Knob

Decision window

You might say: when a choice matters, WEGO turn window

The time and information available before an action becomes committed.

What it does

Sets how a player plans, locks an order, sees a simultaneous result and returns to the next turn.

Ask

What can each player revise, when do orders lock, and what cadence lets asynchronous players meet?

Typical

milliseconds for a reflex action to hours or days for an asynchronous turn

What to look for

1. Time before an action commits
2. Private planning before a shared result
3. A next turn after resolution

Parts

• WEGO plan–resolve cycle: A WEGO turn alternates a private planning phase with a shared resolution phase; unlike IGOUGO, both sides prepare before either side sees the outcome.
• Order commitment: The point at which a player's private orders stop being revisable for a resolution.
• Simultaneous conflict adjudication: The resolver combines all committed orders against a common starting state and applies explicit priority rules when actions collide.
• Planning information: The visibility and prediction tools exposed while orders are still private: observed enemies, legal-move overlays, estimated paths and test replays.
• Asynchronous turn deadline: The real-world cutoff and repeat interval for submitting the latest legal orders when players are not online together.

Sources

1. Avalon Hill, The Rules of Diplomacy, p. 6Immediately following this period of “diplomacy,” each player secretly writes an order for each of his or her units on a slip of paper. When all players have written their orders, the orders are simultaneously revealed, and then the orders are all resolved.
2. Battlefront.com, Combat Mission: Afrika Korps Game Manual, pp. 7–8, 12, 14Both players issue their orders in the Orders Phase. The game is paused and players can take as much time as they like to plan their actions and issue orders.
3. Matrix Games, WEGO World War II: Overlord Game Manual, pp. 10–11, 13, 17–19WEGO by its nature is about the Player’s ability to plan for and manage chaos
4. Matrix Games, WEGO World War II: Overlord Dev Diary #1, planning lock, order reconciliation, collisions and movement slicesboth players issue their orders during the planning phase, and then the game executes them simultaneously in a resolution phase—like watching a film of the turn play out.
5. PlayDiplomacy, Game Options, deadlines and finalizing; Fog of War; game-length examplesBy default, if all players with orders for a phase finalize, the deadline expires early and the phase is resolved immediately.
6. Daniel Cook, Building Tight Game Systems of Cause and Effect, Pacing and Time PressureShort time lapses between cause and effect.
7. Tynan Sylvester, Decision-Based Gameplay Design, Difficult Decisions: decision frequency and decisions made within secondsDecisions like whether to reload a weapon or instead wait another one second to re-evaluate the situation are what should concern game designers.

Use it on your project

teardown-apply: hold "Decision window" (decision-window) from the teardown at https://teardownatlas.com/game-design/ against my project

Paste it into a coding agent that has the teardown skills.

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