[s-d] Duration.

["William P. Berard" <william.berard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I noticed that the rule relative to "after X days"  at the moment, 
reads :  (Rule 2-1, NTime, subsection "Durations")

----
A duration to the effect of "X ndays", where X is a number, shall be 
interpreted to mean that the duration ends at the end of the nday after 
X consecutive changes of that value. [[Thus, if it is currently the 
middle of nday 2, something happening "in 2 ndays" will occur at the 
end of nday 4.]]
A duration to the effect of "X ndelays", where X is a number, shall be 
interpreted to mean that the duration ends at the end of the ndelay 
after X consecutive changes of that value. The resetting of an ndelay 
to 0 from the Clock being turned On does not count as a change for the 
purposes of this paragraph.
----

It effectively means that a duration of N days can actually range from 
N days to N+1 days (with the current rule, if action B occurs 2 ndays 
after action A, if action A is done at the very beginning of, for 
example, day 2, then B will occur at the end of day 4, effectively 
almost 3 ndays later. if On the other hand, if A occurs at the very end 
of day 2, the duration will be effectively a bit more than 2 ndays.

I do not want to seem to be nitpicking, but, considering durations, in 
the current state of the rules, seem to be used mainly for objections 
and support.

I was puzzled that X ndays do not correspond to X multiplied by 24 
hours, to give a real, solid value to an X duration, rather that 
something fluctuating. I suspect if one wants to pass something that 
can be objected, it is in one's interest to log their action as late as 
possible on one specific day, giving the other players 48 hours to 
object, whereas someone needing support for a particlar action, would 
try and log it at the very beginning of a day, to manage more time for 
player to catch up with the situation, and possibly get support.

So I was wondering, before I sumbit a proposal about this, if the 
current version of this rule was like this on purpose, both to avoid 
the hassle of implementing an hours-based duration (the clock does not 
show UTC time), and to give room to interesting "timing tactics" ?

Do you guys think it could be interesting to switch to a hours-based 
duration, or is not worth the hassle? I do not think all the players 
are in the same time zones, so it could be more fair to count from day 
N at time T to day N+X at time T, but I can see that being problematic 
since it is hard to time actions precisely in UTC.

That was just a thought, really, let me know what you think...


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