cheating or not cheating ?
 

I know it's not considered cheating by the current rules, but I really hate it when I see people climbing in the ranking only thanks to massive early donations from their gal. I hate it even more when it happens in my own alliance (3 planets this round).
Isn't it time to ban that practice ? So we can call it for what it really is: pure cheating.

If people decide it's a legit strategy, then fine... that will not be a game I want to play but there will still be hundreds of players, so no big deal.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

Oh is this whine fest still going?

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

Current and for the remainder of this round it is a legitimate strategy, that is fair enough.

I think in the off round it should be made illegal though.

Main reasons:

a) It gives the player an unfair advantage on the basis he has friends who are willing to kill their planets to pump his.

b) It is basically ship donations (which is outlawed) without the effort of building the ships first

The premise of PA should be that everyone has an equal oppurtunity to win and that alliances and galaxies and your own skill/activity levels are what make the difference. It should not be allowed that your planet is given a massive unfair boost early on which can (as we saw rounds back with BlueArmy) make you 'unroidable' for the rest of the round.

I have no issue with people exploiting loopholes and a such, that is the nature of PA, but the PA Team needs to be proactive in closing these holes once they have been discovered, before the next round commences.

Once again ill say it is ship donations without the effort of building the ships first and that needs to banned. Simple.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

But this is exactly what we are doing, having 2 cov-oppers who is active enough to bank hack every 1-2 ticks every day (As i assume he is referring to my gal here). It's a strategy like any other gal strategy, yet everyone seems to be massively upset about it, which I guess is cos they didn't think of it themselves.

Oh and, just for the record: Hut didn't seem to be overly upset about this when he was in my gal in r48, when I was the one doing bankhacks and donating to the gal.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

The notion that the planet rankings are an indication of the skill of individual players is ludicrous. We help top planets by defending them, we help them by escorting them, we help them by donating them resources.

I don't see the problem.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

So you also think that having a few people that will latestart into your galaxy make planets at tick 0 and feed your ships for 300 ticks is also ok?

Because its the same thing, the increase of your value gained by the decreasing of others, with no effort put in by yourself to acheive it.

I like how you keep skipping around the fact that we keep refering to it as ship donating without the prod and eta because you know that is what is and that that is banned from pa

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

We do not have any planets outside our gal feeding us ships.

These cov-oppers are planets that plans on staying in the galaxy, they are contributing to our gal's score just as much as the rest of us, just not in the traditional way.

How exactly is it ship donating? Pretty much every galaxy in the universe thats remotely decent donates resources to planets in the gal, we just happen to be more organized and better at doing it than others, which seems to be what people are sore about.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

No again you miss the point, quite a theme now with you on this subject. I didnt say you did have, i asked if you were ok with it...

Someone taking all the resources they have either produced vi a roids or via covoping and sticking them into a fund for someone else to use to make that other persons planet vastly better than other people at an early point in the game is NO DIFFERENT to someone outside the galaxy using resources to prod ships and sending them on attacks which a player can steal them all which gains value and closes holes in their fleet (something Shazna was very proffiecent at until it was stop by PA Team)

The main problem you have eksero is that no one beleives anything your galaxy says as its full of people who bend the PA rules to such an extent that it gives them a vastly unfair advantage compared to any other galaxy out there, wether by abusing the exile system, the galaxy/alliance funds, latestart avoidance play and until recently blatant ship donations.

We all just hope that the PA team gradually phases out all these 'advantages' and makes you have to play like the rest of us, then maybe we can see how good you actually are.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

There are no rules against donating resources to galmates, while there are rules against shipfarming.

And no, it is not the same, seeing as they are contributing to the score of the galaxy they are sitting in. Someone outside the gal donating ships would be contributing to a galaxy they are not part of. I also don't see how we are bending any rules doing this? No where does it say its illegal to donate resources, hell, people even went to talk to Ace about it, in which he responded something like "They are probably just jealous they didn't think of it themselves".

How do we abuse the exile system?
Latestart avoidance play? What ship donations?

That's a lot of accusations without any proof pal! :confused:

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

Its because the same handful of losers (also self-claimed pa pros) didnt think to use the same system to their advantage. Both the resource hack cov-ops and 50m donation per planet have been in play for countless rounds now, but just because we ("the gal") have decided to use it, its unspeakably unfair, unjust etc. You dont have to look far to realise who the twats are eksero pointed out 2 rounds ago Hut wasnt moaning about eksero res boosting his gal using the same trick ;)

P.S Kai arent you the same loser that supposedly quit pa 3 rounds ago because "we had 97 fleets inc on gal and its only pt200, this isnt fair its outrageous etc. etc."

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

Ahhh Mikee the guy that avoids 'playing' the game for 900 ticks, leeching def off all and sundry just to spend and get a t10 ranking :P

Once again, the super BP comes to defend itself and misses the point wholly!!

We are not saying it is wrong now, at the end of the day its currently in the rules and therefore can be used, what we are saying is that the PA team should look to remove it for future rounds as it does give people who exploit it a huge advantage for little to no effort.

Did you ever think that maybe all the rest of the universe doesnt partake in this because the need to get t1 galaxy is not the be all and end all of their lives. I mean if you guys are sooooo amazingly obsessed with personal and collective ranks then thats cool and all, but dont mock other people when really you are the truly sad ones ;)

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

The whole point i was making is that it was "OK" up until the point we decided to use the whole covert op / donation feature. While were on the subject of obsessions i find it pretty hilarious that the same people are so fascinated and obsessed with our gal/bp/group whatever you want to call it, maybe you should really call it a day and take up a real hobby when all you do is e-stalk people on the internet pal. If you can actually provide a valid reason why this issue wasnt addressed when first introduced to the game other than "it was ok until you guys used it" please do, i highly doubt you can though. Guess itll highlight exactly what 80% of the pa community thinks of your opinion i.e NEGLIGIBLE.

As a footnote, ive never actually played to get a planet rank but then i guess you already know that, yet you feel the need to show what a retard you are :banana: no need to be sore over the whole HeX thing that was over 2 years ago................

oh and for the record the fact you actually admitted to owning more then 1 planet in previous rounds proves the fact about just who is more desperate to win this game, and to what lengths they're willing to go :D

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

If "the rest of the universe" doesn't bother, I actually fail to see your point.

On a more serious note: When I read the OP I thought it was referring to the massive donation some guy early on got from his BP (I assume it was his BP) with the gal disbanding/him exiling afterwards, trying to get into another gal with a huge resource boost.
That's something I'd consider an "unfair" advantage, but then again, it doesn't happen so often I tihnk of it as a serious problem yet.

However, having a cov oper or two ingal and using the fund to donate stolen resources to other planets is perfectly legit imo. It's been around for ages, used before, some people probably complained but it's no "unfair" advantage over anyone.

Any kind of "out of the book" strategy gets frowned upon in this game. There's no appreciation for people who actually find somewhat clever ways to play PA. When they do, others come along and whine about stuff being unfair and the need of banning it. Isn't this game dull enough already, or would you prefer complete railroading of your planet? Why don't you ask for a single race etc, as even slightly unbalanced stats are an "unfair advantage" to those who spot the weaknesses.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

i actually agree with kai, and when the kid goes to sleep I will make a proper post as to why...

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

It's always been like this. Whenever some people come up with a new way of playing the game, all the losers who didn't turn the whine dial to 11. This is just round 16 and round 22 and round 23 and late 20s all over again.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

worst thing of it all is that it isnt even new...

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

[quote=Mikee;3222400]The whole point i was making is that it was "OK" up until the point we decided to use the whole covert op / donation feature.QUOTE]

and there i think is the key.

it is a donation. same as giving ships to a player is a donation

it is being used in many gals this round, but that doesnt make it right

infact, you could say it is worse because at least with fleet donations, enemy has a chance to roid/fc the guy giving donations, whereas nothing can be done about co-oppers.

even worse is it is being used in conjunction with ppl deleting and late sign-up, which to me IS abuse of the game. i have seen 5 ppl do it so far in my small group of rooms.

two planets sign up. one co-ops, gives loads of res to his mate who gets big. then he resets, and the guy who is big can give a shed load of res to the late starter, who in turn gets big. both by donations.
or
two planets sign up. one donates ships to get the other big. then late start ups. big guy gives res to small guy. both are big. both by donations

same ending but one is lauded as 'original play' whilst the other results in closure

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

None of our planets are going to reset, that is the point here. Their play is contributing as much to the galaxy as our play, they are not going to reset or exile out, they just contribute to the overall score in other ways than having a big planet.

Signing up, giving your res away and resetting is something completely different.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

i am not talking just about your gal but in general

however...
signing up just to give res away ok?
signing up just to give ships away not ok?

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

This sort of whingeing is exactly what has driven PA to the brink. People being jealous of a successful strategy and campaigning to get it banned, then PA Team agreeing and restricting the game so that there is only one way to play it. It won't be long before there is no point logging in because the game makes all the decisions for you.
[/rant]

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

There are no rules about donating resources to your galmates, but there are rules about ship donations :cool:

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

lol
i think thats what the post is about

no-one is saying it IS cheating, they are asking if it should be in future rounds.

for me, you have to allow both ship and resource donations, or neither

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

Get security.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

you missed my point

i can get security as can others but a cov-op planet cant really be touched, especially when staying tiny because they are donating planets to top 10 :p

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

I'm pissed off this time because it happens in my own alliance at the highest level. I think it is time to know what Appocco thinks of it and if he wants to do something about it for future rounds.
I was not expecting the people using that 'trick' to call themselves cheaters. And tbh I see a slight difference between receiving donations from cov ops, and receiving donations straight from the startup bonus of other gal members. If the latter could be banned it would be a step in the right direction.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

once again a handful of people think they know whats best for the 800 or so other people thats all :cool: they had nothing to whinge about til this round it seems

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

i think the 'whinging' to which you refer is a handful of people discussing why it is or isnt wrong.

with your contribution being 'you are picking on our gal'

the whinging is coming from you

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

I expected a totally one sided quote from a narrow minded fool like you to be honest :crymeariver:. Fact is none of you have stated why the sudden uproar at this game feature ? after all it has been implemented for ROUNDS....................... yet it seems to be highlighted now of all times :salute:

anyway forest i suggest you saveface now and crawl back under your hole

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

I don't get it, this strategy has been around for numerous rounds(one round BlueArmy had a whole BP donating him res), and now that a gal perfects it you come whining for it to be removed?

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

ty:dr

too yellow : didn't read

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

This been around for ages, but I'd like to see it modified some time in the future. Dunno what a good solution would be, but when a gal is donating to a player but all involved in the donation stays together in the gal its fine. But signing up with the purpose of only donating then exiling, resetting or whatever is not so cool imo.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

I remember this being used during one of the last rounds I played, though can't for the life of me remember who it was. A load of planets donated into one player who used it to build a load of DE and turn himself into a one-man fort. His gal went on to win, afaik.

It was as legitimate a tactic then as it is now. But I suppose "tactic" is a swear word for a lot of people who are still lacking in imagination after... well, whatever round this is: that many rounds.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

it was bluearmy I think , far as I'm concerned its a valid tactic just because you dont like or didnt think of it yourself does not mean its cheating , you could have done it yourself but chose not too , there is more than one way to play the game

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

someone talks some sense at last :p

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

shaz was a big part of this kind of strategy when I thought up the idea originally. I told Appoc I would show him how much you can abuse the donation system, and imo we fully accomplished that. Still, nothing was changed.
Curiously, Hut started the thread about that one too.

Here's my post that sums up the experience and idea behind it and even make a suggestion to how it can be fixed :
http://pirate.planetarion.com/showth...83#post3189983

SS of the donation, 50 mill total at pt41 : http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/2...reenshotbw.png

That was a private gal round, so we had 7 planets that could donate. That's not currently possible. All the planets that donated their res recovered later in the round (mostly thanks to shaz cov opping/donation res away, just like she is doing this round), and both Shadowcat and I ended up beating BA who got the initial donation, while we had 7 planets in the top30 or something silly. No chance of a gal win though, random galaxies had like 25 planets and had all of the top10.

Anyway, the dude with massive CR fleet is worse than what 3:3 is doing imo. 3:3 have found a way where they only need 2-3 people to be active for half the round to be in a good position to win galaxy rank. After last rounds failure with being too fat and getting early incs, this tactics now mean their planets have pretty heavy value from the get go.

You 3:3 people can form an orderly line and thank me for teach shaz this trick.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

I re-read the first two pages of that thread. I agree with my younger self.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

if res donation is something people are more than happy with as a tactic, then we need a discussion to bring back ship donations too

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

no we dont

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

I remeber this thing happened in some other net game. A player got donated to planet win, and suddently everyone was screaming and crying out that this was unfair, and was destroying the game for honest people.
The player who was donated to, some guy named KillMark, got his planet deleted first, later he was awared "joint victory" with another guy :)
Honest people rarely suceed in this game. This is something that has been a well known fact since round one of PA.
Now you can either cry, whine and bitch about people using unfair tactics, this can only result in two Things usualy.

1. Nothing is done. People who see this as a good and moral way of playing PA will continue to do so.

2. The feature will be disabled, or changed in some way its more or less useless. This will hurt the rest of the game who is using this feature fairly and With the purpose wich it was made for.

Now, you can choose to familiraise urself with cheaters, and people who are doing everything to win.
Another option is that you can just close ur eyes for these people, avoiding em, and joinining allies where their way of playing aint welcome.
Or you can chose to try stop these players suceeding, even though their "unfair" and "unethical" gameplay advatanges, this usualy works.
If you look at last round, you could say that those that played unethical, or unfair, did not suceed their goals at winning. This being FAnG and their fenced HC gal.
Now if you want to get rid of fence BPs, or super BPs, or BPs wich abuse exile/donation/late start or what not system, start attacking em, stop whining here in an attempt of ruining the game for the rest of us.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

to be on topic... 3:3 is in no way cheating, and are not doing anything that others are not capable of. As for donations from planets to one planet, where the donators will seize to "exist" at some point, is a competly different story.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

It's worth mentioning that the current #1 galaxy is also using a cov opper to boost their value. It's a very good tactic for early-midround play if you have someone very active and that is also willing to feed others his own value.

Honestly, no matter if the planet gets deleted or if it's staying staying active, it's the exact same thing happening, you are giving your resources away. I think it should be a valid tactic, but it is too powerful, and has been for a long time. 50 mill total is too big of a limit, especially at the start. The galaxy fund should work more like the alliance fund where the limit slowly goes up during the game. Another option is to limit the amount you can donate to the galaxy fund, a limit which is also on the alliance fund. I know people avoid that limit by trading, but it's at least something.

Something like a 20 mill maximum galaxy donation limit would be ideal. it's not really big enough to make or break the game, but it's still viable. Currently 4 of the top8 value planets have received a donation. That's too much. What will also most likely happen is certain planets stacking their res and getting a second donation in 200 ticks. That needs to be addressed too, instead of a donation every 200 ticks, maybe every 500 ticks. simply put, cov opping is too good at the moment.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

I don't have a big problem with how strong cov opping is, to be honest. I cov opped this round and spent last night. I'm now top 60 on score, but not even top 200 on value. I could've donated those resources to someone else, but the end result would've been roughly the same, with them being a bit higher up the ranks than I ended up being, and me being a lot less useful. It's good enough to encourage every decent gal to have a cov opper in its BP. That's 1 in 9 or 1 in 10 of the player base.

However, this does sounds like a good approach. I see no particular reason why it should remain viable to donate an entire galaxy (or BP) worth of resources to 1 planet during protection.

If there's a way around a limit, it's useless.

That's not an argument, it's just a statement. 8 of the top 8 value planets have received defense.

I see no reason why that limit should have a timeout at all. If we changed the donation limit to go up as the round goes on, as you suggested, you could be donated a little bit every tick, or a 1177 ticks worth at tick 1177, to the same effect.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

Aye, that was it. Terran DE fort planet ftw heh.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

if PA Team were to remove this feature, the game would lose another feature that helps/encourages gal members to want to communicate and help each other. theres nothing wrong with this stratedgy, "the gal" is losing 2 ingal defending fleets to value boost 1 planet at a time, there are advantages and disadvantages to what is happening here. just because they're not selfish and play only for their own planet but a group of planets, like a mini alliance, they shouldn't be punished.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

Actually because covoping is so unbalanced that is not true. Yes you have to be active to do it, I concede that, but there is no threat to a covoping planet, it can't be attacked or stopped in what it's doing, it preys on the inactive, if all 900 players were active in the game then covop bank hacking would not be a viable strategy. Good covopers can fill a galaxy fund extremely quickly and boost players, avoid incs and artificially hide score via the fund.

Covoping itself is the issue, not the people abusing it. I think that the pa team needs to overhaul covops and make it more inline with the rest of the game. I made a suggestion a while back about it but I think the main point should be that covoping needs to turned on its head and be basically raise in its effectiveness the more a planet is line with the avg score of its galaxy/alliance/universe (your choice). The culture of avoidance by staying below bash needs to be removed. People need to play the game, not hide from it. Covop planets need to be 'killable'

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

(Dunno if this post belongs here)

Kinda agree on the fact that there isn't much threats to a covop planet. Then again covopping isn't what everyone goes, so if they are getting worse some places perhaps they should get some boosts elsewhere. Perhaps some of the following could be a good idea.

When you cov op someone there is a big chance that your coords get revealed to the covopped planet.

When you cov op someone your own alert goes down massively.

Make Network charting alot better.

Bank hack money is now seen as "dirty money" and can only be used by "dirty planets" (planets with back hack research).

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

I would be in favour of improving network charting to -6 stealth per agent.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

That changes nothing, cov-op planets have a very easy time at getting immune to cov ops themselves.

As for your other points, there are many ways to change cov ops and I was making a list of them, not suggesting they should all be implanted.

In my opinion, you should not need the backing of a cov opper to get rank. Atm, many of the top planets have exactly that. That needs to change and cannot be compared to recieving defense.

Re: cheating or not cheating ?
 

Agreed. The problem I want to solve with that change is that network charting is never used because not only is it easy to become immune, but the op itself is hilariously underpowered.

However, that works both ways. Most of my targets this round were active planets in the top 300. We aren't talking about doing 10 35-agent bank hacks in a row, on inactive planets on 200 roids and no fleet. We're talking about people who log in at least twice a day, who launch attacks regularly and who (if they're not dumb) make a bunch of guards or spend their stock pile as soon as they see a bankhack on their news. This round, I've hit a grand total of 3 planets more than twice (7, 4 and 3 times).

So here's what people should do (this is not actually a reply to you) tell your ally mates to either stop stockpiling, or get alert. It's easy. 2 SCs at the end of protection. Guards = roids * 3 at, say, tick 100. Problem ****ing solved.

Why not?