So, in my time playing Warlight I have pissed off a couple of people because I booted them. Most recently someone named BOSTONFRED who then created a game called (fast...ps dont play with sturn he's a booter). Ok now first I would like to say that BOSTONFRED is very immature for this childish behavior. Second I would like to say that he is not the first person to get booted in a game I have played. I will give him credit...the game we were playing he did very well but I did have the advantage in income and he could not attack any of my countries that were bringing in men. Also he had nowhere to expand from his current location. Anyway...that is not the reason for this post.

If someone creates a game with a boot limit...they are entitled to boot any player who does not adhere to that RULE of the game. It's just like in the game of chess....if you are playing a chess game with a 3 min boot and you take 4 minutes to take your turn...YOU LOSE!!! There have been plenty of games where I did not make my turn in the time limit due to whatever reason and I was booted. Does it suck...yes...did i know the rules....yes...in turn did I cry about it or complain...NO!

The reason I create 3 min boot games are as follows:

1.) You cannot just watch what is happening, think about your turn, plan carefully, rethink it, redo your plan, ect. Once you get into around turn 10 where the game gets good you have to make a decision and stick by it. If i do that and make my decision in 2 minutes...and my opponit has 5 to contemplate everything...thats an unfair advantage.

2.) I have played 5 min boot games where the other player takes literally 5 min per game. I do not have an hour to play a single game.

So if you ever play me in a game where there is a set boot time...and you get booted...Please dont go out and cry about it. Seriously...guys this is a game...if you dont like the rules of the game...dont sign up to play it.

http://www.warlight.net/App.aspx?GameID=1042367

We had an interesting game going. Your post seems to show that you agree. Apparently your goal is to increase your win count, and not actually to play the game. I believe you have that backwards. Your defense is pretty much exactly what I would have said if I wanted to explain why I was warning people from playing with you. I'm sure that there are people who agree with your style of play and I wish you well in finding them. I just hope you choose not to play with me in the future.

For what it's worth, I don't think booting is wrong. It's sometimes necessary to counter people who deliberately use their max time again and again once they start to lose. Here is an example of an acceptable use of booting:

http://www.warlight.net/App.aspx?GameID=1042404

My opponent created the game, set the time limit for five minutes, and played quickly. Then, once I had taken out all of his bonuses and I had huge armies all around him, he stopped playing. Not only was it his first timeout, he had never taken more than a minute or two per turn. So I asked him in the chat window if he wanted to play another. I told him I wasn't going to instaboot at 5 minutes but please let me know if you need time. I politely explained how to surrender. Then I left him a message letting him know I'd eventually boot him if he didn't show back up. After well over ten minutes, I finally booted him, but I wouldn't even have done that if the game were still in doubt.

That's how I believe the boot function should be used. I'm sure there are people who agree with you and think that your way is best. I would hope that you would make your intentions clear to them so you don't waste their time. Maybe use the name, or the description field, or a chat, or really anything would be more honorable than sitting their with your mouse on the button waiting for it to be clickable.

Boston please dont ask me to not play with you in the future...YOU JOINED MY GAME WITH MY RULES!!!

lol

Seeing these posts make me want to advocate for a chess clock option again. For those people like Sturn who only have an hour (or 40 minutes) to play a game, it would allow them to know that the game will never exceed that amount of time. Each player would have 30 minutes (or 20) to play all of their turns and if the clock runs out on either player before the game is won they immediately lose. No booting, no polite requests in the chat. The clock becomes a big factor in shorter games and everyone is happy.

If you take too long (or the game drags on), the startegy of playing as fast as possible and hoping the other player's clock runs out before yours becomes a last ditch option. this happens in chess tournaments all the time. It can add soem drama and excitement to a game that's become tilted toward one player (especially if they took their time in order to gain that advantage).

Randy -- would this be hard to execute?

I don't join 5 minute games since I'd get booted for sure, and I respect the fact that here are some players that actually do care about game pace (as incomprehensible as I personally find that to be) so I don't intrude on their turf. Mostly it's default boot setting games where I get mad about being booted, especially like in http://www.WarLight.net/App.aspx?GameID=1023833 where I even said I would be unable to take my turn for the weekend and still got booted.

IMO the answer is just getting the configurability down right in the game settings, and hopefully making it so that boots are automated instead of being done by the players - do that second thing and all of these debates and flamefests will stop instantly.

im actually a chess veteran or whatever the fuck you call people who are good at chess and some chess tournaments do it differantly. instead of say an hour for a game, they do 50 minutes per a game and an additional minute per move (or whatever numbers). this insures that if you cant estimate how long the game will play, even at the end youll still have a minute per move. its an interesting idea but a lot of times i prefer playing instead of booting. i just wish they had a mercy rule that if say i have over triple your income and its past move 10 in head to head, i auto win since it kills me when it takes an hour to beat someone who is getting creamed but takes the full time in order for me to leave so he can boot me.

Some players (ahem, cough, Douchibag) like to run for the furthest points on the board as soon as you have an insurmountable lead so you have to take every territory to finish the game. It's a bit annoying, but he doesn't slow play, so it's only another 15-20 minutes.

Much worse are poor loser type players who stop playing altogether, don't surrender and make you boot them to win. I've only encountered a few of those.

The +1 minute per move makes sense but you'd need to use an electronic clock. I'm used to the old fashioned chess clocks with the little red lever that drops when time runs out. Obviously on WL it could be +[__] minutes per completed turn to reward fast play. So game time = 10 minutes + 2 minutes per completed turn. Also since both clocks count down at the same time at the start of each turn, the games woudl presumably go a lot faster than the total time allotted to both players.