Lord Deependra Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 Well, as far as spies go, when they first became active it was just fine to move them around the universe just like you can currently move any other sort of character. Only when it became apparent that they were too valuable to do that was the change made. Before that there wasn't any prohibition to doing it. From the turn dated 25 August 2007:- Illegal character assignment may result in Bad Things happening to them. They definitely don't want Santa to think they are being bad this year. Be sure that you're assigning characters to worlds in systems where the character is already present. --Pete So the "Bad Thing" is you are given the location of your enemy's home world? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coconutheads Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 Interesting that Gary is apparently aware of spies allegedly being able to move illegally, yet has never voiced that information to the board in the hopes of getting it fixed. Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ali-t-akua Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 I think poor Gary is sounding a bit stressed. It's like he is seeing White Hats or Galactic Senators or something under his bed at night. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurassier Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 What I took away from Petes post was that the offending player would lose the character AND would lose some if not alll of the next round of Santa SRPs. As far as HW name, you still couldn't assign a character to a system if you didn't already know the name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Carpenter Posted July 28, 2009 Report Share Posted July 28, 2009 Fine if nothing I say is going to be taken seriously, IE people cheating ECT I will stop posting Do not worry I will not go away mad I will just go away. Welcome to the NEW one SIDE only board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WKE235 Posted July 28, 2009 Report Share Posted July 28, 2009 What I took away from Petes post was that the offending player would lose the character AND would lose some if not alll of the next round of Santa SRPs.As far as HW name, you still couldn't assign a character to a system if you didn't already know the name. Which is not to difficult to find out. Once you find any colony of a player, you could use the gap in character movements to move the spy there. Once there they will have random access to all the orders of the player. Since many orders may deal with the HW, odds are in a few turns you'll learn the system name and even world location. Heck, you're spying chances will even be higher on the colony as there are no spies there to counter you .. so maybe you just stay there instead and avoid the HW altogether. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ali-t-akua Posted July 28, 2009 Report Share Posted July 28, 2009 Fine if nothing I say is going to be taken seriously, IE people cheating ECT I will stop posting Do not worry I will not go away mad I will just go away. Welcome to the NEW one SIDE only board. Gary I do take cheating seriously but your information makes it hard to assess if there is an actual cheat or if this is part of the game system. In fact your statement comes across as paranoia. Of course like Kurassier's sig, it doesn't mean that someone is not out to get you or that there is not a real cheat so a little more information would be helpful. You might even report it to Pete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Deependra Posted July 28, 2009 Report Share Posted July 28, 2009 So, what I am getting from this is Pete said two years ago that you can't assign a character to another system, but that lots of people are doing just that with no ill effects. That says either I have misunderstood the rules or Pete has been relying on the honesty of players not to exploit a loophole. I know he has a lot of calls on his programming time, but it shouldn't be too hard to add some validation to the AC order. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cestvel Posted July 28, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 28, 2009 So, what I am getting from this is Pete said two years ago that you can't assign a character to another system, but that lots of people are doing just that with no ill effects. That says either I have misunderstood the rules or Pete has been relying on the honesty of players not to exploit a loophole. I know he has a lot of calls on his programming time, but it shouldn't be too hard to add some validation to the AC order. Well, as I have stated, the fact, that you could AC a character (spy) to a planet you only knew by name and where your empire had no knowledge of (did not do a SS for) was fixed (at least at the time I had tested it). I understood, that there was a change that you could move your chars across your known (by your empire) galaxy at will and that that was as planned. If that was not the intended behavior, the AC should have been easily fixed long ago. And amended with Gate functionality now. (e.g. there is a chance, that the AC kills of the char when using a gate for relocation). For now, I assume the LC's to have there iffy spiffy multi-AP, TWD capable personal shuttles to move them around. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WKE235 Posted July 28, 2009 Report Share Posted July 28, 2009 So, what I am getting from this is Pete said two years ago that you can't assign a character to another system, but that lots of people are doing just that with no ill effects. That says either I have misunderstood the rules or Pete has been relying on the honesty of players not to exploit a loophole. I know he has a lot of calls on his programming time, but it shouldn't be too hard to add some validation to the AC order. Well, as I have stated, the fact, that you could AC a character (spy) to a planet you only knew by name and where your empire had no knowledge of (did not do a SS for) was fixed (at least at the time I had tested it). I understood, that there was a change that you could move your chars across your known (by your empire) galaxy at will and that that was as planned. If that was not the intended behavior, the AC should have been easily fixed long ago. And amended with Gate functionality now. (e.g. there is a chance, that the AC kills of the char when using a gate for relocation). For now, I assume the LC's to have there iffy spiffy multi-AP, TWD capable personal shuttles to move them around. When the cheating was rampant, I was getting messages almost every turn that agents of "X" were spotted and escaped (never caught one single one -- I still think this part of the code is broken). Which was always a mystery as to how they got there as I had never even run into a ship of "X". In other words, one person was sharing the name and location of a HW with others they were allied with, and everyone was sendng spys to the HW to poke around to aid their ally. Now, after Pete's edict and game changes (and some moves of spies back to home bases), things have been much more quiet. I am hopeful that sending LC's off to unknown locations (never scanned) is fixed. But have no way of verifying it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cestvel Posted July 28, 2009 Author Report Share Posted July 28, 2009 So, what I am getting from this is Pete said two years ago that you can't assign a character to another system, but that lots of people are doing just that with no ill effects. That says either I have misunderstood the rules or Pete has been relying on the honesty of players not to exploit a loophole. I know he has a lot of calls on his programming time, but it shouldn't be too hard to add some validation to the AC order. Well, as I have stated, the fact, that you could AC a character (spy) to a planet you only knew by name and where your empire had no knowledge of (did not do a SS for) was fixed (at least at the time I had tested it). I understood, that there was a change that you could move your chars across your known (by your empire) galaxy at will and that that was as planned. If that was not the intended behavior, the AC should have been easily fixed long ago. And amended with Gate functionality now. (e.g. there is a chance, that the AC kills of the char when using a gate for relocation). For now, I assume the LC's to have there iffy spiffy multi-AP, TWD capable personal shuttles to move them around. When the cheating was rampant, I was getting messages almost every turn that agents of "X" were spotted and escaped (never caught one single one -- I still think this part of the code is broken). Which was always a mystery as to how they got there as I had never even run into a ship of "X". In other words, one person was sharing the name and location of a HW with others they were allied with, and everyone was sendng spys to the HW to poke around to aid their ally. Now, after Pete's edict and game changes (and some moves of spies back to home bases), things have been much more quiet. I am hopeful that sending LC's off to unknown locations (never scanned) is fixed. But have no way of verifying it. Just AC one to a planet known to your allies, where you have not scanned yet. If didn't work after the fixes. So, either the spies Gary spotted now are either: a. been there from before the fixes, only just uncovered b. AC is broken again (easy to verify) c. somehow the system got an SS (maybe the ship was not spotted or not shot at (another not fixed bug there in the game!) as it did its SS) Should be easy for Pete to verify if the spy is allowed on that planet or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurassier Posted July 28, 2009 Report Share Posted July 28, 2009 Fine if nothing I say is going to be taken seriously, IE people cheating ECT I will stop posting Do not worry I will not go away mad I will just go away. Welcome to the NEW one SIDE only board. If people are cheating, it should be reported, both to the boards and to Pete. Even if it is a 'loophole', so that the playing field is fair. Plus the more it is reported to the boards, the more likely people will be aware of such things. This will generate more reports to Pete and then hopefully the cheats will be caught, and any loopholes fixed. As far as I'm concerned keep reporting such things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurassier Posted July 28, 2009 Report Share Posted July 28, 2009 What I took away from Petes post was that the offending player would lose the character AND would lose some if not alll of the next round of Santa SRPs.As far as HW name, you still couldn't assign a character to a system if you didn't already know the name. Which is not to difficult to find out. Once you find any colony of a player, you could use the gap in character movements to move the spy there. Once there they will have random access to all the orders of the player. Since many orders may deal with the HW, odds are in a few turns you'll learn the system name and even world location. Heck, you're spying chances will even be higher on the colony as there are no spies there to counter you .. so maybe you just stay there instead and avoid the HW altogether. That explains that, thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hobknob Posted July 29, 2009 Report Share Posted July 29, 2009 And for the non spy using folks out there what you get from a successful spy attempt is an order that is being processed for the position that you are spying on. What you normally see are production changes, installation builds, ship builds, naval movements and RN's. What you don't see are ship designs, research allocations, the results of SS/PMAP/GEO/ORB/EXPL/ANZ/INST etc. Standing orders are fair game too, so all those XSHIP orders to build screens get to be seen as well. Now before Pete fixed it you could send spies all over creation if you had any intel on a planet name/number. He then fixed it so that you couldn't do that any more. Now your best use of spies is with the forward recon fleets. When you find an enemy HW you can drop off a boatload of spies which can then start to feed you information, sometimes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cestvel Posted August 25, 2009 Author Report Share Posted August 25, 2009 Is transfering divisions from a puny race to a groundpounder race considered cheating? At least I can remember the old days when pop and division transfers were prohibited by the program exactly for that reason. Seems. that the checks got disabled somehow. So is it a bug, or a feature? Pete, can you please tell us? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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