Consensus on Cheating?

[Guynemer]

Re: losing facilities if you exploit a submissive...

I can't say if this happens to the AI or not. But it DOES happen to human players if, for instance, a hostile AI demands an amount of credits that you don't have but agree to pay them anyway. Your energy will go to negative whatever, and then you will lose one base facility (or perhaps more than one... it's only happened once to me, so I couldn't say for certain).

Guynemer

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"My nation is the world, and my religion is to do good." --Thomas Paine

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Helium,

Don't know if this is considered cheating or not but cooperative trading of base with Planetary transit has some pretty nasty unbalancing implications especialy if one faction is alien and the other human. Consider trading the base back and forth and allowing a breeder city to exist in no man's land. The base gets takenover and produces a free pod. Truce and trade Planetary transit to player with pod. Instant 3 population city with no mineral expediture for said player. Repeat process for player 2. Net effect both parties get free colony pods.

Cooperative trading of any base with Appropriate SP could be considered a cheat.

[Helium Pond]

Ogie,

Thanks for the input, but I just found out you can't trade cities with humans in multiplayer games! Am I wrong? I couldn't find that option anywhere on the diplomacy screen. If true, this renders the whole concept of "cooperative trading" moot.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Helium,

Color me redfaced. I honestly don't know as I am a tried and true SP. However, the concept I assume could still hold true by cooperatively allowing take over of bases. Thereby spawing multiple pods for recolonization of size 3 cities. I would have to think though a good maxim is never underestimate the deviousness of two cooperative humans vs. the inept and predictable AI.

[Hunkpapa]

The probe teaming allies in my opinion is NOT a cheat.

The US govt. is constantly running covert operations in allied and enemy countries. They don't ask for permission.

The player should not be notified if you succesfully probed them. That is the whole point of a COVERT operation. If you get caught, then pay the price.

[Vi Vicdi]

I think we ought to make the Israelis pay through the nose for catching their spy.

We can't very well execute spies from allied countries, but we can't let it go with a slap on the wrist, either, or we'll have "friendly" spies running out our ears.

The only thing to do is impose a huge fine. Likewise if one of our spies gets caught by an ally we should be able to "buy him back".

Everyone either seems to want this guy sent home with a slap on the wrist or in a box. What ever happened to good old fashioned payola?

[Helium Pond]

Hunkpapa, I think you didn't understand the bug. You say "if you get caught, then pay the price." The problem is, in hotseat play, if you get caught, *you*, not the player you probed, get the warning message. They never know.

Some people think it's fine to allow this. But whatever anyone thinks, it's obviously not the intent of the game designers.

HP: I agree with your infinite drops rule, but one I think you need to add to the list is drops when not in a base. I don't personally consider that a cheat, I think it should be a standard rule. BUT, if other people consider it a cheat, it needs to be on the list, at least as an item to be agreed on before hand.

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Yours Truly

[Vi Vicdi]

In all my time playing I have never been prevented from initiating a jump. Dropping certain places, like enemy airbases, are strictly forbidden, but I've never heard of any restriction on where you can begin a jump.

Why would it be illegal or "cheating" to initiate jump from anywhere you want? Is there some obscure reference to this in the manual? Why should we have to follow a rule that was never actually put into the game?

(Or is this another case of your interface preference determining which rules you get?)

[JAMiAM]

The requirement for a unit to be in an airbase, or a base, in order to begin an airdrop is clearly specified in the manual, page 91. It is reiterated in the Datalinks entry, under "drop pods".

It is a bug, that the action choice is not deactivated in the right click menu options, when a unit is outside a base, or airbase.

That's why it is considered a cheat.

Of course, if the players wish to adopt a "house rule" allowing such actions, it should be discussed, and agreed upon, beforehand.
[This message has been edited by JAMiAM (edited April 21, 2000).]

[Ned]

The game allows crawlers to add minerals to SP's and prototypes. But I also understand that if one disbands a crawler in a city, its full mineral value is added to whatever is being produced. This would permit rush building of very expensive military units at a very low cost. This must be a bug.

As well, the game clearly contemplates using crawlers to add minerals to SP's - just as caravan added to Wonders in Civ. However, I don't believe the designers ever contemplated first upgrading the crawlers to some fantastic mineral count at little more than one e/c per mineral when an SP costs 4 e/c per mineral. Once you get the hang of it, you can normally complete even the most expensive SP's in the first move they can be built using only 2 or 3 upgraded crawlers. This is wrong! It should be fixed.

[BustaMike]

YT, I didn't know disbanding things outside of cities still gave minerals. I'll have to check that.

However, I'm sure that disbanding a crawler outside of a city is a bad idea. When you disband a unit it gives half of its mineral cost to the base. If you press "O" with a crawler in a base you have the option of helping to build a SP or prototype. This causes the crawler to give it's full mineral cost towards the project and is not the same as disbanding. With a standard crawler, pressing "O" in a base would give 30 minerals but disbanding it would only give 15. It's obvious which one is better.

I was not aware (or had forgotten) that disbanding only gave half the mineral value. Thanks for the correction. I'll double check the outside of city thing too.

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Yours Truly

[Ned]

BustaMike, YT, et al. But, if minerals to complete an SP cost 4 energy credits per, and if prototype minerals cost 3 per, building the SP with minerals that cost only 1 e/c per would seem to be a massive cheat. Don't you agree?

Squash
[This message has been edited by YT (edited April 25, 2000).]

And once again: Squash
[This message has been edited by YT (edited April 25, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by YT (edited April 25, 2000).]

Ned: The disband thing is in the manual somewhere. If you disband a unit anywhere (not just in a base), it's minerals get added to a base. However, I'm not sure if it is the nearest base, or it's home base. Because of this, I usually disband dinky units that I capture with probes or ship's marines.

To be honsest, I've often wondered why people find it neccissary to move crawlers all the way into a base to disband it to rush a secret project. I'm pretty sure that the minerals get added to the nearest base (not the home), just like harvesting forests. Just disband crawlers nearest to the base building the project. I'll have to test this theory and see if it works, 'cause if it does, it'll save a lot of time.

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Yours Truly

[BustaMike]

It's not really a cheat because it doesn't really violate any rules, it's really just a more efficient way of doing things to upgrade the crawlers. I think you would be hard pressed to find many players that would consider upgrading crawlers a cheat.

Helium Pond, if you're still checking this thread I remembered another cheat. Upgrading with the design workshop instead of on individual units allows units to keep their movement and upgrade in the same turn. The ruling on this that I've seen is that upgrades from the workshop can only be done after all of your units have moved.

[Ned]

Come, on. In Civ, one could build farms, roads, railroads in one turn by simply giving a farmer orders, reactivating, giving the orders again, reactivating, etc., until the improvement was complete. There was no rule against this. But it fundamentally altered the game if one employed the technique.

Now that I understand the crawler upgrade technique, I consider it to be one of the biggest cheats in the game even though there is no express rule against it. It fundamentally alters the game by making SPs cheaper than ordinary city improvements. This is bizzare!

We should ask Firaxis to fix it. However, before they would, I believe we should agree that it should be fixed.

[korn469]

i do not think that the design workshop is a cheat otherwise why when you discover a new reactor the game asks you if you wanna upgrade your troops...so if when u discover fusion power you upgrade your troops then you are a cheater? i think not...also it takes money to upgrade your troops, and if you have lots of units it takes lots of money (relatively)

i'll tell you a cheat...when you move off of a ship it only cost one movement point reguardless of terrain...so if early game you move a rover off onto fungus from a ship, not only will it have a 100% success rate moving into the fungus even if you have -4 planet and no helpful planet techs you will also have a movement point left

same thing for forest, rocky terrain ect

to me that is not a design intention and it violates the rules of the game so it is a bug and if you exploit that bug you are cheating

however i do think that upgrading all of your units from the design workshop is how the game is supposed to work and that it is not a bug

korn469

[Helium Pond]

Wow--thanks for all the input, everybody! When did all those replies build up? I must have blinked.

I've added two cheats, the Mega-Crawler and the Workshop Upgrades. Personally, I don't think Workshop Upgrades is that big a deal; usually it's way too expensive, because you have to upgrade all the units of a given type at once. So there's a penalty attached, if you have more than one unit of a given type, which you almost always do.

The Mega-Crawler does seem like a huge cheat. Hard to keep people from doing it, though.

YT and JamIAm: I wanted to add the Drop Pods thing, but I realized I've had a contrary experience. I remember making a Drop Pod equipped former, to clear up some fungus on a nearby island, and then being unable to get it back. I got a message along the lines of "Orbital Insertions can only be made from bases or airbases." So, my question is, are you sure this isn't an undocumented feature of the Space Elevator?

korn469: I can see how that is not consistent with the game's terrain logic. But, are you suggesting that players in MP not take advantage of it, and end all their units' turns as soon as they get off a ship? Remember, I'm not trying to just generate a list of design flaws, although most of the things on the list come from design flaws. I'm trying to make a list of the issues players should agree upon before starting a multiplayer game. I don't think anyone would try to get people not to move freshly-disembarked units. Of course, I could be wrong. Has anyone played an MP game like that?

Thanks for keeping this list alive, y'alls. I think it's a really valuable resource. I hope it's been of use to some of you, too.

(Can somebody tell me how to use boldface in these posts? I want to make the titles of the cheats bold, for easier reading.)
[This message has been edited by Helium Pond (edited April 26, 2000).]

[Garth Vader]

BustaMike, I thought the general rule for upgrading was that you can't do it through the design workshop in MP. Even if you move a unit then upgrade with the workshop you are still gaining an extra turn of movement.

[Enigma]

Using square brackets to replace the {'s..

{b}this is bold{/b}

When the curly brackets are replaced with square brackets that becomes

this is bold

Incidentally if you want to know the exact code of what someone used, click edit and you can look at what they actually typed in.

I think that the unit shop upgrade is not that much of a cheat since you must upgrade every unit there. If you are tight on cash then you do not need to upgrade your rear line defensive troops. By doing a regular upgrade then you can be more efficient with it. Besides this sort of massive upgrade is mostly used to add clean reactors to formers.

As far as the fact that units always have 1 move when they get off the ship I agree that that is a bad part of the game mechanics. I like the idea of forcing people to use marine pods, but if you can do landings easily with a rover you do not need marine pods.

[Ned]

Yt, I have SMACX v2.0. The right click airdrop from any location without regard to whether the unit was moved or was in an airbase or had prior airdrops still works that way with infrantry units. However, I designed a drop, hover probe. This unit has no movement left after a drop! While this prevents infinite airdrops, it seems to itself violate fundamental airdrop rules.

Ned: All non-combat units (including probe teams) have 0 movement points left after an airdrop. In addition, they cannot drop into a base radii (possibly even enemy territory) at all, even if there are no enemy air faorces to prevent the drop.

[Helium Pond]

Thanks for the info on boldface.

As to drop teams: a) you didn't mention the Space Elevator, are you sure you can do this without it? b) I'm curious about the same thing I aked korn469 about the shore landings: given that this is a bug, is it really something that people would ask each other not to do? When you (anyone out there) play Multi-Player, do you really ask each other only to begin drops from cities?
[This message has been edited by Helium Pond (edited April 27, 2000).]

HP:

1) without the space elevator you can use this bug to drop from anywhere to anyother square within 8 squares that is legal for that unit. With the Space Elevator (or Gravitronics tech) you can use the bug to drop from anywhere to anywhere that is a legal drop for that unit.

2) When I play MP, I always make sure all the other players are aware of the bug, and request that we CAN use the bug to drop from any location. I personally think that it should be a standard part of the game.

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Yours Truly

[korn469]

well if we ever play a game together YT as soon as i get drop pods i guess its ok to get every single unity pod on the map in one turn with one drop unit

the infinite drop ability from anywhere is a bug and if you exploit it then your cheating unless people have specifically agreed that it is ok

[BustaMike]

It would take a few turns I think. In my experience if you drop onto a pod, the pod disappears and gives you nothing. I haven't done it in a while, but I'm pretty sure that's what happens.

HP: Using the right click menu to air drop when not on a base/airbase is well documented. However, they may have fixed it in the SMACX V2.0 Patch. I just realized that I have been using the No-CD crack recently, and I'm pretty sure that's SMACX V1.0, and have noticed several supposedly fixed bugs have been occuring since I started doing that (for example, I don't get the right quotes for certain facilities anymore). I'll grab my CD back (lent it to a friend), and try a right-click airdrop while using V2.

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Yours Truly