Nov 15th 2012, 23:52:10
I actually thought about something along these same lines the other night. And its for the same reason, trying to get those 12 or 18 hour bonuses without leaving large stocks of cash sitting idle until I can log back in. If you sell off whatever unit you are producing in less than 12 or 18 hours, your are usually stuck with a large wad of cash and no way to put that towards anything until you actually log in to spend it or place some SO's.
Two things I came up with are:
1) Spread out the bonus turns in 1 turn intervals. Currently you get 3 turns for 12 hours, so spreading that out would be 1 turn every 4 hours. I am assuming the reason for this bonus turn system is to keep the servers from being overloaded due to everyone playing at the same time? Offering turns in exchange for not staying logged in all the time and hogging server resources? I don't exactly know how much more server traffic spreading the bonus turns out would create, or if server load is even an issue. But it would get rid of making people wait 12 hours before they could log in and spend their cash if they still wanted to get the bonus turns. A 4 hour time period doesn't seem too bad of a wait IMO. This would also allow people to play at times that are more convenient to their schedules while still receiving most of the bonus turns. My schedule is not the same each day, so waiting 12-24 hours and playing my turns at the same time each day doesn't work for me. Which is a bummer because I have to either sacrifice the bonus turns to log in early at a convenient time, or log in hours after the bonus turns would be given, at a less convenient time.
2) What if you were able to mark certain SO's not expire if you didn't have the cash available? Wouldn't this accomplish the same thing? You place the SO you want for the specified quantity, and then the SO tries to get those goods until the quantity specified is purchased, or the SO is canceled. This would allow a SO to remain open even if the country didn't have the funds at the time to complete the SO, but the country was expecting funds at a later time and still wanted the SO available until such time. One problem I see is the continual loop of a country trying to fulfill the SO even though it doesn't have the funds. Some kind of timer or way to prevent the SO from continually trying to purchase the goods without funds would need to be put in place I think.