Understanding Downtime

Sorry for the long post.

And sorry for disappointing, but the hourglass is really just for limiting the time on 1 decision (1 turn). And only for decision taking.
The actual actions are outside this time frame.
If a decision has been taken, it has to be declared out loud within the minute. It could be 1 second.
Some actions might take some minutes due to complexity. While other actions again just 1 second.
An action has to be completed before the next player is in turn.
Responding to an action like defending or not, has to be taken as fast as possible. If the action already has occurred completely, you are to late.
An example in that is intercepting an enemy that is passing by. During the movement of the pile of units, the intercepting player has to say on which field it occurs, before the movement starts, best to do this just after the choice of the path.

The game is not sequentially (even though that was the goal 3 years ago).
To get close, I introduced the following:
Each round, the turn order of players is determined by picking a number from the bag.
The players follow this order until al action points are spend. The next round the pick a new order.

Other little details:

With "instant" responding, a lot of real time has been kept though. But only in the responding.

There are a lot, really a lot of options for just 1 or 2 action points (1 turn).
Attack/Move/Defend/Assault/Retreat/Retreat to Cover/Intercept/Intercept Assault.
(Some choices are limited to situations only)

Often, you play the game as if it is, for example, Starcraft or C&C. And instinctively a player knows that a small group of tanks will not win against a large group of rocket soldiers.

The hourglass did have some bonus effects to the game play. Like noticing if a player is bored or actually "frightened".

Beginners of course don't get the hourglass or are allowed to use it 3 times ;)

***

Ow No!
I completely forgot about another down time tackle regarding resources.

In my game, resources are carried by certain units.

I allow players to set up a line of these units on the board.
Once this line is complete, and once each worker is carrying a resource. The resources are simply picking what you earn instead of moving them around on the board.

http://www.adaptiva.com/wp-content/uploads/fire-bucket-brigade.jpg

Well, ehm, my jeep and truck variants can switch buckets too :D.

I cannot visit the site, because my web filter says its an illegal gambling site.

On the network I am working on, they use K9 web filtering. It blocks all kind of things. It flagged your site for suspicious and gambling.

I think I wrote that it blocked for illegal gambling, but I looked and instead it said suspicious gambling which I guess is different.

I will try it from another computer that should be okay.

Very interesting read, will trawl through the rest of the site as well.

I was playing Firefly (+expansion) the other week as 5 players and each round of turns took 20minutes, horrific downtime!