This is only a first installment. Basics should work, but it's a bit unpolished...

interesting idea Oli, hopefully it will cut back on the "CD's because of vacation" and such...

Countries given away (BETA, use at your own rist)

lol

But this Idea is awesome.... I like it.

Brilliant Idea, Much safer then the password switching. Makes Sitting a much easier thing now for sure. No logging out to log in as another. I have never actually sit for someone but have came close. I was always thinking how difficult it was going to be to log off and back on. Keeping track of two different accounts. Not missing any phases myself while trying to take care of another account. This is a much easier way. Thank you Oli.

Great idea! I agree with all the others said. And all 6 look well-conceived.
Some questions:

1 - How does point 3 work? IE: How do I, into practice, claim back a Country?

2 - Anonymous game: what happens if I try to send a Country to a user who's already in that game? Since I don't know who's in that game. And I must not know. And nobody must know I'm in it, especially who's already in.

3 - If I accept, does this ever count as a "Take Over" balancing my CDs in order to recover my RR?

1. There is a button in the Send-Countries overview. You click it, you have the country back
2. It does not allow this, (so you know the user is in this game), but as the request is not send nobody else. (It's not ideal, but I didn't know a better way to handle such a thing)
3. No.

1. Fantastic!
2. Ok, this solves half problem, but there's still a very dangerous issue. I'm sending you a PM. Maybe I got an ugly solution that could work.
3. Perfect. :)

btw, I rarely open my setting page. Do you get some sort of notification if someone sends you a game? like for PMs? Or, better, an automatic message in your "Notices" panel?

Someone's thinking! Nice work.

I think you should never just send a Switch-Request without messaging the player you give the country too first. Why should some random stranger take your account?
What should he do if you don't tell him some basic strategy first?

>>>I think you should never just send a Switch-Request without messaging the player you give the country too first.

***Hm, can you swear nobody will ever do it? :-)
Or simply: sometimes you believe you've just sent a PM but you didn't notice the error message "Seems you are sending the same messages again" or something. It happens often, to me. Bet it will happen again?
Well, notification doesn't keep you from messaging the player you give the country. You'd be still totally free to do it, if you want. I look at notification as a useful tool to avoid misunderstandings like "Oh, sorry...I forgot to check my setting page" or something.

>>>Why should some random stranger take your account?

*** When did I say this?!? But wait: let's think about it for a minute.

You know, this is what is happening now. Everyday we see threads like "Sitter needed! Someone please help!". Or no?
And you give your password to the sitter! you're totally in his hands! He can do anything he likes with your account... send flames messages... join ugly expensive games! CD all your games totally screwing your RR... Anything!
Until now.

From now on, instead, you give him only a game. If he misses a phase, this will go in his stats. If he CDs, it will go in his stats. The only thing you risk is to lose some points if he plays badly and/or until the end. But this looks a minor issue compared with the current ones.

So I'm not saying you should entrust your game (NOT your account) to a stranger. But since we did it until yesterday, I see nothing wrong going on like this. The only thing I'd care would be his RR: I'd rather entrust my games to a stranger who played at least 40 games and got RR=99% than to a beloved friend who got a "C" :-)

I'd entrust my game to a reliable stranger!

>>>What should he do if you don't tell him some basic strategy first?
As I already said, I don't want to forbid messages, I'd just like there would be a notification .
But since you asked, I will tell you my experience.
I sitted 3 times in my life. Two times, my friend didn't say a heck of anything to me. I had to read all message-history to know what was going on.
Third time he scribbled half a page of bullshits wandering about his strategy. I had to read all message-history to know what was going on! - LOL

Yes, useful messages exist: "I'm planning to stab france, next autumn should be the right time".
...but the final decision is up to who's actually playing, if he's a good player, he'll read the press and will make a good decision.

Also, the other players in the game will notice one player has changed (right? If no, it should be), so the trust-relationships may change, into the game, and a good sitter should not blindly go on with the instructions the sitted gave him.

Recap:
- if the sitter is worse than you, he probably won't fully understand what you're saying in your "basic strategy" message. He may think you're crazy;
- if the sitter is better than you, he'll probably think you're really a noob, reading your "basic strategy" message, he may be LOLing at you for some minutes, and ROFLing after he read the messages archive!;
- if you're equal, some word may be useful, or maybe not.

My advice is to not waste too much time, typing.

LOL "My advice is to not waste too much time, typing." at the end of that post is rather funny...

I don't want an automation on this.
You should agree on an take-over bevore you send thec ountry to another player. So the discussion about the take-over happens bevore the actual change-request.
This tool s just so ease the transfer and to distribute the game to more than one player. If I see many different requests on one game I suspect a metagaming issue.

Ideally you search for a player that takes one or two games, you send him a request, he accepts, and you get the game back later. Sending a request to some stranger is not the way this should work.

Happy to know you keep an eye on possible abuses, Oli.

However, when my friends are already overloaded, or on vacation, or some of them got a bad RR, then I open a "Help me!" thread and I pick up the first good stranger willing to help me.

This seems to be for permanent transfers, not "sitter" situations anyway. Item #5, would give all the points to the "sitter" even if the game is returned to the original player.

@Guaroz: Sure. You send the game to him, and he knows that he should check his settings, because he offered to help. To be sure just send him a PM too. But you do not send your game to a random User in the hope he will take your game.

@Devonian: IMHO 100% of the games will switch back after they ended. If the replacement-player gets defeated he will send the game back to get a better record, if he does well the returning player will claim his game back to get a better record.

Ops I'm confused now...I'm sure it should happen as you just said Oli, but, re-reading item #5 the sender will lose his points anyway:
5. If the game ends the receiving player get all the points won from this game (even if the country gets switched back later) and the sending player lost the points.
So some sender could claim back his game just for fun, while some other would not bother to claim it back, since he has nothing to win there...
Looks like Devonian made a good point.

And no, I would not send my game to a random user of course, but I could mistake the user ID, press "Submit", don't notice the mistake, and leave for my 2 weeks trip 10 minutes later. Without notification it is a sure CD. With notification, the receiving player would at least notice someone has sent him a game, PM the sender: "What the hell did you send me?" and if he gets no reply, even decide to play it. Looks better than a sure CD.
But this is just an emergance tool and mistakes would happen very rarely. So if coding an automatic message is a long thing to do, I understand it's not worth the job.

It's not about the points, but the stats in your profile.
If the games do not return because of the players I'll add an automation on this.
You see in yout settings page if you send the request to the right player. If you don't check this I can't help. By principe I'm against a notification PM; as it adds to many aiutomation on this and I don't want the people to give away their country too easy.

Re. Points. I might change this in the future. This works at the moment with a minimal change of the original webdip-code andI like to keep my changes very minor, so I can integrate changes from the webdip-site more easy here...

>If you don't check this I can't help.
*Nobody checks his setting page! You only check it if the sender sent you a PM (as it should be) before sending you the game. If... there's no mistake.

>By principe I'm against a notification PM; as it adds to many aiutomation on this and I don't want the people to give away their country too easy.
*If I got a notification without a PM from the sender, I wouldn't accept the game, I'd PM the sender asking for clarifications. Wouldn't you do the same? So "give away the country" wouldn't be easy at all.
However, you don't like automatic messages. Ok. It is not that important, because it would be useful maybe twice a year: this is just an emergance tool and mistakes would happen very rarely.

What would be useful everyday, and even indispensable in gunboats, it's the automatic message from Gamemaster to Global as someone votes Pauses or Extends. It's essential, but...alas! :(

It's next on my toDo list and likely to get add today.. :-)

as usual, Oli, you're fantastic!

It seems to me that the game should not be able to change after a game is complete. If I agree to take over a game and I win I should be able to keep that Stat. Likewise if I lose, I shouldn't have the option to assign the loss to the original player.

I guess the purpose of the assignment is important. If it is for "sittter " situations vs permenant replacement, the assignment of points and stats would be different.

The tool is meant only for "sittter" situations. Anything else could cause a lot of abuse and metagaming issues. (Ideally this would revert back automatically if a game ends), but I try not to change too much original code....

Ok, then it makes sense. Although, having the points go to the sitter regardless of the duration, will limit its use, I think. (which is not necessarily a bad thing)

One concern though... Could players use this as a way to transfer points between each other?

Hi Oli, In threadID=26507 Devonian's concern about points' transfers is right: they could.

The thing is not as concerning as for 2 or 3 players Maps, in which you can't bet more than 1 , because otherwise you could tranfer as many points as you like in 3 minutes.
It's not that concerning because to transfer points you should first play the game and be sure you won't be defeated. Also you can't choose how many points you will transfer.

But it could happen that player A says:
"Hi player B! You asked me for points some time ago. Now in gameID=0000 it's the last autumn because France is going to win, and I will survive with 9-10 SCs that is to say 27 or 30 . If you want them, I'll send you the game."

So Player A could transfer 27 to player B within a phase length. A day or less.

For this reason I believe that points at the end of the game should go to the original player... always (as it happens now in a sitting situation).
The stats (win, drawn etc..) should go, if doable, to the player who was playing the game as the game ended.
The claim/send back options are good as they are now. I wouldn't change this aspect.

Thoughts?

PS. I PMed you because I didn't want to teach on the forum "How to cheat" :)

This is a good point.
I think it might not that much of a problem to put the points back to the original player after the game ends...

Oli;
I think I've found a very serious glitch with this.
I gave a game to someone yesterday - I went to have a look at it today and I found I could take over a CDing country. To test whether it worked, I took over a one-centre doomed power, and I was able to. This means if I claim back my game I will be in control of two countries.
I think this needs fixing ASAP, as it could be used in the same way as metagaming.

Oh. Right. Good point. This should not happen.
Makes the code a bit more complex than I hoped to, but this needs to be adressed asap.

I'm going to test what happens if you reclaim a country under these circumstances - I hope it doesn't glitch up the game...

It's fixed now....
You can't join/create new games if you have active switches...