BC4S turns

[MariOne]

Dear JAM, I am positive about the absence of any messages if you load past turns. The ones you experienced were maybe caused by you and your sister playing HotSeat, and not actually PBEM? (i.e. not saving the files).

You have to separate the warning you get when YOU reload (and the most idiot "IF you go on..." message without a "Cancel" button...), from the reload notification the other players get once you reloaded your turn. this is rather straightaway, imagine this frame:
- you load your MI turn, you play it, save it in the SF turn for nect player, and send it. Spartans get a regular file with no message.
- THEN, you reload your MI turn. Of course this way you'll spread no tattle.
- But more, I'm 99,99% sure that the cheating mark will be added in some game/windows registry AND in the file you IRREGULARLY save, i.e. the one at the end of the turn you reloaded, but NOT in the original save.
If you don't save the reloaded game, or if you change the savefile name, the ORIGINAL SF turn remains unchanged. It was regularly played when you saved it, and its contents don't get altered by you subsequent reloads, thus those contents REMAIN regularly played: no cheating marks get added to the original savefile, even if you send it after playing a reload on the same PC, coz what's in that original turn has been played without being affected by any (subsequent) cheating.

I'll check "to foster" on OED when I get home, as I'm unsure of it's semantics (I held it for "leading or guiding, surveying a group in its research", was it so far?).
But I was considering in other games threads, that we are anyway so used to game crashes, that many times we have to accept reload notifications. Even if a player doesn't warn me in advance of the problems he had with his PC, if I see he reloaded his turn, I don't even think of a possible cheating, it's autonmatical for me to think he must have experienced some crash.

MoSe

[MariOne]

Dear Bing,
many players raised doubts about your point 1., but the answer was that if you need to check things between the turns, specifically, when diplomacy issues are raised between allies which require reviewing details of your last game standing, reloading past turns to be sure of things doesn't affect the turn that is already on its way, thus is not cheating, is not even an issue at all.
The only illegal use of that practice I know, I pointed you out in our correspondence, which I'm forwarding to JAM (FHI).
You have to think that not everybody is on ICQ, able to exhcange ideas having the current turn open on their PC.

Maybe we should gather positions about this issue amongst the whole community of CMNs (but Aredhran is already going on vacation next week...)

MoSe
- Anyway, it's not traceable, and you're the first to say you don't want rules that can't be enforced...

[MariOne]

about Bing's point 2.

The ONE thing I would complain about in a PBEM, is if a player takes the turn for another player. You can use diplomacy and communication to its maximum extent, as long as each player takes his own turns.

[JAMiAM]

MoSe,

My sister and I are playing the same game BOTH as hotseat when we can and pbem, otherwise. The message was generated some time ago, and I may be confused on the specifics, as she is even more of a computer neophyte than I. See my personal emails to you dated today, for more questions and comments. I will send these off to Bingmann, as well. I think you are mistaken on your recon technique, as I cannot get it to work, without tattles. I have asked in the private emails for clarification.

JAMiAM

[Bingmann]

Yeah, I'm not going to do anything about point 1. The main reason for "no reloading" is to prevent people from replaying events to get more favorable results. The reloading message handles this sufficiently, and there is no way to detect the other behavior. That's my decision as far as an enforceable rule. Ethically, I don't like the reloading of old save files. If I don't know what units are in another faction's base but I remember that I had a unit adjacent to it last turn that would be able to see into the base, is it OK for me to reload the old save file to take a look? Is this different from reloading to check something for a diplomatic exchange? If the game were a real hot-seat game and not a PBEM, you would not be able to reload.

I meant what I said about point 2. If one player gives another player their password, I'm not going to do anything if the second player plays the first player's turn, whether that's what the first player wanted or not. Of course the other players can force a different result by threatening to quit, but I'm not going to do anything about it. Here's my reasoning for all possibilities:

2a. You want another player to play your turn. No problem. If you didn't like it, you wouldn't be doing it.
2b. You want to play another player's turn. No problem again.
2c. Another player wants some other player to play their turn. This is no different from what you are doing now: Both players have the turn up and are consulting with each other via ICQ. What difference does it make who actually presses the buttons?
2d. You give your password to another player and they play your turn without your consent. That's the risk you run for giving away your password. If you don't want it to happen, don't give out your password. And if you quit, who will notice? The other player has your password and can play all of your turns.

[Bingmann]

MoSe- This is taking unfair advantage of the PBEM format. Dissecting and digesting another faction's save file at leisure provides information orders of magnitude greater than the info received from allies in the other games formats - single player, hot-seat, IP multiplayer (although hot-seat can come close). There has to be a balance to this, and I think the risk of losing control of your turn is a perfect match. We have a saying here in New England: "Don't let someone into your house if you don't want them to sit on your sofa." (Actually, we don't say that; I just made it up.)

[MariOne]

2197 UP >> MI 6 hours ago.

To update any lurker on our debate, thru private e-mails we found whae the misunderstandig was. Of course you get a message everytime you reload a turn. But if the savefile you pass to next player is the one generated after the 1st run of that turn, it doesn't contain any reloading notification, and next players will not see any messages in loading their turns.
If you play real hotseat without saving files in between turns, you can't use a savefile as buffer, and there's no way to avoid next players to see notifications if you reload.

Now, to the ethical issues in reloading old files.
Suppose I have a pact with a player and I am willing to pass him any information he wants about a faction I have infiltrated and he has not.
If I do it by e-mail after I took my turn and before he opens his turn, I assume we all agree this is a legal practice.
Now imagine he wants to know how an enemy base is garrisoned before bringing his units adjacent to that base. If there are only 1-x-1 sentinels in the base, the ally can bring his 4-1-1 infantries adjacent to the base, and attack the turn after. If there are instead also x-1-1 or x-1-2 untis in the enemy base, he must be more careful in his approach.
I could have already passed him such infos by e-mail, and that would be legal.
But what if I forgot to tell him that intelligence, or if I didn't even think in advance he might need it?
Well, I think that in PBEM is still ethically acceptable that I reload my turn, and tell the ally what he wants to know. I am just comleting the information that I could have anyway legally passed him in the first place. I'm doing in two steps what I could have equally done in one, and the proceeding of the game doesn't get altered in its substance.

I don't think you could compare hotseat and PBEM time frames. In hotseat you don't exchange infos by e-mail. If you want to compare the twos, you should think as if two allies are allowed to meet in a separate room and pass information by talking. In which case, it would be as the hotseat player taking the current turn stands up from the PC and calls for a meeting with his ally halfway its turn, to agree on something before he proceeds with playing. If you don't allow this, it's like you're not allowing PBEM players to exchange infos by e-mail at all.
Of course if the ally who's not playing at that moment can't recall the infos the playing one is asking, the former can't reload his turn to check them. But here I claim that the frame and conditions in which you play a hotseat game are quite different from a PBEM game. You can't as a principle enforce the same strict limitations of hotseat to PBEM too, it's a different matter.

About point 2., the (IMHO vital) difference about who actually presses the buttons, is that in the end player A must be the master of his own turn, and take the actula final decisions on the actions to be taken in his turn. He could pretend to accept orders from player B, but behave differently. Or he could simply disagree. If player A has a weak personality, he could let player A "e-bully" him, but that is still his legal choice as leader of his faction.
That makes a whole world of difference from letting player B take complete actual control of his turn.
If player A plays as submissive faction to player B, he must still remain as filter to enact B's orders. Otherwise this would alter the composition of the game.
One thing is playing a PBEM game with 5 human players where player A is submissive (mind, for a given interval of time, which might come to an end eventually if player A revolts) to player B, and a different thing would be if player B actually plays with TWO factions while players C, D and E play their single faction.
That all stands IMHBFO (in my humble but firm opinion).
In conclusion, I disagree with points 2a. & 2b.
I hope I have demonstrated why point 2c. IMHBFO is wrong.
And the risk exposed in point 2d. is the reason (but the ONLY reason) why passing a previous turn to an ally, as easier way alternative to pass him every bit of info by e-mail (a very bulky e-mail! ), is not acceptable. Wasn't risk 2d. present, or were we playing a PBEM without PWs, no objections to that practice could stand.

Maybe we could devise that practice to implement the otherwise missing option of submissive human faction in PBEMs. If a faction gets submissive to another human player, it has to pass him the password and let him play its turns. If the player wants to cease to be submissive, he just notifies his next player to no more accept savefiles except from himself again...

MoSe

[JAMiAM]

M.Y. 2197 to the Spartans.

MoSe,

No wonder the Apolyton threads take so long to load!

[MariOne]

I wasn't saying that you have the like in other game formats.
I was saying that this way you can't however get any infos, more than the owner of the turn could give you by plain e-mail, or by screen shots if you prefer, if he is willing to (and if he has nothing else to do in his life ).
Thus, if you allow exchage of infos by e-mail... (if you want him to help you build the sofa that perfectly fits your back and your living-room, well.. you have to let him get to know both very deeply )
[This message has been edited by MariOne (edited July 28, 1999).]

[MariOne]

Just to make my position clear:

Let's forget for a moment the passing password and playing other's turn issue.
I had never thought of passing my turn to my allies for informative purposes.
But once my opinion have been asked about that practice (in THC), I pondered a bit, and concluded that this is an equivalent practice to passing every bit of info by e-mail. Thus my CMN position is: if you allow players with in-game contact to communicate via e-mail, you have to allow them to pass their OLD turns each other too for information purposes. If you ban this latter practice, you have to ban too ANY form of extra-game communications in PBEM too.

This, if there weren't passwords in PBEMs. In the real situation tho, I'd never pass my turn AND password to other players, even if allied.
Having to state an official position, apart from my personal feelings, two issues have to be separately analyzed.
- if this could bring to cheating situations (i.e. if any of the two players could this way perform in-game actions that are against fair competition and against the game's [intended?] rules)
- if this could however spoil a PBEM game in ways other than cheating

As said before, my position on the first issue is "NO".

And from my consideration in previuos posts, I am afraid that giving away the password could spoil a PBEM game.
But I have to rethink this position too.
To my (limited) knowledge, you can't shadow other player's mailboxes addresses. So, in a PBEM game, player B is expecting to receive his turn in a mail message which reports in its header "player A"'s address as the sender. If player A gives player D his game password, but doesn't want to let him play his turn on his behalf, ther should be no acutal risk of it happening. Player B will simply not accept turns attached to player D's messages. I player A instead WANTS player D to take his turns for him, he just has to have the D-played turns sent him back, and he will send them to B from his mailbox. Even if we are willing to ban this, there is no way in which we could trace it, so all we can say is whe have to trust each other's honesty as usual. Of course if player D sends player A's turn to player B, hell' get spotted, but I hope no one is that stupid. And player D couldn't spoil the game in any other way than playing player A's turn.
Of course, if both players A & D have an account with the same ISP, and player A gives away his E-MAIL password too to player D, oh well, what the heck!

My boss calls me to work now

MoSe

[Bingmann]

There is a big difference between passing info by email vs looking at an actual savefile. First, with email, your ally never knows for sure if you are telling the truth or lying, either by mistake or on purpose; the save file is always 100% accurate and removes the uncertainty as well as the opportunity for treachery. Second, sharing huge amounts of info by email is self-limiting; you have to endure the pain of composing the "bulky" email to do it. Being able to pass a savefile is just too easy.

As far as playing someone else's turn without their permission, that would require cooperation with other people in the email ring to be willing to either send to you or receive from you the other player's turn instead.

[JAMiAM]

M.Y. 2198 to the Spartan Federation.

[JAMiAM]

M.Y. 2199 to the Spartan Federation.

I will be out of town this weekend until ~9:00pm, PDT. Sorry, in advance, for any delays.

[JAMiAM]

M.Y. 2200 to the Spartans.

We made through 100 years of game play. How many pbems with four players can make that claim? Congratulations to all the players and our wonderful CMN. You should all be proud.

JAMiAM

[JAMiAM]

M.Y. 2201 to Duke Veracitas of the Spartan Federation.