages so that they have some kind of addressing scheme (see below).

From: Austria
To: You (Germany), Italy
Central Triple anyone?

Something like that.

@Draugnar,

A BCC makes a big difference to the game. It allows way more certainty to be conferred, which isn't possible in the FtF game. One needs to consider the impact of it carefully (I am reserving judgement for the moment)

@Draugnar, the purpose in making it clear that the same message was sent to multiple people is the same as face to face where a group goes off to discuss things together. Plus you can still send other information behind one or more others backs.

If you want to just copy a message to another player without any verification that you sent it to that other player, you can do that now by cutting and pasting.

And as Ghost says, being able to BCC someone is very different from face to face. I suppose you could do it by having the other person hide where they can overhear. But I still don't much like that particular idea.