Alternative Action Point based Turn

[BubbaBrown]

While the time based turn works well enough for human players and keeps the game from dragging out too long, it does have it's problems and inefficiencies.  One problem is that when the AI is set for quick turns, they longer seem bound by the time or food limitations and are allowed to do far more than what they would normally be allowed.

An option for an alternative game mode is to do action cost based turns.  This might case games to be longer, but would even the playing fields, improve network gameplay, and allow for more consistency.

Every action would have a cost and you would have a pool of points based on the amount of food you had in comparison to the requirement for that turn.

Actions:
Get a MULE
Get an Assay Bot
Outfit a MULE
Move to next square
Drop a MULE
Pickup a MULE
Search for the Whumpus
Assay square

A majority of actions could just cost 1 point, and it might be decided later to increase the cost of some actions.  The product of this cost based system is that AI could be improved to do algorithmic cost based decision tree searches when making decisions about what to do.  Also, it gives some of the more methodical players a less twitch and panic game.  There could still be turn timers, but it could be slightly more generous in this mode.  Also, sometimes this style of game play would actually speed up games for some groups.

[Eik]

A very important part of the game is not knowing if you have enough time for doing all the things you want to do. Hence, at certain moments stresslevel will rise and people will make errors.
With your idea people will take more time and less errors. Two disadvantages in my opinion.

Playing against AI's is not were the game is made for.

[BubbaBrown]

I have to disagree that time management is an important part of the game.  It is part of the game, but a minor part of it.  I find the time limitations to be more of a distraction than anything.  Sure, there are tense moments and the like, but these only arise when you are having to deal with more than 3 new plots of a land or shifting MULEs around.  Apart from that, most turns are fairly methodical and routine.  The time it takes for a fairly skilled player doesn't vary too much from an inexperienced player for most actions and usually not enough to completely change the outcome of the game.  The point of the game is to play the economy, improve the colony, and do better than your opponents without crippling any of them (there by crippling the colony and yourself).

People won't take more time as the turns will still be timed roughly the same and can be configurable to the players specifications.  Also, people will still make mistakes and the costs would actually be MUCH higher in an action point system.

As for playing the AI's:  Why not?  A sign of a good game is the ability to have a decent enough AI that can play it too.  And you can't always wrangle 4 human players to play all the time.

[Tei]

I don't know other people, but with full food, I can change 3 plots. I design my strategies based on that.