PBW ethics, opinions please.

[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.

[Gozra]

Well here goes stab II. I was playing a great game long ago in a c-64 galaxy far away. Lords of conquest. I the game you could trade resources for resources. Well I desperatly needed a horse to carry out an attack against an opponet. I traded a fellow player a horse for another horse the key 'Gamey" thing here was I got to pick the place where I could put the horse That I traded for anywhere on the board in any of my territories. Well I put it just right where I needed that horse and a few seconds later I had a new provence. And the player I took it from flew into a rage and accused me of cheating.
So the second definition of gamey is if you think of a clever move first that could be percived as gamey.
In Version 1.67 is it 'gamey' to put a weapons platform on a planet with the talisman with an engine destroying weapon on the platform so that when the enemy fleet attacks and one ship in the fleet has it's engine destroyed the fleet can't move until it is repaired? In other words you can only take one planet per game turn.
(I think it is clever use of your combat resources)
But that tactic can give you a big advantage in a game and it exploited a known bug.(engine destroying weapon in SEIV 1.67)

[Gryphin]

Ethics, Cheat, Exploit, Bug, Competative, Things that don't make sence, Limitations.
When all is said and done couldn't the issue be resolved by checking with the game host? I would think that if there is any doubt as to weather a given action was unethical or cheating that the final judge woudl be the game master. That is the way it always was when I played mineatures.
I have not played much PBW so I could be way off base.
Now that I think about it, perhaps I did something I should not have. I once addressed a message to an ally telling him I was doing one thing. I was actualy doing something different but the message was credidble. I then deliberately sent that message to my advesary. So without thinking I may have violated the intended purpose for ingame communications. What do you think?

[ January 11, 2003, 05:24: Message edited by: Gryphin ]

[Gozra]

Well personally I think you were doing an ok thing if you were playing like a stinking cardassian. But, and I find this true of myself, people tend to have a hard time seperating The SEIV player from the nice cuddly human outside the game. I remember reading in an old Wargaming magizine about the Avalon Hill game diplomacy about the tactics of lying. The Big lie the medium lie and the small lie. It was just part of the game.

[geoschmo]

Heck, now we aren't gonna lump lying in and call it gamey are we? I lie all the time in PBW games. I've even been known to lie in out of character email communications from time to time.

Gryphin, you aren't wrong. The game owner is the final say in PBW games whether these things are cheating. THe only time we get involved is if it's a possible issue of hacking, data file manipulation or something like that. I have at times looked at game files at a game owner request to see if a player is doing a bug exploit. But if it turns out to be true, it's up to him what action to take. I won't ban someone from PBW for that.

Geoschmo

[ January 11, 2003, 05:47: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[Gryphin]

Gozra I have to admit I was playing more of a "noble" race. That said, I was also fighting a loosing battle for my life. At the time I saw it as no more than a form of mis-information dissemination that you see in fiction. Sadly I don't know if it worked.
Now that I think of it. I did similar things while playing miniatures. On more than one occasion I left out false equipment list and orders to troops. I know some of those worked. I guess you could say I was exploiting a human weakness.