I take it your wife doesn't read the forums or you have a comfortable couch to sleep on.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

It's not a question about whether a tactic is valid, it's a question of whether a tactic undermines some setting in the game. If there's a time limit in the game, and a player can sit outside the game and only jump into the game to quickly attack another player and then leave, that's undermining the point of the time limit. Time limit should mean if you want to sit and wait for someone to attack them, you have to be burning game time to do it. That's what some gameops want to achieve with that setting, and I'm trying to give those ops the ability to accomplish that goal.

Hit a few fighters and make the person come in and play the game. The game requires some risk taking, and I don't care if they are squatting or not, I will hit their defenses the same way. TL proponents seem to want the luxury of no one online to prevent them from gridding or invasions. I ran into this mindset in a game a couple of years ago where players whined because they didn't know if I was live or keepalive - whined to the Op and he implemented a TL mid-game while I was AFK - came back to no connection. Funny thing is that most people who have lives that make them go AFK are easily patterned on key time.

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

I wonder why some people would want to play in a game where they don't have to worry about others being in the game to attack them... Maybe because that's how the game was when 99% of people who have played the game actually played? Time limits are a way to deal with 24/7 bot tactics that not everyone likes.

But there's no excuse for changing to TL mid-game. That's lame.

Well, they're a very bad way of dealing with it. It's indirect, and it actually ends up making bots much more powerful.

Why? Because in a TL game, the only way to efficiently get 5 people in to cash at the exact same time every single day is to have everyone running on bots. This means those that have their corpies botted will run more efficiently and make better use of their time and turns than those that don't. Spread out the rest of the activity monitoring over your entire corp and you can do things that non-botted people cannot. TLs give bots more power by making them a better solution to the problems imposed in a TL.

With a 2 hour TL and bots, you can do a lot of things. With a 2 hour TL and no bots or reduced scripts, you can only do about half the stuff. Yeh, that's a real great tactic there.

The reason people didn't have aggressive in-game play before is because you had slow in-game messaging and single node play. The former is interesting, but problematic. The latter, however, combined with a TL could help return back to the "one player at a time" days... however lame they were.

So is that the tactic you're talking about, monitoring the data gathered by an in-game corpmate? The only solution I know to address that is static corps and shared corp time so it doesn't matter who's online or how many from a corp, your corp's time is ticking. I think this is probably a necessary step in order to move closer to a true time-limited game. I just haven't gotten around to that yet.

As to the comment about not being able to get everyone together to play at the same time, I think it's a given that people who want to play in a time limited game should expect to hook up with their corpmates at a given time to play, or just accept that they may be at a disadvantage.

So what's the difference between botting a corp member that is AFK and a dupe?

This is where is would be nice to be able to set a time window in TWGS. If players can only enter a game from say 6P - 8P, then everyone has to be on at the same time.

An IP

.. and those of us that do not work "normal hours" or go to school in the evening find another game rather than wait until we can play. The only option is to have the bots for these players and maybe they can play on the weekends while their corpies play their turns during the week. (and I am against playing turns by being botted).

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

Such as my neighbors if I so desired?

               / Promethius / Enigma / Wolfen /

"A man who has no skills can be taught, a man who has no honor has nothing."

No, but no matter what you do that's something you'll have a hard time fixing. Which takes me to my end point: you're adding settings that will promote bots and large corp play at the expense of non-bot and solo players. Isn't that the opposite of what you want?



There's no reason why someone can't drop from a corp first, or bring in a non-corp member to monitor.



Except with bots, I can automate all of that. People will automatically come in when called, decloak, twarp to the specified sector, begin cashing, etc. Even if you just casually bring in your players at a set time, you'll still be at a time disadvantage.

Yes, that is a feature I've asked about. The only way to do it, currently, is to script the game to close at a particular time and then script it to re-open. Instead of having a game for people of all time zones, you have 2 games for traditional and non-traditional schedules.

Yes there is. There would be restrictions on leaving a Corp once you join. And bringing in non-corp members, are you talking about devoting a player just to that role, or using a dupe? That seems like a dupe tactic. Creating a game account solely for the purpose of monitoring and sending data to a Corp would be an undeniable cheat. Now, if you have more than one Corporation actually playing the game and sharing information, I think that's reasonable.

Sing, you don't seem to understand why I'm adding these kinds of options when it just means that only bots can overcome the settings and non-bot players cannot. The more I push these tactics into extreme measures like creating a player account for the sole purpose of monitoring the game and reporting to a Corp, the more likely it is that people will conclude that these tactics are unacceptable. And ultimately that's all I can do. I can't guarantee that players won't cheat. Is there or has there ever been a way to keep players from duping? No. But if a player is caught duping, that's a big mark against that player's reputation.