Terraforming-mars: Pass Generation with 2nd Action

[VanderLeal]

Playing a game among friends in different time-zones showed a bit harder specially when waiting 8hs for someone to wake up just to pass the generation, and they knew this would be the case from the previous interaction...

My suggestion is:
Every time you are on your second action, besides the current blue button (that confirms what you're about to do) you get an extra button to "do the action and pass generation" after that.

In this condition, a second button with a clearly different color (let's say "red button" to contrast the current blue button) that says " and pass generation".
By pressing this extra button a confirmation "Are you sure you want to pass the generation after this action?" would confirm it was intentional. This way the game might flow faster with less unrequired interactions from "people just confirming they have nothing else to do". Anyway, it leaves the current mode available letting the player decided the "dramatic effect" is valuable and he wants to do that.

Best regards,
Vander Leal

[bafolts]

Would this progress the game only to then be waiting at another action for 8 hours for someone to wake up? At some point the game can not progress until that player takes an action. The game would progress to the next research phase and then be stuck until the sleeping player provided their research. In most situations I would think it is always possible to at least sell patents on a turn. My personal opinion is that this could cause more confusion than value as it is another option a user has to look through when selecting options. Would be curious to see how others feel.

[kevinb9n]

We should compare and contrast this with the existing "pre-pass" option.

After taking one action the game offers the choice of "end turn" vs. "pass this generation", a distinction that does not exist in the game mechanics. What this option really says is "end turn, forgoing my second action, and on my next turn, pass". (As implemented, it even tells the other players this information, so the player must weigh saving roundtrips vs. revealing unnecessary information.)

It at least makes logical sense that this would be supported or not independently of whether you happened to take 1 or 2 actions on your turn. The difference, of course, is only that after a single action the game is still waiting for you to make a choice anyway. We would not want to force an extra step after 2 actions. But this seems to be a small difference.

One solution is as described above - distinguish between "commit second action and stay in" vs. "commit second action and on next turn pass". It seems to me like the arguments for/against doing this should be mostly similar to the arguments for/against the existing pre-pass support, up to the problems with interface awkwardness.

OR, an alternative that would address this, and the existing pre-pass support, AND several additional use cases as well:

Allow any player who is not on turn to toggle in and out of the "auto-pass on my next turn" state. That information could come in from any player at any time, and ideally should not be recorded as an actual game event or reported to other players until the auto-passing player's next turn occurs. (Saint Petersburg on boardgamearena works in this way, and it works well.)

[VanderLeal]

Hi Bafolts,
I agree there are many other things people can do...
The sleeping person thing was circunstancial, not the main point...
Point was only to give the user, knowing he has nothing else to do, to pass the generation with the second action instead waiting all the way to get back to himself just to pass, and give the option to "pre-pass" if he chooses to. You would still have to choose to do that, otherwise you just click the action button, life goes on as it happens now.

KevinB9, the current button will still be there...
No one would be forced to do any extra action...
They are just given the option to pre-pass if they want to.

[kevinb9n]

Not sure why the last paragraph is directed at me? If it seemed that I misunderstood any of this, then I think my comment may have been misread?

[VanderLeal]

I was considering your comment "We would not want to force an extra step after 2 actions."

[MentexFraga]

I would very much like to have the option to do "second action with pre pass" OR the alternative kevinb9n presented (allowing us to assign 'pass genration' meanwhile others players' turn.

I agree with bafolts that we can always at least sell some patents. But, this is not the case. When we have any doubts about doing or not doing anything more in the generation, we don't want to pre-pass the generation. We only want to use this option when we are sure that we have nothgin else to do after the 2 actions and we MUST wait for all the other players just to click "pass generation"

As I said, the alternative presented by kevinb9n is also great, although I think it could be a bit more dificult to develop (to allow other players to do things "out of their turns")... but no doubt to me his solution is more user friendly (can be done anytime) and intuitive (sometimes we only notice we have nothing else to do after playing).

[kevinb9n]

I was considering your comment "We would not want to force an extra step after 2 actions."

I see - if it was not clear, I was saying it in agreement with you.

[kevinb9n]

From discord

––––
I wanted to suggest something that might help speed up the game:
the ability to "pass" when you are not active anymore
Sometimes I want to do 2 actions and pass but still have to wait for a whole round to come back to me. this would be a nice QOL feature
poker has this mostly, a checkbox that folds when it is your turn
––––

I also still think I like the out-of-band toggle. I suggest a toggle (both directions) because you shouldn't need an "are you sure" step then. Hurdles:

• There doesn't seem to be any precedent in the UI design for something consequential that you can do out-of-turn, so we'd have to think about what that looks like and where it goes
• It creates a race condition. Sometimes, a player will toggle OUT of autopass, but the information didn't get to the server in time. The cookies, they are at times tough.