PBW ethics, opinions please.

[Fyron]

Just bring enough to sweep 200 mines then. A little redundancy won't kill you.

[spoon]

Originally posted by Gozra:

How about: you would be not to do this in the real SEIV Universe but in the SEIV game you do it to get an advantage.

Realism can be a poor measure to use to decide what you can and can't do in a game - especially for fantasy and sci-fi, since you can use magic or "high-tech" to explain most anything.

[CNCRaymond]

Gravey, I think your one of the few players who can play the game in your sleep. And if someone ever pulled this crap on you, you would still win because your that good of a player.

Your statement and comments are valid, and I would like to respond to them. So please don't think that I am attacking you, I would never do that.

I have heard this argument time and time again. Who are you to decree what is an exploit and what isn't?

Common sense often dictates this. Sometimes the line is very thin between a valid tactic and an exploit. The EB exploit for instance can look like a tactic, but is really an exploit giving the player the ability to amass a massive fleet in extremely short amount of time.

The only person who can decide is the game host for the game your are playing. He decides the rules of the game, including whether any of the currently known bugs are ok or not.

What if he doesn't know about all of the bugs, but player X does? Should Player X be an ethical player and tell the host? Or should he remain silent and use the bug to his advantage? Then in lies the dilemma.

If you break those rules it is cheating.

Again, only if player X is caught.

If you don’t then it isn't. Simple as that.

I have heard this argument many times. If you know its an exploit, and no one else does, then when you use it, you are cheating regardless if it is listed in the rules or not.

If you don’t like his decision as to what is ok and what isn't you play something else or start your own game or whatever.

I think this goes without saying. Play at your own risk.

What you don't do is label everyone else who doesn't conform to your view as a cheater.

I would never do that. I have been beaten many times by brilliant players, and a few times by lucky ones. But when I find out that one or two of the players who beat me did so by using and exploit that allowed them to build massive amounts of colony ships within a fraction of the turns it should have, and did this throughout the game with other ships, then ya, I will label them cheaters, because that is exactly what they are.

[geoschmo]

If you break those rules it is cheating.

Again, only if player X is caught.

No, if something is cheating, then it's cheating whether or not you get caught. Now that is not to say something is cheating jsut because one person or another says it is. But that is the reason for this topic to begin with.

I will tell everyone this, and please take me seriously. There are ways to cheat on PBW. But there is NO way to cheat that is 100% guaranteed of not getting caught. No matter how well you cover your tracks, you cannot get around the fact that all the game files are stored on the PBW server. I can, and have at times, gone through turn by turn and compared to see if it were possible to legally get form A to B.

The most you can do is make it very difficult for me to catch you. And a good rule of thumb is that the harder it is for me to catch you cheating, the harder I will come down on you when I do catch you. So if you want to continue playing on PBW, don't cheat.

Geoschmo

[Arkcon]

Originally posted by DavidG:
As far as I am concerned all 'exploits' in PBW should be allowed unless explicitly Banned by the host.

Sheesh, four pages so far. Gadzooks. DavidG, I agree with this. I hope people will edit the Encyclopedia Malfadorica page here: so we can have a canonical list of what we'd like to include and exclude.

And people can erase from the page what's not an exploit, back and forth until a half-assed consencus is reached. I guess.

[Pax]

Originally posted by Gozra:
Any one want to start a poll? On what is gamey or not gamey?
For instance
Multiple ship training faclities on several planets to reduce your training time. Gamey? or not gamey?

Not gamey. Anyone -- even an utter newbie like I was the first time I noticed this, during my first ever (solo, btw) game of SE4 *classic*, could ascertain the probable results of building a training facility on each of a planet and BOTH it's two moons, just by reading theLITERAL description.

And then, as I did, test it.

Ergo ... it might not OCCUR to you to do so, or, you mgiht nto FIND a two-moon planet.

So what?

You might also get stuck, early in a game, with nothing but small-and-tiny, mostly-domed colonies. I did, recently, on PBW. Would I call the guy who got luckier, with a couple big breathables within ready range of his HW, a cheater for it?

Hell no.

It might seem contrary to expectations WRT how the facilities work to some, but not to me. IMO, a single training facility represents "the best of the best" in naval academies (etc) on that entire PLANET (or moon).

If there's also a moon, you can have the best-of-the-best THERE, too.

Why shoud having two ultra-close-proximity "elite naval academies" do mroe good than a single academy?

One word: competition. Competitive spirit brings out the best (and worst) in people. Having two entire naval academies, able to form training squadrons and engage in wargames against each other ... each with their own cadet uniforms, own insignia-and-colors for the training vessels, and so on ... could greatly, greatly, enhance the efficacy of the efforts to train those cadets.

However, I personally think a training facility should give a ONE-time benefit to a ship, to a much higher level (say, 5x the facility level), and only upon construction, refit, or un-mothball of the ship ... representing the assignment of a NEW, well-trained crew.

However, SE4 doesn't do that ... more's the pity.

[Cheeze]

Guess I must not be just anyone, because it never occurred to me to try this multiple training centers option. It seems both counter-productive to the spirit of the training facilities design(Hey, you get an advantage in combat, but here's the catch: you have to keep your ships on hold for X turns to get it)and to gameplay itself. The 'competition' explanation can be reasonable if you (as a member of a game or a host) accept it. However, the training is done at one location by one ship/fleet....so this works only if you have a race that can split into different selves and re-incorporate every turn to incorporate the knowledge of each. By the 'competition' logic, you should be able to use multiple system robotoid facilities/time shrines or even multiple planetary factories to boost resource/research/intel generation. I'm sure it's been tried, but the game has been designed to disallow that option. If you can't build multiple training facilities on one planet to avoid this "over-training" in a sector, it seems to me that multiple planets in one sector shouldn't skirt around this stipulation, which might be murder to code in such a checking process without creating unforseen bugs.

It also never occurred to me to use training facilites and psychic training facilities together. This too seems to hedging at the edge of what's allowable, although that would seem more fair. The benefit of a training center is to boost a ship/fleet skill by 1-3% per turn. A psychic facility can do the same but anywhere in a system. Perhaps that's just how I would like to play, that any benefit comes with a cost.