I keep seeing people having the same problem, that the timer is already depleted when they take their turn (e.g. starting from 10, rather than 20), and I believe this is mostly due to lag (i.e. the player's computer running slower than the server).

If there were some test screen, which for example, ran for 30 seconds on the server, and 30 seconds on the users computer, and then show the difference between the two counters, the user could see how much (if any) lag they were getting.

My turns all start at 15 seconds. I don't mind it because i need 5-10 seconds to make my turn. Also, having less time makes you to think faster and plan ahead your moves.

Actually, it's not about how fast server and/or player's computers do run. It's more about the distance between those two computers and about proxy servers in the middle of those two.

I'm not sure but SuperMechs and all other Tacticsoft LTD games may be hosted in one central server. If i'm correct then that server is located in Dallas, Texas, USA. And as most of users know, the further away your location is from game's server location - the greater the lag is. Because data takes some time to travel through cables/air, the greater the distance, the longer the time.

Just knowing how much lag anyone is getting doesn't help much. It takes only 1 slow proxy server between you and game's server to slow down the entire connection, thus the lag appears.

Only thing the end user can do from his/hers end is to reduce game's graphics (thus lowering the data amount sent to and from server, making the connection a little bit faster). Other than that, there's nothing else to do here.

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Aeacus

I'm not talking about connection speed, but lag between the server clock, and the in-game one on the player's computer, which is determined by the frames-per-second speed of flash (which is determined by their computer speed)
e.g. on a normal running computer, running x amount of flash frames takes 20 seconds, (the 20 seconds per turn), on a slow computer, it takes more than 20 seconds to run the same number of flash frames, so when all those flash frames have finished running, the accurate server-side timer has gone past those 20 seconds of your opponents turn, and started on the 20 seconds of your turn.

SM isn't the most resourceful flash game out there. There are many games that require even more computer resources than SM does. Also, SM doesn't use Java to run itself, it uses Flash. If it were Java then lag would be more prominent since Java uses much more system resources than Flash does.

Since computers have evolved a lot lately, it's somewhat hard to belive that someone still uses 10+ years old computer for their daily use. While talking about this, i'm quite sure that i can take my old Pentium2 266mhz (made back in 1998) and run SM on it without any problems.

Still, i belive the lag is caused mostly by the connection speed than the computer speed of the user.
But perhaps a word from a staff member would end this dispute?

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Aeacus

I can't play on my tablet :'( its quite sad..

i tried Super Mechs on a pentium 4, 800 ghz, 512 ram...my turn starts at 10 secs