PBW ethics, opinions please.

[Wanderer]

Originally posted by couslee:
I also think retro-series building is gamey. the 50% max is there for game balance reasons, and to prevent abuse

Personally I've never understood the need for an arbitrary limit. Well this post got me thinking and I think I've worked out how to abuse the retrofit system (took me a while as I'm not sneaky enough!) What I'm thinking of would probably be time-effective but very costly.

On a similar note, I'd submit that my refitting of entire fleets in one turn whilst sitting deep in enemy territory (I tend to pack a lot of repair bays on fleet support ships, plus the odd one with a space yard) is another gamey way of using the retro-fitting system, although I'd not thought of it in that way before. It doesn't seem right that ships could perform major overhauls on eachother whilst sitting in a storm close to an enemy homeworld

The emphasis should be on making major reconstructions slow, not outlawing them altogether, especially as long as there's a simple way around any limit. I quite like the way MOO2 does it (assigns the refit to the planet as a construction queue item) - although the fact that the ship disappears for the duration of the refit is a little strange.

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Ch-ching! That'll be two pence, please. Take away or eat in?

[geoschmo]

Retroseries not only can double, it almost assuradly will come close to doubling the cost of the ship. When you factor in the 20% extra for the new comps, the 30% disposal fee for the old comps, and the maintenance you pay for each turn the ship is sitting while being worked on. You can save some if your base maint is lower, and some if you set up the retroseries so that you remove as few components as possible. And as far as speed it it pretty much equivalent to the speed you would get by building the ship on Emergency build.

So you can build a ship on emergency build in two thirds the time and for the same cost, but are penalized by reduced ship yard effectivenss afterwards. Or you can build the ship in two thirds the time with no reduced effectivness afterwards, by spending twice the resources to build it. And by a considerable amount of added micromanagment which doesn't really translate into game terms. It's actually quite an elegant balance IMHO when building a single ship.

Where it becomes sort of gamey however is when you consider constructing a bunch of ships. By doing retroseries on all of them you can free up your space yard to pump out another ship every turn. Your first ship isn't built any faster than emergency build, and only a few turns faster than normal build, but you get another the next turn, and another the next turn after that, on and on forever until you run out of resources or don't have enough repair capacity in sector to fix all the ships you retrofit in each turn.

Because of this, and the little trick Wanderer mentioned about retrofitting while you move your fleet, I have no problem not doing it in games if playing with people that object to it's use. And I prefer that the game owner specify if it is allowed or not, so I know noone else is doing it either. But if everyone understands it and agrees it's ok, I have no problem with it.

Geoschmo

[Gozra]

Originally posted by couslee:
I believe he is refrencing the post made, where a player traded an un visited system for an AI home planet. That was very gamey imo.

Taking advantage of a stupid AI is also gamey, IE trading an unvisited system for a homeworld. The gamey part is in the thought of even attempting this, not in the fact the AI was stupid enough to agree to it.

Those that think it is not gamey, are of the same class of people that think nothing is a crime if you don't get caught.

GOZRA: I resent being lumped in with the "same class of people" That trade seems interesting to say the least. A fully developed homeworld for an entire system? I might make that trade with a human.

All I say to that, is know who your entering into a MP game with. If you accept a game challange from people that feel anything goes, then don't complain later that they lived up to their reputation. or, try and be more cheezy than they are. Hacking game files is blantant cheating, and if done will suceed in noone playing a game with you again. I am talking about questionable tactics, not outright cheating.

GOZRA: I will award the 20 galtic credits to you if you can get 3 others to agree that trading with the AI is Gamey.

send the credits to realpissed_2000@yahoo.com. thank you.

[ January 15, 2003, 21:13: Message edited by: Gozra ]

[Ruatha]

I found something I think is Gamey ( A new term for me, I'd rather think of it as cheating).

Using my Invisible shipset, with invisible ships in a game were the others don't know you are using it.

[ January 15, 2003, 21:30: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[Gryphin]

Ruatha
How would you be able to do that other than in a hot seat game?

[Fyron]

Well... you have to download the ship sets used by other players in the game, or you'll get randomly changing sets.

[Gryphin]

EDIT: was not intended to be ironic. "can" should have been "can't".
Fyron, right, I guess I can't imagine someone down loading a ship set and not looking at a few of the ships.
what am I missing here?

Is this gamey?
Start a series of "Play Style" or "Play Preferances" thread to see if your advesarys will give away their play style.

[ January 15, 2003, 23:53: Message edited by: Gryphin ]

[capnq]

If you were a real leader of a race that's just discovered how to colonise other worlds, would you really order your scientists to research 'physics' up to 'level 2' in order to be able to research 'phased polaron beams'?

That was one of my favorite things about the 'blind research' option in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. You only specified the general area of tech you wanted your scientists to focus on, but had no control over what specific tech they'd discover.

[DavidG]

To Gozra:

Are you saying you would actually trade your home planet for an empty system???
It sort of sounds like maybe you didn't realize what SamuriProgrammers friend did. He selected Ancient Race, claimed a system he have NEVER been to and then traded it to the AI for his home planet!! Clearly there is a bug on how the AI evaluates the trade value of a system

Generaly I'm of the opinion that if the game allows it it's fair play (the opposition to retro series building really baffles me!) but I think we should avoid taking advantage of really obvious bugs like this. Of course this is just one reason to play PBW all human games.

[DavidG]

Originally posted by capnq:
That was one of my favorite things about the 'blind research' option in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. You only specified the general area of tech you wanted your scientists to focus on, but had no control over what specific tech they'd discover.

Yea that was a really cool feature. Make a nice addition for SEV

MOO2's occasional research breakthrough was neat too.

[ January 15, 2003, 23:46: Message edited by: DavidG ]