What I have noticed is that units are placed in the list according to the moment they were created : the oldest units being on top of the list. As a consequence, some units created at the same time in a specific sector will appear to be together on the order sheet, at least some time.

One of the problems is that, since our units move (almost) all the time, their "positions" change from turn to turn in the list. But in fact it is their "names" that change. Anyway, since the list always changes, it is even impossible to memorize it.

When I have many units, I have to find them by using CTRL+F and the first letters of the space in which they are.

In my Modern Diplomacy II game, thanks to the alphabetical order, I can find any unit in less than one second ! What a pleasure and what a gain of time :)

OHHH I see what you mean. I am talking about the dropdown for choosing where to move/support to and from.

OHHH That's why Modern is so unconfortable every time I play it! I never find my units' order line!... Mm... Sorry Ret... I would like to have also Modern with units sorted in the list according to the moment they were created.
But perhaps I'm the only one... more opinions, guys?

Now that Retellion mentions it, I remember playing a couple Modern games and marveling at how easy it is to find units, if my memory serves me. I think it would be nice to have the alphabetical order in other variants too.

That said, my favourite method would probably be having units sorted from North to South or from West to East or anything like that...

Sort them by auto disband order: Distance from home SC then Fleet/Army then alphabetical.

Maybe not true disband. But fleets together and armies together then alphabetical would be very useful.

I prefer the current chronological creation based sorting of existing units to alphabetical sorting. While I think that sorting in the drop downs menus is intuitively correct as an alphabetic choice, I don't think of my existing units that way. and short of a way to sort existing units regionally, I like being able to find first built/last built.

When I play PBEM games I group my orders into regional clusters that make it easier for me to study and double check my orders, but it also makes it easier on GMs who adjudicate the game. I think that the sorting of existing units by alphabetical order is evidence of an addition to the Real Politik adjudication system, which presents orders this way. I find this distracting as a player (and a GM). So my vote would be to leave the game interface as is.

Check your settings-page....

So awesome. So many options. Thanks!

Wow ! Is this new or did I miss it ?

OMG... Oli you're incredible!

Yes, Oli : that's incredible ! Fantastic job ! Thank you so much !

Well... my +1 for Retillon who opened this discussion.
Sorry mate, I was skeptic about it and thinking it would have led us nowhere, but I was wrong.

Hey, I would like to suggest an feature for NMR. All units will automatically do support-hold to any friendly units. This should help out with the unbalanced issue a lot.

Meep. It seems your suggestions are usually about changing the rules of the game, rather than the mechanics of how the site works.

Even though I agree with you that it would solve the imbalance problem, it goes against the actual rules of the game.

Phenomenal job Oli. You amaze me! Thanks!!

The rules of the game was made so many years ago, not in the age of the internet. It was made for a bunch of people gather in the room playing with the board games. There was no NMR problem with the board games.

Now that we are in the internet age, we should revise the game rules to address new problems introduced by the internet.

Do you guys want me to write Pseudo codes to show that I am not all talk. I can write codes too.

What are you talking about?

@MeepMeep: You can make a variant (maybe based on the classic map) to test your ideas.

here is the link to the dev-forum:
http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/index.php

Meep, face-to-face (FTF) games have strict rules about the amount of time allowed between turns. If you fail to observe the deadlines, in a FTF game, all of your units hold. If a player leaves the table because his wife calls him home for dinner, his nation goes into civil disorder, and all units hold. The rules are still the rules. Nothing has changed. There is no 'internet problem' excusing NMRs. NMRs in the online game environment are overwhelmingly a result of player negligence and apathy. You're proposed solution is changing the rules of the game (and not for the better). Such self supporting methods have been implemented in several communities and they do far more harm then good. NMRs and any resulting imbalance (because it cuts in multiple directions aside from the assumed easy gains) are part of the online landscape. They are to be expected, endured, and overcome. The answer to the epidemic is to hold players accountable for their play, not to create safety nets to protect them and reward their negligence and apathy.

@ RUFFHAUS 8 : +1

I am not requesting auto support to protect the people who left the game. I am requesting auto support to protect people who are staying in the game. I don't want to see my neighbors suddenly grew so strong picking piece-meal SCs from those NMRs.

You clearly misunderstood my intention.

In my very first game of Diplomacy, introduced by a High School teacher, he was the game master and conducted the defense of the country without a player. We had two teams each of 6 players. Italy was not played and my teacher will run the defense for Italy when it's under attacked. It's much harder to attack a country with has auto-defense, thus balanced things out.

@ RUFFHAUS 1: +8

:)

@Mapu: Like I said, you can test this by creating a variant (maybe use the classic map). If you set 1 or 2 countries without any player you can test your code. If everything work I will set up your variant here and we all can play test this.

Haha please don't confuse me with MeepMeep.

:-)) Lol. Sorry.

Is there anyway we can have these sort options for the dropdown menu where we choose where to move/support/convoy to and from? This is so useful for finding units to order, it would be great to have it applied on the dropdown menus too.

The drop down menus are much harder to do because my JavaScript knowledge is very limited.
I might be able to do alphabetical,but no promises here...

I am a Javascript/PHP/MySQL expert and am happy to help anytime in any way you want.

Mapu to the rescue!

You can find the vDip code here: https://github.com/Sleepcap/vDiplomacy
The javascript-code is in the javascript directory.
Ask me anything you need to know about the code.

Okay I am marking this thread unread so I can look at that in a bit.

@ G-Man :

Here is how I find the possible destinations for my orders :

1° I click "move", "support move" or whatever order I want.

2° Then, of course, I click on the black triangle that shows the possible destinations.

3° Then, I never use the mouse for the rest of the operation. Instead I use my keyboard : I hit the first letter(s) of the destination that I want (that selects automatically the desired destination) and then I hit "Enter".

-> That allows me to find RIGHT AWAY the destination that I want but also it avoids any misorder because of the mouse.

Thanks Retillion. I had no idea you could do that. I should've played around a bit. Still would love to see them alphabetized on the drop-down though.

Good news, we have alphatized dropdown menus now! :)
Though, I'm not sure about who I have to thank, aside Oli.

Anyway, I want to bring to your attention one issue.
I'm in a WWIV game in which basically every sea space has a fleet in it.
So I was putting in a move order for an army from a coastal space to another adjacent. The dropdown showed me about 120 options in strict alphabetical order, and the only 3 "via land" options were mixed among the others. The adjacent territory I was looking for was the 104th, beginning with one of the last letters.
So: wouldn't it be better, if feasible, to have the "via land" options at top and the "via convoy" at bottom, keeping each subgroup alphabetically listed?

Uhm... I'm not sure this works perfectly yet. There's some mistake, actually. Is it still "under construction"?

I have found that the dropdowns display in a different order depending on what browser and OS you are using.

Really? well, it could be. I couldn't tell, because it's years I use Firefox. Never noticed anything different, though, the few times I used other computers.
Anyway, I've always found via-land territories listed before via-convoy ones, both subgroups sorted in who-knows-what order.
So when yesterday I found all territory listed alphabetically, I thought that someone had made something on the code.

So... am I the only one who doesn't find anymore the "via land" territory at the top of the list?