Cheating in PBEMs - Page 4

klesh · November 24, 2002, 13:07

Well it is not as if I have been blasting around in TSFE without losses. A guy does need to take losses whenever he plays. If I showed you my casualty list and it said that I have captured the entire Balkans and Poland etc with the losses of 15 tanks and 3 infantry, then I would say that my methods of 'maximization' are like cheating. But here I shall show you. This is exactly 1 year (12 turns) after I invaded the Germans. See for yourself, it doesnt help that much.

It doesnt look very good in the propaganda report to say that "Today, 25 units assaulted Budapest, and it is now under our controll and being held by 3 infantry and a fighter." No, indeed I will try to make it seem as though I am unstoppable. Even the likes of Jaques Elul would tell you that

-FMK.

MagyarCrusader · November 24, 2002, 13:13

OK Darius, I won't play like that. I haven't had much of a chance to do it anyway but I will avoid it in the future. However, if I do make keyboard errors in moving units in wrong directions I will reload the previous save.

Quote:

It doesnt look very good in the propaganda report to say that "Today, 25 units assaulted Budapest, and it is now under our controll and being held by 3 infantry and a fighter."

Of course it doesn't look good! Commies, Nazis, Germans, Russians, Romanians, Austrians, Mongols, Turks... all need to stay the hell away from Budapest!

klesh · November 24, 2002, 13:45

Heh, I'm Ukrainian... I'll be over shortly

yop73 · November 24, 2002, 15:54

I have some more questions:

-Is it allowed to reload a file, if you made peace with a certain person, but no yet with the AI, and then suddenly bump into a unit and then kill the unit??

-Is it allowed, when you discover the tech for a new government, that you test in which is the next turn for an instant revolt????

Darius871 · November 24, 2002, 16:04

Quote:

Originally posted by yop73
-Is it allowed to reload a file, if you made peace with a certain person, but no yet with the AI, and then suddenly bump into a unit and then kill the unit??

Well I don't know what you mean by "allowed" since there's no real lawmaker here, but IMO that's ok, as is reloading when you move a unit off a road or railroad by accident.

Quote:

Originally posted by yop73
-Is it allowed, when you discover the tech for a new government, that you test in which is the next turn for an instant revolt????

I don't know about that one; that seems to me to be the same as attacking a city just to see whether it can be taken; the revolt length mechanism is part of the game and you should have to take your chances.

klesh · November 24, 2002, 16:15

So then you are saying that odeo years are a cheat?!?

-FMK.

Darius871 · November 24, 2002, 16:37

?

Choke · November 24, 2002, 16:38

odeo?

germanos · November 24, 2002, 16:45

Every fourth turn you will get the option to change government.

Darius871 · November 24, 2002, 16:50

Yes I already knew that, but I don't know what FMK meant.

Henrik · November 24, 2002, 16:54

The years that give instant revolution are refered to as Odeo years after the poster who found them.

Darius871 · November 24, 2002, 17:12

Ok then to answer his question, yes. Testing to see if it's an odeo year and then effectively hitting "undo" if it isn't an odeo year is the same thing as attacking a city and then hitting "undo" because the attack didn't work. Same thing. As someone said in another thread, world leaders do not have access to time machines, so why should we?

Case · November 24, 2002, 17:28

Quote:

Originally posted by MagyarCrusader
Of course it doesn't look good! Commies, Nazis, Germans, Russians, Romanians, Austrians, Mongols, Turks... all need to stay the hell away from Budapest!

You left out Australians

*starts preparing the Australian march on the Danube*

Re: admitting losses: I generally keep quiet about my defeats. It's better that your oponent is left in the dark about how and why some of their units took marginal damage

klesh · November 24, 2002, 17:37

Strange, I might know for instance that I want to have a revolution on turn 4 of a scenario to break out of a crappy government. Figuring that turn 8 is 4 turns from turn 4 isnt magical, its addition. Some of these rules are going to be so hard to enforce.

I think we should attempt to compile a ballot consisting of every imaginable question we can think of, and then have a vote on what our community standards are.

The only way to keep it official would be to have it through the PBEM civgroup. I am with ANZAC in wanting more features and usefullness about that group, it has so much potential.

If rules are going to be universal, then we need a way to let everyone have a say rather than some debate in one thread, and more debate about another issue in another thread. Uniformity.

Do people in the civgroup agree to maybe comming up with ballot questions?

-FMK.

Darius871 · November 24, 2002, 17:42

FMK, I never said using your knowledge of the odeo mechanism is cheating. I only said "testing" with a reload is. If you know from SP or from experience with the scenario when those turns will be, then by all means have a revolt on them, that's something totally different and is... advantageous for you, not necessarily cheating. But they are two different things.

Choke · November 24, 2002, 17:49

So being bad at math or ignorant of this odeo thing means you are a cheater to reload, but if you know about the odeo thing/figure it out mathematically it's not cheating? Sounds like bullshit to me.

klesh · November 24, 2002, 17:58

Well thats just it. I *could* claim I did the math and things worked out great, all the while I was testing the years to see which is the one. This is what I mean. Who's to know?

Why bother making rules for things that are unenforcable?

I guess this brings us to the larger question at hand. Should PBEM games be thoroughly policed, or should trust of the other players be what we hinge the game on? Seems like a mix might be the best thing. Police what we can, and trust when thats all we have to go on.

-FMK.

Darius871 · November 24, 2002, 18:06

I never said there should be a rule against it, I just called it cheating. Merely defining what cheating is in and of itself decreases how often people do it, ban or no ban.

klesh · November 24, 2002, 18:13

Right, but here is where inconsistancies arise. Thats why I am for uniformity. Will doing something in a game thats cool with the players get me a real entry into the blacklist because it follows your interpretation of cheating? Or should there be a set group of actions that we can ALL agree on so we know exactly when someone has done something we all see is wrong.

I say cast some votes.

-FMK.

Choke · November 24, 2002, 18:17

FMK is right, what constitutes cheating must be defined, too much gray area=people in the same game playing by different rules.

Case · November 24, 2002, 18:22

The problem with clearly defining what cheating is is that it can present a 'how to' guide for newbies...

Darius871 · November 24, 2002, 18:24

Quote:

Originally posted by Field Marshal Klesh
Right, but here is where inconsistancies arise. Thats why I am for uniformity. Will doing something in a game thats cool with the players get me a real entry into the blacklist because it follows your interpretation of cheating? Or should there be a set group of actions that we can ALL agree on so we know exactly when someone has done something we all see is wrong.

I say cast some votes.

-FMK.

By all means, give us a ballot already.

Personally I'm for the Koby standard, but if we have a set standard that has been voted in, I'll stick to it.

klesh · November 24, 2002, 18:25

absolutely, this is the reason that the knowledge of password cracking has been hopefully limited to a select few. What other options have we?

-FMK.

klesh · November 24, 2002, 18:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Darius871

By all means, give us a ballot already.

Easy there, no one has said I am the official ballotmaker, so I will not go ahead and assume I am the one to make it.

Edit: wow, you edit fast! I just dont want to make a ballot and find out that someone doesn t approve of it, hence de-legitimizing it.