Order receipt, just FYI

[Cipher]

This may or may not be interesting to anyone, but the consistency has struck me, so I figured I'd post on it.

We've had a couple of changes to when the turns get processed.

However, the following have held true throughout:
1. Less than 50% of orders are in prior to the actual due date.
- regardless of whether the turn was scheduled for noon, 2p or 10p
- regardless of how many days existed between due dates (2.5, 4, 6)
2. It is VERY rare that more than 75% of orders are in place less than 60-90 minutes from the processing deadline.

There have been a couple of occassions, only a couple, where all orders are in more than an hour prior to the deadline and I believe the turns have been run a smidge early in both cases.

I'm not going anywhere with this, just relaying an observation...

[Ry Vor]

The points to take away are that if all orders are in early, the turn may be run early. This would be particularly true for the once weekly games - if everyone has their orders in a day or two early, Cipher would likely run the turn a day or two before the deadline. Meanwhile, remember the deadline is the deadline, meaning if you submit your turn 10 minutes after noon, you may well have missed the turn - don't let that happen to you.

The corollary there is once your orders are in, they may be run. Don't assume you have until the deadline to make revisions. Generally, just submit your orders when you are satisfied with your commands.

On a different topic, we are still trying to drive our web based order input over the goal line. We have also started a somewhat related project, that of developing an order-checking utility for our players.

Cipher and I are discussing a handful of changes to our existing Classic, Warlords and Titans formats. These would be things brought up before, changes to sea power, and to a couple spells like Chaos, Invisibility, Wall of Flame. Also just clarifying some of the rules, such as for Counter-Espionage. The theme of the changes is to increase fun mainly by eliminating or restricting a few devastating moves for which there is no simple way for the victim to foresee.

Then we'd like to turn our attention to The 3rd Cycle of Steel. This will have some fairly significant changes, including lots of new starting positions for kingdoms, new mercenary types, tactics, spells, possibly a couple new kingdoms. I'm looking forward to getting going on that! Classic and other current formats will continue to run.