Sportsmanship

det0r · Post by **det0r** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:26 pm

LT30 has gone to shit recently - people seem to have taken on the idea that 'you can do whatever it takes to win', and they end up exploiting 'bugs', which are in some cases features that they turning into bugs.

An example: one alliance is taking advantage of the fact that it is a FFA game to 'steal' techs from each other (despite the fact that they are openly working together). Because each city can only have a tech stolen from it once, this effectively makes the city immune to tech-stealing. This is actually a feature of the game, as it ensures that a player cannot just steal a lot of techs from a single enemy city, but by playing in this manner the alliance have turned it in to a bug that will now need to be addressed.

As Lord_P (I think it was him) mentioned in another thread, when he solved a Rubik's cube by disassembling/re-assembling it, he found no satisfaction in the solution. This is an online game that people play in their free time - there are no prizes for winning and the only thing keeping people in the game is the satisfaction of playing and getting better.

Can I just suggest to the people that spend all their free time thinking of these bugs - there will be no opponents for you to play against if you continue to use such tactics, because everybody will get sick of such lame tactics. Perhaps you can spend this time thinking about a tactical move/attack/strategy within LT - perhaps it will be a bit more satisfying if it is effective?

Marduk · Post by **Marduk** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:39 pm

This is a known bug/feature, people have done this for a number of games (though few know about it). I agree that this should be solved but I don't see how that could be done. As exploits go this is not the worst we've seen by a long shot. Now that everyone knows it, tech stealing will just be harder for everyone.

Lord_P · Post by **Lord_P** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:46 pm

Personaly I think we should get rid of the once per city rule, or just limit it to once per turn to avoid mass diplomat attack.
Steal my technology once, shame on you. Steal my technology twice, shame on me for not posting a diplomat to the vulnerable city....

Marduk · Post by **Marduk** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:56 pm

Lord_P wrote:Personaly I think we should get rid of the once per city rule, or just limit it to once per turn to avoid mass diplomat attack.
Steal my technology once, shame on you. Steal my technology twice, shame on me for not posting a diplomat to the vulnerable city....

That makes sense. As soon as such a patch is available I'd support applying it to the LT servers.

monamipierrot · Post by **monamipierrot** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 7:57 pm

Once per same-enemy/same-city?

monamipierrot · Post by **monamipierrot** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 8:04 pm

(actually, I thought it was like that)

kevin551 · Post by **kevin551** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 4:17 am

Is this thread a joke?
It it just a counter attack to the thread about scripting?

Why would you want to change the diplomat code for this.
To steal from your own city is stupid, so why do you take this seriously.

Allowing a diplomat to steal only once from a city is a known and important concept in game play.
To steal more than once the attacker can use a spy.
To stop stealing the defender can build an academy and some defending diplomats.

IllvilJa · Post by **IllvilJa** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:22 pm

Kryon wrote:Yes each different nation should be able to steal from a city once, but not more than that. This fix should not be too hard to implement.

Agreed. I've thought about it and in relative terms, this should be one of the easier things to implement and also, it should have a small impact on client, server and database resources. The best solution (making things slightly elaborate) is to create a server setting so the server admin can decide if every city can be tech-robbed

* once
* once per other nation in the game
* indefinitely.

Once the setting is agreed upon, it should be used/abused as the players like, without requirements on the players to act on some code. As I see it, it's always preferable to code the game rather than code the players

.

Resource usage should be small if implemented in C... a 128 bitfield takes up 16 bytes per city and even if some overhead might be associated with it due to memory management and other computer architecture peculiarities, it's really something that should fit quite easily into freeciv's current system requirements.

I agree with Monamipierrot, I already expected the game to allow each nation to steal one tech per city.

No, I'm not using this tactic and have to admit that if I were to suffer from it (which I might do or might already have done), I would rather call myself 'outsmarted' by the enemies rather than call them 'lacking sportmanship'. If someone develops a tactic within the game rules that hurts me in freeciv, I simply accepts that without complaint or trying to campaign against it. Not to be patronizing but I find it below my dignity to react otherwise for actions that happens in the game world. OTOH, I don't always use tactics if I consider them potentially offensive, or rather, if they have the potential to cause reactions like det0r's above. Instead I ask if it's OK to use the tactic/feature or if it is considered offensive due to being an exploit, like I did with A.Smith's Trading co.

(...which I frustratingly have not yet recieved a clear answer on whether or not it is an exploit vs window client users if I as a Linux user decide to build A.Smith's...)

Sure, it makes the playing field uneven for me. I accept that other people use tactics and strategies against me even if I don't always consider myself having that freedom due to potential community retailation. Yes, that's a disadvantage, but you know, I'm fine with that disadvantage.

Sportmanship is a tricky topic, especially as it's subjective what's good sports and what's not. With the risk of cutting off tender toes here, but I think people have an annoying tendency to use the term sportmanship (I've seen this in other communities like the one around Battlefield 2 and 1942) to vilify gaming tactics and strategies that goes outside their own personal preferences, tactics/strategies that emerges from the complex sandbox environment the gaming world consists of. Attempts address gaming issues by 'coding the players' to maintain someone's definition of 'sportmanship' can easily degrade to a frustrating powerplay, something which in my opinion is a much bigger threat to online games than the gaming tactics the sportmanship discussion tries to address.

/IllvilJa

KG · Post by KG » Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:41 pm

The thing is that some players don't ally officially even though they share the same interest and common goal...

mrsynical · Post by **mrsynical** » Sun Mar 25, 2012 4:40 am

Appropriate techloss parameters can sort out stealing from your friends.