Auctions break up the pace of the game

I enjoy the lil breaks auctions give. Usually use it to figure out how to undermine my opponents.

I also like the pause. Gives me a chance to look around a bit, sell and buy stuff, do a bit of napkin math, and nuke the crap out of my enemies.

I really like the auctions pause - especially with the addition of the quarterly reports. It gives you a chance to breath, re-asses your strategy, sip your coffee. I've had a couple of critical revelations about what im doing wrong while auctions i dont care about are going on.

I too enjoy the breather for all the same reasons

i'm going along with the rest here, auctions are a great moment to look around for a bit without missing important timings

Do you need the auctions to have a break? - can't you just pause the game? (I don't have the game yet, so that's why I don't know stuff like that) I'm neither for or against auctions!

In multiplayer you can't pause.

Another +1 for the pause. It's the best opportunity for stepping back, checking the market, and having a look at what your opponents are up to. It might be nice if the auction dialog was less central so you can still see the map clearly.

I like it as well.  Ensure this game is about brains not fastest hand movements. 

I think it should go the other way.  20 seconds of paused intermission every 5 minutes of game time to let the humans process the backlog.

It would be great to see this as an option at the start of a game, to have the game "auto-pause" every 100 or so ticks. (This would make the game a sort of hybrid RTS/TBS.) It would even be better if you could choose the number of ticks too.

I like the breaks that Auctions provide.

I also like the idea of having fixed intervals throughout the game.  Perhaps even turning these fixed breaks into a mini-game of sorts, in much the same way that the Auction mini-game takes place, i.e., you have to divide your time betweeen the mini-game and your corporate 'stock take'.  Perhaps the fixed break mini-game could have an influence on the prices everyone is likely to see on the Offworld markets; some sort of projections meeting where all the Corps compete for exclusive trade deals offworld.

ohhh fixed interval pauses would be sweet (as an MP option)

That would be fun, I'm going to guess its beyond the scope of the features they are likely to add but,

+1 for a multiplayer option with a quarterly report pause every-other morning or so 15-20 seconds of paused time where info pops up would be awesome

Ewww artificial breaks to allow others to process information. Be more efficient in game and figure out how to do that during the game please!Or use the auction breaks to check around.

I wouldn't mind seeing the auctions switch to a silent auction system with the players entering a bid and the highest one wins. Might be more strategic since you'd have to guess what someone else was willing to big and go above that. Too low, you won't win, too high, you waste money. As it stands now, its not overly strategic aside from when someone decides to bid up the price for the sake of making someone else pay more. The person willing to pay the most gets the auction every time for +1 bid over the other person willing to bid.

@indczn1: I would advocate regular auto-pauses as an OPTION that you of course can choose to ignore. Then there will always be "iron-man" games where this must/will be turned off, maybe even with the auctions not pausing the game.

Love this idea!  Silent auctions would be very interesting.  Would love to see this as a feature, maybe as an option in the game settings.

Options are good, as long as its off by default, The normal game doesn't suddenly become "iron man" or "hardcore" because you add a feature to make it friendlier to new players. If it's on by default, its a terrible, immersion breaking feature that destroys the  game flow of an RTS.

Having the pause is good but being able to sell/buy goods + black marketing during auction is kind of defeating the purpose. I could not focus on the auction since I had to keep an eye on the good prices as well. So, either the auction should block any interactions with the game, or you should be able to put your requests to sell/buy during the auction but the effect should be all together after the auction.

Of course this would be off by default, this is an "economic RTS" after all.

Stardock please fix your forums to allow the liking of a post more than one time.