| No pregame alliances... |
Thu, 01 September 2016 09:34  |
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 XAPBob |
 | Lt. Commander |
Messages: 957
Registered: August 2012 | |
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I'd have thought it was there to prevent people designing races to work together at the design stage, not to prevent easy replacement of alliance races when a player drops out.
i.e. can the rule 'no pregame alliances' have any application post race design?
Opinions?
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| Re: No pregame alliances... |
Fri, 02 September 2016 08:35  |
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| magic9mushroom |
 | Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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Well, early first contact is still something of a leg up on the competition.
I also think that part of it is the somewhat-nebulous concept of "play to win". In a single-winner game, you are supposed to try to achieve victory yourself. Deliberately handing the game to another player is unfair to everyone else; it's dishonourable. Now, that does have a tendency to happen even without pre-games (in the form of "Vichy" players who stay on board with or even form an alliance with someone closing in on victory; it honestly appalls me how many people do that), but by nature a pre-game is usually going to be that kind of "feed" alliance (it can't be strategic, because the strategic situation is unknown).
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "easy replacement of alliance races when a player drops out", though.
[Updated on: Fri, 02 September 2016 08:37] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: No pregame alliances... |
Tue, 06 September 2016 06:36 |
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| neilhoward | 
| Commander |
Messages: 1112
Registered: April 2008
Location: SW3 & 10023 | |
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We are discussing a host decision to only allow player X picking the replacement for player Y, if and only if all other players agree. The host decision was made specifically to avoid (1) the aforementioned lowtek fiasco, and (2) any disagreement about fair play concerning some aspect of the rules not clearly covered before the game started but ultimately (as potentially perceived by some number of players) going against some supposed "spirit" of the game. Ugh. Getting into this territory is not ideal. Know that for each time the host in question pauses a game to investigate potential rules infraction, there are ~3 other requests for investigation that have not required a hold. Also know that players have dropped for reasons as petty as not liking ff design names like "wtfkamikaze" in a no-comms game, and that in other games a host has had to find 3 gd replacements for a single race that was in the top 3 for the entire game.
Now for the fun stuff: The alliance of player X requested permission to submit turns for player Y while he was on holiday for up to two weeks. The alliance of player X neglected to inform the host that player Y had in fact dropped, but they continued to submit turns for his race. It has further come to light that the player which player X wants to replace player Y, has in fact already been playing player X's own race! One might say that the player X's proposed replacement for player Y has been taking over player X's race. Oh really? You don't say. Hmmm. Sock puppets? How many races should one player play in a non-team game, and how many players should be playing a single race? Might be a good question to ask.
[Updated on: Tue, 06 September 2016 06:44] Report message to a moderator
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| Re: No pregame alliances... |
Wed, 07 September 2016 21:57 |
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| magic9mushroom |
| Commander |
Messages: 1361
Registered: May 2008 | |
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Re: replacements - All I'm saying is that bringing someone in as a replacement for an ally pre-game isn't a pre-game. It could be problematic in other ways. The most obvious case is, indeed, replacing an ally in a single-winner game with yourself. Replacing an ally with someone whom you trust not to backstab you is theoretically unfair, but in practice alliance ossification is such a perennial issue in this community anyway that it isn't actually that big an advantage. Still, my position is that I personally don't have a problem with it, but I also don't have a problem with games where it's forbidden (then again, there aren't that many of us to pick from, so is there really a difference?).
Re: Lowtek - I stand by my initial decision to give XAPBob my password. It was a 2-winner game, we were in a shared-victory alliance, and our races were almost perfect partners; there was already zero chance of a backstab (it was also intended to be temporary; I still held out hope that I'd be able to recover and return to the game). The situation with nmid was where things went badly wrong, and that was a bit more complicated than "alliance member picks partner replacement"; specifically, nmid had been refused entry to the game on grounds that he was too skilled. Sprocket and nmid should both have known better than to renege on that, and especially to hand him the #1 race; XAPBob probably shouldn't have made the offer, but he was a relative newbie and it wasn't exactly his responsibility to remember that, so I cut him some slack. And then we had the mess with undisclosed brothers playing, which does raise the spectre of a pre-game even if I personally give them the benefit of the doubt. And then XAPBob and nmid started playing the allied-but-not-shared-victory Phalanx for Eagle of Fire, which I did publically call them out for. Such a mess.
Re: sockpuppets - I'm absolutely sure XAPBob isn't a sockpuppet of nmid. I've spoken to both at length over the years, and they're very different people. Moreover, if both were indeed a single person, that person would have had no motive to bring the "nmid" handle into Lowtek.
[Updated on: Wed, 07 September 2016 21:58] Report message to a moderator
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