Massive scanning - rank #1 point of view

[TehVader]

Originally Posted by [Graham]

ive noticed all this is being targetted on 22:8 when CLEARLY 13:2 and 17:10 have found the way of scanning.

HAHAHAHA

Please show us some facts here eh? When they removed the score from scanning I didn't see my gal drop. You know why? Because we didn't know about the scanning.

Still 22:8 won without the scannings so they deserve the win, it was close in the end though

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by mist

they clearly broke the rules to get it

What rules exactly did they break? 'Don't create a tactic to show up the inability of PA Team'?

Originally Posted by _o0o_

This served absolutely no purpose other than to attempt to exploit the wave scan scoring system...and boost their score, which is a violation.

Exactly what did they 'violate'? What did they 'exploit'?

It wasn't a bug, it wasn't a typographical error.

I agree with Focht. It is EXTREMELY bad practice to change something which has obviously had a large effect on the overall outcome of the game so late in the game.

[mist]

Originally Posted by someone who's obviously read the whole thread

Exactly what did they 'violate'? What did they 'exploit'?

they were hitting the waves page several times a second, creating a disproportinate load, hence breaching the eula. had they just scanned 10-20 times an hour, like a scan planet would odds are they'd a) not have been caught and b) at least had a leg to stand on

-mist

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by mist

they were hitting the waves page several times a second, creating a disproportinate load, hence breaching the eula

I've read the thread. You can't prove that they were causing the problem by themselves, and surely the repurcussions of a top galaxy scanning in the tick only would cause more pages to be changed than if a middling person was doing it if the Galaxy/Universe pages are being updated in real time, which tbh is a stupid way of doing things.

Originally Posted by mist

had they just scanned 10-20 times an hour, like a scan planet would odds are they'd a) not have been caught and b) at least had a leg to stand on

They only break the EULA if they were causing 'disproportionate' load on the servers. Please tell me what 'proportionate' load is.

ps.

The EULA is terribly terribly written.

For example, cheating is defined as:

'Any action in game intended to let one account gain score at the direct cost of another with the main intend being the score gain for the one account.'

That describes every single action taken in the game, nigh on.

[midge5]

Originally Posted by TehVader

Please show us some facts here eh? When they removed the score from scanning I didn't see my gal drop. You know why? Because we didn't know about the scanning.

22:8 only fell because they spent over 1 billion resources that tick once they knew that there was no point saving to scan, not because they lost a load of score from having scans deleted(though admittedly some was lost).

[mist]

Originally Posted by MrL_JaKiri

They only break the EULA if they were causing 'disproportionate' load on the servers. Please tell me what 'proportionate' load is.

pro·por·tion·ate
Being in due proportion; proportional.

pro·por·tion·al
Forming a relationship with other parts or quantities; being in proportion.
Properly related in size, degree, or other measurable characteristics; corresponding:

pro·por·tion
A relationship between things or parts of things with respect to comparative magnitude, quantity, or degree: the proper proportion between oil and vinegar in the dressing.

as opposed to

dis·pro·por·tion·ate
Out of proportion, as in size, shape, or amount.

load
The share of work allocated to or required of a person, machine, group, or organization.
The demand for services or performance made on a machine or system.

(curtesy of dictionary.com)

given the above, i would suggest that a proportinate load would be something like:
a share of work required which is of a comparative magnitude to others

requesting hundreds of pages an hour, would seem to be of a different magnitude to the 'average player', whom, i would suggest, requests more in the order of tens of pages if that.

-mist
ps, yes, the eula is crap, but that's not really the point

[MrL_JaKiri]

Originally Posted by mist

given the above, i would suggest that a proportinate load would be something like:
a share of work required which is of a comparative magnitude to others

requesting hundreds of pages an hour, would seem to be of a different magnitude to the 'average player', whom, i would suggest, requests more in the order of tens of pages if that.

The most active players will request more pages than the 'average' player. Shall we ban them just in case?

I know what disproportionate means (hell, I could give you its latin root); I was pointing out that it doesn't actually mean anything in this context.

Furthermore, why can't the servers take 'hundreds of pages an hour'? If there were 50 or 100 coordinated people doing this I could see your point, but surely they should be able to take the supposed 10 people, even if they are requesting pages 4 or 5 times a second.

[A2]

"dis-proportionate" means requesting an abnormal number of pages, therefore causing problems with the servers to the rest of the community.
In this case it entailed pressing the scan button repeatedly (ie. scanning the same planet [and often their own] repeatedly) in a very short space of time. Abnormal usage would imply that, in this case, the scans were being done for the sake of scanning, rather than the results of the scan as was the intention of putting them in the game.
When they become disproportionate enough to be causing problems for the servers, and therefore the game and community in general then there's a problem which needs to be dealt with. In this case we removed the resources and XP gain from the worst offending planets who had, between them, been causing the server problems PA had experienced.

[Tactitus]

Originally Posted by mist

given the above, i would suggest that a proportinate load would be something like:
a share of work required which is of a comparative magnitude to others

Even if one were to accept this bizarre concept of proportional usage, how would a user know a priori what would constitute disproportional usage?

requesting hundreds of pages an hour, would seem to be of a different magnitude to the 'average player', whom, i would suggest, requests more in the order of tens of pages if that.

Back when gal status was updated in real time, players might easily request hundreds of pages an hour. Likewise, looking for targets might require hundreds of pages per hour. Is/was such usage disproportional?

Suppose beaucoup scanning hadn't caused the server to fall over. Would scanning-for-score have then been a legitimate tactic? Or would PATeam have found some other excuse to disallow it?

[Oghy]

Originally Posted by Nadval

I would not have done the same, had i known i would have got more amps and scanned myself rather than relying on other people - but i wouldn't have stockpiled resources so i could mass scan, that is simply lame. To me PA isn't all about winning - otherwise i would have tried, it's about having fun. And i don't see it as fun just sitting and mass scanning - winning like that wouldn't make me feel proud or as if i've played better than anyone else, tbh it woulda just made me feel like a twat. But then i guess i can't blame you cuz it's just a typical human feature - 'winning is everything'. I stand by what i said before - Pathetic!

liar
All i would have done was move from rank 3 to rank 1, but oh well, i guess some people don't know themselves well enough

[waffle]

Originally Posted by midge5

22:8 only fell because they spent over 1 billion resources that tick once they knew that there was no point saving to scan, not because they lost a load of score from having scans deleted(though admittedly some was lost).

Yah, we did spend all our resources. Good call buddy.

But did you not see the tick before we spent? I guess not. 3 of my galaxy m8s got kicked out of the top 10, and our galaxy took a major blow. Before you speak, know the facts. We fell because Spinner took away our score the past 48 horus(some near 1 million score in my galaxy for their planet alone), and also because we spent massive amounts of resources.

It just shows how good our galaxy was by the fact we managed to lose score, and still win the round. Still a good fight to the end to Sportsfreaks. .

[mist]

Originally Posted by Tactitus

Suppose beaucoup scanning hadn't caused the server to fall over. Would scanning-for-score have then been a legitimate tactic? Or would PATeam have found some other excuse to disallow it?

probably so, however they'd have had to look harder for a decent reason :P

-mist

[TehVader]

Originally Posted by waffle

Yah, we did spend all our resources. Good call buddy.

But did you not see the tick before we spent? I guess not. 3 of my galaxy m8s got kicked out of the top 10, and our galaxy took a major blow. Before you speak, know the facts. We fell because Spinner took away our score the past 48 horus(some near 1 million score in my galaxy for their planet alone), and also because we spent massive amounts of resources.

It just shows how good our galaxy was by the fact we managed to lose score, and still win the round. Still a good fight to the end to Sportsfreaks. .

Thank you for proving my point and it was pretty close in the end. If Ciupu hadn't suicided 2mil score the last night we would've been #1. But then again you suicided 2.5mil aswell so I guess you deserved it

[fuz]

Originally Posted by waffle

Yah, we did spend all our resources. Good call buddy.

But did you not see the tick before we spent? I guess not. 3 of my galaxy m8s got kicked out of the top 10, and our galaxy took a major blow. Before you speak, know the facts. We fell because Spinner took away our score the past 48 horus(some near 1 million score in my galaxy for their planet alone), and also because we spent massive amounts of resources.

It just shows how good our galaxy was by the fact we managed to lose score, and still win the round. Still a good fight to the end to Sportsfreaks. .

this must mean that 11:7 was also very good, since we lost 14mill score to admins while we were #1 gal, (or 33% of our score), and still ended top10 (even tho we didnt roid the last month:P)

so i think the fact that u ended #1 22:8, sais more about the playerbase and how much people put into the game now

but hey, you won in a convincing way i think, congrats

[waffle]

Originally Posted by fuz

this must mean that 11:7 was also very good, since we lost 14mill score to admins while we were #1 gal, (or 33% of our score), and still ended top10 (even tho we didnt roid the last month:P)

so i think the fact that u ended #1 22:8, sais more about the playerbase and how much people put into the game now

but hey, you won in a convincing way i think, congrats

If you take a look at our roid history, you can see we took quite a long break from roiding as well. .

[Cayl]

Originally Posted by fuz

this must mean that 11:7 was also very good, since we lost 14mill score to admins while we were #1 gal, (or 33% of our score), and still ended top10 (even tho we didnt roid the last month:P)

Sorry I don't accept a "We're special because we only put in effort for half the round and were inactive for the rest and we still weren't really low on score" argument

If you want to be #1, work for it all round. If you don't then don't snipe at the people who end up getting it.

[Anaram]

It was clear from the moment EXP formulas were released that if surface analysis scans gave any positive integer amount of EXP at all, they would be vastly superior as means for gaining score when compared to buying ships. I did contemplate dashing a few hundred scans out and testing this in practise before I quit the round, but somehow in the end I totally forgot about it.

Once again, had the formulas been released well in advance of the round (say during the beta) this could have been pointed out to Spinner.