How Often Do You Pause Your Game?

[Hurmferd]

I'm interested in hearing of the various play styles that are out there. 

How often do you normally pause your game? 
Do you pause frequently to keep your empire finely tuned and to intimately manage your battles? 
Or do you let the game merrily roll onwards, pausing infrequently, while you attempt to keep up?
Do you change your normal style depending on the game situation?

For me, I'm a bit of a micromanager, so I pause my solo game every 30 seconds or so to tweak my fleets and economy.  If I'm engaged in a pitched battle, I only unpause the game when I feel that things are well organized and when I'm pleased with how the events are unfolding.  I much prefer a slow, thoughtful game rather than a quick, frantic clickfest.

When I play in multiplayer games, I force myself to only pause when situations demand it, otherwise it slows things down too much for my online friends.  This goes against my normal play style, though, and when I play this way, I feel that things are way OUT OF CONTROL!!!

However, I'm considering lowering the difficulty and setting a limit on my pauses so that I can experience the game a little differently.  For example, maybe I'll drop my difficult to 5/5 and only allow myself to pause the game every half hour.  I might need counseling or a support group to do this though...

Thanks!
H.

[BobTheJanitor]

I'm on pause more than I'm on play, it seems. If I'm not actually waiting for a ship to get somewhere or a battle to play out, I'm probably paused. I get obsessed with the idea of wasting time while the AI is reinforcing planets, so I hate to leave the game playing if I'm not actively doing something.

[Shrugging Khan]

I rarely pause. Paused game bores me. ACTION!

In fact, most of the time by game runs at 10x speed while I'm away doing other things. I only come back to manage battles, or when the economy is ready for another great movement.

[Orelius]

I pause my game whenever I need to give orders to my fleet or whenever I need to build anything.  I probably spend half of all my game time paused.  In addition, I always play at +10 speed, no matter what.  The game just feels too slow at any other setting.

[BobTheJanitor]

I pause my game whenever I need to give orders to my fleet or whenever I need to build anything.  I probably spend half of all my game time paused.  In addition, I always play at +10 speed, no matter what.  The game just feels too slow at any other setting.

I assume you're already playing on the highest speed game setting? I usually play on normal speed and with no fast forward. But I tried epic once and it was way too slow for me. But high speed and +10 fast forward sounds pretty crazy.

[lanstro]

Never, since I play multiplayer.

[Orelius]

I pause my game whenever I need to give orders to my fleet or whenever I need to build anything.  I probably spend half of all my game time paused.  In addition, I always play at +10 speed, no matter what.  The game just feels too slow at any other setting.

I assume you're already playing on the highest speed game setting? I usually play on normal speed and with no fast forward. But I tried epic once and it was way too slow for me. But high speed and +10 fast forward sounds pretty crazy.

Yes, I do play on the highest speed setting.  While I have tried the normal speed setting, I just don't like it.  Epic just seems way to slow for my tastes.  This is especially because I prefer to play a high-economy game, where I can quickly replace ships as they go down.

[Hurmferd]

Phew!  Those games at +10 speed with no pausing must be at a frenetic pace! 

You've all convinced me that I need to give it a try, though.  I'm guessing that I'll have a lot less time to sit and ponder and fortify and plan!  If I try a +10 speed game with minimal pausing, I'll probably need to lower my difficulty, at least for a first attempt.  Instead of 7/7, maybe I should try it at 5/5.

For those of you who play at +10 speed with minimal pausing, how would you characterize your game?  Are you frantically zipping about, building here and battling there, and when a lull in the battles finally comes, you quickly study and tweak your economy, then madly rush back into battle?

I also may have to turn off the tick, tick, ticking of the timed AIP increase.  Maybe reduce it to +1 every hour or two instead of every half hour?
 
H.

[BobTheJanitor]

I have my AIP increase at +1/hr and that's mostly to serve as a reminder of how long I've been playing, because otherwise I can zone out and play right through lunch or something.

[Sunshine!]

I pause only for issuing fleet commands in large battles, where I need to give my various ship types separate (and very specific) instructions.  Like telling fighters to search and destroy bombers while my frigates SND fighters, bonus ships FND whatever is next in priority, and turrets are given their own targeting instructions (usually for bombers and melee ships).

[Mánagarmr]

When I need to wee... but that's it.

[soMe_RandoM]

i pause it a lot like when I'm going around managing economy, (energy, ecter). i also pause when I'm planing in battle (epic speed) and when I'm on defense as well, so i can look and see what ships need to be counter first with what then set target preference for my ships then blob them in. its just my gaming style slow turtle, i dont take planets often like 1-4 every 10 hrs, if I'm lucky i can get raid star ships to take 3 planets early game but that it.

[Shrugging Khan]

I have diff 9 and zero AIP/time. Pausing / Slowing-Down is done only when things go wrong and I need to see why, or when I want to observe the performance of a new ship type / defence layout.

[FarAway Warrior]

I haven't logged as many game hours as many of you, but most of my pleasure in PC gaming comes from the planning and the strategizing.  I pause a lot--probably about half the time--but I'm trying to let the game roll forward and not micromanage so much.  I'm not sure if I'm succeeding or not!   

[Cyborg]

I rarely pause. Paused game bores me. ACTION!

In fact, most of the time by game runs at 10x speed while I'm away doing other things. I only come back to manage battles, or when the economy is ready for another great movement.

Sounds like someone else is playing most of the game broke. Waiting for enough economy to do something. I try to keep things going on all the time because I really don't like those moments where I feel like I can't do anything because my fleet is too small or I don't have enough money.