Many times I have wanted to take over a player who was booted. I think it should only be an option after a set number of turns. By then you are invested in a game and it is unfair on everyone if it ends. If they fail to take turn 1 then it should be a vote to end. As for slowing the game down, the boot times remain the same so it will not slow things down beyond what was agreed to start with. I don't think players will burn out, it's optional. It is a fair point that someone may sabotage in the name of another, it should be made clear in the PLAYERS box they have left (As is the case when the text goes green for AI). As for who in the team takes over, it is the same as a team bonus card, you have to reach agreement as to who takes it, nothing is perfect.

1. Who takes over... It could be with a vote in the team, although this could be insufficient. Alternate between the players could be an option too. First to play. Or give the teammates the option to vote for the several possible options (including AI).
2. In real time it could cause a lot of time outs, especially on bigger maps.
3. It could, not every player nourishes the concept of teamplay.
4.It should be clearly visible who made the moves. Just add turnX played by teammate Y.
5. True, the booting problem, is a huge problem, not only in teamgames. It ruins games too often. Same problem occurs now. When having all AI's as teammates you ask yourself the same question.
6. People have to manage themselves in order not to get burned out.

I'd suggest gifting a booted teammate's holdings to other team members as follows:

1. If the territory is next to another team member, gift it to that team member. Use income level to breaks ties. This would need to be done as a domino effect, until no booted member territories are adjacent to any remaining team members.

2. Gift remaining territories adjacent only to neutral territories based on income levels of remaining team members. But as chunks of adjacent territories, not individually.

I like this idea, just not quite as much as some that are currently holding my votes, but I would still like to share my thoughts
My two cents on those potential issues:

Most boots that I have seen have been auto-boots, so I feel like 3 is not too big a deal.
For #2, it should be possible for this setting to only apply to multi-day, as there are other settings that are predicated upon general settings
For #4, you could make a variant of the display setting currently in place for when AI's take over, especially if you have control go to the team captain.
The big issue I see with the team captain approach is if the team captain surrenders/is booted. The only solution I can think of for that is having a chain of command dictated by slots.
For 5 and 6, people can check the settings, and if they don't like how it goes with this optional setting they can simply avoid games with it. There are certain settings that I don't like so I avoid those games.
For the other issues this seems like something that would be best solved with some beta testing, though that of course involves a lot more resources.

I think in RT games, booted players should just be gone. No takeover by team mates.

In multi-day games, someone will always find a way to cheat by taking over from booted team mates.

However, if you want to offer some consolation to a team when a team mate is booted, how about randomly redistributing the booted players territory to his team mates?

Then, the team could work together to figure out how to redistribute things.
There should be some penalty associated with being booted. This approach would make booting your team mate something you would not want to do, but it would still give a team some chance of recovery when it did occur.

1. lowest income takes over, they probably have more time, this could be a tie breaker after vote option also. if a vote, popup tells team they have 1 minute to choose, after 1 minute if no one votes go to default set by host
2. no extra time
3. boot parameters are in settings, have high number of rejoin chances to prevent abuse
4. and 5. boot rate prereqisites can resolve this

Have players rotate playing boots/quits, it would be interesting to see what kind of options there could be to sort this, and perhaps give more weight to players that are booted less in the sorting if desired.

A way around the time problem would be this: in a 3 minute game, the player in control (team captains are a good idea) would have 3 minutes for each army he has to control. For example, if the captain is in control of his army and 2 other armies, he would get 3 minutes for his own army, once committed he gets 3 minutes for the second army, once committed he gets 3 minutes more for the third army.

Simple suggestion. Allow the booted/inactive players to be replaced by a new player. Especially when you are in a team tournament and you have a player who definitely (more than 30days) got away from Warlight.

This was written to be a part of my original comment, but apparently there is a 5000 character limit, so yeah...

You didn't specifically ask this, but I want to include it as well.

For real time games (at least when real time means 15 minute turns or less): Add on extra time for the player to do the booted players orders. I think that the player should get +2/3 boot time for each player he is controlling, but no additional bank time.

For multi day games: There is no need to add extra time. Make sure vacations for the player controlling don't result in the player being controlled by him not getting vacation and losing control of him.

For both: Consider making it so that playing as the other player is just like playing a second turn in a row, with the same deployment, attack, and confirm orders (for real time, the boot times could be included in this). If the players don't select who controls the booted player, make sure the controlling player gets a notification at the beginning of the turn he gets selected, so he knows he may need to make quicker moves, or start sooner. If the players do select who controls the booted player, make sure they have a small amount of time at the beginning of the turn in real time games, so choosing doesn't infringe on the time needed to play the turn.

1) There are many ways this could happen, and it could be possible to even do more than one and have the game creator choose the type in the settings (or possibly even disable it). First to click a button could work, but really isn't any better than assigning it randomly (except in games where the team is truly playing as a team and they agree on who should play that person), so you could just do that. Assigning a team captain could be quite problematic, as that would probably be through some sort of voting system, and that could result in everyone voting for themselves. You could give it to the person with the highest "skill", calculated however you want. If you were to do it this way, I suggest a formula that takes into account both win rate and games played in that team game type, weighted more heavily towards games played. You could also give it to the person who has been committing their orders fastest on average, so they have the most time. You could even have it rotate through the remaining team members, having a different person play that person each turn. Also, if more than one person gets booted and more than one team member is remaining, the responsibility should probably be distributed among them.

2) This can definitely slow down real time games. Unless someone is already playing slower, or it is early game and people are still going full turns and getting booted, there will definitely be slower games. There probably isn't much to do to overcome this. Having the option to disable it would at least allow people to play at the current rate all the time in certain games. It could even be disabled by default for real time games (if it is possible to be different for both real time and multi day). Some sort of message asking the players to have patience might be nice.

3) If there is no penalty for booting teammates, it certainly could, though I doubt it would be particularly widespread. There are any number of ways to penalize someone. It could be very tangible in the game, such as halving the number of armies that player gets, or penalizing card drops in games with cards, or lowering attack and defense kill rates for that player, etc. However, in larger teams than 2, that could very easily become unfair for the third player on that team, so it might need to be a penalty that doesn't actually affect the outcome of the game, though that would probably be less effective. If you have made some kind of player rating system, you could automatically decrease the points for that players rating. You could have a statistic for how many times the player has booted a teammate, and make that statistic available to be filtered in open seats. For this idea I would also suggest a time limit of probably 90 days, after which they are cleared, so people who might have accidentally booted someone don't get forced out of games with a minimum team boot setting of 0 for forever.

4) It could be as simple as putting the current player next to the player name in the same way you do AI takeovers now. However, I think there should be some sort of warning as well. If one player takes over for the rest of the game, there should be a popup on the turn the player takes over that indicates that he will be playing for the rest of the game (unless he gets booted). If you do some sort of rotating system where the player controlling gets changed each turn, you should have a summary of who is controlling them in a prominent place, possibly also a popup, although I think closing a popup every turn would probably get annoying. It could be a menu option as well, though I don't think that is prominent enough to the players who are new to the game and won't have discovered it.

5) I don't think that using it too much would make team games less valuable. It would likely make team games with random teammates a lot more interesting to a number of people, me included. I have stopped playing team games altogether because my team has been burned too many times by players getting booted. I am sure there are many other people out there like me who don't play them. Additionally, you could limit it to games made by members, or give it a high level unlock, if you think it would be used too much. Also, I think it should be disabled for the 2v2 ladder, in order to continue to encourage finding a good teammate, and to reward those who do.

6) It certainly could. I know in my case, I got burnt out on players getting booted though, so it can't really be any worse, especially if given the option to disable it in the settings.

1. Player with the lowest boot rate/lowest number of boots.
2. Yes, but I wouldn't recommend that it be an included feature for real time, for that very reason.
3. Possibly, but it encourages people to take their turns. And it wouldn't be the first feature that could be manipulated in such a manner.
4. I would suggest marking them like you do with AI. (e.g.: (Cat Jugggernaut (was: Russian Juggernaut) ).
5. Possibly, but it strengthens coherence more than it undermines, I would think. Especially in tournaments, players who are stuck in teams with a player who has gone inactive are sabotaged, and thus lose all opportunity to effectively continue, making the team members likely to give up themselves, even in situations that they could feasibly win. Being able to take over would encourage those players to stay.
6. Again, possibly, but ideally, it shouldn't happen enough for this to be an issue.

TL;DR: I understand your concerns, but think the certain benefits outweigh the possible drawbacks.

What about a setting for the game that says "orders can be entered for a teammate X times"? And then people can set it to 1 or to 0 or to 9999, according to their preferences. Definitely for booted players, probably for surrendered players, and probably also for players who want their teammates to (a setting they can switch on)? I would love for a team game to not be held up by vacations, and this is a way of accomplishing that.

Who gets control: I think it makes sense for a player to be able to set this themselves (e.g. if orders are to be submitted for me, player X gets to do it). In case of this not being the case, I think "first to do it" makes most sense to develop because it is simplest, but if you don't mind then making a vote system could be just as good.

As to slowing down games, I imagine it only slows down games that otherwise would have been ruined by boots - and boot timer is still the same :)

It would encourage people to boot teammates that in one way or another ruins their game experience. Not so much if it's set to only allow orders for a teammate on, say, 10 turns or less. But I don't see a problem making it up to the game creator whether it's possible. If game creator wants to make sure people are never encouraged to boot teammates, then this could be set to 0.

I would not say it diminishes the value of team games because team games is different game play. I would say it would be good to make this change optional, though (for example by the number of turns as suggested above).

Of course you could easily get burnt out if you join several big team games and all your teammates get booted/surrender. But I think you also would be pretty burnt out / pissed off if that meant the AI took their place. I don't think this is a problem.

What was suggested below (any teammate can enter orders for a teammate once the deadline is passed) sounds good too.

And yes, it definitely does need to be clear who entered the orders. I think it would be a good idea to mention it at the start of the orders for the turn. Like "This turn, Fizzer entered the orders for Yeon" with the appropriate colour next to it.

There has been a lot of talk below of which I've taken suggestions but here's what I think as well:

1. As stated before, it's volition and unanimous decision by the remaining teammates.

2. Wouldn't slow down team games, since the above, it would only be taken by a player who a) has the time and b) wants to do it KNOWING the extra time it will take

3. Not sure if it's possibly but can you not set it to "if booted by teammate, not being able to take over?". This would eliminate skilled players from booting unskilled players just to take over. It would not fix belittling someone to quit in team chat and then waiting for an opponent to boot them but nothing's perfect.

4. Similar to how the AI is set up, you could go "Master Ree: was Fizzer" happens again, "General Koster: was Master Ree: was Fizzer" and so on. Not the most clear but it puts the person in control first.

5. While if everyone was booted and one person controls the team would diminish the value, qualitatively (and quantitatively) speaking, ending a game on one or multiple boots diminishes a team game more in my opinion.

6. This goes back to (1), it's a choice, there is no requirement. Only people who would bot get burnt out would take over and again, in my opinion having this option would make people more likely to join team games since now they will not automatically lose because someone ahs a bad connection or the power goes out.

I think it is not necessary for surrendered players.

It is useful for booted players replaced by AI. The original player should be able to return (as is done now with correct settings) AND then if two or more players remain on a team one of them should be able to take control of the booted players orders. First person to click on the option seems reasonable.

I do not think it will be a big issue with people booting just to take over. Allowing the booted player to return will limit how effective that tactic is.

1) as proposed by @Jurden Seag -taking control over booted teammate should be volitional. Although I dont think it sould be voted - this would cause too much mess. I'drather propose that just every teammate can take over this control if he was "first to click". Of course teammates should discuss between them, which of them wil take this controll (if they cant it is their problem). Also this takover should be irreversible once "clicked". This also rais additional issue - 7 - when player takes control over the army of his teammate, and later his original army is eliminated, he should be still able to play his teammates army.

2) It could therefore it should be volitionall

3) certainly yes :)

4) defiantely it should be visibly stated who is controlled and by who

5) I think this option would only do good for teamgames that are too often ruined by having a teammate booted. After assigning this option more people will be encouraged to play teamgames since having teammate booted wont result in highly proplable defeat.

6) IF this option is volitional, this shouldnt happen as player will allway have opportunity to decide wheather he wants to spenn additionall time to play moves for his booted teammate.

1. A "vote to control" system could be put in place, just like "vote to end" - all non-A.I. players have to agree to assign one teammate control of an absent player, or else the A.I. remains in control.

2. It could slow down games, but no more than not having "A.I.s surrender if no humans remain" turned on. So, make teammate control an optional checkbox in the game settings.

3. Some people might boot teammates to control them, but that requires people being bootable in the first place. A game with sensible settings and vigilant players wouldn't have that problem.

4. Players controlled by a teammate should have a status note below their name, such as "T.C." or "T.C. was A.I. was PlayerName" - and a full explanation in the playerinfo pop-up box.

5. Good team players communicate well and frequently, so if one player is controlling all otherwise A.I. teammates, then it's not as though the multi-player team is disadvantaged by necessity. Also, making TeamControl an optional game setting and only allowing TeamControl in a VoteToEnd manner would prevent several complaints that people might otherwise have.

6. If people want to control their missing teammates but otherwise have the option of leaving those teammates as A.I., any burn out they feel is on them.

perfect idea

I totally agree with this idea. There are a few details:
* by default, the AI takes over. But once a player has been taken over by the AI, any team-mate may take control from the AI. Once a team-mate has taken control, that is final. The only way to lose control is when the original player returns or when the second team-mate also drops out.
* Should be a setting: right now we got "AI replaces booted players" and "AI replaces surrendered players". Both are boolean toggles. Change them to tri-state with the additional option "team-mates can take over replaced player". Personally, I would never set this for surrendered players, but always for booted players. But in the spirit of warlight's high customizability, both settings should exist.

I couldn't advocate more for this feature.