Out box for Telegrams

[Avalaun (Ancient)]

I have yet another (Oh no! He's at it again, isn’t he) suggestion about improving the game (ARGH! Yes he is!). This time I was thinking, it would be helpful in maintaining the continuity of communications if we:

1. Could keep copies of sent telegrams in some kind of “outbox” so that when a correspondent returned our messages, we could reference what we had written to keep track of the thread of conversation. (I’m sure I saw an outbox type function on some phpbb based site somewhere, but I can’t recall where.)
2. Had some way of auto-quoting previous messages sent to us, the same way the {quote} button/function works on the forums. I see that recently some phpbb stuff was enabled for telegrams and CHQ posts, so this shouldn't be that hard to do.

It would make holding a conversation via telegram much easier, especially since we have no private message function on the forums themselves. What do you all think? Technical people is this possible? Would it be very difficult to implement here? (NO! not three questions. arrgh!)

[[violet]]

Would it be very difficult to implement here?

It shouldn't be, but it is, due to the original game design. The main issue is it's impossible for the game to load part of a nation: it loads all of it or nothing. TGs often constitute 50-80% of a nation's total data, so something simple like adding Sent Items means doubling server load in a very high use area.

Still, it's something that would clearly be very useful, so I won't rule it out.

[Avalaun (Ancient)]

Would it be very difficult to implement here?

It shouldn't be, but it is, due to the original game design. The main issue is it's impossible for the game to load part of a nation: it loads all of it or nothing. TGs often constitute 50-80% of a nation's total data, so something simple like adding Sent Items means doubling server load in a very high use area.

Still, it's something that would clearly be very useful, so I won't rule it out.

Thanks [violet], both for the information and the quick response. I understand if it would be unworkable, then it can't be done. Doubling the server load would be totally unreasonable. May I ask, what in the game makes it impossible for the computer to load pages as requested, rather than the entire nation file? Thanks for keeping the idea in mind, I hope a reasonable solution suggests itself to you and your technical team.

P.S. What happened to the “big smile” emoticon? It disappeared when the new ones showed up.

[Naivetry]

From a very short-sighted viewpoint, because I would looove to have this feature... even if the server load doubles, we have less than half as many nations actively using the game as we used to. Maybe it would still be okay?

[West-Flanders]

Could be handy for some, but it doesn't matter much to me. In case I want so save an important TM or regional message board conversation, there's always notebook (or wordpad, whatever).

[[violet]]

May I ask, what in the game makes it impossible for the computer to load pages as requested, rather than the entire nation file?

The game doesn't use a database. Each nation is a flat file, which means we need to read the whole thing to find the data we want, and (more pertinently) we need to write out the whole thing when we change any part of it.

[Central World Alliance]

May I ask, what in the game makes it impossible for the computer to load pages as requested, rather than the entire nation file?

The game doesn't use a database. Each nation is a flat file, which means we need to read the whole thing to find the data we want, and (more pertinently) we need to write out the whole thing when we change any part of it.

Ohhhhhhhhhhh... i see now... mot really I'm sitting at home like this but I believe you on it