I'm not going to go to the lengths to discuss each one , but instead take a couple.

Mega rob - you can bang a game to mimic MBBS without it being MBBS per say , and effectively eliminate mega rob.

CBY cashing - turn on death delay.

Blowing star dock - maybe soon there will be a hardening multiplier in Bang.

Blocking fed or Dock surround - use SO_PortFixer , or manually move dock
to adj sector 1.

CLV watching from menu or Main Menu watch - all part of the game and is do-able by all .. so is fair .. IF only I can do this .. maybe it would be cheating.

Unlike chess in the park verse chess on computer .. chess in the park you could distract your opponent and make an illegal move where a computer has set rules you can not bend.

And backstabbing - well is not cheating , just very unethical and wont make friends therefore your name becomes trashed and players will be hesitant to play with unknowns.

OMG, I actually agree with most of that...

The problem is though that the sysop doesn't get to choose which rules he wants to enforce, because the game doesn't have that ability.

It may not be entirely automated, by the spy mode does give the sysop the ability to monitor the game. Granted, it's more work than most are willing to do, but regardless of the effort it takes the rules are inevitably up to the sysop to enforce. The buck stops w/ the sysop.

Just wanted to clarify some things. There are plenty of bugs. Megarob was a bug. Whenever there's a bug, there's always the decision whether it's something that adds to the game or detracts from it, and I listen to the players to make that call. For HVS, Megarob was such an integral part of the game, it seemed appropriate to make it part of the MBBS flavor. That's the point of the MBBS mode, to emulate that game as it's played. And that bug is still part of that game, isn't it?

Another bug-turned-feature was Transwarp Tow. It wasn't designed, but people could do it, and the use of this bug was not detrimental to the game. It added to it. There is always a debate about whether or not a tactic adds to the game or detracts from it. But there are clearly many bugs, or tactics that were not intended. Things like clearing Limpets. It's a difficult thing to address these issues, because everything needs to be a setting. You can't just "fix" something.

Obviously I have my own feelings about what's intended gameplay. I can't enforce that. But gameops should be able to set their own rules and those who play on their server should respect the wishes of the op and follow those rules. If they say no subspace scanning, then if you play there, you should follow those rules. If you don't, THAT'S CHEATING. I won't go so far as to say that if you don't play like I expect you to play, that's cheating. I'd rather put that on the gameop to decide. And if I feel strongly about something, I'll make the game enforce the rule. A game developer should never expect any player to follow a rule. That's just axiomatic. If it can be done, players will do it.

But don't confuse acceptance of bug use or incorporation of a bug into an official feature to mean that it's not a bug. And bug use becomes cheating when a gameop says that it's not allowed on his/her server.

Yes, but they can only spy on one node at a time and the text is usually going by to fast to read anyway.

I was not speaking of mega rob, and no I dont miss you.

Im awaiting the next bang to enable a feature that disables mega rob and numerous rob/steal/buy down tactics in the HVS version. Not really fair to enable it once the game has been in play for several weeks.

Cheat, nasty tactic especially on a lower node count server. Any automated monitor of player activity by a bot/script that takes automated actions, should be considered a cheat by all sysops.




Mixed corp back stabbing... is a cheat due to the unfair advantages that can be gained by a corp useing this tactic. Letalone when red/evil and blue/good switch alignments daily to avoid score penalties and in some cases even useing the 0 score bug (hvs) to hide their activities from other players.

The recently found HVS 2.03a for Worldgroup 3nt has a switch to disable this. The current game running on The Swamp BBS allows for mega-rob. I will be enableing the "BlockStealSell" option in the next HVS game. Hopefully it will work.

It becomes quite tiresome proveing someone is "breaking the rules", then when you do prove them to be a rule breaker/cheat, they tend to bash you and your bbs publiclly denying they were cheating or the fact that
"the game allows it so it cant be cheating"

Sad a sysop almost needs to be a lawyer these days to make a rule and most of the users have no reguard for the rules. The "I didnt do it" till I get caught attitude of many players is anoying to say the least.


I must thank JP for the new versions abilty to help sysops control whats possible and not possible in the game.

I know relying on sysops to enforce rules is imperfect, but it's the best we have at the moment.



I'm willing to improve the HVS mode's emulation. I was hoping if I got my hands on that version's code from Moriarty that I'd be able to really nail that. But with the help of HVS players, I could certainly improve it, and provide a bit more flexibility like a toggle for Megarob if that's what's currently allowed in that version.

Actually , I don't have a problem with it if it had to change because
Sing posted an IRC patch to relay in game activities to corpies on IRC channel
so as long as there is enough time limit to cover 24 hrs by a whole corp ..
Monitoring could be done in game instead ... good for the scriptors.

Btw Stoneslinger ;
What about a script that does the monitoring and record , no action ?
mine does this .. that way when I get to keys I see who has been in and when .. plus it gives me an idea of what the were doing maybe.
Is this wrong ?

As for the
This node sitting .. well its good for J.P.'s sells .. encouraging sells of more nodes huh ?

Cruncher
I did that for years .. and had a very low user count.
As it turns out .. a BBS front end will accomplish the same thing.
Make it harder for players to get into games and you can host a near empty server.

So who would need a large server , heck maybe J.P. could buy back nodes from those who want to go private ? <jk>

I'm forced to consider an option to have Corp-wide time limits. So if any member of a Corp is online, time is running for the whole corp.

I don't really think you get the point of most private servers. It's like if you want to DM a game of D&D. You find a group of friends and you host a game for them. Most private TWGS games are among friends, not public with private access. I'm sure it is hard to get strangers to join your private server. Why would they choose you over any other?

Should I point out that most of us have more than 4 ppl we can contact, and have the rest just sit at terra as needed to check the time? There's no requirement for them to be on corp. Heck, you could even drop corpies and have them sit and monitor, then rejoin when they're needed.