Well, gotta jump on the band wagon here.

I currently don't run unlimited turns games and probably won't because it really lops off a big chunk of strategy from the game. Unlimited turns games tend to be a contest of who can play closest to 24/7. I can understand the attraction, but they are not worthwhile in the longrun. I do run a couple high turns games and I feel those are good for people who like to play a long time every day. I have many players that will script in the background while at work or talking on the phone or watching TV...etc. That's one of the attractions of TW is that it is one of the only games you can play without being tied to the terminal. I also run a couple low turns games to accomodate the people that don't want to play a lot every day.

I don't have a problem with any type of normal scripting or usage of the CIM except for the usage of bots. I hate bots and I wish there was a way to keep them out, but there isn't and I certainly don't have the time to police the games for them. Bots go against the spirit of the game I believe. Imposing a time limit would be one way to reduce that kind of activity, but I don't know if I want to employ that kind of restriction. I like to run my TW server on the liberal side and use settings that tend to make the games easier to play and less restrictive. There is no shortage of conservative games out there and I do have a user base that appreciates the liberal approach.


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quote:Make a no-camping rule. If you're online, you can't sit in one sector for more than, say, 60 seconds. If you do, you're booted for an hour (or you incur some penalty to keep you from just being able to log right back in).

Hrm.. This is an interesting idea... I'm not sure the timeout should be so quick, but... Hrm...

Thinking a little about this, there could be a max timeout for a sector. Like 5 minutes or something. But, that time limit only extends that far if the user is actively doing something in the sector, ie, scanning, dropping fighters, etc. Otherwise, have a 60 second idle timeout...

I'm not sure what the effect on gameplay would be here.. Personally, I usually don't sit in a sector for that long. In fact, the only time I'm really sitting anywhere is if I have the game open in the background waiting for more turns while I sit and program or whatever... Then, I'm just checking every so often to see who is online, what's going on, etc... I hate bots as much as a lot of people do, so I don't use them.

I wonder if maybe the timeout should be longer for an "owned sector"... Well, it's something that can be kicked around.

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~~ XenoPhage ~~
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quote:
Thinking a little about this, there could be a max timeout for a sector. Like 5 minutes or something. But, that time limit only extends that far if the user is actively doing something in the sector, ie, scanning, dropping fighters, etc. Otherwise, have a 60 second idle timeout...

I'm not sure what the effect on gameplay would be here.. Personally, I usually don't sit in a sector for that long. In fact, the only time I'm really sitting anywhere is if I have the game open in the background waiting for more turns while I sit and program or whatever... Then, I'm just checking every so often to see who is online, what's going on, etc... I hate bots as much as a lot of people do, so I don't use them.


All this would do is punish the people not using bots. I'll often sit online in one sector waiting for soemthing to happen. Someone running a bot will just log out every 59 seconds then back in.

quote:All this would do is punish the people not using bots. I'll often sit online in one sector waiting for soemthing to happen. Someone running a bot will just log out every 59 seconds then back in.

Unfortunately, this is true as well... Hrm... Might not be such a good idea after all...

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~~ XenoPhage ~~
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quote:
quote:All this would do is punish the people not using bots. I'll often sit online in one sector waiting for soemthing to happen. Someone running a bot will just log out every 59 seconds then back in.

Unfortunately, this is true as well... Hrm... Might not be such a good idea after all...

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~~ XenoPhage ~~
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What if each ship had a turns/second rating that modelled power consumption due to life support, keeping the lights on, playing the radio, etc... regardless of what the user is doing. These ratings could be low (say 3/60th of a turn per second [3 turns per minute]) and this penalty is not incurred when you are offline (i.e., you're in cryosleep so you aren't using life suport, and the lights are turned off ). Different ships could have different ratings too (an Interdictor might burn more power per second than an escape pod). I think to counter this added turn consumption, you'd need a more turns in a "normal" game, but this would discourage camping scripts. In fact, using the numbers I'm suggesting, maybe you should just multiply all turns by 60 (60,000 turn games, with ships buring 1 turn per second, but costing 60*3 = 180 turns to warp). You could still sit at stardock waiting for the people you hate to wonder by, but you wouldn't want to do that very long, as you are wasting fuel.

If you did this, there'd be no way a bot could bypass the penalty of sitting around waiting. If you logged out every 59 seconds you'd still burn 59 seconds worth of idle turns. I supposed you could have a bot that logged off every 0.99 seconds, before the idle penalty was assessed, but then the time it spent offline (logging out and in) would be nearly as much (or more) than it's actual camping time.

I'm really just thinking aloud here.

Hrm... That makes the concept more interesting.. Obviously, one would want this to be a configurable option...

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quote:
I supposed you could have a bot that logged off every 0.99 seconds, before the idle penalty was assessed, but then the time it spent offline (logging out and in) would be nearly as much (or more) than it's actual camping time.

I'm really just thinking aloud here.


People were doing something similar to that in the USO. They would log in and out rapidly enough that they weren't being charged any time. They would just watch their messages for things to respond to.

It has been a very long time since I posted here so please forgive if this in the wrong thread....

As a suggesstion following this thread, we have expierienced new players getting overrun by scripters very quicklly and also have a following of players from 0.98 that prefer the old fashioned way of doing things without a helper.

Would a feature in the upcoming v4 that allowed the Sysop to disable CIM on a per game basis be possible?

- Ariule

Ariule - probably not. You would have to completely remove course plotting to be able to stop a ZTM, not just disable CIM mode. Also, in general, a thread that is over 2 years old is not the proper place to post something

Inresponse to 1: This is the thread that I was looking for as the macros and cheats are something that the group that I work with have been having difficulty wth for some time. This is the thread that all of us were interesed in.

How is this for an idea. Can you disable CIM by simply disallowing the initial key sequence? If you cannot get into the CIM with the keystroke you stop access. Could you then add a flag to the setup screens to allow or disallow the keystroke? Does this idea at least sound realistic?

- Ariule

coquote:Originally posted by Ariule

Inresponse to 1: This is the thread that I was looking for as the macros and cheats are something that the group that I work with have been having difficulty wth for some time. This is the thread that all of us were interesed in.



macros and cheats? Scripts and macros will do nothing that a player can't manually do, they will just do them more quickly.

quote:
How is this for an idea. Can you disable CIM by simply disallowing the initial key sequence? If you cannot get into the CIM with the keystroke you stop access. Could you then add a flag to the setup screens to allow or disallow the keystroke? Does this idea at least sound realistic?

- Ariule


Disabling CIM mode would be fairly simple. The problem is, that in order to disable the ability to ZTM, the entire course plotting system would have to be reworked. The Computer option F, the course you get when you try to warp somewhere, etc.

I remember a BBS that disenabled course plotting, both in CIM and on ship computer, pre TWGS. You could still get a decent ZTM as follows:
Sit at Terra, script sends "M(ove)11 <enter> N(o to engage)" thru "M 5000 <enter>. Set 1 as avoid, repeat from stardock. If you are feeling adventurous, repeat from a few more locations. Not strictly ZTM, you spend a few turns moving around, but a reasonable map for a few dozen turns.

Thanks for all the input on the topic. I am pleased that there is still so much interest in preventing these types of problems as the game evolves. I hope that there are features in the new versions that will allow GameOps and SysOps to prevent the game from becoming computer vs computer rather than player vs player.

- Ariule

quote:Originally posted by Ariule

Thanks for all the input on the topic. I am pleased that there is still so much interest in preventing these types of problems as the game evolves. I hope that there are features in the new versions that will allow GameOps and SysOps to prevent the game from becoming computer vs computer rather than player vs player.

- Ariule



You dug up a old thread and there is a lot of heated debate to go along with this. The debate is more to do with the fact that it's your "type" of players who started the type of data management that has lead to todays scripts.
You can make the ztm process kinda painful really..
a high % of high warps, a lot of sectors, the shortest possible course plots.

But then your players might complain (my base is in sector 5000, and when I am at terra it will not let me go to 5000) ..
But there is your solution so try it out if you wish.