This thread derailed days ago, turned ugly, and now I think it's time it peacefully passed away.

Admins are aware and making edits

I wonder if categorizing players/styles into two distinct and bipolar groups was ever the original intention.

He is. Instructions are on the AI Development forum section

For any wondering, changes that impact all servers take place at the start of the next upcoming round. Alliance being the first.

I feel like I've seen this posted somewhere regarding % of bonuses lost to government switch being intended. Unlikely to be a bug here.

Based on that opinion, I see only two options: Attempt to completely moderate every external non-EE method of communication with nearly no possible way to access or control... or allow players to do whatever they want on solo non-clan servers. Honestly, it's a toss-up to me which one would be more ridiculous.

I understand the point you're trying to make above, but it doesn't change that you specifically said those, like the two above, would be deleted far less if friendly with a moderator. Similar to your above statement "But its collusion no one seems to care about because those people are more well liked?)." - Call it systemic rule manipulation or whatever else you want, but the reason is off target.

I directly and specifically resent that remark and also declare it completely false. It's also dancing on the line of a forum nuisance I find particularly annoying as a moderator.

As someone that's handed those two many of their deletions (I'd rather not take the time to really count for a percentage), I can't help but assume your comment directly accuses me among others. A large majority of those deletions that I've witnessed would be hard pressed to be more definitive so one must assume the necessary thing needed here is being "friendly" with a moderator. Further, it would be a little more difficult for them to login from the same physical device multiple times 1,000 miles apart. Perhaps your example here just sucks, but your accusation doesn't hold water regardless.




This statement is inherent of the area of collusion and applies to most situations. Simply put, its harder to piece together versus attacks and ops.

Please don't think of this post as me inviting myself to one of your late night novel-long forum debates. I only really posted to say you're mistaken. ...And also, don't be fluff.

Anyone with Premium can use Alpha FFA. - Just throwing that out there.

I also don't have the answer you're seeking, by the way.

Everyone chill out

High hopes, good luck vibes, and well wishes sent your way on this, KoH.

Bots going haywire and attacking/"warring", going all Skynet on us players. Now that is something that would get me motivated! DIE BOTS DIE

Yes.



Yes, they could, and have before. Just an FYI, there are differences in admins vs devs. Pang, qzjul, izarcon, and slagpit are the admins. A few of the short-timers on the dev team didn't really contribute after getting access and/or said/did something stupid to be removed. The ones that still have dev access don't appear to be actively developing right now or they were on the AI team briefly (Disclaimer: I don't know this for sure and only assuming based on what I can see. So if you read this and you are developing, my apologies). Unless someone is working on something and I'm not aware, I don't think there is an active developer. I'm not sure if the code is bulk available somewhere at the moment but I don't think its some secret. If someone wanted to actually put in the time to work on something, I'm sure code could be provided with a test area... but this is not a new idea. The code is old and likely somewhat cumbersome so it takes a good many many hours to both learn and then develop - and most people don't want to work for free.

Martian and I have elevated access to make certain game-related changes but its only through access to a small admin UI, not direct database access, and is limited only to small server changes. For instance, we could technically change the number of "multis" allowed in FFA from 16 - But I have no idea what other things in the game might be impacted by such a change so I've actually never used this area. We could do a handful of other small things like make rounds shorter/longer, start and reset them on different days, turn things on and off like clans, auto-gdi, allies, etc., or change a server turn rate, max turns, or max store. Among a few other things that wouldn't really contribute towards active development. Further, I don't know any code other than self-taught html/xhtml many years ago so I'm not much use in that area. I'm also turning gray and have other responsibilities that would pull my time from helping much even if I had the skillset. I'm loaded with ideas, and understand logic, but can't translate that to game code.





Find someone to commit time to developing for free or hope pang or qz win the lottery and no longer need to work for a living. This game is not a measurable revenue source for them so begging won't help much besides the occasional knee-jerk response to constant whining from a couple of the same people that results in what you see in Alliance server now. Time is precious and qz and pang aren't likely to decide they don't need to work for a living anymore and devote all their time here. I suppose the game could be purchased again as well.




People have said this game is dying since as far back as I can remember.



Promoting other games has never been allowed. The moderators enforce this rule and the moderators are still active. If an admin one day tells us they don't care anymore, then so be it. Until then, we enforce the same rules in their absence that have been around for a long while.



Care, yes. Ability, very little.



Maybe. And I'd say that might be true in a couple/few, but I'm of the opinion that far more devs have fizzled out for other reasons. The last real development seems to have been in different phases of bot edits and a few unfinished projects. Slagpit made minor changes here and there for a bit, some of which mentioned above, but I don't think he's been around for the last year. I did appreciate some of his minor tweaks to the mod/admin tools like disabling accounts and IP bans. I did not agree with him coding a military sanctions option into the game and gave my opinion on the matter during discussion and implementation, but there was never a way given outside the database to enforce it so it was an easy decision to phase that out. I can't speak for izarcon so I have no idea what happened to him. Its been a few years since I've seen him around or heard from him. Jabroni has dev access but I don't recall what he was working on and I don't think he's doing much at the moment either. Pang and slagpit have done the last significant changesets and I think the last one was about 2 years ago. In most cases, I'm sure its just a "life happens" situation.

Moved to GT for obvious reasons. A few posts edited and some deleted earlier due to language. Time-out issued because it continued.

If you fail, they are identified so I'm not sure what additional confirmation would look like or be necessary. The game identifying someone on a successful op seems to drastically diminish spy purpose. Decent SPAL and spy technology already contributes to identifying the player. I only see that useful in cases where the end goal would be for a player to have very low or 0 spies. I suppose if the game heads further in the direction of less and less in-game player interaction, those cases are increasing... but then such a change seems less necessary (no op news worth seeing at all).

So eliminate successful ops being anonymous you mean?

You should consider working in insurance underwriting or risk department for an actuarial.



Did you have another perceived use of such an op other than monitoring incoming ops for potential spy DR? That's the only productive use I could think of offhand since incoming FA during a series of attacks/kill-run is pretty obvious usually. I suppose if someone had a handful of easy espionage targets they were using one might could more easily hijack them after spotting it in outgoing op news.

I think we're set at the moment given the relatively limited traffic - which was likely the primary reason the process with the last two additions took as long as it did.

Premium perk

You guys see what happens when you leave food out?

10 days later and nothing? Ok then. Just checking.

I was trying to message someone in another tourney game and picked you by mistake because the mod message system for tourney is screwy and not setup to correctly message all 3 games. Disregard.

Perhaps it's to prevent multiple reports but I do think it's odd that it's auto-deleted from the player inbox.

Can I occasionally abbreviate it as ASS?



Are you not in support of players on non-clan solo servers being deleted for coordination/collusion? There is no real ingame mechanism to stop this occasional problem, and the moderators essentially do the same thing on those servers that took place here as part of SOTS rule enforcement.



I'd say this is unlikely to happen. Having just one person presents a clear access problem potentially, limiting oversight. Plus, I'd really rather not be without any assistance. Additionally, Martian has access to mod all game servers being in an elevated mod position. We have two more mods with oversight of Team but I honestly couldn't say much offhand about their experience here as players. I will say I trust their judgement and wouldn't really entertain the idea to remove their access.

If a constructive discussion can take place on the topic of the old Spirit of the Rules. Start a new topic here or feel free to necro the thread below that I've included from what seems to be the last real (but small) discussion on it. As the players, you should have a say in such changes and I support the open discussion, feedback, complaints, etc. so long as they aren't out of line and add value.

I don't think (and admins have said such on other topics) that creating new servers is unlikely for a few reasons, and turning Team into a sort-of Alliance2 is essentially the same thing. It's a roundabout way of just separating the primary two sides of the recent "Safe Space" change in Alliance into two separate servers that mostly do the same thing - which isn't a productive solution in my opinion. But I am interested to see if things have changed on the "SOTS" topic for Team given the recent Alliance server change.

A few statements to potentially guide you:

- I was elevated from Forum Mod to game mod around the time the SOTS rules were relaxed/removed so I can only speak to what I've been able to read on both Team Talk and Mod Talk to the pros/cons and complications.

- Clarification: SOTS rules were nothing more than additional moderation on this server. The ingame mechanisms never really changed that I recall. The game mods attempted to initially let the game flow naturally until a majority decided there needed to be more active enforcement policies. Off-hand I don't recall how long it lasted but was ultimately abandoned due to a change in the majority opinion on top of moderation headaches.

- Some old previous game mechanic change suggestions like ingame war dec providing protection from outside hitting would be easily exploitable. It would need to be setup using some of the language as the Alliance Safe Space to allow exceptions for retals of sorts for attacks made prior to war dec and during said period. Although it still does not fully resolve the potential issue of two tags simply using the war dec option as a means of mutual exclusive protection. While individual moderator judgement posed challenges in the past, especially in gray areas and tolerance levels, adding the human component helps reduce exploitation in my opinion but obviously increases the risk of absolute consistency.

- Things moderators likely won't do of it was enforced again (subject to discussion, but still unlikely):
--> Moderate based solely on information/source that would seem to be politically driven; I.E. - relationships/alliances/hate between players and clans
--> Police tags based solely on similar or shared name
--> Follow and make decisions based on forum activity. Example - official declaration of war on Team Talk used as a method to start receiving attention for possible moderator policing. I can elaborate why if needed.

The good news is this would be mostly a moderation initiative if we simply did this with no ingame changes needed and would take less effort than making other game tweaks.

So... feel free to run with this topic if it's something you're passionate about. Fair warning from the start: keep the random nonsense chatter in its place and let the discussion have its day. You know who you are.


===================================

Could be closer to accounts ever created. Using that logic, Earth Empires has over 75,000 players!

Also, please don't recruit for other games on the forum. I'm leaving it because I understand that wasn't your intent here.

It's obviously not really Derrick posting. Plus, look how comparatively short that one post was.

Whomever you are, please return Derrick's cellphone/laptop. It's also super weird you'd be using his game account to post for him. But you've accidentally made far too much sense so the jig is up.

VPN/proxy use is against the rules. Have a nice day.

In some cases, some mods can, yes. But there wasn't an open discussion. I found out with the rest of you. I think I posted that somewhere.

I'm not saying discussions weren't had. I was just saying where the location they didnt seem to happen and that I wasn't included if there was one of sorts. You can also have private messages on discord, btw, same as IRC. I'm not saying that's what he meant, just pointing out it still could have happened.

I'm not criticizing your assumptions, by the way.

Any discussions on the recent topic/game change happened without my knowledge. I can only confirm what I know - that if someone stated it happened on discord, it did not happen in any actual "channel" room on the EE discord. I cannot speak for Galleri. Honestly, I feel like you already have your assumptions how this preceded. I found out the same way as the rest of you.

Don't necro threads please

Bonus