15-06-2004 23:47									#1
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This is supposed to be a discussion thread, not an official thread.

I believe most of us are opposed to cheating. However I think there are different understandings regarding what should be considered cheating. There of course should be a list of prohibited exploits. However, I think for the next game to be really successful in the sense that people enjoy a fair play no matter if they win or lose in the end, we really should talk about what we all believe is cheating in spirit, whether on the prohibition list or not.

After reading some of the CC threads, I realize that we noticed different things and had less concerns on other things. Now after that reading I started to gain a better understanding about why some people were angry at various time, and also a better understanding about my own actions and their affects. So I would like to talk about them here, so that we can all get a clear understanding regarding what common ground we are based on.

	16-06-2004 00:06									#2
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There are three kinds of cheating as far as I can tell from this game.

One is focused on people. People try to gain information through chatting, PMing, looking at posting patterns. The extreme situations that some have feared is that one team could send a "mole" or something like that to the other team. I'm not sure if that means DLs, or simply reciprocal interexchange informations or what. There are also examples where PMs were sent pretending the origination was from another team.

In my opinion, it is harmless fun if players of different team tries to get information through little tricks. Also faction leaders should be allowed to match wits when they try to negotiate deals, etc. However, the line should be drawn when there are routinely unauthorized exchange of faction sensitive information between two players (or DLs) from different teams. Once this kind of situations are discovered, the involved players should be removed from the game.

Another kind of cheating is focused on the game itself. Exploits include tricks to determine base coordinates, former reactivation, and others I don't really know much about. My believe is that only the ones that are specifically stated to be allowed should be used, and others, whether specifically prohibited or not, should not be used. If a question about whether a technique is ok to use rises, CMN should be consulted before such technique be adopted.

The third kind of cheating is problems like reloading, parallel playing, etc. Before the turn is played officially, multiple players can "test play" the turn and discover different consequences under different orders. This kind of behaviors are very hard to moderate, since turns can be emailed around people. Many times a player who plays the turn could have made mistakes and thus have the temptation to pass the turn to another player for a replay since it the mistake is not intended originally. However, my opinion is that we must learn to accept and live with our own mistakes.

My belief is though, since this kind of behavior needs at least two people getting involved, so if we can try to maintain a high morale standard, we can self moderate ourselves. It's alright to say to your teamate: "I think we shouldn't do it."

	16-06-2004 00:08									#3
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Well, let me thread this thread with this.

Whatever information a teammember transfers from his faction to another without a majority consencus is strong nogo for me.

	16-06-2004 00:14									#4
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There are times that an Embassador may need more authorities to conduct his/her business. In the Hive the Chairman and Embassadors are authorized to do whatever necessary to facilitate inter faction relationship, I believe. However I think that can be a internal matter that are decided whthin each faction. What should not be tolerated, though, is unauthorized routine exchange of information that are not disclosed to the factions that are affected.

	16-06-2004 00:23									#5
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That is what I mean with a majority concencus. An ambassador has normally the backup of his team.

As for the other points you brought forward it depends on the people involved. As boring it can be trying to locate base locations, or do parallel playing (with older turns or the most recent one doesn't matter), in my experience it happens sooner or later when someone is bored. The main thing is that when someone do this the info is not told to the other team members, or the thus acquired info used to do a better turnplay in general in case this person has more responsibilities regarding turnplaying/orders at that time.

	16-06-2004 00:37									#6
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The problem with trying to define cheating is that while we will attempt to define it to the best of our ability, something will happen that is fairly common sense but that we did not specifically cover.
If Drogue attempts to punish this person, he will play semantics - "Well, it wasn't "specifically" mentioned".
I think we should make rules for what is amiguous, but let Drogue handle what seems to be fairly common sense ("No, you can't give your teams password out to another team") but might not be specifically covered.

Generally, when it comes to information sharing, I believe it should be like this: If the rest of your faction would be angry if you told someone this information, then you probably shouldn't tell them.

For example: Diplomatic intentions, military plans, base information, etc...

	16-06-2004 00:58									#7
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How about this: One should always let his teamates know what information is shared with other team members, no matter through what channel. But again, this is not something that the CMN needs to worry about, rather this is individual team policy.

What I'm trying to define here is the actions where CMN's discipline is required. Unauthorized routinely solicitating information is one, in my opinion.

	16-06-2004 02:23									#8
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Can you or do we really want to control diplomacy this way?

I might be missing something here but if teams can contact one another thru the game mechanics, then why are we limiting what information can be shared?

Again maybe Im missing something here because Im no AC expert by any long shot.

Can someone explain?

On the reload issue or playing ahead issue, I agree 100%. It should not be allowed. Although Im not sure how you would enforce that, other than you would have to relay on someones word unless of course the outcome of play becomes routinely above and beyond what would be considered normal. (ie, a faction NEVER loses an attack or something similar) That could be checked by the CMN if someone else was suspicious of this this type of recurring outcome.

	16-06-2004 03:29									#9
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The problem is that the game can be set up so that communications within the game cannot be made until contact is made (or the commlink aquired thru trade or podpop)

But players contacted other teams outside the game (by PM, e-mail and MSN chat). Alliances were promised, etc etc in these chats that couldn't have happened in game.

And a CMN is powerless to police these, other than being alert when trolling the private forums for clues, etc as to waht might be happening off-boards

Playing ahead is also hard to police as well, especially if the results are shared thru e-mails, AIM or MSN chats, etc. I did allow a modified form of playing ahead in terms of letting the "non-offical" turn player explore AI interaction, checking battle odds, etc, and the reason I did this is that a couple of teams had highly skilled individuals who were able to almost exactly replicate the official game via a simulator (a scenario they'd set up) that let them actually play ahead several turns.

Not every team had this expertise, so I opened the gates to let the technologically-challenged teams compete on an equal footing.

Again, though, it's almost impossible for a CMN to check whether this is all that's being done with the "playing ahead"

I have less trouble with ten players simultaneously pod-popping, then choosing the version that they want to use for the turn as that is a) time intensive, and b) somewhat random (ie if popping 2 pods, the chances of the one player getting the best result for 2 of them is remote) as well as c) difficult to co-ordinate (In many instances getting 2 players to even look at the turn while the 48 hours was open proved a challenge for many teams many times)

And there are other ways around that as well, such as the hack (quickly edited out of the forum) that removed the replay message, playing on 2 - or more - computers, I've even heard in other PBEMs probably anecdotal comments about a player reinstalling SMAC to hide a reload (it must have been a totally horrendous podpop - or maybe a mindworm eating one of his 2 starting colony pods or something, 'cos that sounds a little too drastic a solution)

But I always thought that the honour code should be higher in this type of game, as the attraction lies more in the democratic actions and roleplaying of the faction while playing the turns rather than in the outcome of the turn itself, and the result of the game. That's how I intend to participate as Morgan anyway. We take the lumps from ill-judged moves and then roleplay a write-up around them, having fun in the process 9even if a base gets wiped out - rich material for an in-game narrative)

In short, there's not really much a CMN can do, and while in this II game I often said that I opened and compared every turn with its previous save, in reality I only did that a couple of times per faction. Bingman, I believe it was, said five years ago on this issue (yes, it's been around for as long as SMAC's been around) "Say you'll look at every turn, and players won't know if and when you do, even if you never look at one, and will police themselves accordingly"

Googlie

	16-06-2004 07:07									#10
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quote: How about this: One should always let his teamates know what information is shared with other team members, no matter through what channel. But again, this is not something that the CMN needs to worry about, rather this is individual team policy.

Yep, I often had no clue what my teammates had been communicating about. Just had awareness of something being communicated because of strange actions/comments by the other team. It was very frustrating and broke down diplomacy which might have been fruitful.

	16-06-2004 07:14									#11
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I agree with every word Googlie said. Lots of times it is up to individual players, instead of the CMN. And I do agree ones experience in a game does not so much have to do with whether you are in the win or lose, rather it is related more with other things, the roleplays, the interaction between different players, etc. I've enjoyed my experiences in the Hive, not at all because the Hive has had the final win. In fact the last stage of game I did not feel as enjoyable as before, since the participation has been dropped from before. While from what I read in the CC's forum, their last stage could be a better experience for somebody like me, even if they are in the losing side.

	16-06-2004 07:24									#12
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quote: Originally posted by Kody Yep, I often had no clue what my teammates had been communicating about. Just had awareness of something being communicated because of strange actions/comments by the other team. It was very frustrating and broke down diplomacy which might have been fruitful.

I think this is kind of weird

When I do diplomacy for Civ3 Demo games I always post just about anything discussed with another team.

Isn't that standard practice here??


(remember Im new )

	16-06-2004 08:11									#13
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Welcome to Nippolyton - The land where what is meant is never said

	16-06-2004 08:12									#14
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quote: Originally posted by Googlie such as the hack (quickly edited out of the forum) that removed the replay message,

Didn't work for SMAX, so no probs there.
That thread got flamed to crap pretty quickly. NW Flamerz!

My opinion of fun in the game?
I'm not into this Socialising RP Bullshit.
I'm here to learn how to build a whoop ass faction,
to build that whoop ass faction,
and to whoop ass with that whoop ass faction.

	16-06-2004 08:18									#15
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Note that having strong intra-team communications only works if your team members are active.
I'd say, talk to whomever's on Trillian or IRC at the time and get their voice.
If that's too dynamic for you, give it 6 hours of notice - but I prefer decisions to be made by those dedicated enough to be around when they are proposed (or within 6 hours of so) - not the lazy slackers who only log on once a day.

	16-06-2004 08:20									#16
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Hmm....So far, Enigma was thrown out of The single ACDG, and then the last ACDG, and then he was thrown out of the Gaians.
I wonder how long its going to be until he's thrown out again!

	16-06-2004 08:43									#17
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going through the save file with a hex editor may be cheating.

Can you imagine though, Changing the text :P

"we want to be friends." becomes "you are all a bunch of wusses."

	16-06-2004 22:59									#18
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quote: Originally posted by conmcb25 I think this is kind of weird When I do diplomacy for Civ3 Demo games I always post just about anything discussed with another team. Isn't that standard practice here?? (remember Im new )

I would say that it is the standard practice, just not everyone follows it strictly.

	16-06-2004 23:01									#19
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quote: Originally posted by Whoha going through the save file with a hex editor may be cheating. Can you imagine though, Changing the text :P "we want to be friends." becomes "you are all a bunch of wusses."

There are already people who attempted it and it is proved that it is not achievable so far. The practice I refer to is not to change the text though, simply to delete the repeatitive text in the end of the save file, which makes the file unnecessarily large.

	17-06-2004 00:10									#20
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ok here are my recomendations for "Formal Diplomatic Protocalls of the ACDGIII"

Part I - For Players

All players must when initiating a chat, signing an E-mail or Apolyton PM must state their Apolyton account, Faction affiliation, title within their faction, negotiating athority and officiality of their message.

Apolyton account is the apolyton account name by which you are know on your factions official tally of members, no other identification is acceptable, no additional names are to be used either.

Faction affiliation is what faction your in so no claiming to be of a different faction to trick people.

Title is what ever officialy sanctioned position or title your faction chooses to give you regardless of any meaning/power/athority it might hold. Put all this together and your going to be signing your messages

SIGNED, GRAND TITLE NAME OF THE BLANK FACTION

Negotiating athority is a conditional destinction granted by a factions goverment for an individuals comunication to carry negotiating weight. Most people have no negotiating athority and mearly express their own opinions, sometimes select individuals will be granted greater leway and can make more solid statments about what their factions position will be. In some rare cases they may even have full athority to deals on the spot. A full explination of all such levels or complexities of athority cant be given here ofcorse, the point is simply that the level of Athority needs to be comunicated in some simple coherent way. If your status changes others must be informed of it at the onset of your next comunication. Claiming to have negotiating status you do not have is grounds for expulsion.

Lastly if a player is transmiting by E-mail or PM an official Faction to Faction letter or statment (typicaly such documents are colaborative efforts that are created on a Factions private forum and polished untill officialy aproved) then it must come with a header clearly stating that it is an "OFFICIAL" document from Faction X to Faction Y. Only documents that have been aproved by a factions goverment can carry this official designation. Falsifying such status is illegal and grounds for expulsion from the game.

Any player who finds themselves to be the recipient of a comunication from members of other factions (official or unofficial) should at the earliest convenience post a copy of it in their factions private forum. Repeted failure to do so with any descusion that their factions deam sensative is grounds for expulsion. Remember to save chat logs before exiting so they may be posted as well. All such material must be complete and unabridged.

No personal Insults or Flames are permissable in diplomatic comunications, but you are encouraged to point out the evils of your oponents goverment, society and people.

Any additinal stipulations your factions makes on your comunications are considered binding equaly binding.

Part II - For Factions


Factions should at all times maintain a listing on the Public forums of who their designated diplomat/s are. Instructions should be clear as the the method of contact, the time of avalibility, the contact/s level of negotiating power andy any other special considerations. It is the reciving factions responsibility to see that recived messages are processed and placed onto their forum in a timly manor, if multiple contact personell are required then request that messages be sent in duplicate or triplicate.

Factions can if they choose establish "Hush Lists" listing the critical information which their members are not to reveal to other factions under any circumstances. Factions can set their own protocall on the tightness of comunication. Policing members will be an internal faction matter with the Gods providing any assistance and judgement they deam nessary. Other factions may be forced to coperate with an investigation if the Gods deam it t be so.

	17-06-2004 00:17									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Impaler[WrG] No personal Insults or Flames are permissable in diplomatic comunications, but you are encouraged to point out the evils of your oponents goverment, society and people.

	17-06-2004 00:19									#22
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You evil capitalist! You evil fascist! You evil anarchist! You evil treehugger! [/sample]

	17-06-2004 00:49									#23
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Tassadar, Enigma thrown out of the Gaians has nothing to do with this. There were different reasons behind his departure, we denie any connection with this issue of him being thrown out before and him leaving the Gaians. We distance ourselves in concentrating on specific individuals, its not fair.

Last edited by laurentius on 17-06-2004 at 00:55

	17-06-2004 01:20									#24
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For official PMs and emails I agree with Impaler. But we should also remember that sometimes people who know each other chats occassionally and such chats may gradually mention some game related information. I think as long as the people involved in chats know clearly who they are chatting with and the information is perfectly ok to be talked about, then we don't really have to go through the formality such as the following:

HongHu: Hey Impaler I'm very impressed about your skills of making good steaks.
Impaler: Yes that is one thing that I enjoy to do.
...
...
HongHu: Talking about this, this is HongHu of the Gaian speaking, I am the current Gaian Ambassador to the Morgans and have full power to conduct interfaction diplomatic dealings with the Morgan faction. Have you received the proposal I PMed you yesterday?
Impaler: This is Impaler of the Morgan Industry, I am the third Ambassador of the Morgan that are granted full power to deal with all diplomatic issues. Yes I have received your PM.
...

	17-06-2004 04:07									#25
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quote: Originally posted by HongHu One is focused on people. People try to gain information through chatting, PMing, looking at posting patterns. The extreme situations that some have feared is that one team could send a "mole" or something like that to the other team. I'm not sure if that means DLs, or simply reciprocal interexchange informations or what. There are also examples where PMs were sent pretending the origination was from another team.

IMHO, moles, that is having an infiltrator in another faction, are cheating, as is pretending to be someone else. Looking at posting patterns cannot be ruled against, since it's impossible to police, and I look at who's posted last just to see if my teams replied yet, in the old ACDG.

quote: Originally posted by HongHu In my opinion, it is harmless fun if players of different team tries to get information through little tricks. Also faction leaders should be allowed to match wits when they try to negotiate deals, etc. However, the line should be drawn when there are routinely unauthorized exchange of faction sensitive information between two players (or DLs) from different teams. Once this kind of situations are discovered, the involved players should be removed from the game.

Personally, I'd see that as an internal faction matter. If you don't want a member of you're team doing unauthorised diplomacy, tell them not to. Make it that only one person can. If other factions want anyone to be able to discuss foreign affairs, let them. IMHO, it's up to the faction to police their own members, if they're giving away information. if the other team has a mole, it's against the rules, but trying battles of wits in negotiations are an important part of SMAC, IMHO. It's all diplomacy, and if in RL someone was caught giving away secrets, their faction would deal with it, possibly by expulsion. If needed,. in the interests of fair play, I can say that I will tell a faction if one of their members is giving unauthorised information away, if I become mod, so they can police effectively.

quote: Originally posted by HongHu Another kind of cheating is focused on the game itself. Exploits include tricks to determine base coordinates, former reactivation, and others I don't really know much about. My believe is that only the ones that are specifically stated to be allowed should be used, and others, whether specifically prohibited or not, should not be used. If a question about whether a technique is ok to use rises, CMN should be consulted before such technique be adopted.

I agree completely.

quote: Originally posted by HongHu The third kind of cheating is problems like reloading, parallel playing, etc. Before the turn is played officially, multiple players can "test play" the turn and discover different consequences under different orders. This kind of behaviors are very hard to moderate, since turns can be emailed around people. Many times a player who plays the turn could have made mistakes and thus have the temptation to pass the turn to another player for a replay since it the mistake is not intended originally. However, my opinion is that we must learn to accept and live with our own mistakes.

I would agree too. I'd put this up to fairplay, but it can be seen when done seriously, that some factions get a *lot* of good luck, and the faction leader can be asked about it. We're all in this for fun though, and we known that wouldn't be fun. It would probably be found out t the end too, spoiling the game, and meaning if winning did matter, it would be forfeit.

quote: Originally posted by HongHu My belief is though, since this kind of behavior needs at least two people getting involved, so if we can try to maintain a high morale standard, we can self moderate ourselves. It's alright to say to your teamate: "I think we shouldn't do it."

I agree, although a watchful mod, though not someone who goes on witch hunts, is always useful, just to check.

	17-06-2004 04:11									#26
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quote: Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar The problem with trying to define cheating is that while we will attempt to define it to the best of our ability, something will happen that is fairly common sense but that we did not specifically cover. If Drogue attempts to punish this person, he will play semantics - "Well, it wasn't "specifically" mentioned". I think we should make rules for what is amiguous, but let Drogue handle what seems to be fairly common sense ("No, you can't give your teams password out to another team") but might not be specifically covered.

My intention is similar. I would want to discuss rules, as this is, and then poll for acceptance of the rules. Once we have an accepted set of rules, this is set, and won't change. If something else turns up that isn't that big a thing, I can decide whether or not it's legitimate. if it's a major thing, we can poll, or just disallow it. When in doubt, ask beforehand.

quote: Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar Generally, when it comes to information sharing, I believe it should be like this: If the rest of your faction would be angry if you told someone this information, then you probably shouldn't tell them. For example: Diplomatic intentions, military plans, base information, etc...

I agree completely. That is for internal policing though. It's like if someone plays the turn who was not authorised, that still stands. If someone does diplomacy that wasn't allowed, that's the teams problem. Hence put people you trust in charge of diplomacy. Actions cannot be undone through lack of authority, it isn't realistic (as in the last DG).

	17-06-2004 05:27									#27
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quote: It's like if someone plays the turn who was not authorised, that still stands.

So, if I wanted to, I could play the Morgan turn, self-destruct all the bases, post it, and it'd be official?

quote: that's the teams problem.

But why? The team can't control what another person does.
And again, the team would never know unless one of the two parties reveals information to someone else. If the two parties are smart, they won't. Thus, the team never finds out...And its not fun when a few people have a monopoly on all the information in the game because then those who joined to play the game, not to play underhanded politics, are left in a major disadvantage.

quote: it isn't realistic

Theres a point where you have to sacrafice realism for fun.

	17-06-2004 14:20									#28
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How about this:

Only the Officialy designated turn player of a faction or their designated back up may submit the turn to the Turn Tracking thread, the first such turn submited by one of these players will be the only turn used any subsiquent ones are null and void. UNLESS the factions deadline has passed in which case the FIRST turn submited by ANY member of that faction (as defined by their official members list) will be considered the official turn, any additional turns will be null and void even if they come from a more official sourse and the team wishes it to be used instead.

Deadline extentsions must me requested in the turn tracking thread by the designated turn player or back up before the deadline would otherwise pass. An explination of why the extention is needed should be provided if they expect any chance for it to be upheld, the extention can last for 12 hours with each request and multiple extentions can be strung together as long as each new request is submited under the new deadline. Once an extension is requested it will then be considered to be in effect UNTIL such time as the games God strikes down the extention/s. If the extention is later struk down then the first turn submited after the original deadline passed will be official turn and the timer for the next teams turn will begin at the point when the Gods struk down the extension. If the extention expires with no turn submited from anyone then we again revert to free-for-all Coup status and the first turn submited from any source will be official.

In the case of a Gross delay of the turn ~48 hours after the original deadline would have passed and if no extentions have been requested or turns have been submited from any member then the Gods will at their discresion be alowed to open the factions turn and press "End Turn" to keep the game moving.


This is similar to what we did with the Hive last game after that huge delay and the Jamski turn coup attempt. Because the official goverment has left the reigns of power unatended by failing to meet the deadline they have opened the oportunity for a coup and it is no ones fault but their own if a disident member then playes the turn.

Theirs no ambiguity in this policy, either one of 2 officials sends in the turn within the designated time limit (so the back up turn player could comit a coup by posting before the main turn player) OR the first turn submited after that point. Very cut and dry.

	17-06-2004 16:26									#29
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quote: This is similar to what we did with the Hive last game after that huge delay and the Jamski turn coup attempt.

It wasn't similar because I announced I was doing the turn in 2 threads (Honghu asked me to do the turn for her). Once someone is offically playing the turn and someone else jumps in and plays it instead.... that falls under a the definition of a coup.

	18-06-2004 00:08									#30
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I tend to agree to Impaler's method. It should be clear in any faction who is the official turn player and who has the right to play and submit the turn when turn player cannot play the turn. There can be multiple players. However the turn submited by a turn player should be deemed as official. In the example of the Mead turn in the Hive, the Mead turn would be used.

One minor change would be that request of extension should be allowed to be made by a non turn player. Often the situation is turn player is sick or away.

If an official turn has started after the 48 hours the turn player or team leader must inform others in the turn thread to insure no unofficial turn be submitted and accepted.