This is a rebuttal to the message in this thread " http://www.eisonline.com/twforum/topic. ... C_ID=11886 " about why not modify the game so that a message goes into the game about access to the t-edit so that sysops can play in their own game without having to worry about being accused of cheating.

There are MANY reasons a sysop should not play in his own game. T-edit access is the first one that pops to mind, and everyone knows all the many awesome advantages that this would give a sysop - for example, jump into t-edit when the enemy leaves the keyboard and edit your enemy's front door planets down to level 1, edit out all his figs and mines, hit the sector with a macro to - fire photon in, enter sector, land on planets and claim one after another. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

But here is something else a sysop can do, that the players have absolutely no way to defend against. Claim that a player is lagging his system, tell him to shut down scripts, or you will kick him from the game and lock his account out of the system. Sysop says it all the other players will believe it, cause it's the sysop saying it - and we all know when you pay 100 bucks (or download a free BBS program) or just pay $8.95 a month to a webhosting service and install the TWGS, it comes with a free helping of the best morals and automatically makes you a much better person than any regular user - morally speaking - and you would NEVER cheat. A sysop playing in his own game running into a script that was driving him crazy would never cheat and do that though, we all KNOW that. And we all know that also even if every player on the board knew the sysop was cheating in his own game they would never say it and risk getting banned from the board if it wasn't happening to them - long as it's the other guy and not you it's fine.

And then here is another awesome advantage a sysop gets. Put out limpets, to let you know when enemy wanders into your trap. Drop carrier to kick him off the board, block the nodes so no one can access the game, surround the sector with limpets, then pod him. Check the limpet report screen (K at the game prompt) to see where the pod went, track him down, surround him with fighters and mines if he is a loner and when he logs back in and tries to limp back to stardock he will hit the fighters and mines with his pod and kill himself - if you are afraid he has help he can send in to get his pod just kill him straight out. End of story, pesky enemy out of the picture until midnight when characters can come back in. When the player gets back in the next day and complains you just say "Sorry, the net messed up on you, too bad." No way the player can prove it was getting disconnected by the sysop instead of the net acting up - we have all come to automatically assume that it's the net being unstable, because so much gets blamed on the net being unstable.

Now anyone reading this may think I'm ranting against all sysops. Nothing could be further from the truth. I estimate that 90% to 99% of all sysops are very honest and helpful people, recognize the temptations sysop power gives you when playing in a game, and won't even THINK about doing up a character in their own game.

But the 1% to 10% of sysops that do play in their own game and are not honest and trustworthy are going to eventually RUIN the reputation of all sysops in this game. The bad apples that like to set up a game, play in it, and lord it over rookies that wander in and don't know any better - don't even know that when they lost carrier in combat it might not have been the net acting up (the net gets blamed for a LOT of problems and in some cases it isn't the net at all - it's a heavy finger on the drop carrier button) it might have been the sysop dropping carrier on you so that he/she or a friend could have an easy kill in the logs, and/or get rid of a pesky little problem.

It is my humble opinion that when a player reports they think they are being cheated then other people, and especially sysops, should check into it more. And maybe this board or someone else should try to start keeping a page where they can report outlaw games - after the game has been checked out thoroughly, say by a group of well recognized experienced players and/or sysops that the majority of people here trust, and this group confirms that suspicious things go on at that board.

And I know the popular standard phrase most experienced Twarriors like to use - he's just a newb complaining that he is being cheated but he probably don't even know it. Like a script is killing him and he is too new to know that this is what is happening. And we all know that this is what it actually is MOST of the time. But this isn't a good excuse to just ignore this problem and say too bad that happened - just find a good board there are a lot of them out there and write this off to bad experience. Players sometimes invest hours (even up to 8 or 10 hours) a day every day of their free time into this game, for weeks and months - it becomes much more than just a game to them, and being told "sorry it happened, too bad you wasted all those hours of your time at that bad game, now shut up and go find a good game to play in" just don't cut it with them. Or they tie up a phone line (costing $35 bucks or more a month if they're on dialup) to run scripts all the time, and are told this same thing. It seems to me we can do better than that. But that's just my opinion, sorry if I ruffled any feathers with this post, but that's just the way I see it.

IP # - 69.47.73.126

No sysops playing...Check it out

Well if we're plugging our own servers now, know that I don't have any TIME to play, so no worries there!

twgs.system78.com port 23

As for sysops playing in their own games, I have mixed feelings. If the sysop is trusted by the players and the players all KNOW the sysop is playing, then it's up to them. I agree that a sysop should never COVERTLY play on their own server, however each sysop gets to decide HOW they want to run their OWN servers.

Personally, I would never play on my on system just so there's no question. There are just too many other servers where I could go to get my Butt kicked... why bother doing it at home?

quote:Originally posted by rompca

Well if we're plugging our own servers now, know that I don't have any TIME to play, so no worries there!

twgs.system78.com port 23

As for sysops playing in their own games, I have mixed feelings. If the sysop is trusted by the players and the players all KNOW the sysop is playing, then it's up to them. I agree that a sysop should never COVERTLY play on their own server, however each sysop gets to decide HOW they want to run their OWN servers.

Personally, I would never play on my on system just so there's no question. There are just too many other servers where I could go to get my Butt kicked... why bother doing it at home?


TEDIT is able to be enter'd.. there is a reason for this..
If the op is playing the game then really he cant even enter Tedit just because he might see something he/she shouldnt..

So even if the op does have the best intentions, it MIGHT be unavoidable that he cheats..

Hence why I don't play on my own system. [:)]

You know with all the whining about sysops playing their own games it just makes me want to bang one and have all the elites come smoke my butt on my own server just to disprove the temptation of t-edit. Contrary to some beleifs there is still some integrity in this game between players and sysops both.

Do it Shorty, show them your integrity. They pod you every day and still you do not touch TEdit.

Hey if it's about playing, sucking, and not cheating I could do that!

Anyway... one more thing I want to say on this topic. I'm sick of seeing all the posts saying "don't play Server X because Sysop Y cheats!"

If you don't trust your GameOp, don't f-ing play there!

That's all. You may go.

i agree with rompca just post what you experienced there and stop playing there.. no need for these long thread full of arguments.

Well this post was mostly to reply to the other post where the sysop was suggesting "Why not just put some code into Tradewars so that if a sysop enters the t-edit it will put a message into the game that he went in there, and what he did in there". I started this new thread because I knew my post would be a long one, explaining to that other sysop all the JUICY little secrets of what a sysop could do in a game, if he wanted to be dishonest.

Shorty, you have replied to my posts and I have seen a lot of your posts on here, and I would have to say one thing for the record. To me you seem to be one of these honest and helpful sysops I was talking about in the original post I did.

But Shorty, there is something else I would like to say to you, and please don't take offense to this. I knew this would ruffle a lot of sysop feathers when I made the original post. And what I have to say to you is in reply to your post here, about how you were tired of whining about cheating sysops and you wanted to bang a game and invite the pro's over so they could kick your butt every day - to show that you could stay out of the t-edit.

My personal opinion on the thing is that you would do this, stay out of the t-edit no matter how hard someone was kickin' your tail You strike me as that kind of sysop. But let's be realistic here, if you want to put up oh say, 500 bucks to guarantee that every person that paid 75 bucks to get a copy of TWGS and Tradwars and put it up on the net to run a game and play in it was going to be honest about it, PLEASE do. HEHEHE I need 500 dollars, real bad Basic human nature, not 100% of the human race is honest and upstanding. Why we have cops and people go to jail and prison. Some people are going to break the law. For the excitement, or for the power over others, so many possible motivations it is impossible to name them all here without turning this into a 3 page thread

My comments at the end were because of the sad fact, these boards don't have a sign on them when you sign up, "Caution, Cheating Sysop Ahead, Play at your own risk" Sometimes players play there for quite a while before they find things out. Before it adds up. Wasting a lot of time. This is an honest question for the rest of you all, not meant to ruffle any more feathers. Do you like to waste hours of your time for nothing? I know, neither do I. Noobs deserve the same consideration.

I've got to agree with Shorty. For a sysop to cheat in a game would be to cut his own throat. Yes, there are some people out there who just can't resist that little tweak and that is sad indeed. But those are the people who end up playing with themselves. The honest sysop can play in and enjoy his own game and know that anyone else can, too. The game is set up and everyone is on a level playing field and the better player wins...plain and simple.

Sorry I haven't checked EIS in a while, so I'm a little late in replying...

I initially registered TWGS and set it up on my server so I could introduce the game to a group of my friends (who all get together for various tabletop, strategy, and roleplaying games.) I saw several messages posted on this forum about various sysops who cheat and alot of others with far-from-stock game settings that I wasn't so hot about. I've known some of the people in my game for a long time and they know my character -- as someone who is very competitive but wouldn't cheat.

Eventually some well-known players entered our newbie game and they taught us some cool new tricks -- and eventually spanked us pretty good. We then rebanged a game with even more experienced players and we randomly split into teams with 2 guides and 2 newbies per team. Since then I've learned a ton about the "modern" version of Tradewars and I now use TWX Proxy and SWATH to automate alot of the repetitive tasks. I've even begun writing my own TWX trigger scripts and I think I'm getting to the point where I could contend with some of the better players in the game. The two guides on my team work with me online so they know exactly how much money I make each day -- in fact I'm the top producer for our corp. Just the other day I had a single SDT run of over 10 million which isn't bad for a 750 turn near-stock game. Our other newb has also lost alot of figs on multiple occasions -- once by taking a corbo trap and another time fusing his ISS with 13K figs. I even got cap'd in a 100K IDC when I was afk and laying seige to a corp's base we had partially invaded (I was cap'd by the other corp in the game.) We don't magically replace those figs -- we have to earn it back like anyone else.

All in all, win or lose, I imagine the players that have come to my game will have fun and will know that they can expect a fair and fun game on my server. My suggestions regarding TEDIT were meant as a way to speed up this "gaining trust" process -- not as a replacement for it.

I started a game about 2 years ago called the Friday/Saturday night Unlimited. At our height we had 20 or so players actively playing weekly 4-10 hour deathmatch. It was alot of fun.

One night a 'well known' player, less familar with the game, joined up. After 4 hours or so most of the players had lost 4 of 5 lives. It was clear who had won and we, as players, declared it so.

So it was time for practice... an event that frequently occured at the end of a long bloodbath.

Well this 'well known' player misunderstood and started yelling to the world "HEY SVEN'S A CHEATER... WATCH OUT FOR CAMPUSPARTY..."

And I'm like "come on dude, it wasn't like that" and a number of players backed me up. But the 'well-known' player just kept going:
Sven's a cheater yadda yadda yadda

After he slandered me everywhere he could I just gave up. I figurred 'the heck with this, I'm not a cheater... screw you'. I dropped the games altogether and turned off TWGS.

That was about a year ago. It was sad.

Today I turned TWGS back on and I already have 4 players back.

I like to play and I don't cheat DAMNIT!

I really like this proposal:
http://www.eisonline.com/twforum/topic. ... C_ID=11886


Sven

Are you going to start campusparty back up it would be very cool to see some more saturday night unlims again....