PlanetsCentral

My suggestion would be that when host is set to run for turn 1 (which has a 7-day grace period to return your turn) and a turn is missing, host should not run but the game should revert "active" to "joining" status, kick out any player who didn't submit their first turn, and let someone else start the game from the beginning.

Stefan: how easy would this be to implement? I think it should be relatively straightforward?

If I understand this correctly, you would send out initial result files, and if there's some no-shows, scrap those along with the received turns? This probably gives a very bad user experience if someone receives an awesome starting location, plans their turn, invests some time and love, and then it turns out all was for nothing.

It had been suggested that the host periodically send out emails "are you still interested"? I've been playing with this idea in my mind, but didn't end up at a solution that wholly satisfied me. After all, spamming users every two weeks "are you still there?" will spawn some bad mood, too (if not at the users, then at the mail servers...).

Putting both ideas together, how about this?: if the game is about to start, everyone whose join was more than X days (X=14?) ago receives an email. If they don't confirm within 7 days, they are dropped. (Possibly with an option: I have played >20 turns during last 6 months, don't bother me next time.) Game starts if we have a confirmation from everyone that is <X days old.

(It's more than a one-liner, though. Currently, host doesn't even know when players joined. Data economy, GDPR, you know. Or just plain laziness....)

--Stefan