The case for legalizing farming

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by jt25man

I disagree, I think the game would be more balanced if everyone was having fun, not just those who happen to know the right people or be in the right alliance. If you re-read my post, I said make it more enjoyable for everyone, perhaps you didn't catch that part.

Well, I think the game would be more fun if it had photorealistic 3D graphics, surround sound and a direct brain-computer control interface. But, y'know, sometimes we can't always have what we want and, as a very wise man once said, 'perfect is the enemy of good'.

Given that any game design will be imperfect, our question must be: how can we make it better? The problem with the 'fun is zero-sum' approach is that it mostly focusses on negative approaches: 'why should the big alliance people get all the fun?', when in reality the 'big alliance people' are only getting the fun they have by virtue of spending hours on the game. It's a lot easier to say what's wrong with either the game as it is, or with any suggestion to improve it, than it is to suggest genuine, workable new ideas. And since Planetarion is a community-driven game, this problem directly affects game development.

It is a pattern that has repeated itself over and over:

* 'Proper' stealing was judged to be 'bad' and was removed after round 2, turning the game into a pure roiding game and removing the tactical depth from combat

* The roid cap was 'too high' in round 3, so we got the horribly nerfed combat engine of round 4 - that had to be changed mid-round because it was plainly no fun (some people may remember the mid-round salvage changes also)

* Round 4 farming was judged to be unfair, giving the top galaxies and alliances too much of an advantage. It was banned in round 5. Yes, the same round 5 that produced one of the most one-sided results ever (for those who don't remember that far back, Legion and Fury were allied. Wrath was Fury's recruitment wing)

* I forget precisely when the in-cluster attack advantage was removed. I think it was after Round 5; suffice to say that nobody can remember any cluster alliance from after that period, because they instantly became meaningless.

* Private galaxies were also judged to be unfair, creating an elitist 'us and them' mentality between the priate galaxy players and the newbies in random galaxies. Yeah, removing private galaxies really solved that problem, didn't it?

Each of these examples had something in common. A set of 'victims' who complained that the fun that other people were having was harmful to them. Often the complaints weren't even made by the supposed 'victims', but by various well-meaning idiots acting on their behalf. Instead of suggesting counter-balancing features to make the game more fun for the 'victims', they suggested simply making the game less fun for the 'exploiters', paying absolutely no attention to the positive side-effects of these game features. Nobody realised that farming is pointless once you're already winning, and that its main purpose after the mid-point in a round is to enable the losing side to keep on fighting for longer (hence the brave stand of Singu's galaxy in r4 compared to the utter collapse of Ely/WPO in r5). Nobody realised that in-cluster attacking created incentives to build a strong cluster so that there was something worth attacking in-cluster. And so on, and so on, and so on...

Some of these changes have actually now been reversed, in part. Stealing is back, and semi-private galaxies exist with buddypacks. But there is already a clamour to further restrict alliances, to remove distorters, to remove structure killers, to nerf covert ops and so on, with precious few suggestions as to what might replace them.

In fact, I wonder if it might not be a good suggestions forum policy to ban negative suggestions unless they are accompanied by a suggestion for a positive replacement...

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Jester

I advocate fixing the game system rather than invoking PAteam's community power. The best example here is the support planet clause. It would be trivially simple to fix the most blatant abuse (the one that caused the rule to be put in place in the first place): just place a hardcoded limit on who can defend who, but instead a crap rule was created at the behest of a bunch of whiners.

I agree. If it can be solved by directly hardcoding it into the game, then it should be done rather then shifting the burden onto the multihunters. If not then the only place it can go is into the eula; in such an event it needs to be made absolutely crystal clear with no margin for error precisely what is not permitted.

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

* Round 4 farming was judged to be unfair, giving the top galaxies and alliances too much of an advantage. It was banned in round 5. Yes, the same round 5 that produced one of the most one-sided results ever (for those who don't remember that far back, Legion and Fury were allied. Wrath was Fury's recruitment wing)

Thats a non-sequiteur. Or to put it in english, Correlation does not equal causation.
Its like saying : Water is a liquid . Water puts out fires therefore all liquids put out fire.
the argument simply cant support the conclusion.

Originally Posted by Comraderob

* Private galaxies were also judged to be unfair, creating an elitist 'us and them' mentality between the priate galaxy players and the newbies in random galaxies. Yeah, removing private galaxies really solved that problem, didn't it?

Such an attitude existed before private galaxies existed. Its human nature and no solution will fix all aspects of it.
It is slightly better with the current system of buddypacks but like all solutions - is not perfect.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Phil^

Thats a non-sequiteur. Or to put it in english, Correlation does not equal causation.
Its like saying : Water is a liquid . Water puts out fires therefore all liquids put out fire.
the argument simply cant support the conclusion.

It's not a non-sequitor, it's just not a strong result. A correlation does not equate causation, but it does imply a certain degree of causation. Further, Rob provided an actual causative argument by pointing out previous successes based on farming. In fact, there's even a direct parallel between Singularity's galaxy in round 4 and the Lothlorien galaxy in round 5. The Lothlorien crowd had, imo, a very clever farming scheme that was of clear benefit to the entire galaxy in round 4. In round 5 they were the strongest WP galaxy, but of course were unable to seek the same advantage that Singularity's galaxy had when they were under siege by Legion. I'm not saying that the one-sided victory was only due to the change in galaxy attack rules, but that Rob is not making a non sequitor error in his post.

[ComradeRob]

Originally Posted by Phil^

Thats a non-sequiteur. Or to put it in english, Correlation does not equal causation.
Its like saying : Water is a liquid . Water puts out fires therefore all liquids put out fire.
the argument simply cant support the conclusion.

There were certainly more factors involved than just farming, yes. But where there was a one-sided battle in round 4, farming allowed the losing side to prolong their resistance. In round 5, with no farming, no such resistance was possible. Once the roids were lost, there was no easy way of getting them back. It's also worth remembering that the remarkable recovery of some FLTV galaxies in late round 6 was, privately, attributed to illegal farming.

Another hidden consequence of banning farming was that it probably increased the number of attacks on 'lowbies'. Galaxies which farmed were able to fight proper wars whilst using a spare fleet slot to keep on gaining roids; galaxies which did not farm could not afford to spend their whole time attacking their strongest enemies. Again, remember that the farming galaxies on the losing side in r4 kept on fighting their enemies, other similarly 'elite' players who can handle such attacks as part of the normal war process. In round 5, when WP/Ely basically rolled over against Legion/Fury, they spent almost exactly none of their time hitting their enemies back; they immediately began hitting downwards, attacking weaker galaxies rather than mounting any kind of resistance. It is very much in the interests of the smaller players that those above them continue to have the means and incentives to fight each other, rather than to turn on the (relatively) defenceless weaker planets.

I'm not really arguing that farming was the sole differentiator between rounds 4 and 5, but I think that the failure to replace the role played by farms was a major contributor to the boredom of round 5. The puritan crowd got their way and the 'unfair' practice of farming was banned, with no regard for the consequences.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

It's also worth remembering that the remarkable recovery of some FLTV galaxies in late round 6 was, privately, attributed to illegal farming.

Just a small correction here, after round 4 farming wasn't made illegal, but ingal attacks were prevented and the first bashlimit (15%) was implemented. Farming in round 6 wouldn't be illegal, but after the harvest galaxies's pounding, no one wanted to publicly admit to farming. Farming was against the rules starting round 7.

[Jakass]

Farming should not be legalised. I imagine that it is hard enough to find multi acounts as it is, but if farming becomes legalised even more multi's will appear. It would ruin the point of the game as well. The aim of the game is to become the best in universe by using skill not by cheating. It may be more fun for some people, but for the people who are good but not quite good enough to get top 50 or so it would make the top even more unreachable. I don't know much about this game, but I have a lot of experience in games just like it. If my points are stupid and noobish I apologise.

[Squidly]

Makes the active become stronger and the non-active get screwed.

However, that doesn't mean that the farming would be exclusively belonging to the planet owner, I mean, how hard would it be to find some randomly suspected farm planet and launch on it. Provided the original owner doesn't get wind of it early on, could be some easy roids.

However... Anyone who once complained about having an inactive galaxy should be ranting/raving on this subject in vehement denial. More farms means even less active players in the galaxy. Musical exiling will run rampant I think.

[ComradeRob]

I think any such fundamental changes to the game should be considered in the context of other possible changes; perhaps the problem you outline is really a problem with the galaxy system, and not a problem with farming?

[Squidly]

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

I think any such fundamental changes to the game should be considered in the context of other possible changes; perhaps the problem you outline is really a problem with the galaxy system, and not a problem with farming?

Fair to say. The galaxy debate has been going on for ages. I do feel it's relevant though, as this one point is directly aggravated by the input of farm planets.

As was probably mentioned earlier... Any thoughts on the "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" theory? Those of us who can put in the time to 3 fleet our farms at necessary intervals, as opposed to those who aren't able to get on quite so much? This has the potential to alienate smaller players even more to some extent possibly?

/me ponders

[ComradeRob]

I suspect that farms probably benefit the 'middle class' more than either the rich or the poor. The rich don't need them; they have highly-organised attacks run by their alliances or AGs/BGs and farming will, after the first week or so, never be as rewarding as those attacks. The poor certainly don't suffer from the existance of farms because they a) are now not being attacked by the people who are attacking farms instead and b) can attack the farms too.

Farms would, I expect, also prolong wars by allowing the losing side to continue fighting for longer. This typically benefits the smaller players, who get less incoming when the big alliances (by which I mean any alliance in the top 10 or so) are focussed on hitting each other.

[Squidly]

More targets are good... But {apologies if this was addressedearlier} are planets ever built for roids alone? How many will be tempted to get themselves a full fleet of scarabs, or literally anything that could be used as a support fleet?

And what limitations on the number of planets would you suggest per person? Whilst time consuming, I'm sure I could get 10 planets together and have each initiate roids whenever possible and build one specific ship.

Given the non-friendly reaction to the support planet rule, this would mean that we either say "to hell with the rules, everyone do as they want" or "no defence except within an alliance/galaxy etc" which also may not be popular due to the theory of overly restricting the game.

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Squidly

Given the non-friendly reaction to the support planet rule, this would mean that we either say "to hell with the rules, everyone do as they want" or "no defence except within an alliance/galaxy etc" which also may not be popular due to the theory of overly restricting the game.

The support planet rule is one piece of rubbish anyway, as it was pointed out several times before in this thread.

About who will benefit from farms: Everyone. The rich will get rich quicker, the middle class and lower class have less struggle with incoming fleets when the rich can get rich quick and easy and then fight their own wars.

[Squidly]

Originally Posted by Heartless

The support planet rule is one piece of rubbish anyway, as it was pointed out several times before in this thread.

About who will benefit from farms: Everyone. The rich will get rich quicker, the middle class and lower class have less struggle with incoming fleets when the rich can get rich quick and easy and then fight their own wars.

Yep. Those are the benefits.

How about me and my 10 personal def planets?

[Heartless]

Originally Posted by Squidly

Yep. Those are the benefits.

How about me and my 10 personal def planets?

Hard-code defense missions. Or scrap the rule completely. I haven't considered you retarded so far but you start talking in circles which is a good sign of you running out of arguments.

[Squidly]

Originally Posted by Heartless

Hard-code defense missions. Or scrap the rule completely. I haven't considered you retarded so far but you start talking in circles which is a good sign of you running out of arguments.

Sorry. I wasn't trying to be hostile or sound stupid there I don't entirely disagree with this idea that came up. I really don't... I'm just trying to look at what the reprocussions could be. Best to catch them early and deal with them before hand rather than have another controversy come up and whatnot.

What would be the preferred? Hardcode it in or allow as many planets as someone wishes?

[Chufty]

I've yet to hear a convincing argument for the ban on farms. Someone earlier hit the nail on the head: if it greatly benefits a player to use farms, it is something that can be attributed to the design of the game. The problem should be addressed from a design standpoint rather than a rules standpoint.

We should be discussing ways to improve the game by design, not by legislation. The more restrictive the game gets, the less freedom we have to develop our own strategies and millitary tactics. It also limits the impact we can have on the universe politically, which is why (correct me if I'm wrong, I've been away for a few years) we don't seem to get the same fascinating alliance affairs we used to.

People are always going to whine when someone else gains an advantage over them - in any walk of life. It's my view that the PA team shouldn't scramble to change the EULA every time someone doesn't like somene else's style -- I appreciate they're trying to run a business and keep their customers happy, but innovation is surely better in the long run than knee jerk modifications?

[JonnyBGood]

It benefits people to farm because the only way of gaining resources extensively in this game is through roids. Roids have to be capturable because this is a wargame. It would not be so beneficial to farm if roids gained from the class of planets which contains farms were worth less, in terms of resources produced, than roids gained from the class of planets which does not contain farms. Ergo one potential way of approaching this problem is to make roids capped from bigger planets produce more resources, either permanently or over a short-term period. However this would prolong all wars, which although we can't predict for changes which could affect this, is not really a desirable outcome. So we switch to roid capped from smaller planets produce less resources. You can provide a real world justification for this by saying something about infrastructure required to efficiently mine roids versus corruption on larger planets (this also opens up other potential areas of added complexity to gameplay).

[Remy]

Originally Posted by Jester

Let me emphasize that last point: The EULA makes Planetarion less fun.

While i understand most of your thread (even with some errors in them), i do disagree with this statement.

Im now not expressing an official MH statement, but my opinion.

Let's make a comparison with the Real Life laws we have to abide with.

If everyone in your country would be friendly and live with the intention not to harm others, then we would all be happy and would not need laws to enforce the beforementioned life style.

Now, in stead of this ideal society, some people have thought that thievery, murder, abuse, and any other sort of behaviour that will make others unhappy is a better way of life for them.

To make sure that as few people as possible choose the lifestyle of making other people unhappy, laws were invented. The idea is that this will lessen 'criminal activity'.

Now, my question to you:

Do the LAWS make your life harder (as you have to abide by them, and can be punished by them), or is it actually the criminals who make your life harder. Without them, no laws would be needed.


My point: it isnt the EULA , it is the relatively small group of (mostly seasoned, long time and high profile) PA players that insist on breaking, bending, abusing and avoiding the ideal ways of life within the planetarion community

[JonnyBGood]

You can't analogise to real life. Especially in this context. If you were to correctly analogise to real life in this situation what we'd have outlawed with farming is giving presents. You can only really analogise to other games.

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Remy

While i understand most of your thread (even with some errors in them), i do disagree with this statement.

Im now not expressing an official MH statement, but my opinion.

Let's make a comparison with the Real Life laws we have to abide with.

If everyone in your country would be friendly and live with the intention not to harm others, then we would all be happy and would not need laws to enforce the beforementioned life style.

Now, in stead of this ideal society, some people have thought that thievery, murder, abuse, and any other sort of behaviour that will make others unhappy is a better way of life for them.

To make sure that as few people as possible choose the lifestyle of making other people unhappy, laws were invented. The idea is that this will lessen 'criminal activity'.

Now, my question to you:

Do the LAWS make your life harder (as you have to abide by them, and can be punished by them), or is it actually the criminals who make your life harder. Without them, no laws would be needed.


My point: it isnt the EULA , it is the relatively small group of (mostly seasoned, long time and high profile) PA players that insist on breaking, bending, abusing and avoiding the ideal ways of life within the planetarion community

But this is a war game, we don't want to live happily with our friendly neighbors, we want to rape, pillage and do all that awesome viking shit that we can't do in real life. We don't want to have to play to carefully avoid breaking some arcane rules.

Chufty: the convincing argument to ban farming is not about early round farming, but late round farming. When the top20 planets are almost purely decided by who can farm their alliance most efficiently, people who have worked hard complain. In my opinion this situation isn't likely to occur on the same level it did before, since actual ingame system mechanisms (omg there they are again!) now work strongly counter to it. You can no longer mine beyond 8k roids, so you'd only get XP and the roids's value. And you'd need to convince people to leave your alliance tag (if you're allied), which would mean they risked not only their roids, but also their ships.

[Phil^]

even in war, there are rules

Originally Posted by jester

Chufty: the convincing argument to ban farming is not about early round farming, but late round farming. When the top20 planets are almost purely decided by who can farm their alliance most efficiently, people who have worked hard complain.

late round farming has never made too much sense to me. The point where you get the most benefit from them is at the start of the round when the safe and effectively free roids you get accelerate the start you get - Putting you in a better position then others who are not farming. Towards the end of the round the farms arent as able to keep up with the number of roids they can provide through either the bash limit or lack of resources for initiating etc.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by Phil^

even in war, there are rules

War game. The rules of war are aimed at preventing unnecessary human suffering. Now despite the superficial resemblances between getting tortured and playing PA I can assure you that rules against farming are in no way comparable to rules against the use of various types of biological weapons.

[Phil^]

and similarly the rules of the game are aimed at preventing unnecessary abuses of the game mechanics in order to win. - with the goal of making it fair for all in mind.
They may not be entirely effective when people think up new ways to abuse them - which is why they keep getting addendums over and over and over.
The culture of abusing the game, exploiting every loophole in order to win needs to be tackled or made impossible for them to do - not simply saying " oh we cant keep enforcing x,y,z so we should ignore people who do it "
Making farming legal would constitute ignoring an abuse of the game imho

[JonnyBGood]

As Francois Marie Arouet once said "a great many laws in a country, like many physicians, is a sign of malady". Fundamentally ideas of the "spirit of the game" are bunk. Excepting bugs, the game is as the game is designed. The line between creativity and abuse is senseless. I think we went seriously wrong with PAX. Tags aren't alliances. Alliances are freely chosen associations of individuals. Even if in the end you make a giant alliance merely through not having members of x tag and y tag attacking each other you're still bypassing the intentions of the game design. And what will we do then? Force people to launch on each other?

The game should reward "fair play" rather than punish "unfair play".

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Phil^

even in war, there are rules

I think I'm going to have to refer you to JBG's 'analogies to real life don't work' line here. I refuse to believe that Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Stalin and the like followed the UN's 'laws of war'. But the analogy breaks down even before then, because we are not trying to simulate real life war.

This is getting pretty off-topic, but let's draw an analogy to chess, which is also a turn based war game. Chess is a classic game of skill and experience. Like chess, early adopters in Planetarion are few, but once their openings become known, they are widely copied. In chess, the only missing information is what the opponent plans to do, which is pretty close to Planetarion. But the rules of chess are heavily bound to the game. There is no rule saying you can't open by moving every pawn forwards 2 steps, "because that would be dumb". Nor are there rules deciding when you can and can't sacrifice a piece, because "it wouldn't be realistic".

In fact, the only rules are those that are built into the game. Your pieces can make such and such moves, when you lose your king, you lose.

The only rules that make sense to class as cheating are those which were put into place in round 2. Account sharing and multying. These rules make sense because in the game there is an assumption that each planet is played by one person and one person only. This assumption traces back do to traditional gaming. Planetarion could be a game that tried to use the anonymity of the internet as a creative factor, instead of trying to combat it, but it doesn't. This is easy to accept. One player pitted against a multitude of others.

Banning people from playing to the advantage of others is a lot like banning sacrifice of certain pieces in chess. In a game where some players are stronger than others, it is a valid strategy to focus on strengths while minimizing weaknesses. If Planetarion isn't to be about this, the game should change, not the EULA. We would never ban the sacrifice of a pawn in chess, even though it seems heartless and allow a shitty piece to exist only to protect a stronger one.

Here is another argument: By making it 'cheating' to farm and have support planets, PAteam are in fact rewarding better cheaters. The people who know how to get away with it, rather than the people who can come up with the best strategies. The person who came up with the farming scheme used in 68:10 in round 4 is a scrupulously honorable player who, to my knowledge, would not apply his energy to figuring out how to trick the multihunters. His strategy in round 4 was strong, worked well and if it hadn't been for late round farming, would have played a part in winning the round for his galaxy.

Instead people who can make a single steal or large XP roidcap look legitimate are the ones who profit.

[paolo]

If farms are comming back, we probably should eliminate the zik race...

[Phil^]

farms are not coming back, this is only a request at present.
Pateam have yet to make an official yay/nay to it , although i suspect they would prefer to remain with the status quo of farms in their current form being banned.

[JonnyBGood]

Originally Posted by paolo

If farms are comming back, we probably should eliminate the zik race...

Or make stealing, probably the single most fun thing in PA, available to all races!

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Phil^

farms are not coming back, this is only a request at present.
Pateam have yet to make an official yay/nay to it , although i suspect they would prefer to remain with the status quo of farms in their current form being banned.

There is no need to be defensive. He raises a good, worthwhile point. It would not do to simply remove the farming clause, because it would immediately provide much more benefit for one race than others.

[Phil^]

i was more attempting to clarify the status of this thread rather then be defensive
as far as i can tell, its still only a suggestion and pateam have yet to respond on it officially

As for zik, perhaps its an idea to differentiate between roid farm and ship farm.
Which are you wanting to return? Roids, ships or both?

[Jester]

Originally Posted by Phil^

i was more attempting to clarify the status of this thread rather then be defensive
as far as i can tell, its still only a suggestion and pateam have yet to respond on it officially

I think you misunderstood the post. He raised a good point, not an attack on Planetarion. There was absolutely no need for a clarification. This is, after all, the Suggestions forum, not the Planetarion Design forum.

As for zik, perhaps its an idea to differentiate between roid farm and ship farm.
Which are you wanting to return? Roids, ships or both?

I'm getting tired of repeating this, but I do not think that the farming clauses should simply disappear. I think that if PAteam honestly consider these things to be problematic, they should admit that it is a flaw in the game itself and not a flaw in the players. They should seek to develop the game so that farming is no longer that kind of problem. There are several obvious ways to do this, but PAteam have never shown the will to do this, instead relying on their favorite crutch; Power over the community (in this case, the multihunter team.)

[Jester]

Originally Posted by paolo

snipped

I think this is off-topic and you should post a new thread.

Agreed. It's now a new thread.

- Rob

[Jester]

Here's a great example of why the farming clause is crap. A past round winner admits to getting a competitor's planet closed under the farming clause. A PAteam mistake cost a legitimate player the round by caving to the pressures of poeple with vested interests.

[bwtmc]

Originally Posted by Squidly

Makes the active become stronger and the non-active get screwed.

Originally Posted by ComradeRob

Each of these examples had something in common. A set of 'victims' who complained that the fun that other people were having was harmful to them. Often the complaints weren't even made by the supposed 'victims', but by various well-meaning idiots acting on their behalf. Instead of suggesting counter-balancing features to make the game more fun for the 'victims', they suggested simply making the game less fun for the 'exploiters', paying absolutely no attention to the positive side-effects of these game features.

Feel victimised?

Winning is what you want it to be. If your aim is to defend your mate at work all round so he can do well, you do and he does, you're probably a winner. Inactives aren't aiming to be strong, if they were they wouldn't be inactive. I think you're trying to suggest that the active might become so much stronger than the inactive [with farming] that the inactives won't be able to have fun, or rather, be winners. I'll try to give you an idea why most people want (or should want?) people who try hard to be strong in a life wasting arena such as this:

I came back in round 13. Even though the game felt horribly small compared to the early rounds, it still felt really big! This was the case because no matter how hard I tried, alliances like LCH hurt my planet quite a lot. I found it enjoyable to contest with them as best I could because I saw it as a challenge. I haven't played a more exciting round since. In essence, I wanted to be screwed over, it legitimated me playing the game in the first place. I don't want finishing first to be easy. I want players to have to make an army of enemies to get there. I want them to exploit every one around them and shoot them down if they could prove an obstacle later on. Actually those things aren't inherently appealing to me personally, but it's important to me that there's other people for which it is. I wouldn't have found round wins for Almeida or JBG remotely interesting if they weren't competing against people that give up everything else in the game to win.

In contrast, last round a guy in eX introduced his flatmate to the game to play in the alliance. At first he found it quite difficult to get used to the game but he knew wargames and got on pretty well after a week or so. Great, we've got someone new to join the game and they're reasonably happy. Unfortunately, he spent the last few weeks of the round with little incentive to do anything. Even the very best leaders find it difficult to motivate their troops when there's nothing to do. He now plays CS and while he likes Planetarion, he "won't be playing until there's more dimensions to the game than alliance politics."

Perhaps I'm lying to myself. I couldn't justify wasting my time here if those that are competitive (essentially, those that apply themselves and try to do well, you might spend an hour a day on the game and develop a great plan for doing well and finish above someone with fifteen cups of coffee on their desk who clicks things twenty hours a day) were not greatly rewarded for their efforts.

I imagine you seldom derive satisfaction from anything that's ridiculously easy. We don't want to make the game easy and we want to greatly reward those that can deal with it being hard. I want to lose to someone who's cleverly outdone me not an individual that's signed up more planets than me (at a financial cost) and done nothing clever. The sketchy outline above brings a lot of positives to the game, it doesn't in any way prescribe that idiots with money will certainly win. Everything on the suggestions forum is changeable, don't read anything here and see it in stone. Do you not think it's possible that legalising farming can benefit the game?

Originally Posted by JonnyBGood

Or make stealing, probably the single most fun thing in PA, available to all races!

I'm still trying to work out why someone felt the need to remove it.

Originally Posted by Phil^

farms are not coming back, this is only a request at present.
Pateam have yet to make an official yay/nay to it , although i suspect they would prefer to remain with the status quo of farms in their current form being banned.

It's like you're trying to kill the thread and I don't know why.

[bwtmc]

Originally Posted by Phil^

and similarly the rules of the game are aimed at preventing unnecessary abuses of the game mechanics in order to win. - with the goal of making it fair for all in mind.
They may not be entirely effective when people think up new ways to abuse them - which is why they keep getting addendums over and over and over.
The culture of abusing the game, exploiting every loophole in order to win needs to be tackled or made impossible for them to do - not simply saying " oh we cant keep enforcing x,y,z so we should ignore people who do it "
Making farming legal would constitute ignoring an abuse of the game imho

I think it's very important that you try to understand what you're actually saying. Firstly, the culture and the game aren't mutually exclusive. Please consider that.

Forget the loopholes and features debate. The whole point of that discussion is that they only exist because people like yourself have felt it necessary to construct their concept. No one who's not been closed has ever abused the game. The game is a reality at a point in time and the ways people will play will change according to how the game changes over time. There's a subtle difference between what the enforcers of rules want and what the game actually is.

Those enforcers of rules often try to bring closer together the two concepts. They achieve this with new or adjusted rules. But unlike the government, the competition commission, FIFA (.. whatever) they have no idea what they want it to be. Rules are constructed not because they help us move in a direction but because they please some people, or they make things 'more fair.'

Fair doesn't exist anywhere meaningful. You know that full well. And yet, you're telling me that aiming for 'fairness' is a good idea. Do you even know what it is, in the context of planetarion? Could it make for a fun game? Is it attainable? Are you moving away from 'fairness' if you legalise farming?

Judging suggestions on 'fairness' in the context of the current game's reality isn't going to get you anywhere and certainly not in the direction of something that was unattainable in the first place. Without any direction you're wasting your time judging ideas in that way.

[IsNoGoOd]

so round 3 - 4 etc 190k planetts 70k players? well still beats the heck out of the latest rounds with 2000 players, all attacking the same targets.

r3 and 4 ftw