It seems like the N-Body Simulation deadline of 12 days is excessively long. Looking at the server status page it shows a max runtime of 120 hours for this app which is 5 days. Some of the _2 or greater work units have been in the system for months. Wouldn't it be prudent to chop the deadline in half?

The project managers don't feel any pressing need for getting results any sooner. Plus, for most Boinc users that aren't exclusively running this one project all by itself, having a 14 day deadline is normal so the Boinc client can perform normal round-robin processing among multiple projects.
It all works out very well in the end normally.

---

Before switching to MW@h I was used to setting up a 10-day queue, but on MW I found that, because of wrong estimates, even 5 days might have risked reaching the deadline, and 7 days was almost certain to reach it for at least a couple of tasks, so I feel it's excessively short considering those uncertainties.

Milkyway is running pretty stable, there's no need for such large cache here. Even two days are more than enough.

---

The more concurrent projects you run on your hosts, the less cache you need. Set a 0.1 day cache and no extra to begin with. If you find your host is sitting idle, slowly increase the cache size by small increments of 0.1. You will likely find that a 0.5 day cache is totally sufficient and allow all your projects to get and process work and return work well within all the different project timelines and allow the Boinc client to efficiently round-robin service all your projects in timely fashion.

---

Since I stick to one project, don't want to risk it. Plus that until a few months ago the computer was offline most of the time. Usually connected for a while each day, but maybe not quite always, and either way it meant that if there was an issue during that window of time, it had to rely on existing cache for one more day. And I had it end up with no work with a 3 day cache once, with a lot of tasks finishing very quickly despite longer estimates.