BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => Development => Feature Requests => Topic started by: egamma on March 25, 2012, 05:13:02 AM
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Title: Delayed Standing Orders
Summary:
I think many marshals would like to avoid saying "next turn" in the standing orders, because when the next turn rolls around, well, it still says "next turn.". Some sort of "rolling" standing orders would be nice.
Details::
Todays orders until dusk: Move to Region A
Tonights orders: Wait for stragglers and misdirect to region B
Tomorrows orders: Move to region C
Tomorrow nights orders: Wait for stragglers and misdirect to region D
Next: Move to region D
Each turn, the orders move up one slot, so that everyone knows what they should be doing at that time, and what they should do the next turn.
To keep this from becoming useless in actual combat, marshals should be able to delete one or all of the orders.
And yes, there is a risk from planning 4 days in advance: if your marshal gets stabbed, then players may follow the wrong orders.
Benefits:
This would reduce confusion in the army about which orders are current. This would also make it easier for players to play the marshal position, which is currently very demanding in terms of time commitment.
Possible Exploits:
Possibly used to impact activity levels by using as a jusitifcation for fining players?
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I love this idea. The only problem would be to get players to actually read the damn Standing Orders.
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I love this idea. The only problem would be to get players to actually read the damn Standing Orders.
I think knowing that the orders are current will help with that.
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oh, this is basically the same as: http://bugs.battlemaster.org/view.php?id=4049 (http://bugs.battlemaster.org/view.php?id=4049)
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I hate when people order armies by using the standing orders. I doubt this will change my opinion of this practice.
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I hate when people order armies by using the standing orders. I doubt this will change my opinion of this practice.
What do you think of the practice of armies ordering marshals (through IC complaints or slow movement) to log on right after turn change?
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Ordering marshals to log on immediately following a turn change is a violation of the IR, and should be reported immediately.
It also is irrelevant to this discussion.
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It is not irrelevant as that is one of the key reasons.egamma didn't say they told him out of character but that the rate of movement is terrible if he doesn't and in-character complaints are done. So if he wants to be a good marshall, have an army that doesn't have a ton of stragglers, and actually win wars, he will need to be logging on right after turn change but with delayed standing orders it does not require that making the job possible for more players to do effectively because if you have great strategy and tactics it isn't very useful when half your army follow your orders because orders weren't issued in time. This is a change that will improve the job of marshall a ton so that there isn't only 1 person in a realm that can be marshall because no one else fit for the job can get on in time to give orders early in the turn.
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don't need new thing for that...
a simple standing order of:
monday sunrise
X orders
monday sunset
Y orders
will do.
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(FYI--I am not playing any marshal characters at the moment, but I am a sponsor who is trying to make the life of my marshal easier. I'm on my second one in two weeks, I suspect the first one will autopause any day now.)
Ordering marshals to log on immediately following a turn change is a violation of the IR, and should be reported immediately.
It also is irrelevant to this discussion.
Not talking about an IR violation, but about the "5 minutes a day and at your own time and pace" game design principles, for both marshal and army-members. Just the simple fact that a marshal will lose 10% of his CS for every hour that he delays in sending out orders. Being able to give people a list of orders with a clearly marked time for executing them reduces pressure on army members to log in late in the turn, and reduces pressure on the marshal to log in early in the turn.
Basically, I am trying to make it easier for people to play the marshal position, and improve army cohesiveness. This feature would also help somewhat with the "saxon problem" where a hyperactive realm can defeat a less active realm.
We can talk about how many days out the orders can be set. 4 turns? 8 turns?
don't need new thing for that...
a simple standing order of:
monday sunrise
X orders
monday sunset
Y orders
will do.
True, but as soon as you don't remove the oldest orders, it looks like you're falling down on the job, maybe the orders are no longer correct, etc.
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eh? the whole point is that you have already issued the new sets of orders based on guesses. it's no more correct or wrong than if you've issued a delayed one
sure, delayed SO might seem to look better, but if you think about it, it isn't
also bear in mind that anyone can issue orders. so if a marshal can't be around early enough, then someone else in the decision making group can do it, providing decisions have already been made
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eh? the whole point is that you have already issued the new sets of orders based on guesses. it's no more correct or wrong than if you've issued a delayed one
sure, delayed SO might seem to look better, but if you think about it, it isn't
also bear in mind that anyone can issue orders. so if a marshal can't be around early enough, then someone else in the decision making group can do it, providing decisions have already been made
How many times do you actually see that happen? I've seen people issue orders and get slapped down for it, or I've seen nobody issue orders. Rare is the realm where you have competent people in the right place at the right time issuing the right orders.
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but you are not really issuing orders on your own, you are just picking from a list of what's already been decided.
obviously that can only happen if someone came up with a list in the 1st place.
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fodder, I think you've confused yourself
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eh, no. the whole point is that the marshal or council which would include marshal decided on the orders for the following turn. then whoever is on 1st give them out (drawn from a list of possible scenarios)
anyone can issue orders, whether anyone follow them is another matter. if a marshal and his command group decides on the strategy and tactics, and made that known that's how it would work and no one follows it because it ain't the marshal issuing it in person, then clearly they don't really much care about the marshal anyway and the only reason they might follow him is the threat of fines and what not for not following an "official marshal order". in which case, you've lost already.
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obviously this is not all that related to delayed standing orders. but i've already said why it's not necessary, because it can be done already with existing tools. only issue is one of perception. just because the game flips a "page" for you does not mean that new "page" is any better or newer than if it was all written on the same page. if anything, it gives a misleading impression that it's based on latest intelligence rather than a (possibly educated) guess from the turn before.
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eh, no. the whole point is that the marshal or council which would include marshal decided on the orders for the following turn. then whoever is on 1st give them out (drawn from a list of possible scenarios)
anyone can issue orders, whether anyone follow them is another matter. if a marshal and his command group decides on the strategy and tactics, and made that known that's how it would work and no one follows it because it ain't the marshal issuing it in person, then clearly they don't really much care about the marshal anyway and the only reason they might follow him is the threat of fines and what not for not following an "official marshal order". in which case, you've lost already.
You just said that if troops will only listen to the marshall then they don't care about the marshall which doesn't make sense.
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First of all, I agree in general with fodder in that this suggestion mostly does not do anything that you can't already do. You can already give advanced orders as far ahead as you want, including conditional orders. You don't need the game to flip the page in the Big Book of Orders to do it for you.
This suggestion will not in any way reduce the need for checking the situation early in the turn, nor remove the advantage that a realm will have from having a "hyperactive" marshal. If you try to do any serious war planning on cruise control like this, you *will* lead your army into disaster. Yes, it might be useful for coordinating a general cross-country move, or the arrival time for a mutlti-turn move. But if you try to manage an attack three or four days ahead of time without constant checking of reports, revision of the schedule, and live confirmation of the orders, then you deserve your inevitable defeat.
But none of those really addresses my main objection to running an army with standing orders. And that's that they don't actually give you a message! I want a message in my inbox that says "attack now!" I want to know that someone laid eyeballs on the reports, assessed the situation, and decided that the situation warranted an attack. I want to be able to look back in my messages and see when an order was given, and see a history of orders. I want to know how old that standing order actually is. I want standing orders to not be 47 lines long, making me scroll through 2 screens of crap to read my messages.
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But if you try to manage an attack three or four days ahead of time without constant checking of reports, revision of the schedule, and live confirmation of the orders, then you deserve your inevitable defeat.
Ahem but that's talking about the activity and pace you play which is an IR and you just said all marshalls must check messages and respond to messages constantly or they deserve to lose so thats saying that the IR violation of people telling the marshalls to be on at the beginning of turns is wrong if you want to win but the IR violation of people telling you have to be on constantly as marshall if you want to win is ok which is why the delayed standing orders are wanted. If all goes as planned you keep the delayed orders as is but if the situation changes you change your plan, and delayed standing orders. I think a request that should go with this is standing orders be delivered as a message whenever changed and that when they were last updated being added to it too.
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You just said that if troops will only listen to the marshall then they don't care about the marshall which doesn't make sense.
it makes sense in that they are not really listening to the marshal. they are listening out for the big stick the judge wields.
ie. going through the motions.
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So because someone listens to those in charge and not just anyone who bosses you around they don't care about authority but worry about punishment from those having authority. Again not making much sense as you generalize everyone in something to broad. If it was decided that someone otherthen the marshall is allowed to issue orders when the marshall can not I see no reason the judge wouldn't fine you for not listening to the other the person that was decided to give orders if the judge is willing to fine you for not listening to the marshall so once more your logic is invalid.
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Request rejected, thanks all for the input, the discussion is now venturing off-topic, so I'll close it.