Well the idea ultimately would be to provide a sysop scripting language with a lot more power and speed than just using TWX to access TEDIT.  But that's still a long way away.

Truth hurts I guess.

Cerne

There's no lashing out here, just a statement of opinion.
No one is calling for a boycott of truce game- there are just some of us that feel that it doesn't bring anything to the game, and that it cripples players who use it as a crutch for their gameplay.

I said that the easiest way to avoid problems that come with truce games was not to play them. That wasn't a call for a boycott, it was just a little common sense. That's all.

Allowing more than a single fighter for a "base" also allows a questionable tactic. Say I am red and the corp alignment is fairly low - hitting corp figs won't flip a red easily. I decide to build my own "base" and drop 5k pers defensive fighters to "protect" the base. Depending on my alignment, the other corp's red hits the figs and now he becomes a blue. Cashing is slowed, and figs are used to flip him back. If the red was AFK cashing which isn't too uncommon in truce games, then their cashing is slowed down until a new red is created or he comes back to keys.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

This is very true, another good reason not to run afk scripts, or be sure your scripts don't enter base sectors
Another note,  This truce game now has 5 players in it.  More than I've had in any game for some time! It has felt rather pointless to run some games for 1 player to come in and "win" with no competition.

Laff, well truce rules forbid 5k per, but otherwise it would be time efficient enough. There exist scripts that can do it (I have one). It'd only cost circa 20bil. But that's not exactly what you meant... Yea, most grids won't have 5k laying around here and there, atleast at the start, but there are alien figs all over the place. No script, in it's right mind, is going to check the owner of the figs before it hits them in-sector... that's a complete lag cycle (or 2) and would either get you killed (in a non truce) or be insanely slow in a truce game (where grid is a lot more fluid).

The only answer would be to holoscan before you go and check against known alien races. Doable, but we're talking about truce players here... as a general rule they aren't the most careful of player. That's why I ask, I rarely play in truces but the few I've seen usually have people zipping all over the place. True, you could say "well you have to stop that" but in the name of practicality that rule tends to be hard to enforce.

As a player you're responsible for your actions, scripted or no, but as a sysop is it really a good idea to be putting rules in places so easily broken? Keep in mind that the most common worldSST and worldSSM scripts do not scan before they go, and any player capable of modifying them to do so would likely not be interested in such a truce. IMO only Xide and Supg have public worldcash scripts, nobody else is ever likely to release theirs unless they just quit TW.

The problem with "knowing" something is in violation of a game rule is that the application of said knowledge is as equally fuzzy as the knowledge itself. This leads some players, that have stuck to the rules, to get upset when other players get forgiven of truce violations the sysop feels falls on white side of fuzzy grey. It reduces truce enforcement to a set of gut feelings.



That's not going to be effective. Remember that fighits are sent via twmail too. Nobody is going to scan thru 10000+ messages, let alone even know that they should. Ironically it would take a script to do that. Unlims are crazy wild on the fighits. Truces doubly so since you can't defend your grid.



Nod, in the few truce games I've been in... that seems to be the rule. People mow around all over the place. Mostly newbs and lesser-dedicateds that just want an easy few days. It's crazy, it's wacky, it's all over the place on fighits. You have to silence all messages just to keep from being flooded, which of course means you don't get fed or SS either. Usually the logs are full of ore wh0re/product pimp messages so you can't read them either.



LOL, yea I've seen people do that. It's easily solved by checking for the lock and regridding the sector if it's lost, however. But that goes back to the script.



Here's going to be your problem, RP, NOBODY has public cashing scripts that check for this. So everyone that runs one is going to be in violation of the truce, or potentially in violation. You won't know you've hit the sector, these scripts abort displays for speed.

Of course you'll get players. But you'll also get a lot of unintentional truce violations too as the player list grows. Then you'll be called in to judge the situation, and no matter which way you go you'll end up being labeled UTW.

He won't become a blue if he's following truce rules and retreats off your base figs instead of attacking them.
All the arguments I've seen so far are circular.  This or that is bad about these truce rules because when attacking a base..........  Yep, you're right, if you break the rules there are consequences.  What about not breaking them?

I'm confused, how is reading the sector display on entry (which is displayed automatically) SLOWER than reading a holoscan display (which requires receiving EXTRA data *plus* data for sectors you don't care about, the adjacents you aren't going through)?


My opinions about "private" scripts have already been made known in other threads.  The very fact these scripts are held private so zealously seems to prove my point that they must be better than the public ones, which reinforces the theory that you have to be a scripter or play at a disadvantage.  Public scripts are not as good.  They might be "enough" to get by, but not to WIN consistently.


That's why I feel automatic referee software would be a better way to go.  There'd be no grey areas because everyone would know up-front how it worked.  They'd also get warnings (except the attacking someone's figs part, but that seems pretty black and white to me; if it's 5k+ figs and there's a planet there, if you attack, expect to find yourself suddenly down one fully loaded ship and the other guy's figs replaced free).


What about announcements that come through from the sysop?  Are those squelched as well if you turn off messages?  (Like the "system is shutting down in 5 minutes for a quick patch, sorry!" stuff?)  There's got to be SOME way a message can be sent to an online player as a warning.  If not, that's a bit more annoying because they might not realize why their 2-fig grid was being mowed so quickly and thoroughly   Then again, ignorance of the rules is no excuse and all that...  A warning is just courtesy, not required.  2-4999 figs will be removed.  Black and white.  If anyone bithces, favoritism certainly couldn't be their argument.  "The computer likes him more than me!" LOL


That's why I was saying I'd like to see people requesting public truce-friendly scripts rather than just denouncing truces altogether because the current scripts don't handle truces properly.

There is sure a lot of brain power going into 3 days of play. lol  This truce game is hell on earth. 5 mill colos the first day and 65k regen after that. It looks like the single blue got most of them. everyone else is red, cashing like crazy.

Cerne

Well, I know that.  This is why I spelled it out.  Be responsible for the actions of your scripts.  If you know your script is going to mow into another base, then better not use it, or you better make a script that is safe.  Are we that dence that we can't take responsibility for our actions, and blame it on some script we know is going to do it anyway?  I like to have a little faith in the human race.
I think Xentropy has a valid point here.  why can't we get some scripts that will run in a truce game without violating the rules.  Most of these rules are rather standard.  Mine might have different numbers than another board (base figs, mines, etc.) but in a truce game for the most part if there is more than 1 fig in the sector,.. avoid it.  Scan it, note it, avoid it, move on.  After truce ends come back and if it's still there, take it
We all know truce games are there, and popular among some players.  Sage has his share of problems, but that's another issue.  I'm spelling things out from the start, be responsible, or accept the punishment.  If I start getting players that always want to push the issue, sorry, not gonna deal with it, and they will be dealt with, or the games will go away. 
I'm just seeing if there is a call for it here.  I don't like truce games myself. But I"m not going to continue to run a TWGS so I can support games with 1 player in them and no competition.  That's a waste of time. I've said since the day I brought my board online that I aim to put games up for everyone to enjoy.  Low turn, High turn, varied edits, and now I'm trying the truce approach.  There will continue to be non-truce games on my site as well.
 

The data itself is irrelevant, it's the number of lag cycles that are involved. If you holoscan you do so from the adj, and a fig that's already been removed meaning you can't direct pdrop. If you display from the sector itself you have to spend atleast 1 lag cycle deciding whether or not to kill the fig. If your mower isn't written to always display sector then you'd have to spend 2 and trigger on the difference instead... which would be even more likely to get you killed.

It's not as simple as just counting lines of data, you have to consider the whole situation.



We're talking about unlims. And again, you're generalizing a great deal here. Not all scripts are equal. A cashing script in an unlim gives you a huge advantage against a weaker script. In a turns game things are different, and method is more important than speed. I've been in games where we outcashed people by doing manual teamSST because the enemy didn't realize ptrade was at 60% and they used a teamSDT. Took longer, but a smarter method was a better method. A photon script would be very different, yet again, and any 2 given torpers are virtually the same in 90% of the games you'd play.

But with that said, the fact still remains. Most cashing scripts don't scan. So then what? Do you just expect these players to stop using them? LOL.



I completely agree with the sentiment, but I think you'll find it's much harder to accomplish than it sounds. Either way, good luck.



I believe they'll come thru, but then again I rarely see those messages even with messages on. If you're moving around the text is going so fast any of that will flood off the screen before you can see it. Those messages are way easy to miss.

Most unlim players aren't grid-stupid. This is because they're usually more sophisticated newbs (due to scripts) than turn newbs (that curve inverts later on tho). I have never seen an unlim player not lay a grid, atleast after their first week of playing. They may not know how to defend it properly, but they'll certainly lay one. Truces are a constant flood of fig hits for days on end. Thousands and thousands of hits. I can't think of a way to get a message thru all of that.

Setup an unlim and run turboSST. See how it goes, you'll get an idea of how fast stuff is.



And of course as a sysop you're free to go that route, I personally don't. I tend to think that if everyone does something it's easier to adapt to the storm than to blow and fuss about it. 5k figs is nothing in an unlim truce. I mean nothing. I mean people make 2, 3, sometimes 4 bil per day. If you removed 5k figs from my ship in an unlim I wouldn't even know you had done it, especially if I was cashing since they'd just be repurchased during the next furb.

I have a gridder that buys from dock, I'll run it sometimes... it scans as it goes, reports to a file, etc. I've been attacked by aliens, lost 100k figs, and rebought them before even realizing I had found alien space.

Even if I suddenly found myself in a pod I wouldn't blink, I'd just go grab some cash and get a new ship (script shuts off and pages me if I'm in a pod). But then again I wouldn't know why I had been podded if the logs didn't say something about it.

Which makes it even funner... if I go in, take out your figs, pop my own planet and lay my own... I may lose a ship, but so will they. So I go in w/ a cheapo, perhaps push an alien near their base. If they go in and retake the sector they'll lose a bigger ship, maybe be #SD#. Automated systems are easy to abuse if a player wants to. I can't think of a single situation where the tables can't be turned in one way or another.



Fair enough, but I don't see anyone releasing their personal casher because a bunch of truce players want one. That'd be like going to the president and asking to see the nuclear codes.



Laff, yea but the brain power is funner than the game itself really. I mean let's face it, how much fun do you really think a 4 day truce w/ a bunch of newbs would really be? The blue will build a base, the reds will cash. When the truce ends any corps w/ a small base and a lot of cash should easily have the game done. Last truce I was in everyone stopped gridding the instant it ended, and only 1 other corp ever bothered to log back in again.



Responsibility and practicality are 2 different things. You can't know that your script will do it, but with turboSST you can't prevent it from happening unless you know the sector ahead of time and can set it as an avoid. If people run turboSST, which I'm sure they are doing right now, there is more than a good chance they'll run into someone's base at some point. I've had it run me into alien sectors w/ a million figs before, so it's not exactly discerning.

Are you saying that none of your players can run turboSST because of the rules of the truce? Good luck w/ that. Since these players probably don't have any other big cashing scripts, you better let them all know they should go blue. Or atleast let them know that if turboSST runs them into an enemy base... they're in trouble. Otherwise I doubt you'll have people reading that far into the rules, even if it's a distinct possibility.

If you want to add scanning to Xide's turboSST go ahead, but it will slow your script down a lot and get you outcashed. I would rather have a corp go in and one of them get podded or dead for a day in retribution than have the entire corp slow down cashing. Find the sector, so what... set it as an avoid and move on. It's worth the risk. And course it gives corps a huge advantage over single players.

Think about it, what other option is there? If you want to win a truce game you have to stockpile, and anything that hurts your stockpile is inherently a disadvantage. These guys aren't dumb, they know this.

IMO if someone plows into your base, big freaking deal. Go back in and put figs there. Put a million figs there, who cares. Put so many they can't be taken out by a single ship, then you're pretty well defended. If you have a script that colonizes without checking fig lock, well that's just dumb. There are a half-dozen public colonizers that will check as it goes. But of course you're not expecting those kind of scripts be responsible for their actions, just gridders and cashing scripts... lol.

I'm sure there's a call for a truce game. They're popular w/ slower players. I'm just saying you might want to put the rules into perspective a bit, otherwise it's just going to be a mess the second someone wants to push the line.

What is a "lag cycle", exactly?
At any rate, the point here would be in the design of a truce-specific script.  A truce script would NOT cancel display of sector data, and if 0.000001 seconds are spent going through an if statement in a truce game you will NOT get pdroped because of it (if you are, the referee refunds your turns and bans the pdroper for their troubles).


I don't care if ALL scripts can't be rewritten to give decisive advantage.  The fact SOME can means scripters > nonscripters, unless and until people are willing to release these super-secret private unlim cashing scripts.  If you want to prove me wrong, make them public.  I doubt I'm wrong here though, else there'd be no reason to keep private scripts.


No, I expect them to ask the "professional" scripters to write truce scripts.  Yes, that means actually >gasp< loading different scripts at the beginning of the game, and then >gasp< unloading them to load the normal ones when truce ends.
Is playing the game in a different way than "usual" such a terrible thing?  Different != worse.


Ideally the referee would handle that.  If it scans and sees in the past 5 minutes the sector went from belonging to corp A to belonging to corp B, corp B was obviously violating truce, everything corp A had is restored, and corp B is banned outright. (That's a serious violation, no itsy bitsy 5k fig penalty here, you're OUT for that game.)


Exactly, scripters have an advantage, as I've been trying to say private scripts support.  But at least the current public ones could be rewritten for "truce mode" or to support "truce settings" (min/max figs to trigger various ways on, for example), so the nonscripters would have AN option instead of NO option.


So write a truceSST and put it on Grimy's.  Bam, all someone has to do is change 4 letters when loading scripts at the beginning, and then go in and unload it and load a different script come truce end.  How is that concept so hard to get across?


Yep, they need a new script.  But they shouldn't have to write it if they're not a scripter.  I thought the scripters supported the nonscripters.  Releasing something 5 years ago and calling it "good enough forever" isn't very good support.  Just reinforces even MORE strongly the scripter advantage.

Actually I agree, but I also feel in some respects your wrong.  You KNOW your script will plow you into that base sector.  Now you have to make the decision and you said so yourself,..

See, you understand the consequences of running your script, and you say you're willing to take that risk.  This is exactly what I'm saying.  Be aware of what your scripts are capable of, and be willing to accept the consequence if you break the truce.  I also expect as you say that this is going to happen.  That's why I spelled out, retreat and move on.  If you find yourself in a base sector, don't figure "I'm here, might as well clean out the sector". but if you back out, avoid, and restart your script I'm happy.

How might you set such a rule then?  I'm flexable, and also working to please everyone.
 

You would think that the scripters who write public scripts might want to help.

But that doesn't change the fact that if a player uses a script that he knows will violate the truce, then it is not an unintentional truce violation, it is 100% intentional.

So what are his choices? Either accept the consequences or don't use scripts you know will violate the truce. The player has a choice to use those cashing scripts or not.

We are really talking about 2 red cashing scripts here. WorldSSM and TurboSST. There are plenty of other cashing scripts that are public that don't rampage through the universe smashing into bases.

Players who claim there are no other scripts to use are either too lazy or too inept to use the other available public red cashing scripts.

Cerne

Right but what other public red scripts cash like turbo SST?

Goal in truce get as much as you can as fast as you can. So what if you run over a few figs, maybe you should have more figs in sector and the script will hang.