Rule Clarification Thread

Rules should never be interpreted differently, resulting in different players having different responses to the same, or close to the same, actions they or others have performed.

Surely a better approach than "hypotheticals" (which is just going to become people changing the name and telling real life stories) would be to start adopting the kind of precedent system used my most law systems around the world. Publish "X has been given Y punishment for Z action" and be very specific about the action that incurred the ban and before long you'll have a reference of previous cases that can be used to justify (and calibrate) future rules breaches.

So "Joe Bloggs was given a 1 week ban for pushing 10m resources to Jack Smith, less than 5% of total account value" - "Mike Turner was given a permanent ban for scripting to automate attacks" - "Mary Jones was given a 2 week ban for sending insulting messages" or whatever - you can then just refer back to a previous punishment for the closest crime possible as the benchmark and adjust for any case specific factors.

This also allows the players to know if it's worth pushing something up to a higher level to appeal because they think a month is too harsh or whatever - more work in the short term but long term hopefully less (I moderated a forum away from here before and the majority of the mods time was spent discussing whether it should be one week or 2 week or whatever for individual offences until we implemented a similar system of precedents with a ladder that doubled the previous punishment for each repeated offence - it worked surprisingly well...)

Quote from crispybits

Surely a better approach than "hypotheticals" (which is just going to become people changing the name and telling real life stories) would be to start adopting the kind of precedent system used my most law systems around the world. Publish "X has been given Y punishment for Z action" and be very specific about the action that incurred the ban and before long you'll have a reference of previous cases that can be used to justify (and calibrate) future rules breaches.

So "Joe Bloggs was given a 1 week ban for pushing 10m resources to Jack Smith, less than 5% of total account value" - "Mike Turner was given a permanent ban for scripting to automate attacks" - "Mary Jones was given a 2 week ban for sending insulting messages" or whatever - you can then just refer back to a previous punishment for the closest crime possible as the benchmark and adjust for any case specific factors.

This also allows the players to know if it's worth pushing something up to a higher level to appeal because they think a month is too harsh or whatever - more work in the short term but long term hopefully less (I moderated a forum away from here before and the majority of the mods time was spent discussing whether it should be one week or 2 week or whatever for individual offences until we implemented a similar system of precedents with a ladder that doubled the previous punishment for each repeated offence - it worked surprisingly well...)

I see 2 problems with this.
1. They have already taken away the Pillory under instruction from the legal department. Such a thing would be too similar to the Pillory, and is unlikely to be allowed for the same reasons that the Pillory was taken away. Plus, they are legally unable to provided details to those not included in each case due to the DPA they sign.

2. The game staff are majorly short staffed as it is that most unis barely have the basics covered.. adding in something like this would take their limited time away from actual GO work into having to explain everything. Nearly all bans come with a pre-set punishment anyway.. so it's not like each GO chooses the ban length.

--

I do have one questions for the thread / team - though I doubt it's something you can answer Kal..

Quote from Gameforge - In game Rules

5. Pushing

No account is allowed to obtain an unfair profit from the resources of a lower-ranked account.Pushing is defined as, but not only limited to, the following: resources sent from a lower-ranked account to a higher-ranked one with nothing tangible in return.
Setting up a battle to enable a higher-ranked account to obtain profit from a lower-ranked account or manipulating trade ratios for a higher-ranked account to gain an advantage through a lower ranked account are considered an unfair profit.
For all exceptions (bounties, etc.) a Game Operator should be informed via the ticket system (http://support.en.ogame.gameforge.com).

Why did Gameforge update the in-game game rules (RE. Pushing, at least..), without anyone informing us? (I have no issue with the changes - rather the return to poor communication..)
And when will the Board thread be updated to reflect the changes in game?

I have a question that's been bugging me for years regarding clarification of the pushing rule, more precisely, the term tangible (which is a terrible word to use for an online game).

For instance. If lower ranked player A cannot afford to build RIPs or cannot send RIPs on an MD for one reason or another, so he asks higher ranked Player B to perform a moon destruction for him and player B loses 5 RIPs. Why can player A not pay him the resources for those lost RIPs? To me, a moon destruction is just as "tangible" as resources are. And if Player B receives no profit, then how is that regarded as pushing?

I apologize if this isn't the purpose of this thread, but it seemed like this was a good place to get a clarification on our current rules.

If Player A can't affprd to build RIPs then how is he going to pay Player B for the lost RIPs?

(I get the point of the question tho - just being pedantic )

A better example might be Player A wants a moon but has little or no defences built yet - so player B sends a moonshot and also defends it with his own cruisers and recycles it with his own bins. There is no way for Player A to perform this action for himself, nor is there a way he could legally pay Player B what it actually cost him.

It was just a basic scenario, perhaps player A hasn't researched grav yet, or maybe player B has a moon in system of the target and it's a lower flight time. I guess the exact scenario doesn't matter much, I'm just wondering what the word tangible defines. If it's strictly resources for resources, then that's fine. But I would think that a moon destruction is equally tangible if only losses are replaced and no higher ranked player profits.

I thought I recalled seeing a post somewhere that colonizing/deleting planets with the sole intention of blocking systems and preventing others mates from assisting a player under attack was considered bug using. Is this correct?

Quote from drogs

Rules should never be interpreted differently, resulting in different players having different responses to the same, or close to the same, actions they or others have performed.

Absolutely! Deliberately vague rules? That's the biggest nonsense I ever heard. You are shooting in your own foot with "deliberate vague rules" which can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. Isn't it obvious this makes gameplaying impossible but causes players to spend a lot of time discussing and bitching and bickering?

This can't be the object of this game. If you play chess, you know the rules and they are perfectly clear, and no time wasted in chat and discussion and whatnot. You just play the game! And what's what you came here for.

This is purely hypothetical of cause but i'v been wondering for some time what the "official" standpoint on this is.

Let's say i find out one of my alliance mates is offline for an extended time period & i find his fleet sitting on a moon.
Would it then be legal to kick the guy from the alliance and destroy the fleet?

I asked a GO once about this and he wasn't sure but recalled something about an unofficial rule that said we had to wait 24-48 hours from the time the player was kicked to avoid any issues.

Can this be true and if so, does that extend to buddylist as well and would it change anything if we kicked the guy before finding out his fleet was sitting?

we always ate the sumbitch as soon as he went 1 day on ally list, if he was set...

@MikeGrinder6 Remember when you accepted that guy into hot, then kicked him and farmed him immediately? Perhaps you can give Parsec some information regarding this?

Quote from Trollhunter

@MikeGrinder6 Remember when you accepted that guy into hot, then kicked him and farmed him immediately? Perhaps you can give Parsec some information regarding this?

this one time... at band camp...

Top 05 - MikeGrinder [HOT] vs. Morphium (TD:30.31G)~ TP: 15G

Stick that up your band camp! Another one that keeps grinders pipe clean.

S

Quote from Allucien

what? He literally posted it for everyone to see...

hello everyone

thank you for your time in advance
i have a question or two

1. is it against the rules to destroy a moon of a member of your alliance?
lets say you send a defend missiion on the moon and then destroy it so you defend his planet and the atacker is not able to see your fleet on the lanx

2. is it against the rules to reush a fleet of a member of your alliance?
lets say your teammate got lanxed in a 3s lanx and you send in an attack 1s before the enemy and crush n recycle your teammate, eventualy you give him the ress but is that move legal?

so in bouth scenarious you are atacking or destroy mission on a friend, on your buddy list, in your alliance, in his knowledge, to get gains and destroy the enemy of your alliance

thank you for your time and aswers

as long as higher ranks do not profit from the above scenarios, all is well, and it is also okay to repair losses incurred, and send rest to lower ranked...

before you take my word for it though, please await clarification from a member of the team...