Time for a poll. (The subject is abuse)

[Xietor]

I thought we had settled these issues in another thread. But to recap:

1. After much debate, in games hosted by velusion, myself, and maybe Llamabeast(cannot recall), if you cast a battlefield spell that causes damage, you cannot retreat the caster until the very last scripted turn(5 turns).

2. In games hosted by Velusion, Llamaserver, and me, you cannot copy orders to attack mage from bogus' friends to other units.

3. I see no issue with the sickle. If an ally lets you kill his troops, he recognizes he is aiding you and he will eventually have to kill you. Also, if a spy witnesses this,
someone could get a nasty surprise.

4. Vengeance of the dead-not abuse. if your sc has killed a lot of people, your best defense is high mr to resist the spell. Mind hunt kills you instantly if you fail the mr check, at least vod gives you a fighting chance.

5. Twice Born on Demons-not abuse. It costs 10d gems and if that is how you wish to spend 10d gems, that is your business. K did this to me in the Big game, and I had no problem dealing with it.

6. Filling lab with slave collars-abuse. And this is common sense.

[kasnavada]

Things on the bug list : the answer is obvious : abuse.

Filling lab with collar ? Abuse, obviously too.

Vengeance of the dead does not work as intended by the game mechanics (the attackers don't die when they lost) -> abuse.

[Xietor]

It does not matter if vod is working as intended or not, casting it is not abuse. It is a valid spell.

And it is only effective against sc's that have killed many units. So if you have such an sc, provide him with mr gear and the problem is solved. If your sc does not have mr gear, he will likely die to a mind hunt anyway-or some other spell.

Actually anyone who lets their sc's run amok with low mr has got it coming anyway.

Kid: "I guess they had it coming"
Clint Eastwood: "We all have it coming kid"

[thejeff]

The problem with "Things on the bug list : abuse"
is that makes the game almost unplayable.
If you have to avoid anything on the bug list, then some strategies are tricky to avoid.

Do you have to carefully arrange your communion slaves so the masters come first and the slaves can't cast? That's on the bug list.

Most things on the list are bad for the user? Should they be considered abuse too?

Units with the wrong weapons or armor? Some better, some worse. Recruiting any is abuse?

Etc, etc.

Much better just to ban the few egregious problems that can be easily avoided. And if people want to play a game to exploit the Mists bug and send each other tons of slave collars? Have fun. I won't be in it.

[Tyrant]

Except for the BFE and retreat, those are pretty decisive results on the poll.

Do you have to carefully arrange your communion slaves so the masters come first and the slaves can't cast? That's on the bug list

I've read a couple of mentions of this and i do not understand at all. What's the issue here?

[K]

The demons come back with afflictions, you know. Its not as good as immortality by far.

[Kristoffer O]

> I've read a couple of mentions of this and i do not understand at all. What's the issue here?

Communion slaves are not supposed to cast spells, but currently slaves can cast their spells if they do it before the master does. Thus it might be considered unfair play to organize slaves and masters in such a way that the slaves benefit from the communion to spam empowered spells.

EDIT: OTOH it is a mechanic that is achievable by anyone with a communion so it is more a matter for us on how to make the communion balanced. It would be much to demand that every user of a communion is forbidden to use slaves with lower ID numbers than the masters. So until the communion is fixed I would not hold it against anyone to use this quirk.

[quantum_mechani]

I've put my two cents in on this before, but in my opinion anything that can be accomplished through the basic game interface and is not specifically outlawed by the host is fair game. That said, a few things are simply so critically buggy hosts should almost always outlaw them, primarily just mist of deception + damage enchantment.

[thejeff]

Tyrant:
The devs have said in several discussions that communion slaves shouldn't be able to cast spells while in a communion.
Any slave whose action comes before the first master casts can cast.
Thus it is listed as a bug.
It's not generally considered abusive though. People build strategies around it.

Edit: And he says it himself while I was typing.

[Tuidjy]

The reason I made the poll is that I wanted to see whether any issues are
clear cut enough so that one can assume that they are banned before
starting the game. It seems that short of editing the .2h file, every
trick has its proponents.

I guess one should never start a game before the host has listed the house rules.
Gods, I hate house rules. It may be helpful if hosts for ongoing games listed
what they consider abuse.