The Flock

[Highwayman]

always crying foul when someone uses the program in a way that was not forseen..... it is not cheating unless you are told "Hey this is not the way it works" and why wouldnt the GM just fix the bad code? like he did about the fuel? i know of a few others and he has yet to do anything about them or he has not said anything about them being changed.....

[The Flock]

Just so everyone knows what happened. I probed the HW several times, LOTS, and a few turns ago I, using the encounter rules I listed in a previous message, managed to get a pop Group on the HW. I had several probes ships blown up and kept having the make more, I also had the cargo fleets blown up and had to make more. Then this turn I sent in a cargo ship with enough people and materials to build a Universal gate.

 

I think of it like this, a small freighter like the Ebon hawk from star wars, Dashing full speed thru the Empire area, taking the least traveled paths, only needing to get close enough to launch the cargo pods and escape pods, the captain launching the pods, and thenturning the ship back toward space, trying to get as far from the drop zone as possible before the enemy sights him, and ejecting just as the ship blows.

 

Mean while the populace, of the conquered HW, the ones that see the pods, keeping silent as the strike team builds the universal gate. The Overconfident enemy not even bothering to put troops in this backwater area, is stunned when an amry marches out of the wilderness and captures the enemy leaders and retakes the planet.

 

Oh it was glorious, the celebrations, the parties, the women throwing themselves at the heros, meanwhile overhead the enemy fleet in shock, shaking thier fists, deciding whether to bombard, or to land their own army.

 

Worry how many troops will they send, they have the skies they can land troops at any time, celebrations end, Can we hold?????

 

Then suddenly from the sky a strange voice, SORRY that was a expoit you should not of benn able to do that I am reversing your victory. And the PETE reverses the control of the world without even contacting the victor to ask what happened, just assumes, a program error and reverses the course of events.

[Desmodus]

BTW I took the HW, you could still of Defended it I took it becasue you did not have a single troop defending. If you had had troops there you might of WON.

Not sure whom your comments have been to, but if your comments are accurate and about the old Flock HW - I've got to agree with you, it should be yours now - all 30 or so pop and the handful of installations not worth scrapping

[The Flock]

BTW I took the HW, you could still of Defended it I took it becasue you did not have a single troop defending. If you had had troops there you might of WON.

Not sure whom your comments have been to, but if your comments are accurate and about the old Flock HW - I've got to agree with you, it should be yours now - all 30 or so pop and the handful of installations not worth scrapping

 

 

I took a HW from Cestvel, geez look at your turn LOL.

 

But thanks for your support saying it is ok to take a HW this way.

[RTGPete]

I did not EXPOIT a bug, I tested the game system and here is how it works. thru many tests at that HW and at other HW's with other empires. SInce RTG is famous for NOT telling you exactly how things work and wanting you to test and figure them out yourself, that is what I did. My testing led me to believe the following.

 

Say on pulse 10 I move to your HW. IF you run first, you will not get a fleet sighting of me and there for your encounter of x will not cause a battle. Later that pulse I move in and sight your fleet. no Baltle orrurs because I have encounter of Q

 

This means that since the battle occurs at the end to the pulse that the next pulse I get to do one order before my fleet is gone.

 

You found what is obviously a very bad bug in the code. It's interesting that you thought that processing order matters, but as it turns out, it makes no difference whatsoever.

 

Suppose on pulse 10 player A's fleet arrives at player B's world which has fleets. It does not matter if player A or player B's order for pulse 10 goes first, which as with all other pulses is completely random.

 

Player A spots player B's fleets. The instant that happens, player B spots player A's fleet. All fleet sightings always go to both sides. It is not a one-way street, where player A spots B's forces but not the other way around. The sighting reports go to every empire present, at the instant any sighting occurs. The moment that occurs, a potential battle is stored to be re-checked at the conclusion of that pulse. Assuming both sides are still there after everyone's orders for that pulse have executed, a battle occurs in between pulses 10 and 11.

 

It should be noted that your fleet actually triggered the battle due to its ROE settings. Whether the other player's fleets would have triggered the battle would depend on his Diplomatic setting toward your empire, but that didn't matter as a battle was going to occur anyway. Your fleet was destroyed at the conclusion of pulse 10. Anything it tried to do starting on pulse 11 should have failed, but did not.

 

The bug in question is that cargo is not always being destroyed properly after a battle. This leads to the potential exploit of a completely destroyed fleet being able to execute orders after it was totally destroyed in battle, an obvious problem. I am writing additional code even now to make absolutely certain that fleets annihilated in battle cannot use their cargo in subsequent actions.

 

I think it is clear to everyone that fleets composed entirely of radioactive debris should not be able to execute actions. It is not a question of roleplaying, where maybe something survived. After a fleet is completely destroyed in a combat, it's gone. The database absolutely needs to remain in lock-step with the battle results, which resulted in the fleet being obliterated down to its component atoms.

[cestvel]

BTW I took the HW, you could still of Defended it I took it becasue you did not have a single troop defending.  If you had had troops there you might of WON.

They were engaged elsewhere. And it was save to pull them away, becasue you were not able to pierce the defenses.And it is in the rules, that you can only attack a planet (drop stuff, bomb, whatever) after youhave posession of the skies. Which you never had.So, you do *NOT* have conquered that HW. Too bad Pete gave you the troops back.And that the bug exploiters unite was to be expected. Just play a game within the rules, easy as that.Then the GM has nothing to revert.I had that glitch back in time with a dropped position, but I reported it to Pete.Thought of it as long fixed until last turn.

[cestvel]

Just so everyone knows what happened.  I probed the HW several times, LOTS, and a few turns ago I, using the encounter rules I listed in a previous message, managed to get a pop Group on the HW.  I had several probes ships blown up and kept having the make more, I also had the cargo fleets blown up and had to make more.  Then this turn I sent in a cargo ship with enough people and materials to build a Universal gate.

 

I think of it like this, a small freighter like the Ebon hawk from star wars, Dashing full speed thru the Empire area, taking the least traveled paths, only needing to get close enough to launch the cargo pods and escape pods, the captain launching the pods, and thenturning the ship back toward space, trying to get as far from the drop zone as possible before the enemy sights him, and ejecting just as the ship blows.

 

Mean while the populace, of the conquered HW, the ones that see the pods, keeping silent as the strike team builds the universal gate. The Overconfident enemy not even bothering to put troops in this backwater area, is stunned when an amry marches out of the wilderness and captures the enemy leaders and retakes the planet.

 

Oh it was glorious, the celebrations, the parties, the women throwing themselves at the heros, meanwhile overhead the enemy fleet in shock, shaking thier fists, deciding whether to bombard, or to land their own army.

 

Worry how many troops will they send, they have the skies they can land troops at any time, celebrations end, Can we hold?????

 

Then suddenly from the sky a strange voice, SORRY that was a expoit you should not of benn able to do that I am reversing your victory.  And the PETE reverses the control of the world without even contacting the victor to ask what happened, just assumes, a program error and reverses the course of events.

It was easily shown what happened. I shot down your freighter with its colonist and 5 Million ACM on board. But magically these appeared to have it made to the ground ...Edit: Oh Pete already stgated the obvious

[El Capitan]

Well, I see an issue that hasn't been addressed yet. The owner of a HW is not aloud to do blind GATKs in the hopes of catching a newly formed PG before enemy troops can be offloaded or gated in and formed into a new army. This is done this way so the attacker has a chance to get his army together before his new PG gets wiped out. So, if the defender cannot issue blind GATKs to cover contingencies such as an enemy sneeking past the patrol fleets, then how is the defender supposed to be able to respond to an attack. If the attacker is allowed to have time to prepare for the attack, should the defender not be cut the same slack? We are all under the assumption, based on the rules, that fleet sightings should take place, especially since Pete opted not to go with cloaking devices for ships. Now there have always been issues of battles not triggering, but it has always been the understanding that the sightings will take place.

[RTGPete]

Well, I see an issue that hasn't been addressed yet. The owner of a HW is not aloud to do blind GATKs in the hopes of catching a newly formed PG before ememy troops can be offloaded or gated in and formed into a new army. This is done this way so the attacker has a chance to get his army together before his new PG gets wiped out. So, if the defender cannot issue blind GATKs to cover contingencies such as an enemy sneeking past the patrol fleets, then how is the defender supposed to be able to respond to an attack. If the attacker is allowed to have time to prepare for the attack, should the defender not be cut the same slack? We are all under the assumption, based on the rules, that fleet sightings should take place, especially since Pete opted not to go with cloaking devices. Now there have always been issues of battles not triggering, but it has always been the understanding that the sightings will take place.

 

Indeed, this is exactly why cloaking devices had to be abandoned--they would have made defense impossible. Blind GATK's are really bad because I have to check each one, and that slows processing down dramatically. In this particular case, the fleet sightings worked fine, the battle was triggered by the intruding fleet, and it was destroyed in between pulses (when all space battles are run). Any actions occurring beyond that should obvioulsy have failed, but they did not.

[El Capitan]

Thanks Pete for quickly clearing up this issue with the facts of the situation (i.e., the battle actually did take place and the ship was destroyed before it could drop the beacon).

[Highwayman]

pete if all parties get a copy of the alien fleet sighting could you explain to me why i got the one i did on turn dated Jan 20th 2012 ... page 43

 

actually it was charles empire 1044

[The Flock]

I did not EXPOIT a bug, I tested the game system and here is how it works. thru many tests at that HW and at other HW's with other empires. SInce RTG is famous for NOT telling you exactly how things work and wanting you to test and figure them out yourself, that is what I did. My testing led me to believe the following.

 

Say on pulse 10 I move to your HW. IF you run first, you will not get a fleet sighting of me and there for your encounter of x will not cause a battle. Later that pulse I move in and sight your fleet. no Baltle orrurs because I have encounter of Q

 

This means that since the battle occurs at the end to the pulse that the next pulse I get to do one order before my fleet is gone.

 

You found what is obviously a very bad bug in the code. It's interesting that you thought that processing order matters, but as it turns out, it makes no difference whatsoever.

 

Suppose on pulse 10 player A's fleet arrives at player B's world which has fleets. It does not matter if player A or player B's order for pulse 10 goes first, which as with all other pulses is completely random.

 

Player A spots player B's fleets. The instant that happens, player B spots player A's fleet. All fleet sightings always go to both sides. It is not a one-way street, where player A spots B's forces but not the other way around. The sighting reports go to every empire present, at the instant any sighting occurs. The moment that occurs, a potential battle is stored to be re-checked at the conclusion of that pulse. Assuming both sides are still there after everyone's orders for that pulse have executed, a battle occurs in between pulses 10 and 11.

 

It should be noted that your fleet actually triggered the battle due to its ROE settings. Whether the other player's fleets would have triggered the battle would depend on his Diplomatic setting toward your empire, but that didn't matter as a battle was going to occur anyway. Your fleet was destroyed at the conclusion of pulse 10. Anything it tried to do starting on pulse 11 should have failed, but did not.

 

The bug in question is that cargo is not always being destroyed properly after a battle. This leads to the potential exploit of a completely destroyed fleet being able to execute orders after it was totally destroyed in battle, an obvious problem. I am writing additional code even now to make absolutely certain that fleets annihilated in battle cannot use their cargo in subsequent actions.

 

I think it is clear to everyone that fleets composed entirely of radioactive debris should not be able to execute actions. It is not a question of roleplaying, where maybe something survived. After a fleet is completely destroyed in a combat, it's gone. The database absolutely needs to remain in lock-step with the battle results, which resulted in the fleet being obliterated down to its component atoms.

 

 

The BUG is your problem, I did not know it was a bug, and the other BUGS in your program were not fixed by cancelling the battle, they were fixed or ignored and the battle stood. How I Am I to know it is a bug, my expalination works perfectly for what actually happened, and I just wasted, how many turns and resources to build this army instead of a fleet. His ground tech out paces mine so he had a good chance to stop me even then.

 

Why is your failure to fix the program after this many years costing me money?????? and the effort I put into retaking the HW? Why is the GM always heavy handedly picking winners and losers, instead of leting the game go one like in previous problems and fixing to problems?

[The Flock]

Not only did I wast effort with this empire, but thinking this was how the game worked I wasted research and built armies on all my other empires HW's.

[El Capitan]

So you knew that you lost your ship before the next impulse could take place (the impulse where you dropped the beacon) and you didn't wonder how in the world you were able to drop cargo that had been vaporized on the previous impulse? The Naval Combat primer explains it pretty much how Pete just did (combat is resolved before the next order impulse executes) and we've had that document for a long time.

 

Yes, hindsight is 20/20, and knowing now what the glitch actually was makes it easier to see the issue clearly, but I still find it hard to believe that when you discovered this "sneak attack" that it didn't at least cause you to pause and consider that it might not be on the up and up.

[RTGPete]

pete if all parties get a copy of the alien fleet sighting could you explain to me why i got the one i did on turn dated Jan 20th 2012 ... page 43

 

actually it was charles empire 1044

 

Well, as it says in that fleet sighting, an alien fleet executed a warp move and spotted your fleet (he got a sighting report too) along with another empire's. They (and you) spotted him as well. Everybody spotted everybody else there. Worked just fine.