Dropped player recover

[Ice_Sickle]

We are on rev 3 of our first attempt at a multiplayer game. This interface is intensely annoying!

Let me explain where we are now. We are trying to complete the first turn. In the setup a player joining 13 hours after launch clicked on the race he wanted to play -- race A -- (already selected by another player) and then selected the race he was going to play. So the player who selected race A to start with can't access it because he doesn't have the correct password and even if the second player gave him the password he wouldn't have his own diety.

I tried shutting down the server and deleting what I believe is the map file (ftherland) and all the .trn files loading up the game again and having the first player re-click his race. I got a "god failed to load" error. So then I restored the .trn files. Same error. Then I restored everything except I deleted the files associate with race A and the player was able to select the race but it still seemed to be set at the other players password. Whether it is the other player's deity or not we won't know until that player emails him the password.

Is there any other solution?

We could just restart -- again!!! This would make the 3rd restart.

Why the $%#$@ does the game allow one player to select a race that another player has already selected???!!! (Why someone would select a race is an issue of wet-ware and not the issue in my opinion. If you give someone the option to do something, they will). There's no indication to anyone that anything is amiss. The game just happily reports that a human is playing that race. It's really unbelievable. It makes absolutely no sense. I can't think of a reason where this ability would be usefull but I can think of countless nightmares that can result from it.