Originally
posted by
Celphi:
Why would sharing your country name be cheating? Seems perfectly OK to me.
ok Celphi,
I respect you , so let us discuss this. I remember reading somewhere that you are a great chess player so let us go from there. If you can convince me that that sharing information that is not available in game is acceptable, then I will withdraw my complaint.
My only beef with you is that you have threatened to quit Express forever on numerous occasions but you always come back. I can relate.
I did not take this debate up with Mo Ron Ford when I had the chance in an earlier thread because he has a long record of saying that using the clan communication system to organize kill runs and share spy ops is perfectly acceptable and sporting. Others have felt that playing each others' countries was perfectly acceptable, "after all they are my friend's countries why shouldn't I help him?". I assume you would not slide that far down the slippery slope of clan involvement in solo servers.
I realize this is not the HoLaEcaust, not the ApocaLaEpse, not the Squadra azzura scandal, not MLB's doping scandal but it is none the less an advantage obtained outside the rules of a solo server and hence cheating. My position is that if you are using the clan technologies to obtain an advantage in a solo server, you are cheating.
First, let us lay out what I believe is happening based upon an in game message I received fro Elliot and the various responses from earlier threads. At the start of each Express reset certain friends tell each other what their country names for the purpose of ensuring that they do not attack each other. This conveys on the cabal participants a certain small amount of immunity from attack. If there are fifty humans in a reset and they tell five then ten percent of the predatory field will spare an individual player from attack.
So Celphi suppose A and B sit down to play a chess match. B has friends in attendance who advise him on which moves to make. This is a small advantage since after all B must make the ultimate decision and they are just friends after all. Some posters would argue A should have brought friends to advise him and hence shift the blame from the cheater to the victim's lack of friends for the result. If the friends advise B between games that is perfectly reasonable and acceptable but advice during a game is illegal. Celphi , I am sure you agree with that. I know the USCF does. The cyber bullies would say B was crazy not to bring friends and his inability to understand that is evidence of a Mo Ron level learning disability. B's statements that the rules do not allow for spectator participation are denounced as the ravings of a madman.
Laocoon has nothing on B.
Let us apply this reasoning to the remarkable 81k acre set.
The player who got that much land and begs us to recognize it as a legitimate record has never denied that he told other players his country name. We can assume from his silence on this issue that he did. If you check EEstats you will see he hit numerous human players none of whom retalled. Do the research yourself this post is long enough already. In addition of course there were many players who may have had the opportunity to attack that juicy target but did not. Celphi you know from experience that it is not at all hard to grab multitudes of acres, the difficulty is in holding them. Retals. policing and predators looking for fat targets hit legitimate players who have grown large. That difficulty is ameliorated when ten percent of the field will not attack a player under any circumstances even to retal.
Did the extrajudicial sharing of information effect the result? We will never know. Mark McGuire is in the news right now saying he would have hit 70 homers even without steroids. Our player says he could have gotten to 81 k acres even without the sharing advantage. Would Mark have hit seventy anyway? It is irrelevant actually and baseball refuses to recognize his record. I know many posters will disagree but I think MLB is right.
Celphi, please convince me otherwise, please convince me major league baseball is wrong. I would much prefer to think that the server is cheater free rather than my current mind set that self-delusional rationalizers are cheating without acknowledging it even to themselves.