I would love a script that welcomes new players. Problem with rules has always been that they're rarely read and understood; or conversely, read and understood too well (ie: the Roach Motel)

Unfortunately. I think my next Truce game will be much shorter.. prob a day.

Due to a lack of Gold bubbles, alot of shoving and pushing as occured for these coveted bubbles. I find that my inexperince at Sysop'n might haven been the catalyst in banging only two Gold bubbles.

I think that there should probably be a comission/panel enacted to draft a set of Truce rules, with 'Sections' and 'Sub Sections' and 'Paragraphs' ie:

The TradeWars Treaty Section 3, Sub Section 2a, Paragraph 1: Thou shall not Kill another Trader during the period of Truce as defined in Section 1 of the TradeWars Treaty, unless said Trader is the CEO and has gone AWOL and left a Corporation in a Lurch. This exception would only be feasible towrads the end of an agreed upon Truce period, as conversion of assets early in Truce would make Ship-Destroying a delinquent CEO suspect.

Another problem is that each server is an independent in regard to operation, and you will never get all Ops to follow the same set of rules. Someone will invariably say "my server, my rules", and be within their rights to so so.

A discussion of pros and cons of different truce rules including the ability/difficulty to enforce them, and how, might be good. Maybe something like:

Armid mine deployments limited to 1 per sector.
-- Pro: Restricts players to non-podding deployment.
-- Con: None
-- Enf: Easy to verify with T-Edit or observer account.

Limpet deployements allowed.
-- Pro: No restriction.
-- Con: None
-- Enf: No problem.

Planets only in DE sector w/o backdoors.
-- Pro: Keeps bubbles and open space clear.
-- Con: Prevents bubble development of a base
-- Enf: Easy before L4, player can move after L4 before Op can check


This might give new Ops the information needed to determine which rules they wish to implement, and how to check for enforcement.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

As someone who does not believe in truces, believing they are neither good for the long term health of the game, it's servers nor it's players, I prefer very lax truce rules.

Armid rules:
None in the MSLs, around fed, stardock or the class 0s. Elsewhere, anything goes. Scan before you move.

Limpets: Same as armids.

Laying more than 1 fig outside of a base? I couldn't care less. People should scan before they move, or atleast fix their scripts to not hang. Maybe a "no offensive fighters" rule.

Blockading or blowing dock... yea, prolly not good during a truce. But what is a blockade, exactly? Obviously not a single fig, but what about dropping 1m figs adj to dock for a jump point? I mean half the idiots out there don't bother to scan for that stuff and their scripts/macros just blow and hang them there.

Bug use: Depends on the "bug." Megarobbing used to be a bug, now everyone does it. Alien farming used to be a bug, now it's 50/50. That stupid fig-chasedown-knockoff bug is clearly a bug, but I've never seen anyone seriously enforce it. Then there are scripts that lag the crap out of the server, but technically aren't exploiting bugs.

Ship destroying another player: Depends on what they're doing. If they're chasing you down to knock you off, ie: exploiting a bug, I say have at it. Kill the b-tard, more power to ya. On the other hand running a script at dock to peg slow and stupid reds... well, maybe that's not truce friendly, but I still think they get what they deserve. And of course gridding: What most truces come down to is no grid defense. People can plow over your grid and you can't do jack about it. But that says nothing about IG holding or torping people in an unlim.

Invading a planet is not okay? Ok, sure. But how do you back that up? Logs? What about lv0 planets? Heck, I could have a lot of fun w/ that. Sit on an lv0 planet, wait for someone to take it (sit on the planet prompt), then oc it back when they try to re-land. Scream "TRUCE VIOLATOR!!!" and cry like a baby to the sysop. Stuff like that... eh, you can always turn it on it's head.

And planets in DEs only? What about adj to fed? What about people that love to build bajillion planet bases?

IMO, the only good truce is a broken truce.

I think Truces are important. Based on my personal experiences, I learned at many aspects of the game thanks to Truces. otherwise I would have spent many, many more hours waiting for game rebangs to get back in and try again --not exactly fun. So I think Truces have their place for New Players.

I'm also beginning to see that Truces have a place for expereienced players as well. All this talk of Rules and Rule-Clarification reminds me of when I would conspire with my corpies, looking for loop holes in the rules. In a manner of speaking, Truces have become a great way to strategize and develope tactics to develope faster/better. The things I use to pull, and things I hear people doing are very clever and hard to prove or disprove. I think there's a real genre of game play 'during' a Truce that even expereinced players are thoroughly enjoying.

So, what we've got here are two types of 'Truce' Games. One for New Players, and another for not-so-new players. Invariably there's always hot tempers and lots of Drama.