when does auto-vacation kick in?

I notice that I've been put on auto-vacation when I had quite a few hours left before my most recently required move was due. It has recently kicked in when I had somewhere between 5 hours and 20 hours left before a required move. So my question is: How many hours are remaining for our next required move before auto-vacation automatically kicks in?

I swear this used to tick down to somewhere under 2 hours, which I liked. Now it has clearly changed to much sooner. Why?

Take a look at this thread

Thank you kohai. This thread was interesting, but didn't answer my questions.

I had already read the official example of how vacation time was used, so I know that auto-vacation deducts a full 24 hours from my remaining vacation time while it adds 24 hours to my game times for each game.

But this still doesn't answer the question, "When does auto-vacation kick in?" Someone in that thread implied something about it kicking in when around 90 minutes or 2 hours are remaining before my next move is required. But that's not confirmed. And also, I'm pretty sure that recently I've had many hours left on my next required move and been 'vacationed' by auto-vacation.

Should be 90 minutes remaining on the clock, you should receive a message about this with a link to the game that triggered the auto vacation time.

In my experience, auto-vacation kicks in when one game has gone down to something like 30 mins - 90 mins. The exact point of time varies, but this is not so important to me because it does its job of keeping the game from timing out no matter when exactly it kicks in.

Thanks, both. Yes, that used to be my experience, that it got down between 30 and 90 minutes - which I also liked because it kept my games from timing out.

But what I'm saying is that I swear this has changed now to kicking in when we have somewhere between 5 hours and 20 hours of time left. This change seems to have started when the newer rule began docking 24 full hours of vacation when auto-vaca kicks in. Maybe I noticed this wrong... ? But I'll try to keep tabs on my "Time Left" and see when it happens.

I would be surprised if this were really the case. Are you sure you checked these times before auto-vacation kicks in, and not after it has kicked in?

If you look at the time left in your games after auto-vacation has kicked in (or even after you switched vacation off again), I would assume that it does not show the time left before auto-vacation kicked in, but that it may show the new time left after the part of the 24 hours which has not yet passed since kick-in has been added to your game times.

If you are already on vacation and you wish to check the exact time that was left in your games before kick-in, you should make sure to have been on vacation for at least 24 hours before turning off vacation. Then, directly after turning off vacation, you will be sure to see the exact times that were left in your games when auto-vacation kicked in.

Personally, I feel that the vacation rules have become far too complicated. I have been recommending not to introduce the minimum 24 hour rule because of all the counterintuitive consequences it brings about.

Good point, ilmago, that I could check the exact time that was left in my games before kick-in by staying on vacation at least 24 hours and then checking how much time was left in my games when auto-vaca kicked in. I understand the idea, I think, because I  could subtract the number of hours of vaca I used....

Two problems with this plan for me:

1. I have very little vacation left, which is exactly why this is a concern for me to begin with... so the last thing I want to do is let more vacation elapse.

2. Since I don't notice the moment that vacation kicks in, and often it's many hours later (an unknown number of hours later), I don't know quite when 24 hours has lapsed.

Thanks for the idea. I think I just have to sadly accept that I'm now losing a lot of vacation time all of the sudden and feel like I have little control over when it will kick in against my will.