I am designing the PvP battle system for my multiplayer browser based game. Typically, combat takes place between 1-5 players on each side. I have to choose between: 1) Battles that take days to resolve: Similar to the Utopia system where a team can "declare war" on another team and typically it takes a couple of days to determine the outcome because actions are queued to take place once every few hours. (once players attack, they have to wait 6hrs to attack again for example) 2) Battles that resolve in around an hour: Players have to be online and sitting in front of the computer. Games like Urban Dead, Nexuswar, Pardus etc allow players to store turns. Typically a team will store up to the max and then mount an attack on another team's stronghold or location. Battle is over within 10-30minutes. 3) Cater to both. Allow players to choose which they prefer. If everyone participating prefers short/long battle, that system will be used. Default is long battle resolution. OR make the game in such a way that there are "fast battle zones" and "long battle zones". I am leaning towards option number 3. The more the merrier eh? However, the segregation of the game into fast and long battles seems a bit arbitrary to me.

I'm not entirely sure what Number 1 is. Do both armies fight every few hours? If so, then it seemes exactly like Number 2 except that in Number 1, there is a sequence of battles set up for you.

I'd say that you should allow armies to do scaleable battles. Depending on how many people are online, you can have a 5v5 battle or a 6v6 battle, or a 56v56 battle, ect.

I guess you could do both. Warring factions could set up battles with multiple waves. So a battle won't be finished for a few days, one wave of the army fighting each day.

What do you think?

The major flaw of course is that it requires players to agree a time to resolve the battle. Two possible situations can occur:

1) Somebody plays the game when they should be at a life critical event.

2) Somebodies DSL line breaks down for a few days and the battle does not get resolved. The other person gets bored and plays WOW instead.

If you manage to balance the length of the battle with the difficulty of scheduling that battle, you will be successful.