What is considered cheating

[Snowflake]

This is supposed to be a discussion thread, not an official thread.

I believe most of us are opposed to cheating. However I think there are different understandings regarding what should be considered cheating. There of course should be a list of prohibited exploits. However, I think for the next game to be really successful in the sense that people enjoy a fair play no matter if they win or lose in the end, we really should talk about what we all believe is cheating in spirit, whether on the prohibition list or not.

After reading some of the CC threads, I realize that we noticed different things and had less concerns on other things. Now after that reading I started to gain a better understanding about why some people were angry at various time, and also a better understanding about my own actions and their affects. So I would like to talk about them here, so that we can all get a clear understanding regarding what common ground we are based on.

[Snowflake]

There are three kinds of cheating as far as I can tell from this game.

One is focused on people. People try to gain information through chatting, PMing, looking at posting patterns. The extreme situations that some have feared is that one team could send a "mole" or something like that to the other team. I'm not sure if that means DLs, or simply reciprocal interexchange informations or what. There are also examples where PMs were sent pretending the origination was from another team.

In my opinion, it is harmless fun if players of different team tries to get information through little tricks. Also faction leaders should be allowed to match wits when they try to negotiate deals, etc. However, the line should be drawn when there are routinely unauthorized exchange of faction sensitive information between two players (or DLs) from different teams. Once this kind of situations are discovered, the involved players should be removed from the game.

Another kind of cheating is focused on the game itself. Exploits include tricks to determine base coordinates, former reactivation, and others I don't really know much about. My believe is that only the ones that are specifically stated to be allowed should be used, and others, whether specifically prohibited or not, should not be used. If a question about whether a technique is ok to use rises, CMN should be consulted before such technique be adopted.

The third kind of cheating is problems like reloading, parallel playing, etc. Before the turn is played officially, multiple players can "test play" the turn and discover different consequences under different orders. This kind of behaviors are very hard to moderate, since turns can be emailed around people. Many times a player who plays the turn could have made mistakes and thus have the temptation to pass the turn to another player for a replay since it the mistake is not intended originally. However, my opinion is that we must learn to accept and live with our own mistakes.

My belief is though, since this kind of behavior needs at least two people getting involved, so if we can try to maintain a high morale standard, we can self moderate ourselves. It's alright to say to your teamate: "I think we shouldn't do it."

[GeoModder]

Well, let me thread this thread with this.

Whatever information a teammember transfers from his faction to another without a majority consencus is strong nogo for me.

[Snowflake]

There are times that an Embassador may need more authorities to conduct his/her business. In the Hive the Chairman and Embassadors are authorized to do whatever necessary to facilitate inter faction relationship, I believe. However I think that can be a internal matter that are decided whthin each faction. What should not be tolerated, though, is unauthorized routine exchange of information that are not disclosed to the factions that are affected.

[GeoModder]

That is what I mean with a majority concencus. An ambassador has normally the backup of his team.

As for the other points you brought forward it depends on the people involved. As boring it can be trying to locate base locations, or do parallel playing (with older turns or the most recent one doesn't matter), in my experience it happens sooner or later when someone is bored. The main thing is that when someone do this the info is not told to the other team members, or the thus acquired info used to do a better turnplay in general in case this person has more responsibilities regarding turnplaying/orders at that time.

[Nubclear]

The problem with trying to define cheating is that while we will attempt to define it to the best of our ability, something will happen that is fairly common sense but that we did not specifically cover.
If Drogue attempts to punish this person, he will play semantics - "Well, it wasn't "specifically" mentioned".
I think we should make rules for what is amiguous, but let Drogue handle what seems to be fairly common sense ("No, you can't give your teams password out to another team") but might not be specifically covered.

Generally, when it comes to information sharing, I believe it should be like this: If the rest of your faction would be angry if you told someone this information, then you probably shouldn't tell them.

For example: Diplomatic intentions, military plans, base information, etc...

[Snowflake]

How about this: One should always let his teamates know what information is shared with other team members, no matter through what channel. But again, this is not something that the CMN needs to worry about, rather this is individual team policy.

What I'm trying to define here is the actions where CMN's discipline is required. Unauthorized routinely solicitating information is one, in my opinion.

[conmcb25]

Can you or do we really want to control diplomacy this way?

I might be missing something here but if teams can contact one another thru the game mechanics, then why are we limiting what information can be shared?

Again maybe Im missing something here because Im no AC expert by any long shot.

Can someone explain?

On the reload issue or playing ahead issue, I agree 100%. It should not be allowed. Although Im not sure how you would enforce that, other than you would have to relay on someones word unless of course the outcome of play becomes routinely above and beyond what would be considered normal. (ie, a faction NEVER loses an attack or something similar) That could be checked by the CMN if someone else was suspicious of this this type of recurring outcome.

[Googlie]

The problem is that the game can be set up so that communications within the game cannot be made until contact is made (or the commlink aquired thru trade or podpop)

But players contacted other teams outside the game (by PM, e-mail and MSN chat). Alliances were promised, etc etc in these chats that couldn't have happened in game.

And a CMN is powerless to police these, other than being alert when trolling the private forums for clues, etc as to waht might be happening off-boards

Playing ahead is also hard to police as well, especially if the results are shared thru e-mails, AIM or MSN chats, etc. I did allow a modified form of playing ahead in terms of letting the "non-offical" turn player explore AI interaction, checking battle odds, etc, and the reason I did this is that a couple of teams had highly skilled individuals who were able to almost exactly replicate the official game via a simulator (a scenario they'd set up) that let them actually play ahead several turns.

Not every team had this expertise, so I opened the gates to let the technologically-challenged teams compete on an equal footing.

Again, though, it's almost impossible for a CMN to check whether this is all that's being done with the "playing ahead"

I have less trouble with ten players simultaneously pod-popping, then choosing the version that they want to use for the turn as that is a) time intensive, and b) somewhat random (ie if popping 2 pods, the chances of the one player getting the best result for 2 of them is remote) as well as c) difficult to co-ordinate (In many instances getting 2 players to even look at the turn while the 48 hours was open proved a challenge for many teams many times)

And there are other ways around that as well, such as the hack (quickly edited out of the forum) that removed the replay message, playing on 2 - or more - computers, I've even heard in other PBEMs probably anecdotal comments about a player reinstalling SMAC to hide a reload (it must have been a totally horrendous podpop - or maybe a mindworm eating one of his 2 starting colony pods or something, 'cos that sounds a little too drastic a solution)

But I always thought that the honour code should be higher in this type of game, as the attraction lies more in the democratic actions and roleplaying of the faction while playing the turns rather than in the outcome of the turn itself, and the result of the game. That's how I intend to participate as Morgan anyway. We take the lumps from ill-judged moves and then roleplay a write-up around them, having fun in the process 9even if a base gets wiped out - rich material for an in-game narrative)

In short, there's not really much a CMN can do, and while in this II game I often said that I opened and compared every turn with its previous save, in reality I only did that a couple of times per faction. Bingman, I believe it was, said five years ago on this issue (yes, it's been around for as long as SMAC's been around) "Say you'll look at every turn, and players won't know if and when you do, even if you never look at one, and will police themselves accordingly"

Googlie

[Kody]

How about this: One should always let his teamates know what information is shared with other team members, no matter through what channel. But again, this is not something that the CMN needs to worry about, rather this is individual team policy.

Yep, I often had no clue what my teammates had been communicating about. Just had awareness of something being communicated because of strange actions/comments by the other team. It was very frustrating and broke down diplomacy which might have been fruitful.

[Snowflake]

I agree with every word Googlie said. Lots of times it is up to individual players, instead of the CMN. And I do agree ones experience in a game does not so much have to do with whether you are in the win or lose, rather it is related more with other things, the roleplays, the interaction between different players, etc. I've enjoyed my experiences in the Hive, not at all because the Hive has had the final win. In fact the last stage of game I did not feel as enjoyable as before, since the participation has been dropped from before. While from what I read in the CC's forum, their last stage could be a better experience for somebody like me, even if they are in the losing side.

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by Kody


Yep, I often had no clue what my teammates had been communicating about. Just had awareness of something being communicated because of strange actions/comments by the other team. It was very frustrating and broke down diplomacy which might have been fruitful.

I think this is kind of weird

When I do diplomacy for Civ3 Demo games I always post just about anything discussed with another team.

Isn't that standard practice here??


(remember Im new )

[Nubclear]

Welcome to Nippolyton - The land where what is meant is never said

[Enigma_Nova]

Originally posted by Googlie
such as the hack (quickly edited out of the forum) that removed the replay message,

Didn't work for SMAX, so no probs there.
That thread got flamed to crap pretty quickly. NW Flamerz!

My opinion of fun in the game?
I'm not into this Socialising RP Bull****.
I'm here to learn how to build a whoop ass faction,
to build that whoop ass faction,
and to whoop ass with that whoop ass faction.

[Enigma_Nova]

Note that having strong intra-team communications only works if your team members are active.
I'd say, talk to whomever's on Trillian or IRC at the time and get their voice.
If that's too dynamic for you, give it 6 hours of notice - but I prefer decisions to be made by those dedicated enough to be around when they are proposed (or within 6 hours of so) - not the lazy slackers who only log on once a day.