Or get accused of cheating in if they play in the game?

Grazhoppa got me hooked on MechaStrike, a Mech game, and the Admins there play in the game same as the players. Nobody accuses them of cheating. Graz is two levels or so ahead of me and is an Admin there. Rather than edit themselves gold coins, they actually buy them from players via the marketplace. I sold Blank, the developer of the game, 100 gold coins for 100 credits each recenty. If he was a cheater, there would be no need to buy gold coins as he could easily have edited them into his account.

So I ask, what makes TW2002 so different that GameOps cheat, or get accused of cheating? Easy access to the editors? Blindly fast local connections? In what conditions can a GameOp play in their own game and not be considered a cheater? If they play from home and never touch TEDIT and instead have someone else use TEDIT to fix things?

MechaStrike is totally different from TW2002, it is web based and instead of ships you buy Mechs and tweak them to fight better and improve your commander to operate them better. Instead of pods, you have a win/loss ratio. There are also secrets that are hidden in the game that newbies must find out on their own, like how to increase their commander's intelligence, etc. But it seems to be as addictive as TW2002 ever was.

Instead of dupes they call them multis, different player with the same IP address. If they catch someone using multis, they ban them from the game or put them in jail in the game. Anyone that cheats or breaks the rules ends up in jail for X days, or is deleted, or is banned, depending on the Admin's mood.

wheres this game located i would be intersted in checking it out

YES. TW2k2 is the ONLY game where SysOps are EVER accused of cheaing.

Sarcasm aside, I'm fairly certain I've seen SysOps cheat in more than a few BBS-era door games (LORD, TW, and more...).

Oh, and I'd like some info on that mech game, too. Maybe I could host it... for some reason I enjoy hosting -- probably since I don't have time to play so I get to live through my players. ^_^

It is currently being developed, but it is much fun.

I hope I do not get into trouble for posting the link to it.

http://www.mechastrike.com/

If you want me to get credit for referring you, and I can earn GCs, click on this link:
http://www.mechastrike.com/signup.php?refer=2059

I am User ID 2059 in the game, P7SOrionBlastar, a member of the Pirates of the Seven Sectors clan.

First thing you do is buy a Baby Mech for 4000 cedits and then buy a Pellet Gun for 1000 credits and find a level 1 newbie with a low win ratio and beat on them. If you email me in the game, I might forward you some credits or a weapon or something depending on my mood and how many credits I earned in the game. Save up gold coins to get an upgrade subscription so your Mech won't miss so much and boost Strength and Agility.

Yes I recall LORD and other games having cheating SYSOPS, but I have not seen LORD make it to the Internet yet as TWGS has.

MechaStrike is a good thing to play while waiting for your TW turns to refresh, Graz taught me that. You get 1/6th your energy and salary and 25 tokens every 2 hours in MechStrike, so it has a mini-Extern that runs every two hours.

I got an offer I cannot refuse to join Hatman in his Exosquad Clan. My Baby Mech was tweaked so much that it was taking out Three Mechs at a time. He says with some training I can become a Demi-God in the game. I had no idea I was doing so well, but almost have a 90% winning streak.

I might just write a Newbie Page about MechaStrike to help Noobs learn how to build powerful Mechs and play the game.

TW55 just joined up, I gave him a Pistol and some GCs to get an Upgrade Subscription to tweak his Mech. My money is limited, but I will try to help anyone from here out that needs help at least with advice, training, or maybe some money, a weapon or something.

MechaStrike help can be found at:

http://normad.8m.net/orion/mechastrike/

I made a Newbie FAQ page and a Formula Theories page on what I think could be the formulas used in the game. I just guessed and I could be wrong.

Federation Games bought the code to MechaStrike, not sure if they want to sell it yet. Looks like it is written in PHP and MySQL. I got a MySQL error once, so I know it is MySQL, and all the pages are PHP pages. It is not in beta, but it is still being developed on.

mechastrike is no longer at mechastrike.com now it is at mechastrike.net I know because I am a staff member there. the one and only brain stormer

I can't comment on all games, but I can comment in general on twgs.

The reason people often accuse sysops of cheating is probably because of history. While I have only been on one server were the sysop may have cheated, I know some people who have been said have a history as a cheating sysop. In my opinion, it is simply a matter of professional ethics. You shouldn't put yourself in a position were you could be considered cheating. I know CK nor BC play on their servers (I don't believe Vader of RR do either). I consider all of them completely unwilling to cheat, and would trust them to play, but I think out of concern that everyone feels nobody is cheating they don't. There are plenty of servers to play on, so a sysop can always find another server.

Jhereg

quote:Originally posted by Draconis

I can't comment on all games, but I can comment in general on twgs.

The reason people often accuse sysops of cheating is probably because of history. While I have only been on one server were the sysop may have cheated, I know some people who have been said have a history as a cheating sysop. In my opinion, it is simply a matter of professional ethics. You shouldn't put yourself in a position were you could be considered cheating. I know CK nor BC play on their servers (I don't believe Vader of RR do either). I consider all of them completely unwilling to cheat, and would trust them to play, but I think out of concern that everyone feels nobody is cheating they don't. There are plenty of servers to play on, so a sysop can always find another server.

Jhereg

You are entirely correct...none of the above play on their servers in order to avoid any accusations of cheating. I am unsure if it is possible using TWGS to set games with specific TEDIT access to various games as it used to be possible to do when the game was played mainly on BBS's. Specifically I remember at the late Frogland BBS when Founder was still playing he was the main gameop for awhile and reserved the right to play in one of the games there and had someone else set the edits. Several current servers with multiple games also have info at the enter menu where the gameop has spelled out that he is playing in one game and mentions which one. Gameops like to play also and that makes it difficult finding a game with a couple corpies where they are NOT playing on their own server!