Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Academy » Known Bugs (JRC3)
Known Bugs (JRC3) |
Fri, 21 February 2003 19:27 |
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Known Bugs in Stars JRC3
Original document copied directly from Stars! FAQ
Coding Bugs
Race File Corruption:
If you edit the race name in a race file can cause the file to become corrupt. This is especially common when making the race name shorter than before. To get around this, when editing the race name, either edit it one letter at a time (saving and re-opening each time) or copy the race data into a new file by hand.
Random Race:
If at any point during the race creation you select random race but then de-select it, it can cause the race to generate a random race every time you use it to play a game with. This is because the random tag within the file is not unselected. Though it has been reported by others, I did a recent test of this, but could not activate it.
32k Ship Limit Per Fleet:
There is a limit of 32k of any one type of ship in a fleet (32,767 to be precise). If you try and merge two fleets together which would push the ship count over this limit (i.e. a fleet with 25k chaff and another with 10k), stars has a few problems. If done manually, the ship type will disappear from the fleet readout, but re-appear in the next generation (you will only lose ships in excess of the 32k). But if done using the "merge with fleet" waypoint order, all the ships of that type will disappear. This is because when the integer (16 bit - signed) holding the number of ships goes over the 32k limit it becomes negative, and as you can't have a negative number of ships, it reads as 0.
There are also some other limits in the game: 512 separate fleets, 512 separate minefields, 16 ship designs, 10 starbase designs, 256 tokens at a battle. The game will not allow you to exceed these limits.
AR Starter Colonies:
Starter colonies for AR races will not contribute excess resources to research, unless the build queue is cleared first (using the clear button) or the hull design changed / upgraded. This is due to the "build Starter Colony" order invisibly blocks the end of the queue despite the fact that it has already been completed.
Failing to Close to Range 2 with Sappers and R2 Beams:
In the battle VCR, if a token of ships armed is armed with both sappers and range 2 beams, and is facing an enemy token for which it has enough power in its sappers to completely take down its shields to 0dp in a single turn, then the ship will not attempt to move into range 2 in that turn even if it has spare movement points and regardless of the given battle orders (even with maximize damage). If the token lacks the sapper firepower to deplete all the shields then the token will close to range 2 as normal. The exact logic code-wise behind this bug has not been figured out yet.
Copy Protection Activates When Editing an Allies Turn File:
When you save an submit a turn and then transfer the .x file to another computer (which is being used by another player in the game) and then re-open the turn and then re-save and submit before finally turning over the file to the host, it can cause the copy protection to kick in. The solution is to open the turn file up, delete the .x file while stars is still running and then save and submit, the newly created .x file will be safe to send to the host for generation. The reason for this bug is that the machines hardware hash is only written to the .x file when the .x file is being created and not updated on subsequent save and submit, whereas the stars serial number is updated each time. When you open up your allies turn file, his hardware hash is already encoded into the .x file, but when you update the file with a new save and submit, your stars serial number is added to the file replacing his. Thus the host during generation sees the same serial number on two turn files but both with different hardware hashes. For more information, see the section on the Copy Protection Features.
Font Problems When Using a Non-English Version of Windows:
When playing stars on a non-english version of windows, there can be a few problems with fonts used in stars, the most noticeable of these is in the player scores dialog where the player names are written horizontally, making them overlap each other. This is due to the fact that Microsoft has used different filenames for the various fonts in each language version of windows. To solve this problem requires editing the stars.ini file in the windows directory and editing the [fonts] section. Details of the correct text for each language can be found here.
Netscape email attachment corruption :
Wen sending emails using Netscape, it will treat small attachments of an unknown file type as text (7bit byte) instead of binary (8bit byte) and so truncates the leading byte, this can lead to corruption of turn files sent this way. The solution is to tell it that the various stars file types should be sent MIME encoded.
Player Exploitable Bugs / "Features"
The use of these bugs (with the exception of chaff), is generally considered cheating in multiplayer games unless specified previously by the host that they are allowed, though if you are in doubt check with your games host. Though it is still advisable for hosts to mention which things are disallowed before the start of the game.
Chaff:
The game mechanics will cap the kills inflicted by missiles to the number of missiles fired (i.e. one missile = one kill). Also the targeting algorithm favours weakly armoured targets (in relation to cost in res and bor). These two facts can be taken advantage of. The cheapest armed ship you can build is a scout or frigate with an x-ray laser and QJ5 engine. If you build 1000's of these, the enemy's missiles will target these first. The problem is that the targeting algorithm doesn't take into consideration the fact that to kill a frigate with an Armageddon missile is actually wasting 1005 points of damage in overkill. So with enough chaff you can effectively nullify the enemies missile firepower. But note that the "one missile = one kill rule" doesn't apply to beams, so beamers will eat through chaff very quickly.
See Art Lathrops article for a more in-depth description of chaff and the various tactics associated with it. Though most players consider this a perfectly legitimate and very useful tactic, there are an odd few players who consider this cheating, and so you will find the occasional game which bans chaff, though be very careful to get an exact definition (including ship designs) as to what is consider chaff from the host if it is banned (well before it becomes an issue), as the line between chaff and a cheap sweeper is very thin.
Split Fleet Dodge: (Sort of) Fixed in JRC4
An attacking fleet can only attack ships at the same location. If you split your fleet into many smaller individual fleets and diverge their movement orders, an attacking fleet can only engage one of them (the one with the largest mass will be targeted - though there may be a bug with this). A change was made in the JRC3 patch to stop multiple chasing fleets from all attacking the same target when this was done.
UR/CE Scrapping:
Races with CE get half price engines, and races with UR get to reclaim up to 90% of resources and 70% of minerals that went into the ship/fleet. However when scrapping at another races starbase, Stars doesn't take into account the fact that CE races get half price engines and the resources given are based on the full amount. A ship that is mostly engine (scout with pricey engine), can be used between an alliance to generate "free" resources and minerals. This has been partially countered now that gifted or alien ship (i.e. not built by that race) are considered 30% cheaper in working out scrapping.
Battle Board Overload:
The battle board can only handle a maximum of 256 tokens (shared among all races present). Excess tokens are simply left out of the battle. The tokens selected are based on fleet number, so the lowest numbered tokens would fight and the other left out, though each player is guaranteed (256 / players present) number of tokens. This can be taken advantage of by splitting off 256 chaff (or other cheap ship type), doing a split all on the 256 chaff fleet and then merging the rest of the fleet with the highest numbered ship. This would allow you to "dodge" the battle for the price of 256 chaff. Or simply keep some of more vulnerable ships out of battle (i.e. bombers and freighters). Most players would consider the deliberate use of this to be "cheating" unless specified by the host prior.
0.2% Minimum Damage:
Stars records damage to armour in a fleet/stack as in 1/512ths (0.2%). Any shots in combat (that do armour damage) will be rounded up to the next 1/512th of the total armour in the stack. Normally this isn't an issue, but can be abused. By Building 100+ DDs or nubs with alpha/beta torps, and splitting them into individual fleets just before combat, you will fire a very large amount of slavos (100 fleets of nubs with 9 slots each with beta torps = 900 salvos). Normally these would only do a little bit of damage, but because they are all individual salvos they will each do 0.2% damage, and with 900 slavos that is 180% damage. Which would kill one enemy token/stack outright and damage another by 80%, and this is per round of shooting. The number of missiles per slot won't increase the damage, but having 2 or 3 in the slot will give you a second or third chance to make that salvo hit (missed missiles don't damage armour). Note that shields aren't calculated this way. And the 0.2% rule doesn't override the one missile = one kill rule, so when the stack is at 99% damage you will still need one missile per ship to do the killing blow. The best counter tactics for this are first to split up your fleet into several smaller tokens (thus it will only kill part of your fleet), and to have gatling armed beam ships (as they do damage to each token in range).
False Public Player Scores:
Stars calculated actual resources during the middle of the generation, but calculates resources displayed in public player scores at the very end of the turn. This can be taken advantage of, by uploading pop from each of your planets using waypoint 1 orders (i.e. after movement) and then dropping them back as a waypoint 0 order (ie before movement). This doesn't affect actual output, but can significantly lower your reported resource output from which your score is largely based. This could prevent other players realizing that you are running away with the lead (and thus ganging up on you) until it is too late. Though this could backfire if you are caught, as other players would know that you are hiding something so may to gang up to stop you (which is exactly what you are trying to prevent).
North/South Minefield Immunity: Fixed in JRC4
There is an unusual bug in which there are no minefield hit checks done do a fleet traveling exactly due north or due south. Though the checks are carried out if there is even 1ly of east/west movement. This could allow a player to travel through a minefield at warp 10 with a 0% chance of hitting a mine. Most players would consider deliberate use of this bug to be "cheating".
East/West Speed Bump Minefield Immunity: Fixed in JRC4
A similar bug to the one above, but this time affecting only speed bump fields for fleet traveling due East or West.
SS Pop Steal: Fixed in JRC4
The robber baron scanner can steal minerals from an enemy player, though a player cannot usually steal enemy colonists. Though in the J patch, the check for seeing if the player wishes to steal enemy colonists was disabled when using the waypoint 1 task option (Transport|colonists|load all). This was not intended. This bug has been proved to unbalance the game when used. Most if not all players would consider use of this bug to be very serious "cheating" unless "specifically" stated by the host prior the start of the game.
JRC4 Fix caveat: Mineral transfers must be done by hand, not as a waypoint task.
[freepop] Hack:
Using a memory editing utility it is possible to create colonists out of thin air, limited only by a players freighter capacity, with the help of a memory editor. This abuses a lack of a viability check for loading colonist from an uninhabited planet, usually you cannot load more colonists than you drop down in a turn, but a memory editor can be used to trick the user interface into believing that you had dropped down millions of colonists, and the host doesn't double check these figures. Use of this in a multiplayer game would be considered by most players to be a totally inexcusable cheating offence.
Cheap Starbase:
If you build an EMPTY starbase on a planet which has no base yet, and finish it to 99%, then next turn you can still EDIT the design, add all the weap and armor you like, and the base is still 99% finished. This means you only pay 1% of the full armed base, and 99% for the empty base.
Mineral Upload:
Stars! allows you to upload minerals to any fleet in orbit that does not belong to you. You can even do this if that fleet does not have a cargo hold. This causes the minerals to "disappear".
People have abused this bug to deny the salvage of a battle from their enemy by uploading the minerals from the surface to the enemies warfleet/bombers.
Target List Overload:
The fleet lists that popup when you right click in the scanner pane and the blue diamond of the waypoint tile will only list 100 fleets. So when someone has 101+ fleets at the same coordinates (in orbit of a planet for instance) you can NOT target fleet 101 or higher(these are the fleets with the highest fleet #s.)
You can use the "Other fleets here" list to select(but only view) the higher fleets.
Space Dock Armor slot Buffer Overflow
If your race has ISB and RS, building a Space Dock with more than 21 SuperLat in the Armor slot will result in some sort of error. 21 SuperLat gives a Space Dock 16,000 armor, 22 SuperLat gives it 49,518 Armor. For a full 24 SuperLat stack, you get a whopping 51,018 armor. In comparison, a Death Star for an RS AR tops out at 31,500 armor (not including M.T. toys). [quote Matt Laub]
Race has to have the RS LRT and starbase hull has to be Space Dock to trigger this bug. More details here in this thread.
ISB trumps IT gate scanning
Improved Starbases makes gates invisible to some IT gate scanning. ITs can't see ISB gates with 150kT/600ly gates and infinite/800ly.
This may seem like a limited liability, however, there is often a fairly long period where infinite/800ly gates are the best that can be built, before the 100ly/infinite or infinite/infinite gates can be built. [quote LEit]
Note that the other race only needs the ISB LRT, they do not have to build a Space Dock or an Ultra Station to make their gate invisible, any hull will do.
[Mod edit Feb. 07 2005: added "Space Dock Armor slot Buffer Overflow"]
[Mod edit Feb. 26 2005: added "ISB trumps IT gate scanning"]
[Updated on: Wed, 11 May 2005 15:47] by Moderator
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Re: Known Bugs (JRC3) |
Sun, 23 February 2003 07:27 |
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Robert | | Lt. Junior Grade | Messages: 393
Registered: November 2002 Location: Dortmund, Germany | |
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2 more bugs:
mineral vanishing:
if your planet is bombed by enemy ships, upload minerals to
their fleet (which has no frighters!), next turn the minerals
are gone...
cheap starbase:
if you build an EMPTY starbase on a planet which has no base yet,
and finish it to 99%, then next turn you can still EDIT the
design, add all the weap and armor you like, and the base is
still 99% finished.
this means you only pay 1% of the full armed base, and 99% for
the empty base...
i think the first one is really hard to detect, and can be
painful in the late game, when you fight for minerals...
the cheap starbase trick seems to be really evil when you first
know about it, but there is a simple solution: allow it!
(and tell everybody how it works...)
this is not as hard as it seems, as it just changes the way to play the game... in the late game it is not that important anyway, cause bases dont add much defense anyway... ITs may get
and advantage, as they can build a gate quickly, but still you
need 2 turns, and if an it wants a gate up in 2 turns, he can
do it anyway... this is also countered by the fact that anybody
can build cheap MDs quickly, which is a disadvantage for IT, as
they are weak with massdrivers... so i think its fair again.
so - later in the game bases are unimportant anyway, and in the
early game the situation is quite different. once you got a plaent, it is difficutl to take it away from you early. so it
is much more efficient to grap as many planets as possible, and
build a full equiped fort there soon...
just changes the playing style, as usually it is more efficient
to colonize the _fat_ greens first to optimize growth, but so
it is better to get all greens early to get controle...
well... i played in 2 games, where this cheat was explained
to everybody first and then allowed - no problems had....
but mineral vanishing is nasty...
just what i think... open for discussion
robert
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Re: Known Bugs (JRC3) |
Tue, 15 April 2003 00:33 |
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my bad i was going to the site that showed the patches as being
Patch for 2.70H:
st27h27i.exe -- 417,420 bytes
Patch for 2.70G:
st27g27i.exe -- 418,328 bytes
Patch for 2.70F:
st27f27i.exe -- 418,359 bytes
Patch for 2.70C:
st27c27i.exe -- 419,530 bytes
Patch for 2.70B:
st27b27i.exe -- 419,529 bytes
Patch for 2.70:
st27027i.exe -- 422,945 bytes
and didnt see anything about a path saying 2.70j hince the problem i was having.
thanks for the info though, found that patch.
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Re: Known Bugs (JRC3) |
Tue, 15 April 2003 17:00 |
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Micha | | | Messages: 2342
Registered: November 2002 Location: Belgium GMT +1 | |
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Quote: | what i do is to set the name of the race at beginning of
race design and not change it anymore after that...
sounds strange, but it _is_ a possible reason.
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Not that strange since it comes forth from even more protection against hacking ...
Quote: | also if you use netscape to submit the files, that might
be a problem. i know netscape sometimes messes up .x files,
maybe also racefiles?
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Yup, race files too IIRC, has to do something with the settings in Netscape, you can fix it, but can't remember exactly how ... something to do with MIME and adding the .x# and .r# as file type ... ??
Or you can just zip the race file (or .x-file), with that file type Netscape doesn't have a problem ...
Quote: | hm.... but i think it does not necessarily mean you use the wrong patch...
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Seems in his case it was ...
regards,
mch
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Re: Known Bugs (JRC3) |
Wed, 16 April 2003 11:17 |
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regiss | | Petty Officer 1st Class | Messages: 65
Registered: November 2002 | |
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Quote: | something with the settings in Netscape
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Files smaller than 1Kb are treated as ASCII files by default in
Netscape. Simply register .x# .r# file types as binary.
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Re: Renaming Races |
Wed, 16 April 2003 21:59 |
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BlueTurbit | | Lt. Commander
RIP BlueTurbit died Oct. 20, 2011 | Messages: 835
Registered: October 2002 Location: Heart of Texas | |
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If you leave the race name blank the program will use "Humanoid" as the race name.
If you leave the plural name blank the program will use the race name for the plural name.
The other races will see the plural name id on your planets, and they will see your ships as the race name in the summary, except when they point to the emblem under the ship, then they will see the plural name instead of the race name.
So if your race is named 111 and the plural name is 222 then:
Other players will see you as the 222s on the public score sheet. They will see your planets as belonging to the 222. And when they click on one of your ships the summary will say it is a 111 ship. But when they click on the emblem under the picture it will say it belongs to the 222 race?
So if you play SS you could name your race the "not", and the plural name the "there".
Then when the other players discover your HW and ships they will say to their allies:
"There HW is there, but their ships are not there"
And the other will say "where are there ships"
And the first replies "I don't know, there ships could be anywhere, but I know they're not there. Why? Is there a problem with there?"
In conclusion, there is no conclusion. This all depends on what happens in the JRC5 patch.
[Updated on: Wed, 16 April 2003 22:07]
BlueTurbit Country/RockReport message to a moderator
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Re: Known Bugs (JRC3) |
Fri, 30 May 2003 11:04 |
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It was most likely an overflow error. Either it expanded past the edge of the galaxy or exceed the size of the memeory location alotted to store the minefield information.
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Re: Known Bugs (JRC3) |
Fri, 30 May 2003 20:51 |
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I've done that too.
Worst, though, is when I made an IS OWW race. It started doing that overflow, and a lot more. Eventually, it reached the year 3138 and when I try to generate, Stars! comes up with 'floating-point error: overflow' and crashes. Here's a picture:
http://www.users.bigpond.net.au/djhakase/stars!-crash.gif
The question is, which overflow crashed it?
Was it the excessive pop? The excessive space pop growth (3.6 million a year)? The excessive fuel on the that fleet? The excessive number of ships in that fleet? You'll notice the mines for that planet is '1' - that's a result of overflow as well.
In fact there's probably 3 or 4 other overflows going on in the background too. Maybe someone should make a list of overflows and at what point they occur?
they made me do itReport message to a moderator
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Re: Known Bugs (JRC3) |
Mon, 02 June 2003 10:38 |
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Hatterson wrote on Sat, 31 May 2003 15:18 | I doubt that this will actually affect anyone in a real game, but I thought that it was an interesting bug.
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Actually, this might be causing another problem I've seen. In large games with an SD about, the game files occassionally go south. What I mean is you start seeing strange messages and the occassional error, then about 6 turns later, you can't even gen anymore. The whole game is a loss. I've been in two games where this has happened and heard about a few more.
I think I'll forward this to Jeff McBride and see what he says.
Jeff
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Re: 2 new Bugs to discuss |
Sat, 25 October 2003 20:06 |
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EDog | | Lt. Junior Grade | Messages: 417
Registered: November 2002 Location: Denver, Colorado, USA | |
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Robert wrote on Sat, 25 October 2003 06:02 |
- if you are at the same position as your enemy and want to chase him, then he might set a waypoing without having enough fuel to reach it. The chaser "overshoots" and ends up at a point where the fleet had gone without running out of fuel.
So it is impossible to chase...
- you can send 2 mineral packets from one planet the same turn, by building a packet, updating the base design, and sending another packet of a different kind of minerals. ends up having 2 packets at the same location...
open for comments, cheat or trick?
robert
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Well, the first one is a trick, but to little benefit of the chasee. Essentially he will be stuck with no fuel (or drop to W4) and the chaser can turn around and overtake him the next turn and punish him mightily for having the cojones to try and pull a fast one.
The second one is clearly a bug along the lines of the free starbases bug. If you are going to disallow that one (and any sane host would), this one should be disallowed as well. Where is becomes difficult to catch someone exploiting the free starbases, this one will be very obvious (I'm assuming that a target world would get two "A mass packet has been detected..." messages). Either way, it's naughty.
Thanks for bringing these up, Robert!
EDog
http://ianthealy.com
Born, grew up, became an adventurer
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Re: 2 new Bugs to discuss |
Sun, 26 October 2003 04:08 |
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The first one IS open to abuse:
Just include a fuel transport in the fleet, so you generate some new fuel every turn - this way you never get stuck at warp 4 and can continue to 'run out of fuel' attempting to travel at warp 9 on EVERY turn...
Definately a 'cheat/abuse' if it can be used like this. (I haven't tested)
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Re: 2 new Bugs to discuss |
Sun, 26 October 2003 08:29 |
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Robert | | Lt. Junior Grade | Messages: 393
Registered: November 2002 Location: Dortmund, Germany | |
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Yes, I see this is important to discuss...
Especially as I think exactly the opposide!
To compare the multi-minral-packet trick with the cheap starbase trick is not really correct. With the cheap starbase trick you get something without paying for it, with the multi mineral trick you have to pay for the second base, and as you have to change the massdriver types/numbers, and massdrivers cost a lot, it is quite expensive.
So you get nothing for free, and realistically, if you build a completely new driver, why not also a new packet?
As for the cheap starbase trick:
yes it is a bug, and yes you get something for free. The problem is that you cant control it well. So i put a lot of thinking into consequences when this would be allowed. What happens? Some say IT gains an advantage. Maybe... Gates are cheaper for IT, now everybody can build gates for free. Also now everybody can build massdrivers for free, more disadvantage for IT.
So, I dont think IT has much of an advantage.
What happens is, that it changes the way the game is played.
People will tend to grab space and planets much more quickly,
and once they got a planet it will be theirs for a while...
It is just different, usually you distribute pop to have efficient growth, now you would distribute pop to grab planets quickly...
The only PRT with real disadvantate is the AR. AR cant use the trick.
So... in normal games where you cant check I am usually very paranoid... I watch neighbours very carefully, checking designs and estimated resources if he did not cheat... makes me not feel much better... so... i am not sure...
I guess either you allow it, or you need a neutral third party to check, and really check here and there. If someone is caught, kick him out... If you got no neutral third party, well...
In the end: what is victory worth, if you know you achieved it by cheatint? But not everybody thinks like this...
Ok: to the fuel bug...
I think this is cheating!
You have no chance to chase someone, and this can be abused to destroy minerals once your planet has been attacked. load mins into freighers move them away using the trick, and next turn scrap, or delete the design... ok - stupid example... SD can lay
minefields this way and cant be caught... there are more examples i guess... harmful ones...
and if you like to test, you can calculate the coordinates you will arrive and send another fuel transport... whatever...
IMO this is a cheat...
so... still open for discussion i guess (in the end each host has to decide on his own, and players have to follow).
Robert
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