So, Tell me, just exacly what's so bad about a Sysop playing on his/her own server?
Admittedly I play on a small server with a small group of friends from the old bbs days, but I have never been accused of Tediting/cheating. Heck on the current game (we only run one at a time) I still have no idea where stardock is. I know how easy It would be to look it up, but why?
I not saying that I haven't been tempted to cheat now and then, but I won't for 2 reasons. First: My players trust me, and I don't want to lose that. Second: I would spoil my fun along with everybody else's.
Aren't we all, more or less, adults here?

Just wondering

-Prinz of Darkness

adults?? nahhh

well its too bad not everyone has your fair play ethic's.
I think most sysops do and thats commendable. If your games have fair play, people will know it, and want to play there, if not, they will go elsewhere.

the other thing about a sysop playing in his own game he/she will always be faster for he is connected directly to the machine

quote:Originally posted by Strider_2001

the other thing about a sysop playing in his own game he/she will always be faster for he is connected directly to the machine


I leave the ship delay on. I could be wrong, but as I understand it, all players pay the time penalty. I think it balances overall gameplay. I want a Scout Marauder to be able to outfly a COLT. It just makes more sense to me that way.

but in an attack war ship to ship or pdropping a planet or something that requires fast movement the sysop will win everytime

It's not the movement times for the ships, but the reaction times from getting messages. If you play locally, you'll have at least a 60 ms advantage over most everyone else.

quote:Originally posted by Harley Nuss (teamEIS)

It's not the movement times for the ships, but the reaction times from getting messages. If you play locally, you'll have at least a 60 ms advantage over most everyone else.


60ms dosen't seem like a lot to me. Well, maybe with scripting, or queueing commands as fast as you can type them. Any Idea on how to eliminate that? Fair is fair.

-Prinz of Darkness

quote:Originally posted by Harley Nuss (teamEIS)

It's not the movement times for the ships, but the reaction times from getting messages. If you play locally, you'll have at least a 60 ms advantage over most everyone else.


Anyone ever check the reaction time if sysop is playing his own server but from a different computer?

Prinz, I just posted about this over in the game op forum, which you can read if you have a password for it. Basically the reason is that because even though 90% or even 99% of all sysops are fine honest helpful people, the other 1% or 10% that play in their own game ruin it for the good ones who want to play in their own game.

The sysop has t-edit access, so he can change things in the game. A particularly evil type might even change all your front door settings so he can walk right in behind a photon and use a macro to land on all your planets and claim them.

The sysop is almost always believed over the player(from looking around the forums here it seems to me at any rate), so if you are doing something he can't beat honest, say a script he can't get around, he can always claim you are lagging his system - and lock you out of his board. All your hours of hard work gone, up in smoke.

If the sysop can't beat you in an even fight, if he's the cheating kind he can always drop carrier on you and do you in before you can even get logged back in. To make sure of it, he can even lock you out of the nodes so you CAN'T possibly get back in until he is done with his dastardly deeds. So even if the sysop doesn't drop carrier on the player to do something against them, if they get disconnected at that time there is always going to be that nagging suspicion on their end. If it happens often enough they will voice that suspicion, often in heated no uncertain terms to you on the fedcom.

And then there is the speed issue that everyone here has touched upon. He gets a large speed advantage over you because he is logged on to the machine. He gets messages faster than you, and in Tradewars (especially in a script battle) speed is everything. Nomad had a pretty good idea, but networks are 1/10 Mbps or 10/100 Mbps these days, so I am sure that the connection for the sysop would still be much faster - maybe as fast as playing on the actual game box itself.

As I said in the other post, this isn't a rant against all sysops, most of them are honest and fair as the day is long. But there's that 1% or 10% that isn't honest - human nature. That's why we have cops and people go to jail and prison. Thinking everyone that buys TWGS and Tradewars and puts a game up is automatically honest is a wonderful concept - but extremely out of touch with reality.

Guess it comes down to what a lot of people ask themselves about Sysops playing in their own game. With all the hundreds of games out there, why does a sysop feel he has to play in his own game, why is his NEED so great to play there instead of somewhere else? Not saying that there is anything dishonest about it in reality, just that it automatically raises warning flags in a lot of people's minds.

ok smacktalk me if i'm wrong.. I have morals and ethics also.. i believe a fun game is a "fair" game. I think that if a sysop wants to play his own server and not be abusive of it.. i think he paid for that 60s advantage by paying for the codes for the server and teh connection used to host the servers. Now i'm not saying that sysops should use the fact that they are paying for it as an excuse to go in and mess with the game outside of normal gameplay. I do think that slamming sysops playing a game which they provide freely to others is right. So you can slam me if you want.. but not all sysops who play the game are cheaters or immoral.

Not slamming all sysops Tchiak, I said so very clearly in my post. As I said, the greatest majority of sysops are fine honest people who could play their own game and be quite fair about it. But here's the rub, if you haven't been playing a long time and know who to look out for and who not to, how you going to be sure? A cheating Sysop doesn't put a nice clear sign out like "Cheating Sysop Ahead, Play at Your Own Risk!!!" Believe me, I wish they did. And a quick comment on the paying for it thing, a lot of games these days are being run on cable modem, and the people would have the cable modem or DSL would have it anyway. Yes, they do pay for the TWGS and Tradewars software, I know I did. But, they aren't the only ones paying to play this game, if you don't use the JTWAT free helper most people pay for their SWATH, ATTAC, and/or TWX helper. So not meaning to get any kind of smack talk going on here (they have a forum for that here) but the sysops are not the only ones paying for things, the players often also pay to play as well. And the largest investment is often time.

I look at it this way...

I used to play on my own server because I wanted to play my game edits. I never cheated by any means, nor did I spy on nodes of players that were playing in the same game as I. I never entered tedit to make changes to myself or other players. As a matter of fact, if you could find players that have played on my server, they would tell you that I am not very good, and didn't play for weeks at a time other than logging in to keep my character alive. I was also destroyed in all the games I did play. Just for the record too, I haven't played my server in over a month, and nor do I plan to play on it again in the near future.

This is just a problem the people of Tradewars will just have to deal with. Sysops (either ethical or not) can and will play their servers. The only way to probably prevent this would be to have the server lock tedit after the game had been banged and put into service, or by blocking local access (either thru the main machine or local ip address, and this would take some reconfiguring of the TWGS server (and I beleive JP has better things to do).

This argument can go on and on, and quite frankly, this topic is getting old. If you find a server where you suspect someone or some sysop is cheating, bring it to his/her attention. If you don't get results, move on to the next server (there are PLENTY out there, and many will accomodate requests).

I am not trying to be cynical here, but I am sure people can find better things to do than to find fault with others. There are alot more worse things people can do. They can steal your identity on the internet for goodness sake!

Just remember this next time you want to find fault in others (and not saying they don't have any, cause believe my, I have faults.)

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

The Outlaw

Well said Outlaw. Informative and good job of staying on topic. Thank you for taking the time to post.