Is there a way to take people from outside the US in consideration when determing the end-time of a reset?
Like in Express, we're missing out a lot of turns because the reset end at 2am, on a monday night, West-European time.
I don't think a lot of players can justify staying up that long for a game when they have to get up early for work, school, etc...

Maybe determine the end randomly at the beginning of the reset so it aren't always the same that have the disadvantage?
Or find a day or time that fits more than just one continent? Why not end somewhere between Friday @midnight and Sunday@noon?

I realise most players are from the US, but if the game grows, sooner or later one will have to consider this, I guess.

we used GMT because it was easy, unix time ftw; heh earth used to use Central time, which was inconvenient for everybody in the east coast US i think...

I know you just can't do good for everyone if it comes to time of day, but ending a set during the week is worse than in the weekend.
An end of set on saturdaynight (keeping the same time) should possibly give everyone the opportunity to be online.

all sets to be end weekend but still at least 30-90 days sets and express full week saturday/sunday to sat/sun.

(alliance) sets are 60 days long

the break between them is adjusted between i think 1 and 3 days to try to push the start of the set to the beginning of the month

Does it actually matters when a set starts? Even if it's in the middle of the night, you'll have to wait for turns to do something anyway. Be honest, what can you do in the first hours of the set? The earliest, people can even get OOP in alliance is after 31hours. People run startups/their country at a time that's good for them.

Only maybe the 12/18h bonus turns can matter. It depends if the counting starts from the first login after the start of the set or the actually start of the set itself.
Then again, is their one person on any server that's capable of login exactly after every 12/18h of the entire set? I've tried it once on Swirve and I must say it demands a LOT of effort and compensating when you have a family.

I don't think it's really important for anyone when the set actually start. Most will agree that it's better to be able to play till the end of the set.

Ending in the weekend gives the majority of people at least the chance of being there, even if it's in the middle of the night. During the week this just isn't an option if you have to get up for work at 6am.

The break between sets would be exactly the same as it is now, but the focus would be on the set-ending instead of the set-start.
Another option would be making the length of the set variable like ending on the first or last saturday of the month and starting again on the next sunday or monday. Breaks between sets would be minimised that way and everyone would be happy. :P

No, that's not the point, the point is to synchronize it with the months so that people can more easily judge how much time there is in the reset.

The number of turns in a reset should be held constant, so that one reset can be compared to another; a reset that's two days longer always has higher nw finishes for example (unless there's a server war or something).

Finishing on the weekend would necessitate making reset lengths a multiple of 7 minus the break time between two resets; while possible, this would involve the resets revolving around the year, and not synchronous with the months.

I think it's just easier to understand this way; alliance is approximately 2 months long starting and ending at the beginning/end of a month

at mehul's time sets started many time at december and ended at end of january.

it wasn't nice to get fs'd at eve of xmas.

yea, but it's better to have the mid set over xmas than to have two sets ruined if you go on xmas holidays because of a set starting on new years...

i do agree that the set end time should be, maybe not random, but on some form of rota basis. maybe between 00:00/06:00/12:00/18:00 so that the advantage of being able to use the last turns doesn't always fall on the same people.

I couldn't care less what time the set started on.

So you're saying people find it easier to judge when it can end on any day during the last week rather than for example always ending on a first saturday of the month???

Why would the length of the reset (in turns) have to change? I'm starting to think we're on a different path here. Now the starting day is always in the first week of a month, making the endingdate somewhere (startdate + x*30 days later) during the week. What I'm suggesting is adjusting the startdate so the end of the reset falls in the weekend, but keeping the same length of the reset. (startdate = enddate - x*30 days)
BTW: in FFA Set Jan-Mar: 61 days; set Mar-May : 62 days; current set: May-Jul: 59 days...

Let me point you at something easier : When you start the 60-day set at the first wednesday after a reset ends, you (nearly) always end at the first saturday of the month 2 months later, apart from a few exceptions (like when the month February is involved, but you have the same problem now).
The 30-day sets in team and Tourny are more difficult (read impossible to schedule to always end on a weekend).

btw, sorry for the long posts.
edit: because of typo's

Say it's the 17th of the first month; how many days left are there approximately? well you'll know it's got to be about 43....

these things are useful....



So if we kept 60 day resets, we'd need a period of 63 days to be compatible with the week... so 3 days of break between each reset, and it would start on a tuesday or wednesday and end on a saturday or sunday... and it would necessarily advance through the month, so it wouldn't stay the first week, it would rotate through the months; we'd end up with about 12 days less of game play per year...


I just don't see finishing on the weekend a big deal; those last couple turns aren't *that* important for most people anyway =/