So we held a little poll on AD

[Phil^]

if it were that simple it would already have been done and there wouldnt be any need for this debate :/
atm the multihunters just cant pin them for it because they're smart enough to know how far to stay under the radar to avoid getting closed - and what excuses to use in the unlikely event that they do

plus atm, abusing the alliance size limits isnt forbidden in the eula specifically, though it certainly goes against the fair play principles

[Alessio]

Originally Posted by Phil^

if it were that simple it would already have been done and there wouldnt be any need for this debate :/
atm the multihunters just cant pin them for it because they're smart enough to know how far to stay under the radar to avoid getting closed

Your wrong, this defence limit appoach I mentioned hasn't been tried, done or even considered before.
It will make it alot easier for MH, and more difficult for abusers.

Without affecting the community, which is the main thing for me.

[Phil^]

it hasnt been tried because its ultimately defeatable, like i explained how in a previous post

[Alessio]

Originally Posted by Phil^

it hasnt been tried because its ultimately defeatable, like i explained how in a previous post

I have enough faith in MH that I trust them to recognize 40 member alliances that get constant defence from random planets.

Or 60 member alliances that get constant defence from 20 member wings. (which not necessarily is a bad thing)

Or half a dozen 20 member swarming alliances.. that don't get their precious eta bonus while defending.

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Alessio

I have enough faith in MH that I trust them to recognize 40 member alliances that get constant defence from random planets.
Or 60 member alliances that get constant defence by 20 member wings.

i have faith in them to detect them but i dont have faith in them being allowed to act upon it.
people who know what they are doing can slip by any detection routines easily.
It doesnt look like im going to convince you to my way of thinking though
fair enough, i understand your position but i dont agree with it.
Imo the best way for a hardcoded solution that ive heard so far is lokkens, and the best way for a eula solution is for it to be explicitly forbidden , no faffing around with number of defences in a given time period
removing the limits and rules entirely is just a disasterous solution that only the insane (imo) or those who would directly benefit from it would agree with it

[mist]

phil: how would you defeat a limit whereby you could only defend someone in an alliance if you were in an alliance of at least 65% of its size? or even 40-50% of its size.

[Phil^]

size in the example alessio gave was number of members, not planet score and from my interpretation it was for those who are under 65% of the size, not over it.

in such an example you would create small alliances of say 10 planets and use those to defend

if the limit was for alliances who are 65% or over, then it just leads to the situation we have seen this round of flak alliances being used to defend one main alliance. alliance wings could still be used feasibly, all they need to do is recruit inactives and thats hardly difficult to do


edit : having reread his post it seems it was for those who are 65% and over only, in which case see point #2

[Alessio]

That were my 2 cents,
I still prefer the current or past situations by far to Lokken's suggestion tho

[Alessio]

Originally Posted by Phil^

in such an example you would create small alliances of say 10 planets and use those to defend

10 member alliances can defend 22 member alliances without eta bonus.. woohoo effective


EDIT: I know my math sucks but you get the idea

[Phil^]

numerous 10 member alliances can defend a 22 member alliance without eta bonus, yup. the numbers simply scale and to get those numbers you just recruit inactives ( or if they really wanted to cheat in a big way, multis and we all know how simple it is to avoid being caught for -that- ) and take advantage of any loopholes in the stats, like the viper, vsh, frig situation this round to defend without requiring the eta bonus

[mist]

Alliances can only get defended by alliances with a minimum of 65% of their alliance size (membercount)

to me, a minimum of 65% means 65% or over. fk knows how you reached your interpretation tbh

i was going by score and/or roids tho, rather than member count - obviously that's quite easy to 'fake'

[Alessio]

I bet its unworkable and/or obvious... I guess we will never agree on this

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by mist

to me, a minimum of 65% means 65% or over. fk knows how you reached your interpretation tbh

reading things quickly while eating at the same time

[Alessio]

I don''t know how to interpret the 65% either, I changed my calculation beneath it a dozen times

now shush

[Kal]

when i said "soft" i meant as in not harsh, they would still be hard limits, just mroe akin to the excpetions system.

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Kal

when i said "soft" i meant as in not harsh, they would still be hard limits, just mroe akin to the excpetions system.

the exceptions system is based on "x offenses in y timescale"
as ive said earlier thats an unacceptable solution as it solves -nothing- and is trivial to get around
mind you so is the exceptions system , and i DID press for a much more strict system to avoid it being made a mockery of but was i listened to then? noooo... :/
was it abused? - almost certainly

[Alessio]

Originally Posted by Phil^

i have faith in them to detect them but i dont have faith in them being allowed to act upon it.

How about this, by caught planets that they ain't sure about, they remove their ability defend alliance X.
And you check a few of their attacks for cooperation.

[Phil^]

you cant punish someone if you cant pin them conclusively, especially not in a p2p game
if you're going to punish them you have to go the whole hog , and you absolutely need the evidence to justify it

[Alessio]

Originally Posted by Phil^

you cant punish someone if you cant pin them conclusively, especially not in a p2p game
if you're going to punish them you have to go the whole hog , and you absolutely need the evidence to justify it

[KweKweK]

Verry interesting thread, this support planet thing might well cause problems if things idd work like some of the examples given.

Hard coding the rules: Imo a verry bad solution, because even if you only do this for the top 5 alliances you still limit politics which imo make this game so verry fun to play. If for example top 5 alliances cant defend eachother while beeing outgunned in a fleetcatch by 2 or more alliances its unfair. Because the offensive side got to use outside help while the defenders are left restricted and this will surely be exploited.

Completly throwing the rule overboard: You'll get all ot of scanners with def fleets only outside tag. Alliance restricion goes to waste

Imo we should do neither of those 2 suggestions above, but just improve the current rule. I have played the whole round and it was a verry intense, fun and close round. I think alot of people will agree with me on this. I have read most of the posts above, tho its 02:30 here and at the end of a round so not really clear of mind, but I dont think any drastic changes are needed. There is really no need to go for a 100% succes solution, because there is simply more to loose then to gain. Trying this will only result in making the game less fun to play(hardcoding will seriously affect the political aspect of the game even if you restric it to top 5 allies). This rule was called to life because some alliances made use of there scanners as def planets only. These are the ones mainly causing the problems and need to be dealt with accordingly. My solution there for is that MH tools should get improved that they are able to monitor planets more closely or something along these lines.

I'll go to bed now think about this a bit and improve tomorrow.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Phil^

the exceptions system is based on "x offenses in y timescale"
as ive said earlier thats an unacceptable solution as it solves -nothing- and is trivial to get around
mind you so is the exceptions system , and i DID press for a much more strict system to avoid it being made a mockery of but was i listened to then? noooo... :/
was it abused? - almost certainly

I was actually thinking of something a litlel cleverer than the exceptions system, and with its details not being publically released - but my point is with correct design it would be reasnably easy to detect the abuse - flag it for further investigation by the mh team and at the same time prevent further abuse by thoose planets.

Why not from a design of mh tools pov have a systsem that detects when somethign is getting to an abusve level - informs the MH team and prevents further suspciious activity. the mh team can then decide whther it was really suspicious activity and close or not close the planet - but at the same time any further damage is prevented during the inevtigation AND for the rest of the round if the MH team made an incorrect decision.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by KweKweK

Verry interesting thread, this support planet thing might well cause problems if things idd work like some of the examples given.

Hard coding the rules: Imo a verry bad solution, because even if you only do this for the top 5 alliances you still limit politics which imo make this game so verry fun to play. If for example top 5 alliances cant defend eachother while beeing outgunned in a fleetcatch by 2 or more alliances its unfair. Because the offensive side got to use outside help while the defenders are left restricted and this will surely be exploited.

Completly throwing the rule overboard: You'll get all ot of scanners with def fleets only outside tag. Alliance restricion goes to waste

Imo we should do neither of those 2 suggestions above, but just improve the current rule. I have played the whole round and it was a verry intense, fun and close round. I think alot of people will agree with me on this. I have read most of the posts above, tho its 02:30 here and at the end of a round so not really clear of mind, but I dont think any drastic changes are needed. There is really no need to go for a 100% succes solution, because there is simply more to loose then to gain. Trying this will only result in making the game less fun to play(hardcoding will seriously affect the political aspect of the game even if you restric it to top 5 allies). This rule was called to life because some alliances made use of there scanners as def planets only. These are the ones mainly causing the problems and need to be dealt with accordingly. My solution there for is that MH tools should get improved that they are able to monitor planets more closely or something along these lines.

I'll go to bed now think about this a bit and improve tomorrow.

i'm reasonably certain that with pan most if not all scanners will be inside the tag

[mist]

Originally Posted by Kal

with its details not being publically released

you realise why people are complaining about the current rule, yes?

[Kal]

Originally Posted by mist

you realise why people are complaining about the current rule, yes?

yes, but i also know why things like the exceptions system get abused - its bcuase people know exacty how much they can get away with without being closed.

the eula is purposefully vague - we could make it very specific but then the amount of low level abuse would increase - then we would have to make it more restritive - then we would ahve to ahrd code ti so people can;t do anything in the game.

[Kargool]

Originally Posted by Kal

the eula is purposefully vague - we could make it very specific but then the amount of low level abuse would increase - then we would have to make it more restritive - then we would ahve to ahrd code ti so people can;t do anything in the game.

Dont worry, they hardly cant to anything allready.

[lokken]

Originally Posted by KweKweK

Hard coding the rules: Imo a verry bad solution, because even if you only do this for the top 5 alliances you still limit politics which imo make this game so verry fun to play. If for example top 5 alliances cant defend eachother while beeing outgunned in a fleetcatch by 2 or more alliances its unfair. Because the offensive side got to use outside help while the defenders are left restricted and this will surely be exploited.

Contrary to what you believe, politics will not be as affected as severely as the majority of politics are conducted by attack cooperation. We are trying to isolate and get rid of a relatively miniscule number of incidents that people find objectionable.

As for fleetcatches - that's how it's always been with reduced ETA for alliances. To not hardcode it simply allows the behaviour to continue. There is no 'political' defence to out of tag defending - it goes against the very reason the rule was created because any exception to the rule allows its exploitation.

The problem with mutlihunter tools is that when you get to the point of getting the planet to defend himself before you delete them, there's a huge number who will bullshit their way out of getting deleted. Phil knows it's true, because he was a multihunter. Because the threshold of cheat enforcement needs to be relatively high, you can't simply rely on a multihunter and everyone in the universe thinking a planet is cheating, because at the end of the day, it's your word against theirs.

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Kal

I was actually thinking of something a litlel cleverer than the exceptions system, and with its details not being publically released - but my point is with correct design it would be reasnably easy to detect the abuse - flag it for further investigation by the mh team and at the same time prevent further abuse by thoose planets.

Why not from a design of mh tools pov have a systsem that detects when somethign is getting to an abusve level - informs the MH team and prevents further suspciious activity. the mh team can then decide whther it was really suspicious activity and close or not close the planet - but at the same time any further damage is prevented during the inevtigation AND for the rest of the round if the MH team made an incorrect decision.

clearly you missed, or deliberately ignored where i pointed out where any such system is ultimately defeatable ( just like the exceptions system is, since its design was compromised the moment the level of interactions was raised and fixed for within a certain time period - despite my objections )
all they have to do is trial and error and see which accounts DONT get closed and emulate what they did.
not to mention how painfully obvious how easy it is to get around ANY automated system which relies on x events in y time.

You really have only three choices.

• Hardcode it and ensure any abuse is minimised.
• make the current rule absolutely clear and enforce it properly - untie the MH's hands on the amount of evidence required before they can close
• remove the rule altogether and let the game be ruined through rampant abuse

there is NO middle ground or place for half-solutions like the one you mentioned.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Phil^

clearly you missed, or deliberately ignored where i pointed out where any such system is ultimately defeatable
all they have to do is trial and error and see which accounts DONT get closed and emulate what they did.
not to mention how painfully obvious how easy it is to get around ANY automated system which relies on x events in y time.

You really have only three choices.

• Hardcode it and ensure any abuse is minimised.
• make the current rule absolutely clear and enforce it properly - untie the MH's hands on the amount of evidence required before they can close
• remove the rule altogether and let the game be ruined through rampant abuse

there is NO middle ground or place for half-solutions like the one you mentioned.

i wasn;t talkign about x events in y time, i was talking about looking at metrics over a whole round i.e. what multihunters do at the momemnt - just automating things with thesholds that tell mh's when somehting needs looking at. note the threshold would be purposefully low as the mh is not bound to close the person.

there are no specific bounds on how much evidence an MH needs to close someone - if an mh believes someone has cheated and has something to back that up they can close them. in fact i;d expect its far easier to close a support planet than it is to close a vnc user.

[Phil^]

im guessing your whole idea of what the support planet problem - in order to come up with a solution, will be that its a few planets who defend a select group a fair few times.
it does not have to be that way
it could be hundreds of planets, who defend an alliance no more then once or twice when they really need it

how would your automated metric tests cope with that eventuality?
- it wouldnt, they would fail miserably at detecting such an eventuality

no, those hundreds of planets dont have to be real people either, they can be multis very easily and you and i both know how easy it is to avoid being closed for multi-ing if you know what you are doing

[mist]

in the hundreds of planets once or twice scenario, the only option would be hard coding it, as people wouldn't be able to spot it either.

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by mist

in the hundreds of planets once or twice scenario, the only option would be hard coding it, as people wouldn't be able to spot it either.

indeed :/

( and before anyone thinks that paying for a few hundred planets would never happen, need i remind you that there are people playing who have already bought a ton of credits this round, and given them out to others. Wishmaster is one noteable example - i believe he bought 50 this round. In my time as pateam i saw several 50 credit orders so believe me when i say there ARE people out there with more money then sense )

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Phil^

im guessing your whole idea of what the support planet problem - in order to come up with a solution, will be that its a few planets who defend a select group a fair few times.
it does not have to be that way
it could be hundreds of planets, who defend an alliance no more then once or twice when they really need it

how would your automated metric tests cope with that eventuality?
- it wouldnt, they would fail miserably at detecting such an eventuality

no, those hundreds of planets dont have to be real people either, they can be multis very easily and you and i both know how easy it is to avoid being closed for multi-ing if you know what you are doing

i'm tlaking about planets who are onyl support planets and not any other type of cheat as well. if there were hundreds etc then it is likely that they are also mulis as well and hece we have other rules to cover that.

DO not confuse issues.

[robban1]

how many planets are we talking about as known support planets? where they payed ond so? i think it was more of an flaw in the stats that make viper def planets usefull this round cos of the xan fr dominace that made the eta 8 co def usefull

if you hardcode it its all allie in pa, there isnt room for tryout friends or ppl who isnt active enough to play in allie but still wants to hang around m8s and so

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Kal

i'm tlaking about planets who are onyl support planets and not any other type of cheat as well. if there were hundreds etc then it is likely that they are also mulis as well and hece we have other rules to cover that.

DO not confuse issues.

im not confusing issues. they dont HAVE to be multis, but its easier for alliances if they are as it means they dont have to find a few hundred friends to do it for them.
If they multi , yes they're breaking other rules but they also are bloody hard to CATCH if they know what they are doing and so for all intents and purposes, in pateams eyes they WILL be seperate people

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by robban1

how many planets are we talking about as known support planets? where they payed ond so? i think it was more of an flaw in the stats that make viper def planets usefull this round cos of the xan fr dominace that made the eta 8 co def usefull

if you hardcode it its all allie in pa, there isnt room for tryout friends or ppl who isnt active enough to play in allie but still wants to hang around m8s and so

read lokkens suggestion - it strikes a good balance between curbing abuse of support planets while allowing people like you mentioned to play

[mist]

Originally Posted by Kal

DO not confuse issues.

i think they were confused before phil got here. this isn't a problem in isolation.

[lokken]

Support planets are not multis by default. It is a strategy that gets round the spirit of the rules. The scary part is that there are plenty of cheat planets that can appear to be legitimate. The hardcoding is needed to prevent people going overboard.

Do not lose focus on this.

It's fair to say that if multihunting tools can't result in deletion for open/shut cases of farming and the like, it's not going to work for much more easily evasive breaches of the rules.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by lokken

Support planets are not multis by default. It is a strategy that gets round the spirit of the rules. The scary part is that there are plenty of cheat planets that can appear to be legitimate. The hardcoding is needed to prevent people going overboard.

Do not lose focus on this.

It's fair to say that if multihunting tools can't result in deletion for open/shut cases of farming and the like, it's not going to work for much more easily evasive breaches of the rules.

lokken you clearly do not know much about MH, farming is by far the hardest thing to lose someone for as someone being a stupid idiot and someone famring look very similar and thus it is hard to proove that someone intentionally gave away ships/roids.

Also the fact that this came out of AD and that a significnat portion of thoose in favous of it are anti a spefici alliance does not fill me with confidence about the ideas validity.

If you really want your suggestion disucssed properly make a new thread about it, and ask the AD people not to reply in it for a few daysuntil some other people have had a chance to think about it and discuss it. There is no hurry to decide on things laong theese lines, its a reaosnably trivial change to the game in terms of codeing.

[Phil^]

If this was an anti-exilition-only suggestion, then it would have things like "all exilition members would be subject to instant closure for defending out of gal, out of alliance"
Get a grip on reality, its not a partisan issue.
There are people on ALL sides who are both opposed to, and agree with this - whether you choose to believe it or not.

if anything it shows how far out of touch pateam currently are with the community for you to try and smear the issue

[Shyne]

People are worried about banning support planets leading to alliance based play.

The game with a little over 3000 members is dominated by those who play in alliances, and those who arent in a good alliance almost never get defence from outside of their alliance (excluding ingal) anyway.

Having playing in subh this round, an alliance reasonably holding 7th-9th place through the round, we have defended each other and noone else.

The problem of defence planets comes mainly from those in the higher alliances who can't face being roided because it'll reduce their ability to stay at the top end of the t100.

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Phil^

If this was an anti-exilition-only suggestion, then it would have things like "all exilition members would be subject to instant closure for defending out of gal, out of alliance"
Get a grip on reality, its not a partisan issue.
There are people on ALL sides who are both opposed to, and agree with this - whether you choose to believe it or not.

if anything it shows how far out of touch pateam currently are with the community for you to try and smear the issue

no offence is intended here Phil, but its really you I want to stop replying on this issue - look back over the thread its got you and lokken all over it and very few other people - this isn't a discussion, its a demand by 2-3 people for things to happen.

[Phil^]

Originally Posted by Kal

no offence is intended here Phil, but its really you I want to stop replying on this issue

congratulations kal, with that one line you have just lost all respect and support i once had for you.
you do not tell people to shut up because they are saying things you find uncomfortable, its disasterous PR.
mind you pateam in recent days hasnt had much skill in that area anyway

[mist]

Originally Posted by Phil^

you do not tell people to shut up because they are saying things you find uncomfortable, its disasterous PR.

true, however sometimes you do tell people to shut up when you want to hear what someone else has to say on the matter*.

and personally, i'd rather pateam apprached things with a healthy dose of cynicism, rather than believing every poll they read.

i know you want them to stop dragging their arses, and them finding a clue would be nice an all, but you do seem to be taking the whole thing a tad too seriously.

*note, i never said i thought it was a good thing to do, just that you might be misunderstanding the reasons. that, and if everyone's in agreement that things need to change, it's not like him hearing it from someone else will change the message, is it?

[Kal]

Originally Posted by Phil^

congratulations kal, with that one line you have just lost all respect and support i once had for you.
you do not tell people to shut up because they are saying things you find uncomfortable, its disasterous PR.
mind you pateam in recent days hasnt had much skill in that area anyway

I didn't say shut up, I said I wanted a new thread without the 2-3 obviosuly pro people pointing out all the issues with not hardcoding things. We are all well aware that the only way to entirly wipe out abuse is by changing the game mechanics to physically prevent it. What would be more useful is ways to allow a community that is not restricted to alliances to thrive.

[lokken]

Originally Posted by Kal

lokken you clearly do not know much about MH, farming is by far the hardest thing to lose someone for as someone being a stupid idiot and someone famring look very similar and thus it is hard to proove that someone intentionally gave away ships/roids.

Also the fact that this came out of AD and that a significnat portion of thoose in favous of it are anti a spefici alliance does not fill me with confidence about the ideas validity.

If you really want your suggestion disucssed properly make a new thread about it, and ask the AD people not to reply in it for a few daysuntil some other people have had a chance to think about it and discuss it. There is no hurry to decide on things laong theese lines, its a reaosnably trivial change to the game in terms of codeing.

One second, we're the side that has come along with a compromise to keep a number of parties as happy as possible to present something "workable", yet you haven't budged an inch.
You actually haven't proposed anything that scrutinises my proposal in any sense, nor have you as a big boss man even recognised that there is a strong want or at least evidence of it for improvement in this rule to improve it's consistency amongst the very people who this rule chiefly affects.

I didn't come here kicking up a big stink about it off my own bat, I asked AD as a whole what they wanted, then came here after taking into account the various opinions of those in the userbase. You'll note i'm someone who was against the rule in the first place, yet I'm willing to advocate staunch enforcement of this rule within certain parameters. I don't doubt there are those with an alliance agenda involved in that poll, but i think that this is an issue that is serious and needs to be settled - one way or the other. You'll note that my proposes operates to serve the game as a whole and is based on the nature and behaviour of top and bottom-level alliances in general. I have even pointed out on the AD thread that alliances are not the issue.

As for telling AD users to shut up - they are still your customers and have every right to an opinion. While those who blame some kind of creator/alliance conspiracy are not welcome, there are those who think this should be a legitimate tactic, while there are others who think there are good reasons to stop support planets dead. You would be better advised saying that alliance discussion in specifics is "off limits" rather than telling AD to shut up, because believe it or not, they're probably part of your most loyal customer base.

Who are these "other people" to think about it and discuss it? Do they work for PA team? Are they paid a wage? Why aren't they here already discussing it if they are?

I agree there is no hurry - but the fact you seem unwilling to debate it, put forward various alternatives, or even put a combination of alternative options forward on how we should proceed seems to me to be unreasonable. This is a suggestions forum yet all you come up is with sweeping generalisations and trying to discredit posters, forums and the posts they make rather than actual "suggestions". You suggest this should be debated in a different way, yet do nothing to start it yourself, which suggests to me that you don't want to debate it and have your way.

[mist]

as a slight asside, are you part of this discussion group thingy lokken?

[lokken]

i am one of the two moderators of alliance discussions.

[mist]

i meant the discussion group that pateam wanted to form, but last i heard was bogged down in jolt nda incompetence...

[Kal]

lokken I did put forward alternatives...

[lokken]

list all the options in a post, their requisite advantages and disadvantages and start a fresh discussion on it instead of pissing about and gauge opinion on it.