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Originally Posted by U-Bones
The immediate problem for that idea is the boredom introduced by the lack of time compression.
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Hmmm...yeah, I suppose that's true. FORCED 1x careers could be...tedious.
The solution, of course, would be to do something many MMOs are leaning towards - 'Instancing'. Each war patrol acts as an 'instanced dungeon' (for lack of a better word).
IE., when in or around the port area, everyone forced to be "at 1x compression" isn't a problem - you will be, anyway. Ditto when bidding on upgrades or whatever - whoever is in port participates in that interactively.
When the career starts, though, the sub skippers are free to engage in time compression at their discretion. Whoever is in a certain area of a convoy at a certain time get collectively dropped into an 'instanced' attack on that convoy, at 1x compression again (everyone on the same page).
As an alternative, you could force wolfpack activity, and make each entire patrol out from port as an 'instance' for the wolfpack. IE., a group of 6 or 12 submarines are all in communication with each other, and set time compression collectively. When they hit a convoy, they all work together to beat it. This is much more the traditional "all instanced" type of MMO, like "Guild Wars" (which has no monthly fee). The towns and such in that game are open to all players, but once each group leaves the common area, they are all in their own instanced version of the world.
Anyway, in either case, to keep the upgrade cycle even across multitudes of different time compressions, you'd have to assume a base 'average' TC as a clock that cycle each week. Say, 30 day patrols in 1 week IRL. So, every Friday or Saturday, all subs would have to have their 30 day patrol done (done at whichever TC they used, engagements they chose, etc - they decide during the week how they want to spend that time - although the key of this "clock cycle" idea is that you cannot do MORE than 30 days in a single week), and return to port to bid on crews, upgrades, new boats, etc with the renown they earned.