Longturn Forum

Dear admin,

It seems I have been kicked from the game. I assume this has to do with time spent in game. Just to let you know, if any other player asks me to log off because they want to make moves, I always do that within a very reasonable amount of time (just a few minutes at most if I need to make moves). The reason I am sometimes logged in for longer, is because I love to look at the map and make various plans, and more importantly because I give tips to the less experienced players in my team. Surely, the community does not wish to punish those who try to build a community of better players?

Anyway, I am very sad that I have been kicked from the game. It was truly fun to play and I like FreeCiv. And more importantly, I think many can attest to the fact that I am a very reasonable player respecting even the wishes of my enemies, when it pertains to the camaraderie of the community.

I did not get any warning about this kicking. Please explain.

/Xercise

This needs to be explained quickly. It is not fair for Xercise to not know why he has been punished nor what the punishment actually means.

Presumably Xercise has been automatically disconnected by Edrim for a few hours - he will be able to log in again soon.
Presumably it is for leaving the client on too long.
I make these guesses because of what Edrim has been saying in the game chat.
But making threats is different from actually 'kicking' someone off.
Edrim needs to explain what he is doing and why.
It should be clear what the time limits are and what the punishment will be.

There was a game, without any limitation where players spent 24/7 ingame, it was disaster for player who wasnt ingame for all day and for players who was online and make RTS every single second a day. I dont know if it was automatic or by hand I dont care. We have had a discussion after this game about spending time in game and play without enemy being online, letting players make their moves silen without horrible counterattacks and all this things that shouldnt be allowed in Longturns because it is not shortturn and usualy players here are meet freeciv only in Longturn, they are not familiar with RTS playing and they are not so quick hand.
In LTeX we have test automat to cut off players for a turn who spent more then 1 hour (or any limitation was given) but it is not user friendly, because you can leave your client by accident or any reason else and you cannot login in this turn again.
Thats why we have a deal placed in rules after this game:

1. Basic gameplay
   8. It is common courtesy to log out and let your enemy do his moves in peace, after you have done yours.

We dont have time limitation, but we (Administrators) have agree that if it is much more then one hour players can be kicked from a game because it is nearly sure he left his client open and go out. I am talking about more then hour, not exactly hour and kick. After splitting Administrators rights to make specific things i am something like PR Administrator, I am trying to keep our rules stable and usable.

In this situation:

(T91 - 08:11:21) Xercise has connected from host109-148-124-69.range109-148.btcentralplus.com (player Xercise).
(T92 - 12:47:03) Lost connection: Xercise from host109-148-124-69.range109-148.btcentralplus.com (kicked) (player Xercise).

It was over TC and more then 4 hours spending in a game, sorry guys but in this case some players, may wish to make their moves without Xercise attention, so they could wait and wait long because he could left his client open for some reasons and back for next TC.

Players have modified clients, that was in past, that logging enemy moves. I dont know how good this clients are but this is another reason we are not agree to left client open.

I will not make spreadsheet who says that they has vanilla and not log moves or have patched client, it is not the point.

When we left this problem open without any attention next game players will leave his clients open many more times, after couple of games some players will leave his clients on screen for whole game. When is good moment to stop it? Can you make a line and say n hours is ok but m hours is not ok.
When we have a team game with 8 players each team 4 hours for each player is much to more, because 8 players can cover all Turn by their time spending in a game. We are not in evil stage of this thing, we are after first big accident and i am focusing to avoid exploitation of this.

Some of you can say that they can logout if they will be asked. Nobody in true action will not ask player to logout not to let enemy know anything is going on. Thats why i get this kicking "stuff" for my shoulder. I know some of you will not accept it as it is. I wonder if players who are happy about this kicking will let us now wht they are think about it. Usualy kicked player are not out from couple of names, all other players can login, do their moves and logout without getting my attention to their logins.

Belive me, letting client open is evil and it may bring horrible situation in future, this is same situation like password sharing, teleportation, etc.

I have invent an idea about Ledder Wars. We will have wbout 4 games in each wave of games. So in best points game we can cut off limitation spending in a game, because in this board players are quite familiar with this game and paying much more attention to it then average. In second board limitation could be 12 hours. In Third 6 for each Turn. In last boards it may be 3 hours, it is just enough for less points players to make their moves, i think last board limitation for half hour will be ok but not necessary.
We can check it in this case, time limitation was invented for players who are not so familiar with this game and are not able to make complicated action with enemy attention. We can check my idea that no limitation is not good thing and players in 1st board can bring us opinions about it after couple of games.

For all others who will get their first kick: remember after next login you need to type /take <your_nickname> to take your nation.

Of course we can start discussion about caravans teleportation passwordsharing and all big exploit again to let everybody know why we dont have this things here, same like time limitation.

edrim wrote:

1. Basic gameplay
   8. It is common courtesy to log out and let your enemy do his moves in peace, after you have done yours.

In my country, "it is common courtesy" to say thank you when someone receives a gift. It is also "common courtesy"
to hold the door for people to be using the same exit after yourself. There is no way, that one would be punished or
fined if he did not do these things.

The wording in this "rule" is very wrong and very confusing.

Also, pertaining to the enforcement of that rule.
As much as I am grateful about the works of administrators here. It also does not make it a rule when
you agree on something between admins.

I "forgot" my client open in many occasions in LT31 and LT32. Maybe it wasn't notice because of ping timeout but still, I am pretty sure that many times
(>50), I have been online for more that an hour.

I do not completely reject the spirit of that rule but I do think it is a little bit abusive (even if properly formulated). I think that rule exist because
we haven't completely removed all the RTS from the game. As soon as we have no RTS in the game we should not have that rule.
I also would agree that if any new RTS were to be discovered, then that rule would be reinstated.

Thank you very much for the thorough and valid explanation!

I agree that a four hour limitation is reasonable for the reasons you have stated. And I now also understand why some people will not 'ask enemies' to log off, so I guess some automatic time kick is actually good - 4 hours seems smart. If it is not too much trouble, I would suggest a warning via chat message, just before you kick (can also be automatic maybe?)

Cheers, Xercise

As i said, i belive that this couple of players will get what is going on with this long connection and they will nto do it.
Everybody can leave his client open by accident, no big deal, but if some players do it again and again it is not ok.

In my very private opinion timeout 23h is not quite ok too, because a player can has time only in one zone of day, so he will loose one turn every 23 days. I wanted to change it to 25 hours but this idea was not got as good as i thought.

Mostly players here are casual, logging one time a day to make their moves and be a member of a community, i am trying to care about them at most reduce very active players respect to my person. I cannot make happy everyone. I am not talking that most active players are worse then the others. I think they can live with some limitation, but without this limitation we will ruin less active players fun of playing.

If anybody has an idea to remove RTS without makeing it hard to play i will be first to let everyody client open and plan their moves or strategy.

pipo wrote: In my country, "it is common courtesy" to say thank you when someone receives a gift. It is also "common courtesy"
to hold the door for people to be using the same exit after yourself. There is no way, that one would be punished or
fined if he did not do these things.

The wording in this "rule" is very wrong and very confusing.

Can you write how this rule should be written? I am not as good in english as i want to be so i will not change it because it may be worse then previous.
You know the spirit of this rule so you can write a sentence or quotation for it.

you should write this into the game as autokick features, so once player has passed x number of minutes logged in, they are blocked for the rest of the turn

mmm2 wrote:you should write this into the game as autokick features, so once player has passed x number of minutes logged in, they are blocked for the rest of the turn

As i said this is not user-firendly when you really forget to logout before doing your moves and pass your time, you are in big trouble. We have tested it in LTeX and it is not working.
I prefer to work with players and show them that spending so much time in freeciv is bad for other players playing same game. Once there is no respond to for asking i am helping to disconnect, thats all.

I have asked some time before to log out. Sometimes player forget to logout so he is disconnect by hand, i think kicking is not good word in this situation and has very negatiove meaning.

I will add one more thing to current ruleset.

We have agree that city trading is evil some time before. It brought teleportation (fixed) and all dirty tricks.
Now when we have team game, and noone can be kicked from team city trading was natural to be on.
But in this case it may brings that one player will spend 4 hours ingame getting cities from previous player and be on duty, next player will get his cities after another 4 hours, and again and again. Or worse player will give some naval cities because he is not good in RTS as recipient. So good player will take cities for whole turn to give them out for TC.
Thats why we have switch off city trading and city trading should not be allowed in any diplomatic and gametype form. Lots of players didnt hear about citytrading horror, but same game as we switch it on new exploits are invented.

edrim wrote: Can you write how this rule should be written? I am not as good in english as i want to be so i will not change it because it may be worse then previous.
You know the spirit of this rule so you can write a sentence or quotation for it.

English is not my first language either. I am against rules generally, and against any current form of governments. Call it libertarian or even anarchist as you wish. I already pointed out that I am against this rule. All this to say that I might not be the best person to ask to formulate a rule.

What I am saying is that if you are putting rule out there, it has to be specific and not subject to interpretation. You need to use words like "Gamers have to do this and that in this and that situation.".

eg: If we have a RTS flaw in any current game, players must not be signed on into that said game for more that one hour at a time and no more than 4 hours overall, or cumulatively, in any turn.

I hope this will help you.

edrim wrote:

mmm2 wrote:you should write this into the game as autokick features, so once player has passed x number of minutes logged in, they are blocked for the rest of the turn

As i said this is not user-firendly .... We have tested it in LTeX and it is not working....

What do you mean by "not working"
do you mean there was bug in code or that players complained that they couldn't play RTS staying logged in all turn?

btw, everyone on our team stays logged in for less than hour. this kind of autokick feature would have no impact, except for 2 or 3 turns when we planned some attacks that required coordination.

i favor autokick/time limits because it enforces that every team has the same time per turn!!
imo, it's unfair if some teams can be online 2 hours a day to micromanage everything, and other teams only 10 minutes each..

but regardless main advantage is being online for first 10 minutes and last 10 minutes of every turn. making autokick won't really change anything, other than to end excessive micromanagemant and microplanning, city trading, etc...

I agree with Mmm2 that the time limit will not solve RTS - of course. If we discuss TC RTS here... then my preferred option would be a random TC within one hour. I think someone said this was possible or even tested in the past, no?

(To explain 'random TC': So, the turn is for example 23 hours... after 22 hours, the TC could occur at any random minute in the next hour! This would solve RTS before TC and for all intents and purposes even RTS after TC)

everyone would vote yes if such patch was made for randomness, or something like this..

mmm2 wrote:everyone would vote yes if such patch was made for randomness, or something like this..

Yes, but this patch need to be tested in LTeX, to check if it is stable, we dont want segmentation faults in middle stage of a game.

mmm2 wrote:you should write this into the game as autokick features, so once player has passed x number of minutes logged in, they are blocked for the rest of the turn

Are you going to write this patch? I don't think you will, I won't write it ... so the manual kick by the admin is unfortunately what we live with for now.

mrsynical wrote:

mmm2 wrote:you should write this into the game as autokick features, so once player has passed x number of minutes logged in, they are blocked for the rest of the turn

Are you going to write this patch? I don't think you will, I won't write it ... so the manual kick by the admin is unfortunately what we live with for now.

But now situation is stable, nobody "forget" his connection open and all players are happy. I wonder when situation will happen again and some of players will try to enlarge his onnline time. It will be again same discussion as it is now, that nobody knows that it is not good for others to let connection open.