A feature/bug may break the game in some people's minds, but for others it is a useful tactic to use and enhances the game. I do have every right to call, or consider, something to be a feature just as everyone else (including yourself) does.

I also have the right to withhold information that is useful to me in a game, and am under no obligation to share information. I do help new players learn, and not always by SD, but I also keep certain information to myself or close corpies.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Mainly because of what I have seen on the focus on preventing "advanced" game play. The advances are due to players figuring out new methods of play.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

I'm not sure how one can be "weak" when what they do requires detailed knowledge of the game. I don't consider EP "weak" because of his haggle script that some might say takes away from the "thrill" of getting a perfect haggle by hand. The work and knowledge that required amazes me.

I do see people that can't (or don't like to) play a certain type of game bashing on others who do - be it turns vs unlims, time limit vs no TL, solo vs corp play, or script vs no script. A TL-turn-corp-no script is not something I would play, but for others, go for it. Are they more skilled or less skilled because they do, doesn't matter, they are playing what they enjoy.

Are HVS games only through BBS front ends? I might have to be one of the "script kiddies" to go over and see if I can maybe release a script pack to help people out. I don't know the issues that might exist with the TWX database, but it might be interesting to try.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

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

Actually, what you are describing sounds like bug use to me. You can justify it to yourself by calling it a feature or advanced tactic, but it is still bug use. The problem here is that the game actually does have features that you might think are bugs. So, yes there is a grey area here and the cause of endless debates, but that doesn't give players the right to cheat. IMO, Anything that gives you an unfair advantage against your opponents is probably a cheat.

HVS games are only on MajorBBS (MBBS) now called WorldGroup BBSs. The HVS version is not a BBS door, but an MBBS Module. There are only a few left, and I have them listed seperatly on my site.

Yes HVS needs a bbs front-end. Swampbbs has the least buggie HVS game that I know of.

HVS is totally scriptable, the latest Swath works in HVS except for turbo mode. Turbo mode requires displays to abort and that is not possible in HVS.

The only scripts I was able to work in HVS from TWX were the move scripts. Most all scripts in TWX have spaces that abort display. When you write scripts for HVS you cannot have spaces between your commands.

TWGS - A Y 1 * * In HVS would be - AY1^M^M

HVS is extremely fast scripted in Zoc.

I would be excited to see your opinion of the old HVS game and you would very easily be able to distinguish the differences. Then you may fully understand the difficulty players who's last experience was on HVS are having walking into TWGS today.

If you, as a player, discover an advanced tactic, or even a bug, that gives you an advantage over other players, you have two choices. One, keep it to yourself and use it to your advantage, because your victory is all you care about, or two, report it to me and let me decide if it's in keeping with the design, because you care about the game, and not just your personal domination of it.

If this is a change that just occurred recently, as seems to be the case with Micro's tournament, all the more reason to bring it to my attention. With a game as complex as this, any change is likely to have repercussions, and only through serious play will these things come out. The involvement of players in real, public games is part of this process. And any player who chooses to keep bugs for personal use is working against me in the effort to get this game stable. You can rationalize it however you want, but until you bring it to my attention, you don't know. There have been many cases where I've said "that's not a bug, that's just very good play", and then there are cases where I'll say "that's legit, but it's so powerful that it should be an option", and then there are those cases where it's obviously a bug and it needs to be fixed. If you can do something that clearly goes against the intent of the rules, that's a bug. It is never a valid tactic to get around the clearly intended rules.

In the case of Micro's tournament, the fact that he had a setting to keep players from tracking the online/offline state of other players clearly indicates the host's intent. If players figure out a way around that, it's cheating, not necessarily in the strict rules of the game, but at least in the rules of the site. It is an ongoing process to find ways to enforce rules in a way that they cannot be undermined by those who won't respect a host's right to set rules, and whenever we see that there is a way to break a rule, it will need to be addressed, either by plugging the hole or by accepting that the rule cannot be enforced strictly in the game, and can only be enforced with "rules of conduct" as established by each gameop for his or her site.

I personally think that Micro had justification to disqualify team Kraaken for using tactics that were clearly against the intended rules of his game. But Micro hasn't made this claim himself. All he's saying is that, once the tactic is discovered, it should be reported so we can decide if it's in the best interest of the game. That's the point of using the latest release in serious tournaments. To expose things like this that won't show up under less stressful conditions. It's awesome that Micro is willing to do that. I just wish that the bugs that were discovered in the game were being reported.

One final thing. TW will never be "done". It's a hobby. I don't have a team of software engineers doing regression testing with every new change. The dev cycle is, basically, add a feature, test it on classictw.com for a few days to make sure it's not clearly broken, release it to the public, receive bug reports, fix them, repeat. This game is so complex that you really only get a solid test with live games. So until I'm completely done adding features, which I don't have a timeline on, the "beta" status will continue. If and when I reach a "no more features/changes" status, the beta will continue until no new bugs are found and reported, which given the fact that the codebase originated in the early 1990s and today's game shares code with a version that ran under DOS5 and Desqview, it may never be bug free. All I can say is I'll fix the bugs as reported. But you need to report the bugs!

The rules for the tournament included player conduct, and states that anything other than bug use and buyouts is permitted. Although using the player hail to determine if a player is online is dishonerable, it is allowed by the tournament rules. The fedspace blockade was also allowed by the tournament rules. If they did use bugs, then they should have been disqualified. The problem is that I have no way of knowing if they used any bugs or not.

Micro , I'm sorry to disagree with you ..
The hailing has been around as long as sub-space messages.

And according to J.P. sub-space crawling is except-able .. therefore private hailing is too.

This has been a practice when "Who is online" has been disabled.

No one in that game had any issues with that ... as some have said .. they learned something from those settings.

We as players have to over come the obstacles put to us.
This is what makes a winning team.

If a rule was posted , we obeyed it .. there was none based on that tactic.

Maybe someday someone will write a few pages of "Trade Wars as intended"
I'm sure we players/SysOps would love to hear the advices of a seasoned player on these matters.

Each man/woman has their own concepts of intentions .. they are subjective.

I'm sorry to derail this whole thread .. but it was set in motion by subterfuge

sub·ter·fuge/ˈsəbtərˌfyo͞oj/
Noun:

1) Deceit used in order to achieve one's goal.
2) A statement or action resorted to in order to deceive.

To get Cruncher going ... kinda the way she came back to tradewars to stir
the fires.

I thought I might open some eyes up to : feature vs bug controversy.

It was fun .. thank you all

"We as players have to over come the obstacles put to us."

Not if the obstacles are rules. If a setting is meant to keep you from seeing who's online, then any tactic that allows you to see who is online is circumventing the rule. So either the tactic is reported and the rule is refined to account for it, or the rule is abandoned as being unenforceable in-game, in which case a gameop can only post the rule and do his best to enforce it against those who are dishonest enough to ignore his rule.

Your view of how to play TradeWars would land you in prison if employed in real life.

In computer chess : the rules are coded in ..
But I want to make my first move king pond to king 7 ...
the program will only allow max 2 space forward ....

The rule is hard coded .. done deal.

The no private hail is not hard coded to off.
Maybe that is a coding error ? an over site ?
or just something that is allowed ?



Playing RED will always land you in prison , as well as killing any opponent

So why do we keep coming back to real life examples in a fictitious space war game ?

The tournament rules clearly allowed any and all dishonorable tactics (with one exception), so there is no tournament foul here. The settings I chose were intended to keep anyone from seeing who's online, so JP is correct that this tactic circumvented my intentions.

Actually JP added a "progressive delay for switching corp channel to limit subspace scanning" in version 2.08/3.22. Subspace crawling is still acceptable, but severely crippled.

Yes I am aware that timing has been added to SS crawling.
I did not know or see where you posted that players were
"allowed any and all dishonorable tactics"

Had you advertised that you may have had more players.

Maybe next tourney you host , you put that up front for all to see

So your telling me that you didn't bother to read the rules?

http://microblaster.net/Default.aspx?topic=FT2011

I posted a link to the tournament rules in several posts. It's roughly 3 printed pages long. Here is the section regarding player conduct:

5. Player Conduct

a. All players will refrain from offensive language regarding race, sex, or religion in any form of in-game communication and on the TeamSpeak server. This also applies to player handles, and the naming of any in-game object such as beacons, ships, planets, ports, etc…

b. Hacking another player’s password is prohibited.

c. Bug use is prohibited. This is a very difficult area to define and violations will be taken on a case by case basis

d. Buyouts of any kind are not permitted.

e. Anything else allowed by the game will be considered legal regardless of how dishonorable a tactic may be. This includes but is not limited to Subspace Crawling, Shield Riding, Backstabbing, Blowing StarDock, Blocking Fedspace, AFK scripts, Botting, etc...

NOTE: I don’t personally agree with the attitude that anything allowed by the game is "Fair Play", but in a tournament I feel that we must clearly define any and all tactics that are to be considered violations.

I will take into consideration any conduct requests that are emailed to dmc@twfm.net before the start of the game.

Vid, your example about chess is actually a good one to consider. Sure, you can only make certain moves. But you can do far better if you play the game with a bot than if you play with your own brain. If you're playing against another player and you're using Fritz to decide your moves, you're cheating. But according to your view, that would be fine.

There are plenty of legitimate ways for you to win games. You guys are seriously good at this game. I have no doubt you can be dominant players while sticking to the spirit of the rules. But there are tactics that are clearly meant to circumvent the rules of the game, and you have no problem using them. That's the issue here. And it actually diminishes your accomplishments, from what I can see. It's like you'd rather show off your ability to break the game than show off your ability to win an honest battle on a level playing field. Do you think you need the advantage of secret "tactics" to win?

Getting back to the chess analogy, it would be like if the diagonal move of the Queen was a secret that only a few players knew about, and it gave those players a huge advantage. Is that fair? No. Every player should have the same tactics available, and what decides who's the better player is how those tactics are used in your overall strategy.