Heart of Fire Tracking Thread #2

[Kody]

The road over fungus trick.
Tricking Buster into thinking that he was dealing with a peace member.
Rioting base + probe.
Black tile thingy.
Support window thing.

That's all I've found so far. I guess they aren't specifically cheating, then again most of the things I've told you guys about you seem to be okay with although they seemed dodgy to me and I still used them.

I guess what I really mean is the whole thinking that if it isn't on the banned list then it's okay to use it. Maybe my real issue was it was onlonger friendly competition anymore. Sure everyone went to great lengths not to be clearly in the wrong....

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by Kody
The road over fungus trick.

Must have been before my time, know nothing about it... You made me curious now!

Originally posted by Kody
Tricking Buster into thinking that he was dealing with a peace member.

Shouldn't laugh but that was funny. It wasn't delibaretely though AFAIK Maniac. Besides, he clearly signed with his CyCon title, and we asked Googlie about this before proceeding further. Not that it helped us much in the end. IIRC it only made some CyCon members the more convinced that PEACE would be used as a future forwarded base of assault without the Hive or Drone homeland under direct thread. That was most certainly the reason why I went at great lengths assuring that no PEACE base must be allowed towards Hive territory. Did that rather well I think...

Originally posted by Kody
Rioting base + probe.

IIRC that was only a proposal made by Impaler, and kept in the discussion stage with remarks to PBEM rules? Unless I didn't follow it up till the end off course...

Originally posted by Kody
Black tile thingy.

Ah yes, murky indeed! Before my time though... I'm starting to wonder how many tricks Impaler still has in his pocket...

Originally posted by Kody
Support window thing.

You lost me again...

Your remarks seem to come down to that they did it so we're gonna do things as well.
I have no idea who started this murky part since I wasn't involved in the ACDG at the time, but wonder how the other teams became aware of them. That brings me to my next question. Moles? Were there, and perhaps, who?

[Kody]

Actually I can't remember how it started. I think it was the brickering over technicailities that showed it. Also there was the the fact Googlie was told us a cheat techniques to "even things out". The cheat was the check techs and bases through pact to pact infiltration. The also during the whole mole incident where cycon was arguing that a mole was technically not a spy so was legal. Seemed like a really weird arguement and it seemed to me that it was about bending rules without breaking them.

I got the sense that as long as the rules weren't specifically broken you should do your best to drag out every advantage to you could get. So I followed that against common sense. I used my own tricks like autorehoming and starvation and used the unit-drag because I thought I was balancing out Impaler's click in dark method.

Earlier in the game I was analysing people's posts, doing searches of posts in non-ACDG forums and trying to figure out their personalities. Also monitoring their login habits and figuring out their normal posting patterns. Also watching the last post in the AC forumid=6 to figure out when people posted in their private forum. Also I looked at the search number of hits and you could figure out how many posts they were making in the private forum since the search number would not quite add up with their post count (not including offtopic). Another big give away was when turn players would logon and not play the turn post and logoff and logon post and logoff.

However, that earlier game stuff was me because I was a very bored boy that was wasting time.

Also it seems that the mole issue was mostly in my mind than anything else. More like some people that were mislead and others disenchanted. Apparently, Correlian was a mole, but I see now he was just tricked. I won't label the other people since I talked to them directly and feel obliged to say quiet as a couresty for them talking to me about what was going on.

[GeoModder]

O what, I kept myself busy with the things in your third paragraph as well in the last month... Was a way to figure out the actual Hive turnplayer(s) instead of Voltaire.

So I take it Hive and CyCon had (in an inner circle) no secrets for each other.
Since how long did you got access to the CyCon forum?

[GeoModder]

Ok, back to topic.

Turn 2117, Heart of Fire, on to Magi Enigma_Nova of the University of Planet.

[Snowflake]

Originally posted by GeoModder

Shouldn't laugh but that was funny. It wasn't delibaretely though AFAIK Maniac. Besides, he clearly signed with his CyCon title, and we asked Googlie about this before proceeding further. Not that it helped us much in the end. IIRC it only made some CyCon members the more convinced that PEACE would be used as a future forwarded base of assault without the Hive or Drone homeland under direct thread. That was most certainly the reason why I went at great lengths assuring that no PEACE base must be allowed towards Hive territory. Did that rather well I think...

Wasn't deliberate at first, but became deliberate later didn't it? As for CyCon title, we did see some communiques signed by "Peter". Yes diplomatic messages were shared between the Drones and Hives as long as the embassordors were doing his/her work. You can see the reactions in the Hive toward this incident in the Hive forum when it is opened. And even if CGN Hive embassy is not opened you will not miss much because I've copied most of the messages from Drones embassy and CC embassy into the Hive forum. Yes I was working quite diligently.

That brings me to my next question. Moles? Were there, and perhaps, who?

I guess I've never been in the really inner circle. Because I'm too transparant I think, and too open. I heard hints all the time though. And some of the incidents were quite interesting, although not really necessary in my humble opinion.

Oh and Geo, you could have asked my much earlier, if you wanted to know who is/are playing turns for the Hive.

I have tried to be as open and straight forward as I could in ACDGII, but it looks like I wasn't that successful in delivering this image I guess.

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by HongHu
Wasn't deliberate at first, but became deliberate later didn't it? As for CyCon title, we did see some communiques signed by "Peter".

You'll notice my first reaction on Maniac's announcement soon enough . But for our defense I have to mention that not a single mouseclick could be heard from Buster's side. Can you imagine a 'Borg deprived of info. It's... scary...

Originally posted by HongHu
Oh and Geo, you could have asked my much earlier, if you wanted to know who is/are playing turns for the Hive.

Asking the enemy .......... Joking.
Wasn't that important, just handy to know whom the best person was to sent communications to and when to expect the turn (GMT zones).

Originally posted by HongHu
I have tried to be as open and straight forward as I could in ACDGII, but it looks like I wasn't that successful in delivering this image I guess.

Too many voices with to much different opinions on the same topic came over from Hive. If this was not a clever scheme to confuse CyCon, it certainly showed great partition within the Hive. I kinda 'distatched' from it all after that PEACE colony pod debâcle.

[Maniac]

Originally posted by HongHu
Hmmm I'm really not sure about the ACDG thing. As far as I know Kody was talking about the "super teraforming" exploit.

Don't tell me you've used this cheat the entire ACDG:

This bug is not allowed: On the turn a terraformer completes its terraforming task, its "flag" will be grayed out indicating that it has moved. Clicking on and activating the terraformer will allow a new terraforming command to be issued to the terraformer with the correct number of turns to completion displayed. Clicking on and activating the terraformer again, cancelling its new orders; at this point, the terraformer will have regained one movement point.

That's more or less getting the Weather Paradigm for free.

As for CyCon title, we did see some communiques signed by "Peter".

One IIRC. And then Tassadar said signing with "Peter" wasn't allowed, so we stopped.

Originally posted by Kody
I don't really want to play this PBEM anymore. Perhaps someone find a replacement? I'll be willing to give them all the stuff I've come up with on this current game.

Although they'll probably need to tell me if they want the short version or the long version, and whether they want the turn orders for the next 10 years or whether they want to come up with turns themselves.

I'd be potentially interested, but IIRC your co-players denied you unity pods. Doesn't that make the Spartan position more or less a lost cause?

The road over fungus trick.

Does that work? We tried it out but it failed. I assumed it was fixed in some patch without me knowing.

Support window thing.

That's something Drogue came up with, but it didn't work either. (He thought you could see all supported units of a base you have infiltration of.) Unless you're referring to something else than I am.

Btw, how about making some list of "dodgy tactics" used in ACDG2, and then can we decide whether to allow them in the next ACDG? That will hopefully decrease some disappointment if players discover after a year of spending lots of time on a game that their rivals have used some tactic by some considered a cheat.

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by Maniac
I'd be potentially interested, but IIRC your co-players denied you unity pods. Doesn't that make the Spartan position more or less a lost cause?

You wouldn't say so if you saw Kody's powergraph...

[Snowflake]

Maniac I would be the first to welcome you to our little pbem but I really don't want Kody to go. Don't encourage him now.

As for the former reactivation thing, I think we started later in the game (didn't know about it in the beginning) and haven't been persisting in doing that simply because we have had too many turn players who sometimes did and others times didn't. Again it is allowed though in ACDGII. I'm very happy you have added that in the rules for ACDGIII. It is a very good rule. Other exploits, I have to admit that I'm just too dense and don't really know how those work at all.

[Kody]

Fell asleep pretty much at keyboard. Got work need to finish by monday, will play turn if notice, may be delays max 24 hours. Talk later.

[Enigma_Nova]

Originally posted by GeoModder
Ok, back to topic.

Turn 2117, Heart of Fire, on to Magi Enigma_Nova of the University of Planet.

Ding, playing turn.

[Enigma_Nova]

The Hive turnplayer thing was a big flaming mess.

First Kody became tired and quit,
Then Dacole left for the inner-faction strife,
Then I got annoyed and quit
and HongHu was supposed to get overloaded and quit.

The Hive was a pretty **** team, held together in the early years by its strong turnplayers.
I'm looking at Morgan Industries for the ACDG3.
Simply put, go on a recruitment drive and you get the scrags coming in.
So no Gaians or Angels.
Spartans are too bloody RP for my tastes.

Kody is AAK? Hmmm... get more sleep.
Just check for the turn whenever you go to the toilet like I do.

[Kody]

Waiting for car pool, few things.

Honghu wasn't part of the private vote that the former reactivation was legal. The circumstances were that we posted it in the turn orders and googile never brought it up. If it was illegal it was agreed I take the fall for the good of the Hive.

I didn't realised was I under suspicion for making theories about the peace-cycon. In addition to the posts I made about tracking Peace and Cycon members, I also watched the arguement between Googlie->Peace Members, and Cycon. Basically Googlie waits 5 minute intervals between posts, instead I watched an argument unfolding between the peace members with Peace members fast posting and Googlie fast posting. Also intertwined with Cycon members posting higher than normal to. This I only ever told to the chairman since I felt I was inappropiate to bring it up.

With this game I haven't used any exploits or cheats aside from looking at elevation map and stockpile. Actively avoiding doing things like that. One thing that was questionable, is that I'll be meeting Hercules soon. This is because I deduced that Hercules had the largest terriority because he wasn't squashed down beside a pole according to the player layout map Enigma posted earlier.

Talk later have to go.

[Enigma_Nova]

And that's the last of the MWs destroyed.
I keep winning battles this turn for no apparent reason. I guess MWs are swarming my bases, but I can't see any damage to my units.

I'll need to get my Scouts out to find new base sites, and I'll need a former fleet in operation to forest the new sites.
I'll plonk some Sensor arrays, which can detect worms in fungus.

Turn to Jamski.