Hi All,

As promised in the other change, there's going to be a logout bonus change, going into effect as of rounds starting in June (including Alliance/FFA).


Currently, as you probably know, you get 3 turns for 12h out, and 6 turns for 18h out; they are queued on turns being given, and you *don't* get them if you login before.


The *new* system, you *will* still get them if you login before. You will even get them if you never logout.

The new system will ALSO use 12h and 18h as the bonuses, ***EXCEPT FOR EXPRESS*** which will now get them at 4h and 6h, in the same manner.

The way it works is thus (in pseudocode first, examples after):

IF(country gains a turn)
{
       bonus_to_give = 0
        IF(logout_timer_12 WAS SET more than 12 hours ago)
        {
                bonus_to_give = bonus_to_give + 3
                SET logout_timer_12
        }
        if(logout_timer_18 WAS SET more than 18 hours ago){
                bonus_to_give = bonus_to_give + 3
                SET logout_timer_12
                SET logout_timer_18
        }
}

Example:

Play turns at midnight. (no bonus)
Country play 18 hours later (gets 6 turns from 12h & 18h bonus)
Country plays 4 hours after that (gets no turns)
Country plays 8 hours after that (gets 3 turns from 12h bonus)
Country plays 6 hours after that (gets 3 turns from 18h bonus)
Country plays 8 hours after that (gets no turns)
Country plays 10 hours after that (gets 6 turns from 12h & 18h bonus)
Country plays 72 hours after that (gets 6 turns from 12h & 18h bonus)
Country plays every 2 hours for 24 hours, gets 3 turns at 12h and 3 turns at 18h.


Thus, if you play every day, you should get 6 turns bonus per day, on average; you don't have to wait for the 18h mark, you can play at 16h and then 2h later at 18h to get your bonuses.

Technically, if you play every 6 hours all set, you end up with an average of 8 turns per day, over a 72h cycle. However you'll have a smaller PM &etc; if there ends up being any sorts of abuse with this we can always tweak stuff, but I don't anticipate anything too extreme.

This may be a bit confusing at first, but I encourage you to read the example above, and the pseudocode, and it should all make sense ;)


The intent of this is mainly to stop punishing people for logging in. We would rather people be more active than less. I have personally found myself not playing in a day because I wanted to wait for the 18h bonus, but then got busy and forgot to play for the day. This, I think, is not the best user experience, so hopefully these changes will allow people to play whenever they want, AND encourage them to login later *additionally* =D

It also may give a slight bonus to market driven strats, as you can login to sell without fear of losing your bonuses.


Regards,

- qzjul & the EE Dev Team