| Mine damage dodge |
Wed, 01 June 2016 04:20  |
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 magic9mushroom |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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| Do you accept this proposal?[ 6 votes ] |
| 1. |
No |
 3 / 50% |
| 2. |
Yes |
3 / 50% |
We had a discussion a few years back about fixing the "standard cheats disclaimer", and it got filibustered out by a lot of yelling about the faulty mine damage algorithm.
This thread exists to get agreement on a standard policy for mine damage dodge, since I'd like to try again and it would really suck if it got filibustered out again.
My proposal is as follows:
Mine damage dodge - Banned
You may not arrange your ship designs and fleets in such a manner that ships survive a mine hit or succession of mine hits which would not have survived those hits were they in a fleet of a single design and the same total number of ships at each hit. If this happens unintentionally or unavoidably, you must scrap those ships at Waypoint 0 the next turn.
I think it's a good proposal, and in particular should satisfy what I understand to be MA's objections to "mine damage tanking", while remaining relatively simple and not unduly punishing players for the unavoidable nature of the bug at fault. Some of you may disagree; hence, the poll. Since this is part of an attempt at a standard, and not a rule by which all must abide, I'll consider this "settled" if "Yes" has at least 75% of the votes (once the majority of the active community has voted).
If anyone has something they consider to be a better proposal, they may make their own poll in their replies.
[Updated on: Wed, 01 June 2016 05:25] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Mine damage dodge |
Thu, 02 June 2016 01:53  |
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| neilhoward | 
| Commander |
Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023 | |
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No. A sock-puppet poll in this context is not what is called for.
Half of the games both hosted on SAH and announced in the New Game Forum over the last 3 years have allowed Mine Damage Dodge; more than half have allowed Mine Damage Allocation.
Policing Mine Damage Dodge and Mine Damage Allocation require substantial commitment, and their potential use adds strategic depth to the game.
I think a more productive poll would specifically target hosts as well as players that consistently finish the games they start.
[Updated on: Thu, 02 June 2016 03:05] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Mine damage dodge |
Thu, 02 June 2016 15:26 |
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I voted no.
As a player I would like to vote with yes.
As a host of many games I have also in mind how to check and police it and that would be a pain. Additonally the mine damage dodge, while annoying, isn't a game-breaking thing.
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| Re: Mine damage dodge |
Sat, 04 June 2016 04:36 |
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| magic9mushroom |
| Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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m.a@stars wrote on Sat, 04 June 2016 17:51neilhoward wrote on Thu, 02 June 2016 07:53Policing Mine Damage Dodge and Mine Damage Allocation require substantial commitment
Perhaps a tool to extract and summarize the relevant in-game messages would help with that. 
Quote:and their potential use adds strategic depth to the game.
Removing minefields' usefulness also removes any strategic depth left. 
I wouldn't call mine damage dodge "removing minefields' usefulness", actually. There are three types of sweeping:
1. Safe sweeping (light sweepers enter at safe or "mostly-safe" speed) - requires the least investment and no loss, but is slow (and doesn't work against SD exploding minefields).
2. Aggressive sweeping (many heavier sweeping fleets go at unsafe speed, collide and sweep where they stop) - requires greater investment than safe sweeping (particularly after accounting for repair time) but is significantly faster and still has no loss.
3. Collision sweeping (send a couple of hundred suicide fleets into the field, remove it with collision damage) - requires slightly greater investment than aggressive sweeping and has heavy losses, but is instant.
Mine damage dodge merely adds a fourth option:
4. Mine damage dodge aggressive sweeping - requires substantially less investment than aggressive sweeping (though more than safe sweeping), and is equally fast (against most minefields - against SD exploding minefields it's only as fast as safe sweeping, because MDD fleets can't take a second mine hit), but has losses (though not nearly as much as collision sweeping).
#4 is not clearly the best in every circumstance, or even dominant over any other method, let alone sufficient to "remove minefields' usefulness". I'd say the most dangerous in that regard is #3, particularly in the case of Speed Trap mines (because you don't even take the losses) and exploding mines (because you can deny the detonation; there is a countermeasure inasmuch as you can set the would-be collision sweeper to "friend", but it's very risky).
[Updated on: Sat, 04 June 2016 04:58] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Mine damage dodge |
Sat, 04 June 2016 22:27 |
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| neilhoward |
| Commander |
Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023 | |
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magic9mushroom wrote on Sat, 04 June 2016 01:36...
#4 is not clearly the best in every circumstance, or even dominant over any other method,
...
Yes! Thank you. Add a #5: distinction between MDD and MDA. Also consider that with MDA and/or MDD allowed, there is a differential impact on existing differentials of MF deployment & avoidance based on PRT, e.g. SD, IS, SS.
It would be very helpful to have a report on player race cost/benefit analysis of allowing one or both MDD/MDA.
[Updated on: Sat, 04 June 2016 22:28] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Mine damage dodge |
Sun, 05 June 2016 05:16 |
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| magic9mushroom |
| Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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Yeah, TBQH you and Altruist have some good points and I even thought some things along the same lines as that when I was writing the bloody thing up.
The thing is that the mine damage allocation bug annoys me because it's silly and unintended, even if I know that it's not really game-breaking, and it feels kinda wrong to let people have an incentive to exploit it. Yet I equally know that there's essentially no way to draw a line on it without screwing people over (the obvious case is an HE using mini-colony ships as fuel boosters hitting a minefield they didn't see/notice beforehand - avoiding MDD there requires a great deal of work to pad ship slots). The proposal honestly kinda sucks, I just wanted the bloody thing done without another eight pages of seeing people throw accusations of "cheating" at other people for their rules preferences (something I firmly oppose, incidentally; cheating is breaking the rules of a game, not having an opinion on which rules are worth using, and conflating the two is a disgusting smear tactic) and this seemed like it might work.
Ironically enough, I actually agree with the sentiment of MA's argument. But it's not fully applicable here - it doesn't negate minefields' effectiveness, or even reduce it by a great deal (unlike, say, N/S Minefield Immunity) - and there is going to be collateral and/or complexity in any attempt to ban what is essentially an unavoidable if flawed game mechanic. Where it is fully applicable is repair after gating - the intended mechanic that gating prevents repair is literally nullified by that loophole, and there is literally no collateral from banning it since WP1 merging is never necessary except to trigger the bug (there's nothing that makes or destroys fleets between WP1 merge and WP0 merge the next turn, so even the fleet limit is no excuse). I don't really see a difference between repair after gating and empty-slot colonisation except that the latter's slightly easier to police (scanning a .m file for WP1 merge is as trivial as scanning a ship designer for empty-mech-slot designs, it just has to be the right turn's .m file instead of any within a large window).
But that's probably getting off-topic. 
[Updated on: Sun, 05 June 2016 05:39] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: Mine damage dodge |
Mon, 06 June 2016 01:50 |
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| ManicLurch |
 | Lt. Junior Grade |
Messages: 462
Registered: May 2009 | |
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Quote:My proposal is as follows:
Mine damage dodge - Banned
I think this should be something that each set of game rules decides if they want to ban or not. If it weren't a pain to police, I might be in favor of including it in the standard cheats. But since it is, I think that it should simply be up to the game host or whoever is setting the rules for a particular game whether to ban it or not. The main point though is the game rules should always address this and specifically allow or ban it for that game. That is my opinion.
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You only need to consider overcloakers or Tachyon scanners to see why. Defenders also might want to disguise the amounts of their uncloaked reinforcements if possible. I've seen games where it was mandatory to avoid triggering the much worse "Target List overload" bug. 
Agreed