what time compression? Play at 1x!
That's a serious problem though - speeding through the game at 2048x simply because watching the waves got boring half an hour ago might cause a time paradox with the player who is in the same area, going at 1x and evading a destroyer.
Even though it's a simulation, people mostly care for the actual action (even the hardcore) - actual convoy encounters (and searching for convoys as well, but transit and the like are just boring).
Best from my point of view, would be to have a "tactical phase", where you plan your course, and where the game interrupts only in case of an event.
Perhaps tracking a player's position (in the form of map coordinates) at any given time and dropping to 1x and alerting whenever a contact report is sent from another boat within "striking range" would be cool. That may seem like gibberish, so an example is in order:
player A is doing a patroll, automatically jumping through all the uneventful stuff, dropping to 1x time comp. in case of "events" such as a convoy, plane etc.
One such event, the player sends a contact report to BDU, while in the AN47 grid. At the time the report is sent (server time), another boat is in the same grid, so Player B's game is interrupted by the time compression dropping to 1x and orders from the BdU to intercept said convoy (assuming he is not playing at 1x already, and unable to recieve the message - i've heard splashes above put radio messages out of your head for a while). This would encourage players to act like a captain would, knowing it has some meaning to report contacts, other than a "good job" message from BdU. That another boat might be there to assist.
Now THAT - that's a service which would justify the connection required, as long as you could turn it off (and transmiting longitude and lattitude ONLY, should not strain your connection too much). As long, of course, as it an be disabled and the game played offline.
|