Vacation Fix

[Peace Alliance]

Here's what i'm thinkin:

- 24 hour waiting period to go on vacation. Vacation now lasts 5 days.

- During the waiting period, an empire is marked on the scores page that he will be on vaca

- Cannot send aid to an empire who is set to go on vacation.

- Any aid sent to an empire marks them as active, so they cannot be aided minutes before they auto-vacate due to being idle for a week.



For clan storehouse rounds, we could just turn vacationing off after distro.

[Briar]

- 24 hour waiting period to go on vacation. Vacation now lasts 5 days.

just a clarification..does this mean someone can only be on vacation for 5 days??

[windhound]

Er.
No thanks Sticker

For Reg, Vacation is just a time-lapse.  It doesn't really matter.
Turbo, eh.  In general the fast-pace of turbo would allow people to pass the guy in vacation pretty easily anyways, I dont see that a change is necessary for a general turbo round.

Now, as far as aid, lets look at it from the other side
Dude A needs to go on vacation, so Dude A sets his account mode thus and goes away.  Dude A's account is now, for all practical purposes, a sitting target you just painted a bullseye on.
Dude B doesn't really like Dude A, so Dude B keeps sending negligible shipments of aid to Dude A to keep him from going into vacation.  Dude A's account is now forced to be active while Dude A is not around to defend it.
I do not approve.  Just forbid the sending of aid to those going on vacation if you want to. 
btw, that wasn't the problem last turbo round; I got all my aid in -then- set my account to go into vacation.  Allendale received no aid after vacation mode was set.

Also, the aid fix mentioned would help solve that problem.

Vacation is around for a reason
Yes, it got abused one turbo round. 
Remove vacation entirely from storehouse rounds, set the idle-out time to 60 days and remove the option from Manage Army.

[Shadow]

\just remove the option entirely, set the idle-out time to 4 days on turbo and a week on reg, and make it so that idle-out is reset each time someone logs in rather than each time they use a turn. \still abuseable, but would require a lot of forethought and will be extremely obvious if it does, so you can then deal with it case by case if anyone is stupid enough to abuse it

[Wolf Snare]

No.

Vacation works perfectly fine the way it is. Take a fascist approach and make the move for protection purposes illegal. Make it so anyone caught using this (it's an obvious move) suffer the consequences of their actions. This can be solved very easily, we set guidelines like the "One Rat Attack" and "Troop Loop" had, and if abused the rule breakers are disabled.

[Peace Alliance]

Wolf Snare, I'm not about to go about delving into the lives of everybody who has gone into protection to prove they're /actually/ away... That doesn't rly make sense, and is unreasonable. Besides, people can feel free to be on vaca even if they're not going on a trip, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just annoying when people do it in a way that is... cheap. like what could, potentially,  have been the case in the storehouse round.

Shadow, making it so people need to idle out (which takes a week). Is the same as simply extending the waiting time after you set yourself on vaca for a week instead of 12 hours. I'm proposing making it 24 hours, which is plenty of time to try and take somebody's land before they become useful.

Windy... I'm confused about most of what you just said. One thing i know is that you misinterpreted me. If you SET yourself to have ally, people cannot send you aid, that's what i said.  What i meant by the aid thing is that if somebody is on their way to being 5 days idle, and they receive an aid package, that it sets them as active.


Although i do worry about the 24 hours thing, especially if it's visible on the scores page that somebody is set to vaca... they're a sitting duck, and the average player will get wrecked because people know they're going away and won't be able to retal. Still... they could just idle onto vaca if they want to be sneaky about it.

[Gen. Volkov]

I'm for removing the voluntary option altogether. If we mark them as special, it will paint them as targets, and if it remains voluntary without the special marking, the potential for abuse remains. Snare's points also have merit though, but his idea would be difficult to implement, especially in a case like cloud's, where he went into vaca with a lot of NW because he got deployed to the front.

Windy, I can think of a way to abuse the vacation feature to a "win" even in a normal Turbo round. If I wasn't the kind of player that I am, I'd have already created a clan expressly to do so, just to prove the point. If I can think of it, I am far from the only one.

[Peace Alliance]

Pretty much all promi's used this same vacation system originally... have any of them changed it?

[Gen. Volkov]

I believe many have.

[Shadow]

I like peace's solution, actually, although i think the waiting period needs to be more than 24 hours - that isn't enough to block an emp account. Three days is the clan waiting period, why not 3 days for vacation too?

But yeah, sending aid to an account that is idling out should reset it.

[windhound]

Er.  How about no Shadow?
We're talking about -vacation- here guys, its a legit thing. 
I know some of yall never leave your computer, but some people do.  And they do it without a darn 3 days notice.
At three days, what is the point of putting the account in vacation anyways?  The entire point of vacation is to preserve the account's status until you're able to resume playing.  You'll be torn to shreds after 3 days of idling, and after that you're locked out (not gaining turns, mind) for another 3 days.  Idle-out is the better choice at that point.

Do -not- allow sending aid to extend the idle-out.  That's moronic and easily abused to stop someone ever idling out, which is a more serious problem imho.

For Turbo,
Before you absolutely castrate vacation mode I'd rather just see it taken out.  Remove the option from manage army and be done with it.
Plausibly remove idle-out from turbo too.  Its only a month long, and if you idle for a full week there's not a snowball's chance in hell of you winning anyways.

Don't touch Reg though.
There has not been a demonstratable abuse of vacation mode on reg to my knowledge.  Bob's disappearance with around 100k acres was cheap, but it ultimately didn't benefit him much at all.
Has there been anything else other than that one incident?

I mean, this has all been very recent in the game's history.  There has not been a problem with vacation mode until now, and I'm still not sure its a pandemic problem.  I kinda doubt many of the other Promis have made changes, I know FAF didn't.
Its something that has been blown way out of proportion.  Volky accused Cloud of cheating because he idled out with a good chunk of net.  A chunk of net that he had been holding for quite some time without incident, and none of the changes proposed would have effected his going into vacation.

IMHO, this is something that should be dealt with on an individual basis.
I mean, hell, Allendale broke vacation one day after the minimum 72 hours.  Way before the reset, as planned.
If I'd have come out an hour prior to the reset I could understand the kicking and screaming and general noise making, but I didn't.  My reg, btw, idled to vacation over that time period.

[Shadow]

Has there been anything else other than that one incident?

WIth Ereptor's team there were plans to have him vacation while we set up another emp as well, but that got scrapped. Point is that yes, it is possible, and we could have easily abused that to huge benefit had we chosen to pursue that course of action.

kinda doubt many of the other Promis have made changes, I know FAF didn't.

Sure, and over at FAF Arthus and co are currently popping in and out of vacation at odd times, shut down teh competition, and go bacj on vacation. Only reason I haven't complained that is that there are like 5 active players and i can't be bothered. Abuse happens at other promis too.

IMHO, this is something that should be dealt with on an individual basis.

We have already established that that just results in a lot of debate and in the end fails

You'll be torn to shreds after 3 days of idling, and after that you're locked out (not gaining turns, mind) for another 3 days.

You have full turns after three days on either server, and you are only torn to shreds after three days if you are in a war, and you are unlikely to idle out during a war.

I mean, [haties], Allendale broke vacation one day after the minimum 72 hours.  Way before the reset, as planned.

I have a hard time believing that there were never plans just to wait til the reset. Especially with Bob at the helm. I suspect the only reason that it didn't happen was because you refused it. Am I right?

Bob's disappearance with around 100k acres was cheap, but it ultimately didn't benefit him much at all.

Right, but that's because he was dumb about it. And since he went on and off vacation three times and posted regularly, he was obviously -not- on vacation, and his readons were crap at the time. Whether or not he abused anything is open for discussion, though, which is why we -can't-  deal with this on an individual basis.

[Wolf Snare]

I still say you guys are going crazy for a fix when it is obvious and simple; outlaw vacationing in the sense that it was used last turbo round, and be done with it.

[Shadow]

People don't have tim to police everyone, nor should they have to. I agree that we should ban it for now until it can be coded out and we agree on a fix, but in the long term it isn't realistic to expect the admins to waste their time policing players for things not related to administration. There is also the fact that indy said that the vacation was legitimate - maybe it was and maybe it asn't, but were I an admin, I would not want to waste my time verifying each and every case.

[Wolf Snare]

You are being unrealistic. The simple system has worked thus far for many things; it's a matter of something like that happening and it being reported.. Don't tell me it wouldn't gather the attention of several of our members instantly.