It sounds like tesco is describing the Civilization series of games (or at least the FreeCiv Version) and/or MOO3. Both systems have a "Last player nag" feature, etc. Granted, Civ has VERY simple combat, so tactical combat isn't much of an issue. And MOO3 is set up to discourage if not prevent tactical combat (ISTR reading you could use "Focus Points" to take control of combats, but I don't know if that was only in single-player mode).
In any case, tesco's suggestions are similar to other turn-based strategy games with simultaneous turns. I have to disagree with geoschmo's assertion that the suggested features are more for "real-time" games. As far as the result of a tactical combat affecting other empires (like whether a particular fleet could go on to destroy a planet), ISTM the only thing lost would be time spent queuing up orders, since the orders wouldn't be carried out until the end of the turn anyway, and (if I'm reading all this correctly), the tactical combats are essentially taking place "between" the simultaneous turns (defining a "turn" as the time when a player can issue orders, and "between" turns is when orders are carried out). Under tesco's plan, players not involved in tactical combat just get to start their "turn" early. We could either make the game user-friendly and not allow a player to issue orders involving systems where combat is taking place, or let the player find out the hard way and avoid those systems on his own until after combat has been resolved.
Or maybe the players not directly involved in a tactical combat should take advantage of the time to get a drink, answer the call of nature, talk to their significant others, etc.
Edit: Some players may already have to "sit idle" and wait for others, just because they have far less to do in a given turn; I ran into this problem in FreeCiv since my gaming group had one player who ended up creating twice as many cities as the rest of us, and micromanaged everything to death, so we were constantly waiting for him to finish his turn. Tactical combat just makes the problem more likely...
[ 11 December 2001: Message edited by: DirectorTsaarx ]
Re: what are the advantages of TCP/IP
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