PBEM: Heart of Fire GM needed, and rules discussions

[Frankychan]

Aye.

I'm just really looking forward to interacting with you guys roleplay-style....things should be interesting.

[Barinthus]

Eh? Oh, yes, yes thank you, Jamski

Whee, now that I'm done with Uncle Sam for now, I can focus on this PBEM.

Just to make sure everything's on same level, here's my updated information....

[B][I]LIST OF PLAYERS[/I]
NAME          FACTION              EMAIL                              GMT  PASSWORD[/B]
Kody          Spartan Federation   [email]xxjohn@users.alphadimensions.net[/email]xx +10  submitted
Frankychan    Lord's Believers     [email]xxfrankychan0112@hotmail.com[/email]xx          submitted
Jamski        Morgan Industries    [email]xxj_maunders@yahoo.co.ukx[/email]x         +2   submitted                       
Minute Mirage University of Planet [email]xxminutemirage@hotmail.com[/email]xx            submitted   
HongHu        Gaia's Stepdaughters [email]xxhhu003@mchsi.com[/email]xx                    submitted
Hercules      Peacekeeping Forces  [email]xxcathal.mullaghan@ntlworld.com[/email]xx  +1   submitted
GeoModder     Human Hive           [email]xxgeomodder@hotmail.com[/email]xx          +1   submitted

[B]
Preference	| Kody Frankychan Jamski     Minute_Mirage HongHu     Hercules   GeoModder[/B]

Map size	|      Stan/Large Stan/Large Stan/Large    Stan/Large Stan/Large Stan
Ocean		|      30-50      30-50      50-70         30-50      30-50      30-50
Erosion		|      Aver       Strong     Aver          Strong     Strong     Strong
Life		|      Aver       Rare       Aver          Aver       Aver       Aver
Clouds		|      Aver       Aver       Aver          Aver       Aver       Aver
Difficulty	|      Transc     Transc     Transc        Transc     Transc     Transc

Transcend	|      Yes        Yes                      Yes        Yes        Yes
Conquest	|                     
Diplomatic	|      Yes        Yes                      Yes        Yes        Yes
Economic	|      Yes        Yes                      Yes        Yes        Yes
Cooperative	|      Yes        No                       Yes        No         Yes
Do or Die	|      Yes        Yes                      Yes        Yes        Yes
Flexible start	|      No         No         Yes           No         Yes        Yes
Tech stag	|      No	  No         No            No         No         No
Spoils of war	|      Yes        No                       No         No         No
Blind research	|      Yes        No         No            No         No         No
Intense riv	|      No         No                       No         No         No
No survey	|      Yes        Yes                      No         Yes        Yes
No scatter	|      Yes        Yes                      Yes        Yes        Yes
No rnd events	|      No         Yes                      Yes        Yes        No
Time Warp	|      No         NO                       No         No         No
Iron man	|      Yes        No                       No         No         No
Rand person	|      No         No                       No         No         No
Rand social	|      No         No                       No         No         No

RESTRICTIONS/MODIFICATIONS:
1. No Empath Guild
2. No permanment pacts
3. A player may insert stockpile energy into the build queue after the production of a military unit.
4. No interceptors on auto
5. A player can not use a former to accumulate teraforming while the former is in transit.
6. A player may not restart a turn without good reason. The player should specify the reason in the game thread if he was not able to avoid reloading the turn. (Obviously, if a player has suffered some sort of crash during a turn, such a reload is unavoidable)
7. A player is not permitted to establish contact with another faction prior to having met them in-game.
8. If a player performs a probe team action other than to infiltrate against another player with whom (s)he is in a truce, treaty or pact, they must inform the probed player what it was they did and what they stole/sabotaged. They must also choose the 'declare vendetta/cancel pact' option when they perform the action.
9. A player is not permitted to make more than one social engineering change per line, per turn. For instance, one is not permitted to start the turn in wealth, switch to power mid-turn for the extra disbanded minerals, and then switch back to wealth that same turn, getting the refund.
10. A player is not permitted to use the 'demand withdrawal' feature against another player, leaving the AI the decision of whether to withdraw or not.
11. A player may not accept a bribe from another player's AI during council sessions.
12. A player may not perform multiple airdrops in a single turn with the same unit using the right-click menu.
13. A player may not use the F4 screen when infiltrated to change an opponent's workers to specialists.
14. If a player declares vendetta upon another player, either directly or indirectly, they must not accept a pending diplomatic agreement between the two factions in the same turn.
15. A player may not upgrade a particular type of unit using the design workshop, and then attack with that unit in the same turn.
16. A player may not make air drops using the right click "air drop to" function, when it is not possible to do so with the "i" button, ie. after already having moved or made a drop.
17. A player can not exploit the demon boil bug by setting patrolling waypoints for a mindworm.

NOTES:
Those emailing Jamski, put 'PBEM' in the subject line.

[Barinthus]

As the best I can figure, this is preferences based on the majority...

One item - Flexible Start - was tied between 3 Yes and 3 No. I took the liberty of putting it down as a Yes. If you don't agree, well, you're more than welcome to try to persuade at least one other person to change

TENTATIVE PREFERENCES

Map size	|      Standard
Ocean		|      30-50      
Erosion		|      Strong
Life		|      Aver
Clouds		|      Aver
Difficulty	|      Transc

Transcend	|      Yes 
Conquest	|      Yes               
Diplomatic	|      Yes 
Economic	|      Yes 
Cooperative	|      Yes
Do or Die	|      Yes  
Flexible start	|      Yes
Tech stag	|      No
Spoils of war	|      No
Blind research	|      No
Intense riv	|      No
No survey	|      Yes
No scatter	|      Yes
No rnd events	|      Yes
Time Warp	|      No
Iron man	|      No
Rand person	|      No
Rand social	|      No

[Barinthus]

Are anybody picky about turn order? It seems to me that with SMAC, the turn order is permanmently set to Gaia, Hive, Uni, Morgan, Sparta, Believers, then Peacekeepers. If you guys prefer a different order, I might will have to set the game up via SMAX but I'm not sure if everybody has that.

[Frankychan]

Am I going to have to change the txt of SMAC to implement the Restrictions, or will the gamefile do that automatically?

[Barinthus]

Well as of right now, I pretty much was going to do this by the honor system. In other words, you guys will have to trust each other to not violate those restrictions.

If you know how I can implement those restrictions, do let me know.

[Frankychan]

I'd rather do the honor system. I don't know how to hyper-form. Perma-pacts you can kinda tell...besides, it's better to meet ingame.

Empath Guild.....easy to see if someone is cheating.

Stockpiling bug. I don't know what this is.

No interceptors on auto. Can you clarify this for me?

[Snowflake]

I think you should be able to disable Empath Guild. Also you may want to disallow joint victory to disallow perm pact but I'm flexible on that.

In addition, moving and terraforming on the same turn may be perfectly ok if it is on a road and it has moves left when it reaches the destination. My understanding is that the "hyper-teraforming" is referring to accumulating teraforming while formers are in transit.

[Snowflake]

Oh and we should also include all the craps like no talking before actually meet in game and such.

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by Frankychan
Stockpiling bug. I don't know what this is.

Stockpiling bug is that you put stockpile on the building queue so you gain ecs when you complete a production.

No interceptors on auto. Can you clarify this for me?

I think Jamski explained this one that when interceptors are set on auto it will automatically intercept enemy planes when the human player are not even aware.

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by Barinthus

Blind research	|      Yes

Is this right?

[Frankychan]

Thanks HongHu!

Ummm, I think I was the only one who voted for Blind Research....that wouldn't be fair to everyone else...

[GeoModder]

Indeed, blind research off please...

Also, I prefer not being able to contact each other before we meet ingame. The rest :shrug: there is no AI ingame, so is not really a problem.

[Frankychan]

Agreed. All ingame stuff should be just that, INGAME.

But tech questions or whatever should be just fine outside....maybe once we start contacting e/o we can create another thread...

But you can't look at it until you are contacted!

[Barinthus]

Oops, blind research changed. Thanks, HongHu .

Yeah I pretty much do what's easily done such as disabling technology or whatever. Stuff involving tinkering with alpha.txt itself, I'd prefer not to.

As for comlinks, there's a line that needs to be changed in alpha.txt to ensure that human players doesn't get comlinks for each other in the beginning. But that involves you guys going into your alpha.txt. Prolly easier just to ignore but that means no free comlinks via pod popping which is probably a good thing but I just recalled that you guys wanted no scatter