Trader Joes house of shady deals

[Fyron]

With someone I have no idea is trustworthy, I would demand a sample ship of the intended design, especially if the trade will be for a lot of ships. If they don't like your response, they can always cut off relations and destroy that one ship...

[bearclaw]

I'm usually not too worried about the ships I trade to others. If worse comes to worse and I have to fight them, I just change the strategies for those ships to something like Don't Get Hurt. Found out by accident that regardless who controls a ship, the creator still controls the strategy. I rationalize it with the thought that if I build a ship, I'm going to retain the default command codes.

[Alneyan]

You don't know the true meaning of Paranoia, Fyron: they could still cheat you. Trust no one, and attack them first.

Specifically, you could deceive someone by using two designs with a very long name, as in, say, Littletradevesselformylovelyallyknownasfriendlyblo ke. It will be cut off by the game, allowing you to create another design with the same beginning characters, but something different at the end: "oneborneveryminute" instead of friendlybloke, for example. For everyone involved, both designs will appear with the same name, as the game cannot display the whole string of characters.

Disclaimer: what is described above should only be taken as a joke. Please do not sue me.

Bearclaw: that sort of thing might be bypassed by giving the traded ships a mandatory fleet strategy (not turning on "All ships break fleet orders"). Retrofitting might also help, though I seem to recall having odd behaviours with ships coming from a retroseries with different ship strategies.

[Atrocities]

I like to trade ships with useless technology to the AI for thier more advanced technology.. works every time. Stupid AI.

[Slick]

Unless it is the point of the game for a team victory, everyone wants to win so everyone will be looking for an advantage and to deny one to other players. I always give players the benefit of the doubt on honesty until proven otherwise. I also scale up the amount of risk by starting small like SJ recommends. It's a game and it should be fun. It will take weeks to months to finish. Not many people will be willing to ruin that much of a time commitment and ruin their reputation over a trade.

Just remember that under most circumstances, in-game good will between empires is simply a means to an end - which is winning the game by eliminating all enemies. Play under that pretense and expect eventual war. BUT, don't take things personally; after all everyone is tring to win. The SEIV community is mostly mature and people usually don't resort to cheap tricks which will end up in being ostracized from future games because of poor sportsmanship.

[Fyron]

Alneyan, I would have to black list anyone that did that.

[bearclaw]

Alneyan said:
Bearclaw: that sort of thing might be bypassed by giving the traded ships a mandatory fleet strategy (not turning on "All ships break fleet orders"). Retrofitting might also help, though I seem to recall having odd behaviours with ships coming from a retroseries with different ship strategies.

Unless I'm mistaken, isn't the setting to break formation with the ship design, not the fleet stratagy? True that retro-fitting will negate all this anyway.