TG contest question

geoschmo · #1 February 9th, 2001, 12:03 AM

quote:
What's to prevent you

...

As the rules stand now, nothing except your own sense of fair play.

The most I have done with relation to maps at this point is regenerate until I get one with enough systems to my liking. I don't even look at what is in the systems.

Not saying that is cheating, just that I haven't done it. (yet)

Nyx · #2 February 9th, 2001, 12:34 AM

Wilcoxon, technically you can do such a thing. However, I personally scan each game, I do look for things like that. Hell, I've been manually adding up the income from facilities and checking the value against what's listed to make sure the player didn't hex edit something!

As for the score limit, I'll look into that. We had a bug in the database limiting it earlier and I told them to raise it to 99 million and they told me they had. I guess they lied and will have to be loaded onto a transport and dumped into space like rioting populations... Uh er, wait, been playing too much I think. I'll speak to them and get back to you.

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Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.

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Score update:
According to our database people, the limit is set to 80 million and I personally saw them use our site to enter such a score. I can only assume that people having problems might have been entering scores with commas, and it may be that this confuses our database. Please try again and if you still have problems e-mail me directly and we'll look into it. Thanks for the heads up on the issue.

[This message has been edited by Nyx (edited 08 February 2001).]

geoschmo · #3 February 9th, 2001, 12:58 AM

I was in fact using comma's, 80 mil will do me but your gonna have to bump that up for Drake and Tomgs, laf.

[This message has been edited by geoschmo (edited 08 February 2001).]

Seawolf · #4 February 9th, 2001, 01:06 AM

Nyx,

Thanks for the link and the info but they want too much personal information on me to join. Good luck to all those that play in it.

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Seawolf on the prowl

Drake · #5 February 9th, 2001, 02:20 AM

quote:
Originally posted by geoschmo:
I was in fact using comma's, 80 mil will do me but your gonna have to bump that up for Drake and Tomgs, laf.

Yep, I'll need more than 80mil. I'm sure I won't get near 200mil, so that should be safe.

-Drake

Puke · #6 February 9th, 2001, 08:42 AM

I dont think this is the right quad type for the contest, but the principal is the same, and this was my first try. doing this should be Banned in the rules. there is nothing to stop someone from doing it with even more planets than this, and whats more, there is nothing to stop someone from value-improving all the planets to 200%, and building SWs around each star, and convert all asteroids to planets, and convert all atmospheres before saving the map.

I dont know how you could really enforce a rule against doing this though, since it would be just as easy to subtily manipulate a map, just by converting a handfull of atmospheres or improving a handfull of planets, you could not really tell.

there is the honor system that people may use, but you can only vouch for your own convictions. you could make one standard map for all entrants to use, but then everyone would play a race perfectly suited to that map and it would not be much of a contest.

The best thing i can come up with is this: every contest applicant sends in their race file, and the contest admin sends back a gamefile made under the proper conditions that the applicant must play. this will allow random quadrants, and eliminate this abuse. to save the admins work, maybe you could generate the map by using the command line Version of the game, i dont know if that is possible. or you could have a '1-game-per-week-per-person' rule.

Tomgs · #7 February 9th, 2001, 10:40 AM

Have you tried to play for score for 150 turns? It takes a long time to get a good score. Somehow I don't think too many people who like to cheat or take shortcuts will finish a game like this. The turns can take over an hour apiece to do at certain points of the game. Yes its posible that people will cheat and take shortcuts but IMO the amount of money is so low and the time invested is so high that its not worth it to cheat. If someone does and dosen't get caught Oh well. I entered this contest to see a different portion of the game and did I ever. You see the game in a completely different light when you play for score. Most of the game is solo because the AI gets no bonus and its a small quadrant so its all colonized fairly fast too.

Yes your right there are many ways to cheat in this game because its so modifiable. And many of those ways are very hard to detect unless you really overdo it. I know they will watch for flagrent cheats and somehow I don't think too many people will succeed in the micromanagement this type of game requires if they like to take shortcuts.

Really come on now This is my 5th game and all but one of them had to be restarted because of new cheats or shortcommings in the game that were being learned as time went on. Enough is enough I will not start another game so if the rules change again I will not be among the entrants. I have played three of the games past 100 turns now that is a bit much. Yes there are hundreds of cheats still possible out there that haven't been mentioned yet do we have to start a new game every time someone comes up with another possible cheat?

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 09 February 2001).]