Wait time before game start

Feature request:
When a game fills up (last player joins the game) don’t start the game right away, but wait 24 hours, so everyone gets a chance to set up their starting moves and plan out their game. This is especially important in a game with the setting ‘dark start only’.
I noticed in several games now that being the last to sign up gives you a considerable jump start.

It could also be a good period to deal with the insta-quitters that 64-player games suffer from. If ticks aren’t running yet, the spaces could be re-filled with new people maybe?

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This doesn’t seem necessary to me, as you can already make all your moves when you join the game, no need to wait… Unless you mean you want to wait until the dark start is gone, then make moves. There is an option under create games to make a galaxy without a dark start, maybe that is what you really want… Either that or I am misunderstanding your request…

One might very well want a dark start but to have this delay – dark starts make it harder for groups of players to deliberately join as neighbors. Seeing the galaxy might really change what your initial moves should be. For comparison, in a turn based dark start I only make a few really obvious initial moves before the game starts, but I never submit turn before the game stars as I frequently will want to change those moves, or add to them.

I agree with this idea. It is annoying to come back to a game which a few hours ago to find your carriers are going in the wrong directions because you needed to make blind decisions.

In effect the first moves you make have the dark universe penalty while the last player can play unhindered. The alternative is not making any moves, but this means you are several hours of fleet movement behind.

Disabling dark-start fixes these problems. But as suffusion says, there’s a reason dark-start was added!

It also serves as a warning for players so they know beforehand when the game starts. Especially in larger games (64p) or custom games that fill up slowly, it will save you the constant stress of checking whether a game will start or not.

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How about an option to schedule a time for it to start? So, say, the game starts at 9:54am GMT. Or, possibly, just have an option to start the game paused, and the game creator just unpauses it when they want the game to begin.

If you have players in multiple time zones it would allow you to pick a cycle time that’s during the day for everybody, and having a “start paused” option lets you get everyone signed up well before you actually want the game to begin. Both options would help with organising games.

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I believe there is a pause function, it is mentioned here:

http://forum.ironhelmet.com/t/pause-functionality-for-turn-based-games-and-or-the-ability-to-vote-on-turn-setting-changes/1440

Yes, there is a pause function, but in order for it to be useful for what the original poster wants the game creator would need to see when the game starts and be in a position to pause it immediately. So, if the last person to join the game joins when the creator is asleep, that’s not going to be useful.

I was saying that an option for the game to start paused would solve the problem.

Easy solution is for all games to have scanning = range at the start

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Perfect! Would only need to apply to dark starts though.

I think this feature would be nice as well especially on large fast paced games. Either a 24 hour delay before it starts (telling you when it will start exactly) or having a fixed start time so that you only have to check in once.

For instance I have joined a custom 32 player game set for Quad Speed and 16 hour production, if i understand this right that means every 4 hours real time there will be “production day”. This promises to be a very fast paced game, but the custom settings have us with no ships so we cant even do “turn 1” orders as we cant build carriers with no ships at the star.

This game has been filling up for at least a week now, and we are finally getting close. However I am worried that it will finally “go off” during some period when I’m not able to check it for several hours (like when I’m sleeping). that will mean that whoever is last to join and kicks this thing off will have tons of ticks, and possibly 2-3 full production cycles, before other players even get a chance to act at all!

Of course this means we will likely see a ridiculously high number of afk quitters who never do anything in the game because the first time they log in they discover they are too far behind to even try to compete. That will quite possibly ruin the game from any real competitive standpoint.

And a stated delay would fix this.

Maybe its too narrow a case to warrant coding time, but it never hurts to ask.