Vacation Fix

[Shadow]

Sure, but in the case of intentional maxxing it's clear - either they did or they didn't. Here, we get into arguments about whehter it was real vacation, and there really is no way to prove that without going into a level of detail that borders on abuse of privacy. And you can bet that if someone was going to do this for the purposes of defense, they would claim legitimate vacation. It would just be really messy, and I don't think the admins want to do that, but I suppose I can let them speak for themselves on that score.

[Wolf Snare]

That's why, as I said in my first post, we set up some ground rules, and make it known to the population of the game that aiding up to someone only to have them vacation will result in a disabling. The only fix I would suggest is making them green instantly, so we don't get massive chunks of land getting locked on *legitimate* vacationers. Besides, what is the harm in allowing someone the free will to vacation? I understand the issue we are trying to fix here, and as I said earlier it would be pretty obvious if someone attempted to vacation for their own benifit.

[Shadow]

Well if the admins want to deal with it case by case that's fine, my point is that we should not ask them to waste their time if there is a code fix that could do the job for them. We are trying to find that code fix. if we fail to do that, we can look at alternatives.

[Peace Alliance]

I don't want to deal with it that way. As far as I'm concerned people can go on vacation just for the heck of it. There's no reason they must be away from the internet.

[Gen. Volkov]

Windy, just because it hasn't been abused on reg doesn't mean it CAN'T be. If we can see the potential for a problem, we should remove it before it becomes a problem. Oh, and I wasn't accusing cloud of cheating, I was asking why he went on vacation, and if the vaca function really was being abused, again.

I still advocate removing the voluntary option altogether, and make idling out the only way to go on vacation. It seems like the simplest fix that will achieve our objective.

[Wolf Snare]

look -- you don't have to nitpick the entire scenario -- an obvious abuse (one that has sparked this discussion) will be noticed RIGHT AWAY and dealt with as a result. I'd like to think we are a democratic society here at RWL, and to take away our right to vacation at all is contradicting our rights.

I say we dig up one rat attack, look at the rules set to keep the new rule enforced without going through complicated alterations of changing the code and arguing -- and enforce no vacationing to save an emp. It's a simple fix, one that we should not overlook.

[Shadow]

It will be noticed right away, the person who did it will claim real vacation, and we get a repeat of last round. This is not something that can be policed without interfering with people's privacy.

This idle out thing won't make people targets unless they were in a war, in which case they would be targets already. Once the potential vacationer is hit down to land around the average, they will be left alone to idle out. If you are in the middle of a war, you might get hit lower, but hopefully you had the common sense to send away everything of value before letting yourself idle out, so it isn't a problem since the enemies will go after the net and not you as long as you aren't trying to idle out for protection, which is why aid should reset the idle time (although this point still needs some tweaks).

This really won't cause anyone to be smashed any lower than usual, and it gets rid of the need to mark vacationers on scores - people are left in their scores spots for three  or four days days (turbo) and a week (reg), and then they go on vacation, and they can come back whenever they like.

Snare, the admins and players have better things to do than make sure everyone else abides by a set of rules that new players are never going to read. If it can be automated, it should.

[Peace Alliance]

I think for now i'm going to make the aid restriction to people who are set to vacate. I'm going to add in that it makes people un-idled when they receive aid (or at least adds 12 hours to the idler so they have to wait at least 12 hours after receiving aid, just like if you were going to set yourself to vacation).

As for when people are allowed to use vacation... We'll remove it from the storehouse round, but any other time, and any other situation i think should be allowed. Until I see that unbalancing the game. A good point was made who ever mentioned when bob went on vacation last round... it really got him nowhere in the end. That's sort of the idea of vacation, is you're stuck as-is until you come back. The only reason we even have the 12 hour wait is because people hate it when lots of land goes on vacation right away. It doesn't really matter if NW goes on vacation, it just means everyone has a chance to build up while the other guy doesn't receive any turns.

I don't think it makes sense to take a week to go onto vacation (idling out)... If i'm leaving for a week I'll set myself to vacation.

[Gen. Volkov]

Just because Bob failed in that instance, does not mean that will be the case every time. Do I really have to prove the point by abusing the vacation function to a win before you'll change it for the whole game?

Oh, and Snare, I'm gonna hafta agree with Shadow in regards to your proposal, there is no way to be sure about the vacation being real or not when it first starts.

[windhound]

That's kinda my point Volky.  You cant win Reg.
You can conquer it by becoming an Emp, but you're not recognized as such if you're in vacation. 

If you have a nefarious plot that could destroy reg using vacation mode as it now stands, please share it or better feel free to demonstrate.
All going into vacation on reg does is timeshift your net to a future date.

Shadow, you don't gain turns while in vacation and directly after you push the "I really want to go on vacation" button.  Your 3 days out in the open does nothing productive except produce an open target unable to fight back.  In general all that means is that you'll be taken down to around 5k acres.  But if someone realizes the account is on vacation (ie, tries to send an aid package and it bounces [or if you mark them on the scores]) that gives a rather ideal target for an easy kill.

And if you did put Ereptor into vacation while propping up another emp it wouldn't have made a whole lot of difference.  Your resistance at that point was rather negligible, yall basically had the run of the server.  You probably could have split Ereptor's net in two equal halves and had two emps that way.
Try to prop up two emps using vacation mode right now.  I kinda doubt it would work, too many folks are active at this point in time.  You would actually face resistance to getting the first one up.

Again...  RWL is rather ancient, years and years old.  This "issue" cropped up within the last month or so
Applying the fix for a Storehouse round is mandatory at this point, but otherwise I don't think any changes will be implemented

Fix Kills first.  Zepher or whoever is wreaking havoc in turbo because my muted calls for Standards Below 500 has gone unheeded and noone seems to care much.
Seems about the same here.  Lots of uproar at the moment, but I'd be surprised if anything came of it.

[Shadow]

I pmed a vacation abuse strategy to peace, he can judge whether or not it needs to be removed.

[Peace Alliance]

Ya, there's potential for unfairness. Something i would like to see addressed. Not something i think needs immediate attention. RWL is a social game, most of these vacation problems require a team of people willing to do something malicious. As shadow said, they considered it with ereptor and decided not to... I can only think of 3 people who play this game who'd be OK with this exploit, heh... not gonna name namesbobshadesevah.

[Gen. Volkov]

If you have a nefarious plot that could destroy reg using vacation mode as it now stands, please share it or better feel free to demonstrate.

It's not really nefarious, I just looked at how the game works and figured out a way to abuse the function. It would be rather simple. The clan lockout and vacation last the same amount of time, approximately. So, if I were to do this, I would pick someone to scrape up a bunch of land and create massive leader defenses. Then we'd stick a bunch of NW on him, boot him from the clan, and he'd go on vacation. He's not going to get taken down in 12 hours, or even 24. We'd wait the three days before he could come back, which means he'd also be able to rejoin the clan. Whilst he was away, we'd build as much net as we could and after 3 days, we'd do a clan run and send everything to him, boot him from the clan again and he'd go back on vacation, with the same massive leader defenses and only 12 hours to be even touched. We'd have very few points of vulnerability, and he'd be untouchable for the majority of the time he was out of the clan. In two weeks, we could probably make him so big that he couldn't be touched even out of vacation. At which point we crown him emp. If anyone can see any really serious flaws in that that don't exist for any other emp strategy already, please do tell, cause the only one I can see is that he won't gain turns while in vaca, but that won't matter because people couldn't do enough damage to him to require him to use turns when he wasn't in vacation. Land would build back up in the game, but it would take awhile to do so, and by that time we could have him so high that we could take him back off vacation and he could get turns again. I can't see any other flaws than that, I see a way to create an invulnerable net storehouse, which would be running far fewer risks than any normal emp strat.

I really hope one of you sees a serious flaw here that would prevent a player from abusing the code to a win. If you can, great, if you can't, well, if I can think of it, I'm sure others can too, especially now that I posted how to do it in detail.

[Shadow]

That's even dirtier than the one I sent peace, and yours doesn't evne required the vacationer to use turns....

[Gen. Volkov]

*Nod* I know it's dirty, which is why I would never use it, unless it was to prove a point.