Banking boot times

Banking boot times is a feature that gives more flexibility to players with the boot times. When banking boot times is enabled, whenever you take a turn under the boot time, you "bank" some of that time. You can then use this banked time to go over the boot time in subsequent turns.

This helps keep the boot time more fair. For example, if a player plays very quickly during the week, but not at all on weekends, they don't need to worry about becoming bootable on Sunday evening, even if the boot timer is set to 1 day. Conversely, a player who constantly waits a long time take every turn will become bootable much more easily.

You can always see how much time a player has banked by opening the nudge/boot dialog and clicking the "speed" link.

Since banking boot times gives more leeway, it is recommended you use smaller boot times than you would without it.

Settings

There are three settings that game creators can configure when they enable banking boot times:

Bank Percent

Bank percentage is a number from 0% to 100% that controls how much time is banked when players play faster than the boot time. For example, in a game with a 5 minute boot time, if the bank percentage is 100% and a player takes their turn in 3 minutes, they'd bank the full 2 minutes they came in under the boot time. If the bank percentage were 50%, they'd bank half that amount, 1 minute.

Initial Bank

Game creators can grant free banked time at the start of the game. For example, in a 2 minute boot game, all players could start with 10 minutes pre-banked. This would give them 10 minutes additional time they could spend over the boot limit.

Bank Duration

Game creators can control when banked time expires, in number of turns. For example, with a bank duration of 10, if you bank a minute on turn 1, and don’t use it by turn 11, it would expire. This limit exists to prevent someone from acquiring too much banked time.

Examples

et’s start with a fairly typical example.

Boot time of 2 minutes, Bank 50%, no initial bank, bank duration of 3: You always have at least 2 minutes to take your turn. If you take your first turn in 1.5 minutes, you’d bank 50% of the 30 seconds difference, or 15 seconds. Therefore, your second turn would give you 2 minutes and 15 seconds before you’re bootable. If you take 2 minutes and 10 seconds to take your turn, you’d eat up 10 seconds of your bank and be left with 5 seconds in your bank, giving you 2 minutes and 5 seconds for your third turn. If you take your third turn in 30 seconds, you’d bank 50% of the 1 minute 30 second difference, adding 45 seconds to your existing bank of 5 seconds giving you a bank of 50 seconds. For your forth turn, you take exactly two minutes, which doesn’t adds or subtract any time from your bank. However, since the bank duration is only 3 turns, the 15 seconds earned in the first turn expire, reducing your bank to 35 seconds, or a total boot time of 2 minutes and 35 seconds.

Let’s look at how adding initial time changes things:

Boot time of 12 hours, Bank 50%, 12 hours initial bank, bank duration of 20: You always have 12 hours to take your turn. However, because all players start with 12 hours already in their bank, the first turn boot time actually becomes 24 hours. Let’s say you take your first turn in 14 hours. This eats up 2 hours out of your bank, and gives you 22 hours to make your second turn. You take your second turn quickly, after only 2 hours. You bank 50% of the 10 hour difference, adding 5 hours to your existing bank of 10, which means you have 27 hours to make your third turn. If the game made it all the way to turn 10, the initial 12 hours would expire leaving only the time earned in the last 20 turns in the bank.

Let’s look at how we could use this to address a common request, adding additional time for the game’s first turn:

Boot time of 5 minutes, Bank 0%, 10 minutes initial bank, bank duration of 1: In this case, the 0% banking percentage means there’s no way to add to your bank. The initial bank is the only amount that applies. Therefore, the first turn gives you 15 minutes, and all subsequent turns give just 5. If this is a manual distribution game, those 15 minutes would apply to the territory selection step, otherwise they’d apply to the first turn of the normal game.