2nd thoughts maybe don’t do it randomly as there are too many angry people in this game
1 Like
I don’t see one either, but the solution must be found.
I think (no offence) a player ran GC is a band aid that is doomed to fail.
The “honor system” that failed to regulate IA - will fail to regulate UA.
It is player driven, players have motive to bend the GC to their will.
Fuck band aids.
If you don’t have one, give it some real thought!
We all have to be able to come up with something!
- @SunTzu Suggested this, I think I am for it. I will miss my beloved market - but it does cut off the aiding nonsense 100%
- Very clever! Especially “War Declarations are public” that is hot!. Not sure I like limiting conflict amounts - in a given explo you might have to clear 10 fams in a few days.
- Another good one! Kinda adds a semi - pmode function to conflict.
- Band aid feel.
- Band aid feel, but a good one if @I_like_pie doesn’t see it that way.
- Love that idea.
- Best suggestion so far - Pie has said he feels that is a band aid - I hate to agree with him, but he is prolly right. I personally agree with you that it is (to say the least) a really good band aid.
- Oh god no - nightmare of heaps of people playing together that shouldn’t have too.
That is the 20$ question - how do we do that? =)
1 Like
-
I don’t think the market is the problem itself. It is the smaller number of players that make market aiding possible nowadays. I think that was a much tougher feat to pull off when there were a thousand+ players in MW and the market bids went to two decimal places.
-
In theory, this is great. In practice, it is a nightmare.
For example: Families A & B are in wars with families C & D. Family F takes advantage of the declarations to either portal up in cores for A,B,C & D, or just flat out attacks A,B,C & D knowing that none can retaliate at the moment. -
But for how long is an automatic NAP? Some warmongers would be against Perm NAPs, while others would use it as a rebuilding period then attack ASAP once again.
-
Been in favor of this returning for a long time.
-
I can agree with this too.
-
Pretty certain this is being worked on already.
3 Likes
Ban UA - enforced without taking pies time.
I guess the simplest from my point of view would be to get a second admin/game mod who has power to investigate/enforce UA voilations, but this still costs pie time to oversee.
Other ideas:
Focus just on the obvious and most impactful UA actions which are joint attacks/wars.
Ignore information sharing, make market aiding impossible.
Possibly develope some tools(complex) that help identify these joint attacks.
2 Likes
You guys are kicking ass here. Awesome!
Yep, that’s spot on. The difference is, before, players would focus on accusations and bans, which would be particularly painful for players who didn’t cheat but were impacted by the blocked players’ decision.
This happened 3 out of the last 3 rounds, which I think some players are forgetting. If you’re curious and/or bored:
- Milky Way 65 Cheating and Deletions
- MW66: Illegal Coordination Evidence and Defense
- Milky Way 67 Cheating: Multis and Illegal Market Aiding
What’s interesting there is the responses. You don’t have to look far in those threads for people who defend IA, and suggest that the rule is bad and we are too harsh on the offenders.
Some of those same people are now saying that we should re-institute the rule. I know of several players who have been both for and against the rule depending on the round, whether or not they themselves were guilty, and whether or not they were impacted by somebody else’s block and deletion.
We should be careful not to look back at prior rounds as if they were some ideal scenario we abandoned; they weren’t. It may feel worse now because it is different, but that is part of the acclimation we have to go through.
I do believe this will be the case. I am cautiously optimistic that most players will adapt over time. It may not feel like that when you’re in the middle of it, but it helps to think about the big picture. I remember my first UA round in SN being downright infuriating, but also thinking about what it allowed us all to see.
I’d argue that the core issue isn’t that at all. It’s another layer above the core issue. See Root cause analysis for the approach I’m taking.
- UA is a problem because it allows people to coordinate
- Allowing people to coordinate is a problem because 2-3-4 fams work together
- 2-3-4 fams working together is a problem because… ?
There is something underneath what you perceive the root problem to be. This is why I am also skeptical that changing family sizes will help. IC should ideally play well in any family configuration.
This is a solution to a problem that is itself only a symptom.
It’s not easy to figure all this out by any means, but our biggest gains are to be had by solving the lowest root problem we can possibly identify. One that stands out as a common issue is how players treat each other, which we can code and design against to some extent.
After seeing the chat council that formed, I do think there is a lot of potential here. I am going to look at what is possible to finally link game accounts to Discord accounts.
If we can do that, we could have an automated galactic council on the main server that is not controlled by any single player, and thus would in theory be more trusted by all players and free of a bias from a “leader” (server owned by a player).
This, along with Galactic Congress Forums having returned, will hopefully become more and more useful for players as they get used to it being there for them.
I love this idea! I thought we had a “Public Market Ledger” idea somewhere but I can’t find it. 
I added it to #roadmap:to-do here: Public Market Ledger.
Disabling the market is less appealing to me, but I’d be open to trying it.
As for all the “guilty” stuff, I am hesitant to punish players in ways that aren’t regular empire actions. Stuff like losing race bonuses and such is drifting more into the game itself being discriminatory based on subjective qualifiers, which feels dangerous.
It seems a safer bet to just let the GC green-light some kind of mass punishment via attacks. It’s important to remember too that we don’t necessarily want to forbid dishonorable behavior, partially because it’s impossible to define but also because we don’t want to say that you can’t play as “a bad guy”.
I do agree though that GC actions would be great to show on profile histories. Regardless of what “honor” means, it would allow us to see players who acted against agreed upon social norms, which may even change round to round.
1 Like
we dont have enough players to back fun alliance play
2 Likes
@I_like_pie aslong as your goal is to not police IA or look for solutions to assist in that work, the root cause for why UA is a problem in a game with less 100 players is completly neglectable. players will gang up if they are alowed to, and no code can stop that aslong as there are no rules and ppl enforcing them.
this is my last post on this matter ever, i promisse…you are doing me a huge favor with this UA thing pie, making me take time off. i need it. good luck with it all 
2 Likes
I would say this is incorrect.
Previously you have some IA actions like information sharing.
Some cheating via market aid, possibly some IA market aid that wasn’t published.
But you didn’t have 3+ families coordinating attacks and fully working together, making alliance mandatory and removing any chance of families outside of the alliances from doing well.
So what we had and what we have now are very different.
2 Likes
@Airwing I realize this is your last post, but I also wonder why you yourself willingly broke the IA rule at least twice in the last year with the reasoning being that it was the honorable thing to do despite the rules forbidding it.
I don’t mean to pick on you, I just don’t understand why you see it as a bad thing now that we don’t enforce the rule, but willingly broke the rule before when we did enforce it. By that logic, you only want the rule so others have to follow it.
I don’t get it.
You make an interesting point about the size of the game though, but I disagree. It is possible for IC to play well with a very small amount of players. In fact, it’s critical in order for Custom Games to become more appealing.
If we can make alliance play fun with less than 100 players, every possible matchup will be better for it.
3 Likes
I’m always curious and usually bored. I’ll be checking those posts out. 
Maybe the alliances weren’t official “in-game” but I’m pretty sure I heard/read somewhere that they were going on and it was via players texting and whatnot outside of IC where it could be tracked. It wasn’t as open and apparent as it was during this round but it was still happening.
And what do you mean “making alliances mandatory”?
I have got to figure out how the little box with another persons quote is getting into everyone’s messages. Lol. Someone help me!
1 Like
Lol, just highlight the text you want, prest the white “Quote” box that appears - and the game will open up a message window for you to reply.
1 Like
I’m mad it wasn’t more difficult. Makes me feel like a simpleton. Lol
1 Like
Yeah some information sharing technically IA but very different from having three families working together and attacking the same target/targets.
Other action people could have done planet swaps, market aid harder to detect, but all the IA stuff I saw was information and have much less impact on the game than full on coordination.
Mandatory if you want to compete. There is not much a single family can do against multiple other families. If you didnt join an alliance this round then you got farmed into nothing.
1 Like
@I_like_pie
1st block: block was for spesific cords in a NAP deal, which was later alowed even in No IA/UA rounds. it was a gray area that was that round not alowed but afew rounds later alowed. ( i didnt know i was breaking rule) i could ask for spesific core systems and swap outs that was alowed but i couldnt ask for spesific systems outside a core…where is this rule writen nowhere but i was blocked for it.
2nd block: i made an idiotic comment to pickle about market aiding him, since pitbull was on a NAP breaking streak, it was a comment, i never market aided but i was blocked for it.
3rd i cant remember. but i think this was a nap deal with some ingame msg between zero and me that by mistake had abit to much information on what fleet and my plans were. this information was historic data with no relevance or game changing effect, but blocked for it.
well as i stated many times before, the rules are so vage but there are threads on this i wont repete myself, but none of these blocks was active coordination vs another fam, all these blocks were either nap deals or statments in affection with no action or game changing effect.
last post
This is such a complex issue that I really can’t imagine a single solution will make a huge difference. I expect it to require a number of significant changes probably ironed out over a few rounds to make UA enjoyable.
The least enjoyable aspect of UA for me is that it feels like it HAS to be a competition to see who can bring the most people to a gangbang. This means you either need more friends than your enemies, or you need to play on peoples grudges which only adds to the toxicity.
As it is necessarily a numbers game, the top alliances will try to draft smaller/medium sized fams into the wars to gain an advantage - and why wouldn’t you? However, post-war this means that the smaller/medium fams who aren’t officially part of the alliances get farmed into oblivion, partly because they sided with the enemy and partly because there’s no one else left to hit.
How do we fix this? I really don’t know.
-
Removing the ability to market aid is definitely one of the better options. However, disabling the market will cripple active players in smaller families. There’s nothing worse than being an attacker with no gc for 12 hours at a time.
-
Reduce the ability to farm. People are more likely to develop/hold grudges if they’ve been taken back to the stone age. Base morale on family size not individual, any top fam will have low size attackers. Possibly introduce a battle fatigue where attack bonus starts to decline rapidly after fighting the same fam for a certain period of time.
-
Pmode kicking in sooner and lasting longer, or reduce max kill %. Somewhat counters the increased ease of raiding with alliances and taking people down to literally 0 fleet in 5 minutes.
I’m not fresh enough to think of specifics for these, but they are my only thoughts for now.
3 Likes
@Airwing then there are more than 3, if those are the ones you are thinking of.
The 2 I am thinking of are 2 when you intentionally violated the rules, and explained to me in person the reasoning why even though you knew it could get you in trouble if caught.
I won’t post the specific convos, but your words now contradict your words then. I’m staring that the Discord convos right now.
So no, I don’t buy that they were all accidents or mistakes, because by your own admission they weren’t.
Again, I am not trying to paint you out as a bad guy or anything. I don’t think you want to play unfairly or anything, and I think you have a good sense of balance for the game. My point is that some players’ opinions of this rule (and therefore, their actions) change depending on their own personal circumstances, and we should acknowledge that.
1 Like
@I_like_pie ur right but i was never blocked for that but ur right that was the round pickle and market aid comment block.
that round i convinced like most of MW to gang up on pitbull to revenge multiple nap breaks. i was under the influence that the old honor system was still somwhat intact and i was pissed
LAST
You were blocked for that. The only reason we had that conversation was because you wanted to know why you were blocked. It’s part of the same convo.
To your credit, you owned up to the violation after our discussion, and that it was dancing a grey area.
That’s all besides the point though. The bigger thing is what I said earlier; we need to remember the problems we had with this rule, not just the problems we have without it.
i’w broken the rules from time to time, without a doubt. and i always try to bend them to my advantage. but the game than was fun and when i went to far bullshit blocks or not (and . u know some of the where BS blocks!) , i was stopped, but the game was fun…now its not. this UA thing is not a game tweek, its a complete game changer not only for the worse but not gametime worthy atm and i truly think thats sad couse i love this life consuming game
1 Like