I posted this on AT as part of larger group of suggestions but I think the concept itself is worthy of it's own thread for discussion.


One of the biggest aspects of warring is walling, but the problem is not everyone can be online 24/7 to wall. I have been known as one of the harder to kill players in the game, but it is very draining in my older age to go without sleep. In fact it is one of the things I dread about the game.

I believe it would be a positive for the game if a player has an option to select an 8 hour period of the day where their country cannot attack or be attacked. That means any player willing to wall have an 8 hour respite and also any player who does not wake to wall has a fair opportunity to level the playing field against the guys who will wall 24/7. There will always be those players who do not take up the 8 hours.

If that player is attacked during this 8 hour period the attacker would be greeted with a message along the lines of "Your Generals refuse to attack due to bad weather. They advise that the weather will improve in ** hours."

You can change your 8 hour period but any changes will take 24 hours to become active.


A further note, I don't think you should be closed off to landgrabs during this 8 hour period because that would have broader repercussions in terms of retals and landgrabbing etc. But I am certainly open to input from others.

I'm in favor of trying to solve the problem of getting woken up in the middle of the night in order to stonewall. Here's what one implementation would look like:

* Players would specify up to an 8 hour window in their game profiles during which the attacks their countries can receive are restricted on clan servers that allow for PvP with FFA excluded. I'm just going to call this "sleep hours".
* A country inherits the profile setting for sleep hours upon creation. In other words, changing their sleep hours in their game profile won't change it for any active countries.
* A player cannot login or perform any action with their country during sleep hours except on the final day of the reset. Countries still gain turns normally and can perform automated market activity.
* Countries during sleep hours cannot be subject to special attacks. They could still be landgrabbed or be the victim of harmful spy ops.
* Countries would appear to be on vacation during sleep hours. This is the only way that I can think of to communicate the new change to third party sites via feeds. As a result, we would remove the current vacation system (currently zero countries are using it).
* Flavor text might be "Your generals refuse to perform cowardly special attacks against a nation whose people are sleeping!"

The problems that come to mind are:

1) War is already difficult between clans that have few members. This would restrict the number of targets available during war chats. I suspect that this would be especially bad for warrers who live in Asian time zones. Would they be able to meaningfully participate in wars?

2) A player couldn't choose to login into the game during an important event or an emergency, such as participating in an FS or responding to a suicider.

Most wars I have been involved in usually vary their chat times between the 3 main zones. I think the timezone most disadvantaged would actually be Euros. But even if you cannot be killed for 8 hours, there is still a huge 16 hour window to kill said country. It would mean tags have to adjust their tactics but overall I think it is fairer gameplay.

In terms of the FS, most FSes these days comprise of at least 2 warchats. If you can't get a target at one you would have to get them at the other. In terms of participation you might not be able to make 1 chat, but you can make the other one.

As a person that turns everything off when sleep time comes, I love this idea, and yes that should only apply to attacks that can kill your country..

GS, BR, and Chems, I wouldn't even worry about Spy attacks that reduce civis or destroy military.



----------Slags concerns----------

The problems that come to mind are:

1) War is already difficult between clans that have few members. This would restrict the number of targets available during war chats. I suspect that this would be especially bad for warrers who live in Asian time zones. Would they be able to meaningfully participate in wars?

2) A player couldn't choose to login into the game during an important event or an emergency, such as participating in an FS or responding to a suicider.

-Possible solutions...

1) allowing only GS, BR, and Chems attacks would make these countries still available for other forms of attacks that will contribute to the war, for example....you can AB and do spy ops to cripple them.


2) If the player logs in during that period it would void the protection and would have to wait x amount of time to activate it again.

There's a few ideas I can think of being a waller myself.

#1
Offer another protection sorta like GDI which allows a user to enter/exit into it which charges them $ per turn in protection. During this period a player cannot be GS/BR and/or AB. Everything else would be fair play. That way war clans would still be able to do some sorts of attacks & at the same time it costs the person offline a penalty the longer they are in it.

#2
One other idea would be to allow a user to set trigger points where if a unit type fell below a certain amount they would auto buy a unit. Or if their population fell to certain amount they would auto-buy a unit. Programmatically this would seem significantly harder to do than #1.

On idea #1 you could make the penalty get progressively higher per turn offline (or per turn in this new protection).

This would make the importance of market spying more important to clans and bomb banks more useful.

I like the idea of not having to be available 24/7. Setting up notifications while you sleep and having your phone or laptop by your bed is a bit much for me these days.

I would agree on anything that can improve that for QoL.

That does suck for the people who can and do go to the lengths it takes to wall 24/7. I'm not sure what to give back to them for their dedication.

Tbh., lots of sets I don’t even play because of the dedication it takes to maintain it.

I’m all for it.

This is the type of change where it would be very helpful to receive feedback from players in a variety of time zones.

I would create an in game poll to get that info. Lots of people who play don’t even know about these boards.

Maybe add an extra in game bonus for players who answers these types of questions.

That's a cool idea and I'd like to do something similar one day, but there's too much other work to be done first.

Maybe a few warring clan leaders can poll their members for their opinions?

Will do

There is strategy on when to take your 8 hours window. For many vets, it's likely going to be the time clans are most likely to fs; as we can get alerted instantaneous when we are hit already. It would make sense for an entire alliance to black out a certain time range as a group to gain a tactical advantage. That would cause its own challenges and pivots, where clan A is zoned out from 00:00 to 08:00 by. Clan b is zoned out 08 to 16:00 gt. Making where you can only really fight from 16:00 to 24:00.

I think 2 days out of the week would be more beneficial to gameplau, but they can not be consecutive days. This would allow for more robust counterstrikes.

I would think there should be either less turns accumulated for your country if you choose the eight hours, or extra bonus turns for those who don't take the eight hours- or both. Just my opinion but it adds incentives to risks

I can tell you that most people would simply select when they are sleeping. I have no qualms in walling any FS, I have survived chem rushes from 60+ countries hitting me which would normally result in a 10 second death. What I don't like is not being able to sleep.

Any updates regarding this?

This is roughly fourth on my list and would probably be included as part of change set 25 but I can't give any specific dates.

Sounds good