Perhaps we can compromise. If I take the time and energy to check a cube, I’d like the points from reaping, and like the idea of just setting reaped dust cubes to good.
(edited, read your post (Nik) more carefully.)
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Yeah, it’s how it happens now I believe 
EDIT: lol
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Okay everyone, weekend’s over so we’ve got some responses. Since there are a lot of separate (but sometimes related) questions, this reply will be long, sorry in advance. I’m paraphrasing your questions to help somewhat, but if we’ve had a misunderstanding, please let us know.
@annkri:
a) “if we aren’t able to use complete-children until the branch is done, won’t this give people a lot of boring corner cubes to play”?
Not necessarily. There is also the weight cap to consider. People may notice a slight increase, but those cubes can still only be assigned so many times. Also bear in mind that using complete-parents is what the majority of admins have done in the past, so when we were doing more real-time completing it would have been a similar scenario.
b) “must we finish a whole branch after starting it?”
Yes, please. Because we have insufficient tools right now for showing where people are, and because the communication methods we have are also limited, reapgrowing/SCing will currently work best if everyone can generally trust that when a person says they’re starting work on a given branch, they’ll be there for a bit.
@Atani:
c) “can I still review branches from the children to the parent?”
The GMs have to request that this not continue. One reason that the majority of GMs have always avoided such a practice is that you may start completing a merger branch before you’ve realized it’s a merger; it’s wasted effort. The other reason is that if some majority of people are already reviewing from parent to children, and people are zoomed in a lot in overview, they may also wind up on the same branch together and not know until they’ve met in the middle.
d) “who claims missed extensions?”
The discoverer claims it. Since there’s a chance that the misser would not be online for hours or even days, there’s no reason to wait around for them to fix it.
e) “can people be disallowed from Fort activity when they’re on /silence?”
We have no ability at HQ to see what cell people are actively working on, either, and we also have no ability to see who’s on /silence, so if we made this a hard and fast rule, it would be completely unenforceable and anyone suspected of breaking it could just claim they didn’t see people’s messages. All that said, we do highly advise against performing any Scythe activities on /silence, because communication is crucial.
@Nseraf:
f) “in bipolar fields, should Scythes claim branches or cells?”
Let’s go with whole cells for fields. They are indeed small and, though time consuming, sometimes they don’t even have “branches” per se.
g) “can the ‘don’t use complete-children’ rule apply to Forts only?”
We’ve seen the problems resulting from complete-children in all cells, so unfortunately we have to apply our expectations to all cells. Just to reiterate, though, you can use complete-children once the branch has already been fully grown, reviewed, and otherwise SC’d. That way Scythes still don’t have to complete corner cubes individually, but Scythe A doesn’t scoop up a bunch of SCs from Scythe B just because A used complete-children to claim the branch.
@rinda (and others):
h) “invisible mode?”
Because this concept seems to keep coming up in various discussions/e-mails, let me state clearly that an “invisible mode” for chat is not currently in the development pipeline. We’ve simply received requests for it from various people. The requestees’ concern seems to center around receiving PMs once it is known that they are online because of the chat reports about their gameplay. Sometimes these players would like to “get in the zone” and be attentive to pertinent discussion without feeling social pressure to participate. Or we’ve also had players who receive unwanted messages from specific people and don’t want those specific people to harass them. There are various ways to approach this problem and an “invisible mode” is only one of them, so HQ has not decided yet on the solution. In any case, we would like to keep this thread focused on reapgrowing and SCing, so we will not discuss such a concept further right here.
@jax123:
i) “can Forts be released later in the day?”
Just as a general reference, GMs are usually in the office somewhere from 10:30 AM to 7:00 PM Eastern Time, Monday to Friday. Sometimes one of us will be online at home later than that, or on the weekend, but that time window is the best bet for expecting a Fort or for that matter any new cell. Unfortunately, we do not have automation tools for queuing up cells to launch at times when none of us can be online. Because we know that Forts, new Relics, etc. can get eaten up fast, we can try to monitor the time of day when we most often release such things and try to spread them out a little more, but we’re cautious about guaranteeing anything. Sincere apologies!
@various people:
j) “can we/can we not bounce around from branch to branch?”
We understand that spawner slowness can sometimes happen or that it can be frustrating to just sit there waiting. However, bouncing around is precisely one of the ways that people can inadvertently do redundant work. Again, the whole reapgrowing experience will work smoothest for the time being if people explicitly claim specific branches and stay on them until there’s nothing else to do on them. If you are experiencing obvious slowness or you think the spawner’s having a problem producing children for a given cube, you can go ahead and change the branch you’re on, but please declare the fact that you intend to do so.
k) “can anyone claim multiple branches at a time?”
Well… yes and no. I mean, “branches” is a loose concept because one branch will usually split into several more before it nubs, depending on the cell’s morphology. So if you claim one branch you are implicitly claiming its child branches. At the same time, please do not claim simultaneous multiple branches in the sense of branches that all originate at the CB.
l) dust conversation
This is unfortunately not on topic. We will open a separate thread soon for discussing individuals’ processes for log entries and what the admin position is on making entries for dust.
That might cover everything? We’re happy to clarify as much as necessary so that things go smoother from this point forward. And just to reiterate again, these are the current guidelines based on the fact that we know we don’t have automated/visualized ways for doing some of this more experimental gameplay. One reason that basic tracing might feel “happier” or less stressful is that we’ve had a years-long schema in place that’s much more automated than other aspects of the game. Even that schema is not perfect, but it’s not as inclined to growing pains as our newer gameplay features. Hopefully over the next year we’ll have some major Fort/reapgrowing/SCing improvements!
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Okay, ty for the reply
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You missed one of my questions, lol.
Is it ok to reap out the end of a branch to keep it growing and then go back along the branch and reap cubes that have already spawned but you didn’t have to reap to make it grow? or do we have to start from the parent and go cube by cube? usually it’s pretty obvious that someone is working the branch, even if there is some blue left in the middle for a little bit. This is another strategy I use when the spawner is slow to prevent downtime.
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Oops, sorry. I’m not sure I 100% understand what you’re describing, but it sounds like you’re saying that on a given branch you may reap cube n at the end, then once it’s spawned and the AI naturally adds six more cubes, you don’t bother checking all of those cubes, you just jump to cube n+6 at the end and reap that to make it spawn, etc.?
If that’s indeed what you’re doing, my answer here assumes that you’re in a Fort, based on the described activity. On the one hand, you’re still basically on the same branch. On the other hand, M and I literally just realized that we’ve probably never told Scythes that you don’t have to reap every single cube in a Fort if the cube has already spawned. In fact that should be up to you; it depends on whether you want allll of those reaping retros or if you’d rather grow the branches ultra-quick, SC them, and increase your chances of the 5k bonus. We are okay with either approach (at least unless we discover that one approach is breaking stuff more often for other people).
Tldr: if I’m understanding you right, you can continue that behavior, but some of it is not strictly necessary behavior? lol.
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I think what atani is describing is say she reaps cube A and it spawns cubes b c d e and h
h extends but ai missed it and the others are overlaps or in between stuff, can she reap h and then the others until spawner spawns more stuff or must she reap all the other stuff 1st and then cube h?
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Okay, if that’s what she’s saying then my answer above stands.
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That is what I’m saying more or less, lol. I do wind up reaping all of the cubes on a branch, but I keep the end growing as much as I can, as it saves time.
Thanks for answering!
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b) “must we finish a whole branch after starting it?”
Yes, please. Because we have insufficient tools right now for showing where people are, and because the communication methods we have are also limited, reapgrowing/SCing will currently work best if everyone can generally trust that when a person says they’re starting work on a given branch, they’ll be there for a bit.
k) “can anyone claim multiple branches at a time?”
Well… yes and no. I mean, “branches” is a loose concept because one branch will usually split into several more before it nubs, depending on the cell’s morphology. So if you claim one branch you are implicitly claiming its child branches. At the same time, please do not claim simultaneous multiple branches in the sense of branches that all originate at the CB.
from this i take it that you should not start reapgrowing unless you have at least 4-5 hours to play to be able to finish several hundred cubes so you will be able to finish the branch, personally i prefer to just scroll at the chatlog and see if the earlier reaper of a branch have been active reaping for the last timeperiod and if not i have felt free to take over that branch in the past.
and good with the clarification that we do not need to reap every cube on a branch.
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i dont think anyone…well almost anyone has that much time per time lol so if you declare a branch and no one says “im there” for like 10 mins go for it imho lol reap as much as you can/want and then stop. i think declaring in chat “ive stopped reaping in ####, anyone who wants can continue it” will let other scythes know you are no longer claiming that branch. imho
, and i do think that a cell is not complete if it has low wt cubes even if they are corners 
but that’s me lol so i do try to always make sure there’s none before/after admins declare it lol, in forts it’s easy lol to reap everything. lol
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That makes sense to me! That spawner can be slow! What confuses me is when I click on multiple branches and they are being reaped by the same person - not sure where to jump in and don’t want to step on toes! Reap on!
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imho if someone has grabbed more than say, 2 branches (as per atani example) , say for example 3, 4 or 5 or more branches he is being greedy, self-centered, selfish and arrogant and even if i am only a scythe imho i’d say it’d be well within your rights to ask if you can grab one
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Hi hi!
I am a bit late to this post, but I have a quick question: As a scout, if I ever find a mistake in a fort and need to flag it, do I also mention which cube I am flagging in chat? And is there anything else in this policy that would affect scouts? Because if so, I would like to know 
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Hi hi
Not trying to belabour the point, but want to be absolutely clear. Are we still saying that if/when i use this method in a fort, that branch is still “mine” and the in between cubes are still mine to reap if I so choose until I announce I’m done?
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@peridot if you flag a cube you should always add a entry in the scoutslog, if it is a error that need to be fixed fast, like a growing merger branch, you should tell in chat like for a normal cell, you could send a pm to the scythe that have reaped that cube if it is a big mistake out of courtesy so that scythe are not missing accuracy over it.
what is discussed in this post should not have any effect on scouts, unless you want to read it for when you become scythe.
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@annkri @Nseraf Indeed, people don’t necessarily have 4-5 hours to devote to playing a single branch. The point about staying on it till it finishes is essentially that admins would like Scythes to stick with one branch and its descendant branches for as long as they are around. If you do not have time to grow something till it’s completely nubbed out, that’s fine, but if you intend to spend 1 hour on a Fort please focus on the first branch you choose rather than bouncing around to other branches. Then, as Nik says, you can declare the fact that you’re done reapgrowing your branch when you leave. Is that clearer?
@Atani Yes, if you choose to use that method, the branch is still “yours,” I was just pointing out that unless you want to collect reaping retros for every single cube on the branch, it is not particularly important that you reap everything in between if it’s all properly extended/not missing nubs, etc. Please just make sure you’re completing parents periodically so that other players see a purple trail that belongs to you; then they should be less likely to jump on.
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All good here
Ok next question then, lol. I was under the impression that we were not supposed to be completing what we reap in forts. Or am I mistaken in that?
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Ah wait, that’s another reason I was a little confused by your question. Somehow I wound up thinking in terms of Mystic gameplay. Yes, please continue waiting to SC in Forts until reapgrowing is more or less complete. If you have already claimed the branch for reapgrowing purposes and you choose to bounce around with what you reap upon it, it doesn’t particularly matter, because you already claimed the branch for that purpose.
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