Should social birds count as a new turn for the timer?

[infamouswhiteknight]

I recently noticed that some birds (e.g. a humming bird) give players a full turn worth of time when they activate.
E.g. in fast mode you get +0:38 per turn, but a "turn" is not defined the way I expect, and activating a humming bird counts as a new turn and gives players +0:38 to their time (on top of the +0:38 they got at the start of their turn).
Are other people aware of this? Is it expected behavior? Am I missing something?

[Cos-]

I recently noticed that some birds (e.g. a humming bird) give players a full turn worth of time when they activate.
E.g. in fast mode you get +0:38 per turn, but a "turn" is not defined the way I expect, and activating a humming bird counts as a new turn and gives players +0:38 to their time (on top of the +0:38 they got at the start of their turn).
Are other people aware of this? Is it expected behavior? Am I missing something?

That's just how BGA works. Whenever it's someone's "turn" to take whatever action, they get the thinking time allotted. It may or may not correspond to what a particular game calls a "turn" - lots of different games have very different structures, they don't all have discrete complete turns. It would be really weird and complicated to try to make this work any other way. It's simply, your move now, you get the time.

[infamouswhiteknight]

Fair point about that being how BGA works, and maybe there's no good way around it.

But in the game description, when it says you get +0:38 per turn, I think it's very clear that the intended interpretation is that you get an additional 38 seconds for each "turn of wingspan", not for each "turn of BGA".

This may not matter most of the time, but on rare occasion I've played against very slow playing players, and have been wondering why the game took way longer than expected. It can be frustrating having a game expected to take 30 minutes actually take 45 even though you yourself only used 10.

Looking back, I realized the player was getting and using +0:38 seconds per action more than per turn (neither is a perfect description, but action seems more correct). I feel like this is a bad implementation, but maybe that's just me.

Looking for other opinions!

[Jellby]

But in the game description, when it says you get +0:38 per turn, I think it's very clear that the intended interpretation is that you get an additional 38 seconds for each "turn of wingspan", not for each "turn of BGA".

Given that there are more than 1000 games in BGA, each one with its own mechanics and definition of what is a "turn" (or "round", or "epoch" or "action"...), I'd assume the intended interpretation is for each "turn of BGA", whatever that ends up being in the game in question.

[Cos-]

But in the game description, when it says you get +0:38 per turn, I think it's very clear that the intended interpretation is that you get an additional 38 seconds for each "turn of wingspan", not for each "turn of BGA".

That's not in the "game description" - it's not anything describing a specific game. That's in the description of the "game speed" under "table configuration". I think it's pretty clear that it's a BGA setting, not a game-specific setting, and I think it's reasonably clear that it's meant as a BGA-wide kind of setting that isn't necessarily altered for the mechanics of specific games. I don't see how it could possibly seem "very clear" that it's somehow intended to mean a "turn of wingspan", personally.

Looking back, I realized the player was getting and using +0:38 seconds per action more than per turn (neither is a perfect description, but action seems more correct). I feel like this is a bad implementation, but maybe that's just me.

it's not ideal for some games, but what do you think would be a better way of doing it? If you can explain specifically how it should work - in a way that could apply in the same way to all the games here - you could write it up a suggestion in the BGA bugs & suggestions forum.

[Jellby]

Ah, I see the point though. The speed setting (at least in the "old" lobby) is presented together with other game-specific settings like goal board, etc. There's no indication which of these are BGA-wide and which are game-specific. Once you've played a few games, you realize that "game mode" and "game speed" (and "playing hours") are BGA-wide.

[infamouswhiteknight]

There are some good points in this thread, so thanks for engaging!
Maybe the biggest point is just that it's too difficult to have something consistent across games. I don't play too many different BGA games, so don't immediately have thoughts about how to define a more consistent mechanic across games, but I will think about it.

From a purely theoretical point of view (e.g. without thinking about the site mechanics, etc.), it feels like timers per "game turn" make a lot more sense than per "BGA turn". A few reasons why I think this:

- Timers per game turn are much more consistent (e.g. some players don't get more time than others based on choices they have made in the game - especially fairly innocuous choices).

- Timers per game turn are not affected by developer choices about game implementation

- Timers per game turn are a lot more clear to relatively new or casual players, who understand the game rules perfectly well but don't think a lot about the implementation

- It's much easier to have a sense of how long the games will take in advance. In some ways, this seems most important to me. If I have a block of 30 minutes before another commitment, it would be nice to know if I can guarantee I will finish my game of wingspan before then, or if it's possible the game will take extra long and I'll have to abandon it.

As counter-arguments to this, the only one I see is that more complicated turns will take longer, so players should be allowed more time. This seems fair, but in Wingspan at least, I feel like the game speed settings give options for anyone to have enough time to complete any full "game turn".

I'm curious if I'm missing anything though - maybe there are some more good arguments in the "BGA turn" camp that I'm not thinking of.

Thanks again for the discussion!

[FrankJones]

I have not noticed my turn timer resetting each time I activate a new brown-powered bird in Wingspan in the habitat I am utilizing. Is that what actually happens? It sounds as though that is what is being said in this thread.

[FrankJones]

It is possible that social birds such as hummingbirds reset the clock.

But it is definitely not true that each action resets the clock. I just had a game where I had 4 brown power birds in the grassland, so each turn, I was laying 4 eggs and then activating each brown power. My clock never reset at any point during my turn.

The best way to handle the hummingbirds (or similar birds) would be to have the active player's clock paused while the other player chooses the food, then resume the clock when the active player's sequence resumes. From this thread, I assume that is not how it is done?

[Cos-]

There are some good points in this thread, so thanks for engaging!
Maybe the biggest point is just that it's too difficult to have something consistent across games. I don't play too many different BGA games, so don't immediately have thoughts about how to define a more consistent mechanic across games, but I will think about it.

From a purely theoretical point of view (e.g. without thinking about the site mechanics, etc.), it feels like timers per "game turn" make a lot more sense than per "BGA turn". A few reasons why I think this:

- Timers per game turn are much more consistent (e.g. some players don't get more time than others based on choices they have made in the game - especially fairly innocuous choices).

- Timers per game turn are not affected by developer choices about game implementation

- Timers per game turn are a lot more clear to relatively new or casual players, who understand the game rules perfectly well but don't think a lot about the implementation

- It's much easier to have a sense of how long the games will take in advance. In some ways, this seems most important to me. If I have a block of 30 minutes before another commitment, it would be nice to know if I can guarantee I will finish my game of wingspan before then, or if it's possible the game will take extra long and I'll have to abandon it.

As counter-arguments to this, the only one I see is that more complicated turns will take longer, so players should be allowed more time. This seems fair, but in Wingspan at least, I feel like the game speed settings give options for anyone to have enough time to complete any full "game turn".

I'm curious if I'm missing anything though - maybe there are some more good arguments in the "BGA turn" camp that I'm not thinking of.

Thanks again for the discussion!

I don't agree with some of these points.

"Timers per game turn are much more consistent"

Timers per "game turn" would be much less consistent, and more unpredictable. Different games would define what counts as a "turn" in different ways, and it wouldn't always be obvious to someone who plays different games - they'd get surprised. And even if you know what exactly counts as a "game turn", you can't predict when you will need to do something that may be part of the same "turn". Take Wingspan for example - you may think you have a certain amount of time to think, and use that time, and then to your surprise the next player activates a power that lets you get food and you need to choose which food to take, but you already used up your time. It would be really tricky to make this work in a consistent and predictable way; lots of games would end up surprising players with the way turn time works. I can't think of a way to make it consistent and feel predictable.

"Timers per game turn are not affected by developer choices about game implementation"

As I described above, it's the opposite: Developer choices would make a much bigger difference in how game timers work. Currently, they have very little choice, but if BGA tried to make it possible to do it by some nebulous concept like "game turn" then the developers would be much more responsible for figuring out what that means, and there would be a lot more possible variations.

"It's much easier to have a sense of how long the games will take in advance."

Not really. It's just as predictable now with the current system. Many games have a very variable number of "game turns" anyway, so there's no way in advance to know how many turns will happen in a game. Even if there were, you can't know in advance how complex turns (either BGA turns or game turns) will be, so you don't know whether most of the moves will be made quickly or whether a lot of times people will use most of their available time. But on the whole, it averages out well enough over many tables of the same game with the same number of players, that BGA's estimates are as okay as they can be. Trying to institute a "game turn" time system would probably make it harder for a person to estimate, but I doubt it would change the quality of BGA's estimates.