I have no memory of how Play-by-Email should be working, because I never played RIS against a human opponent when Play-by-Email existed, so please bear that in mind.

I've been considering this issue, and my big concern deals with how mission execution is supposed to be handled. From @mkmccarty

If I recall correctly, Player 1 would take their turn, and the mission
results would be generated but not shown, the save file was encrypted and
sent to the other player. Player 2 would take their turn, mission results
generated, prestige awarded, Player 2 could could watch the results then
complete season's saved file would be sent back to Player 1 to complete the
turn. Player 1 would see their mission and prestige results and start
their next turn. It was a fairly basic tweak to the normal gameplay.

I interpret this as the first (USA) player not seeing any of the mission steps during their initial turn, only learning of success or failure in a replay done at the beginning of the next season. This is easier to execute from the perspective of creating the save - the USA player creates a normal two-player game, runs through the first turn, and saves the game as a Play-By-Email file. But it has ramifications on the mission execution, namely:

I recall encountering a mission fail state where the game asked me if I wanted to continue or abort the mission, and
Players are normally given the opportunity to scrub each mission before executing it.

Assuming I'm not imagining (1), that would make pre-generating mission results inviable, because there could be an error state that demands player input. For (2), there are multiple scenarios where a player would reasonably scrub a mission depending on the outcome of the previous mission(s) - both theirs and their opponents. Now, both of those problems can be solved by taking away player agency, but that's a solution I'd rather avoid.

Another way to handle PBEM is for each player to execute their turn and resolve their missions, ignorant of the other player's actions. They would (possibly) see a summary page after each mission telling them which prestige events they accomplished, minus the prestige analysis. Then, having completed all their missions, the 2nd player would see any prestige firsts their opponent achieved, would send the file back, and the 1st player would then see any prestige firsts their opponent achieved as well as the full summary page for their missions complete with prestige analysis.

While I think the second approach solves the game-play concerns, staging missions at the end of each player's turn requires the game to know which type of game it is when it's created, and not when it's saved. Otherwise, it won't know to change when mission execution occurs. As far as I know there is no selector for choosing game type in the New Game screen, so that would mean creating a new selection system.

A solution would be to have the game play normally, and when each player decides to end their turn - instead of clicking on the flagpole - they enter the Time Capsule and save the file as a PBEM save. The player then plays out their missions, the results of which are recorded in the new save file. In this way, it operates much as the second approach, but uses the Time Capsule to conclude a turn rather than the Flag Pole. This solution would resolve most of the technical issues, but seems inelegant, and isn't intuitive.

Am I missing something? Thoughts?

Play-by-Email (PBEM) missing #131

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