MOO1 Exploit List

[dathon]

Now, having said what I did in my previous post, I didn't expect that the draft ruleset as I wrote it if perfect. I fully expect that there are areas that can be tightened to be clearer, more concise, and easier to follow. I just wanted to lay out why I felt compelled to suggest that such a list exist in the first place. It's purpose is to force us to eschew over-powerful tactics in favor of challenge and ingenuity.

Yo-yo exploit The rule as written simply requires you to move your missile boats forward to the maximum range of their missiles. You don't have to make any decisions about fight or flight at the beginning. Just every turn that you choose to stay, move your missile boats foward before they fire. Volleys may be fired at will at any time, but you must keep moving forward as you fire. Maybe that is a clearer way to put it?
"A missile boat must move forward its maximum amount before firing. This rule applies until the armament of the ship can reach the back of the tactical screen." This allows for shots on the way forward, and does not require any knowledge of the enemy fleet. Plain and simple, if you want to engage with your missile boats, you must move them into the line of fire.

Retreating Ships I like Olorin's suggestion, but I would even open it further:
"Fleets that contain ships with ammo-dependent armament (missiles, bombs, spores) that retreat from combat, cannot redirect to the same planet unless they retreated on their first turn."
This lets beam-only and unarmed ships do whatever they want, which I think is acceptable.

Baiting I like ignatius' suggestion on wording.

Sepctator Wars This is one of those areas where a hard-and-fast rule to cover all situations is going to be impossible to write. Basically, the rule is don't start a war you have no intention of joining very soon (hence the 10 turn rule). You shouldn't be asking for help until you have a fleet built up and ready to attack. Now, if intentions suddenly change because of a surprise, then that's fine. We can't predict what's going to happen. The point is to not start wars you have no intention of fighting.
@Olorin - Your suggestion as written still does not cover this intent. By that rule, I can break trade and war monger, without necessarily having to fight.

Tech Trading AFAIK, tech values are largely static. All races value Soil Enrichment, regardless of whether they have Advanced or not. Olorin has the right idea. If you know somebody has a superior tech, don't make the trade. If you don't, don't worry about it.

Sporing rules I still strongly agree that sporing on the tactical screen should be limited to hot war. The player is supposed to incur a diplomatic penalty for sporing, and destroying from the tactical screen clearly bypasses that. It's a bug, not a feature. The AI doesn't reap any diplomatic penalties from sporing because it does not know how to make that tradeoff. As for the invasion rule, how about this:
"Any planet who's population cannot employ more than 25% (50%?) of available factories cannot be invaded."
This should always be known, via scanners or ships in orbit. And if you honestly don't know, then don't sweat it.

Threats As far as knowing, do the best you can. Basically, Option A should play as follows: "If you take a planet, and can see an AI fleet inbound within your current scanner technology level, then don't threaten to turn them back."

Bribing I mainly put this on the list for Imperia games; I agree that we don't see it much in SG's. And since we don't, there's no harm in the rule remianing

The point of the ruleset isn't to beat people over the head. If somebody commits an "exploit" because of lack of information, nobody is going to get flogged The point is to close some of the loopholes in the game, and encourage challenge and ingenuity. I'm going to wait a couple more days for comments, then I'll write a second draft.

dathon

[ignatius]

@olorin

I like your suggestion for the spec. war. In fact, the very same criterion could also be used for tac. sporing, which will further simplify things.

For retreating ships, your rule is fine, but I like dathon's restriction to ammo ships, even if it is slightly more complicated. In fact, I would replace the "retreat on the first turn" criterion with "have fired any ammo weapon" - often ships have missles or bombs along with beams and I don't think they should have to retreat if they use only the latter.

For the tech trading, this is really de minimis lex non curat. The situation is so rare and the advantage, given the AI's general greedy tendency in tech trading, so small, that it's simply not worth to write a rule about it esp. if such a rule could not be clear-cut. Also, via increased tech level and trade value, there is always an advantage in having a tech.

@dathon

Exploiting the rules to play as in "playing the best strategy the game allows as good as you can" is where the fun comes from playing 4X games.

OK, I agree that I should have stated my point clearer. What I wanted to say is that I want rules to be clear cut, so that they depend strictly on the current game state and not on my interpretation or my intentions, so that they feel exactly like the hard-wired rules in the game itself. If that is not the case, then your are in a situation where you are plaintiff and defendant at the same time and you no longer play to win; rather you play to arbitraily prolong the game, giving the AI some rope, but not quite enough to defeat you.

A good rule would not leave this decision to me and allow me to focus on the fun part: playing my best game and outwitting the AI within the borders of the rules, no matter whether they are builtin or self-imposed.

We can debate until the cows come home on what maneuvers exactly constitute "pinning" an AI fleet on the tactical screen. However, I think it's pretty obvious when the intent is there. I don't think that spending a lot of time debating semantics of what "is" and "is not" allowed, trying to find just how far a certain tactic can be pushed until it falls afoul of the rules is constructive.

This is exactly where we disagree. "trying to find just how far a certain tactic can be pushed until it falls afoul of the rules" is part of the fun. Only that in normal play, you wouldn't notice because the game interface would not allow you to cross the line - you just play your best game. When the rules are self imposed, it should work the same.

Rather, analyzing the game and devising new strategies and tactics to win is a better use of time.

If a clear cut-rule is impossible, then, instead of resorting to "spirit", a rule should change the "economics" of the game, so that new and innovative tactics also become the most effective for winning.

A good example is the spec. war issue, where a clear-cut rule is impossible as MOO lacks explicit war-delarations. In response to Olorin's suggestion you write

Your suggestion as written still does not cover this intent. By that rule, I can break trade and war monger, without necessarily having to fight.

You meant this as a critique, but IMO this is a feature, not a bug. A rule is not supposed to deal with intentions. Olorin's solution is elegant exactly because it does not outright ban passive warmongering (as there is not clean way to formulate this restriction), but makes it so "expensive", that you would only use it in the most dire circumstances. In economics, you would call that an externality charge - you have to pay for using a tactic, which, if free, would be too powerful and may spoil the game.

Bribing: I mainly put this on the list for Imperia games; I agree that we don't see it much in SG's. And since we don't, there's no harm in the rule remianing

I know this was meant tounge in cheek, but this argument is just as bogus as the famous "if you have done nothing wrong, you won't mind the state tapping your phone calls / read your mail / install a camera in the bathroom / etc.". If a rule does not serve a purpose and only "solves" a nonexisting problem, then it should not be there. All things being equal, less regulation is always better than more.

As for my "leave the decision up to the player for his turnset" suggestion

The problem with this is that all decisions have an impact on the game. If I choose to use the yo-yo exploit to eliminate a rival's largest fleet, the ramifications of that action will impact everybody's turns for the rest of the game. If you're following me in the turn order, you may now have carte blanche to invade that rival with a clearly inferior fleet.

You're right, it's probably not possible to make a meaningful decision between lasting and non-lasting effects, so this might only useful as a last-resort policy if no other consensus can be found.

cu

ignatius

[Zed-F]

Not everything can come down to a black and white rule, ignatius. You cannot rules-lawyer your way to a fair and balanced game. At some point, judgement calls are inevitably required, and if you don't exercise a sense of fair play, but insist on stating explicitly exactly which loopholes are and are not covered, all you will get is people bending and stretching the rules as far as they can be bent or stretched. This results in an endless rewriting of rules that is no fun for anyone. You won't have been around to remember it, but RBCiv experienced exactly that problem with a few people in the early days of Civ3 here.

Ultimately, it is far more efficient to have a few guidelines that are flexible, and come to a group consensus on where we think the lines should be drawn in a general sense, than it is to be overly specific.

[ignatius]

During OSG 17a, I found an exploit which I didn't know about before:

When you have a ship with ion stream projector and another stack, both having movement points and/or shots left, so that you can use the wait command, you can fire the ISP as often as you wish by repeatedly using the wait button on both stacks, as unlike other weapons, the "fired" state is not stored between wait-button-rounds. This means that you can destroy any stack, or even multiple stacks (including missle bases), in a single turn with just two ships. As ISP is always hit and ignores shields, there's no defense.

This is clearly an exploit and I think it should be in the list, maybe with an exception to allow its usage to counter the negative fleet bug.

A possible formulation would be: "An ISP may only be fired once per turn unless to on stacks with more than 30000 ships."

[ignatius]

Since the discussion on the exploits seems to have somewhat died down during OSG17a, I tried to come up with a stripped "greatest common divisor" list of banned tactics to relive the discussion. Generally (with the excetion of the spec. war) the proposed rules are more forgiving than in dathon's list, but should still deal with the most damaging exploits while excluding issues where the consensus seems weak. I tried to keep the formulations as simple and unambigous as possible, making them depend on the current game state and avoiding to refer to players intentions and furture events:

1. Baiting: Unarmed ships have to retreat on their first turn when friendly missle bases are present.
   
2. Ammo: A retreating stack which has used ammo during its turn must not be directed back to the colony it is retreating from unless this colony belongs to you.
   
3. YoYo: Missles which can be dodged by the enemy may only be fired form the minimum distance attainable in this turn when friendly missle bases are present.
   
4. ISP: An ISP may only be fired once per turn unless on stacks with more than 30000 ships.
   
5. Spec Wars: You may only ask an AI to declare war on another race when you are already at war with that race.
   
6. Threats: You may only issue a threat against an AI if this AI has a stack inbound to one of your colonies.
   
7. Tactical Sporing: In the tactical screen, biological weapons may only be used against races we have neither trade nor treaties with.
   

The ammo rule uses the concept of reloading in transit as to avoid problems when the planet retreated to is under attack. The ".. unless this colony belongs to you" still allows missle boats to be used for defense.

The ISP rule is new and includes an exception to allow to use of the exploit to "correct" the negative fleet bug.

The proposed spec war rule is stricter than the ones discussed so far, mostly because I could not come up with a simple, yet unexploitable way to formulate exceptions. A possible way to allow for saving the vote might be "... except in years before the vote when the there are not treaties and trade with the target race."

The tac sporing rule tries to account for cases where your only way to attack and start a war is by using spores (if you can't attack the bases, it's almost impossible to provoke a war in a reasonable timeframe)

Baiting, YoYo and Threats rules are basically the same.

Bribing, Tech Trading and Invading Spored Planets are not covered by this list, as public support for them seems to be considerably weaker than in the other cases (they can of course still be used as variant rules).

ignatius

[Zed-F]

The tac sporing rule tries to account for cases where your only way to attack and start a war is by using spores (if you can't attack the bases, it's almost impossible to provoke a war in a reasonable timeframe)

This should occur so rarely that it's not really an issue, and you can always tech up to a better weapon or attack another opponent. I don't think it's necessary to account for that case, and it weakens the rule against no-diplo-penalty sporing too much IMHO.

1. Baiting: Unarmed ships have to retreat on their first turn when friendly missle bases are present.
   
2. Ammo: A retreating stack which has used ammo during its turn must not be directed back to the colony it is retreating from unless this colony belongs to you.
   
3. YoYo: Missles which can be dodged by the enemy may only be fired form the minimum distance attainable in this turn when friendly missle bases are present.
   
4. ISP: An ISP may only be fired once per turn unless on stacks with more than 30000 ships.
   
5. Spec Wars: You may only ask an AI to declare war on another race when you are already at war with that race.
   
6. Threats: You may only issue a threat against an AI if this AI has a stack inbound to one of your colonies.
   
7. Tactical Sporing: In the tactical screen, biological weapons may only be used against races we have neither trade nor treaties with.
   

I agree with the changes to (5) as I agree the KISS principle should be applied here. We don't really need to leave ourselves a back door into spectator wars, do we? If we really need to start a war, we should build a fleet, attack, and THEN drag in allies.

Overall I'm willing to accept these suggestions, but would like to propose a couple of additional ammendments:


[indent] 4. Special Weapons: Any damaging special may only be fired once per turn unless on stacks with more than 30000 ships.
6. Threats: You may only issue a threat against an AI if this AI has a stack inbound to one of your colonies which has at least one missile base.
7. Tactical Sporing: In the tactical screen, biological weapons may only be used against races we are already at war with.
8. Watch List: Bribing, Tech Trading, Invading Spored Planets. There are no specific rules against these tactics but players should be cautious when employing them to avoid over-use and/or possible abuse.
[/indent]Thoughts?

[dathon]

Glad to see the discussion that we've had on exploits to date. I think we are beginning to see some consensus emerge.

Overall, I would say that ignatius' refinement draft looks pretty good. Comments:

1. I would tighten this rule ever-so-slightly to include military ships that you have no intention of using. Basically, if you aren't going to fight with the ship (armed or not), and a military base is present, retreat it.

4. I agree with Zed's proposed amendment.

5. I agree with ignatius' wording. It might generate more losses, but I think it is fair and is far simpler to implement.

6. Threats. This is the one I debated over the most in my head. And after seeing the arguements posted, I have to grudgingly agree with Zed. I hate losing a newly founded colony to an inbound stack as much as the next player, but the AI just does not respond realistically. Having a missile base present sets precedence of ownership. I'm going to have to side with Zed's amendment to the rule.

7. Since Cold Blooded Killers (OSG 16), I've always thought that tactical sporing should be limited to hot war opponents only. And I still do

The proposed tactics for the watch list are acceptable at this time. We haven't had any major problems, but they are on the scope for later. As an aside, the sporing-invasion can backfire for the player. While thinking about this, I remembered a game where I invaded a planet of mine that had been spored and re-founded. The tech gain was nice, but I primarily did it because it looked like a good window to take my world back. Well, the Silicoids came back with more force than I thought they had, invaded the world, and looted an RC tech that gave them two more levels of factories So it can backfire!

I'm looking forward to seeing how some of these rules play out in OSG18.

dathon

[d0om]

I don't know if its really an exploit, as its not beneficial to you in all circumstances:

When you try to steal/trade/pokey-stick a tech from an AI, it rolls a D1-TechLevel to see what you can steal. Since tech level = 80%MaxTech +*no.tech often a race's top techs will be above their tech level (or at least very close to it) which makes is unlikely or impossible to obtain.

Trading or gifting your low level tech in the approriate field will boost their tech level, allowing you to steal their latest techs (but boosting their tech levels.)

This tactic is only really useful as Darlocks, where you will be doing lots of espionage and want to get the latest tech as soon as possible, but you could also use it to obtain large amounts of tech before a gropo invasion etc. (Although its hard to give tech to someone you are at war with!)

Its probably not exploitative, since you are giving the AI an advantage by boosting its tech levels, even if it means you can steal adv.soil enrichment off them, they are still better off themselves.

[dathon]

I'm not sure which exploit you are referring to, but it seems to be bribing, so I'll go with that.

The problem with bribes isn't what you get technologically, but diplomatically. Basically, you can make any race your personal puppet with a few outdated tech and/or reserve cash. Even though I personally hate bribing, I have no problem with it being used on a small scale for diplomacy boosts. The problem is, there are no diminishing returns for successive bribes. Look at the latest SG for example; all it took was ~6 techs to turn the Mrrshan into complete Allies! The AI is too easily manipulated by the bribes. The tactic will remain on the watch list for now, pending evidence of exploitation in the Imperia.

When you try to steal/trade/pokey-stick a tech from an AI, it rolls a D1-TechLevel to see what you can steal.

You are correct for the first two, but not for ground invasions. ALL of the AI tech is on table for taking from a ground invasion. In fact, it's often an excellent way to pick up those techs that are unavailable from stealing/trading IIRC, you get a 2% chance to steal a tech for every enemy factory captured. This is NOT cumulative; a d100 roll is made for each factory, and if it's 99 or 100 (or 1/2, don't know), then you get a tech. So taking a 50-factory planet does NOT guarantee a tech; in fact, there's a 36% chance you won't get one. The number of techs you can steal from any single invasion is capped at 6.

dathon

[d0om]

I don't mean the diplomatic benefit but more the way I can gift some low level techs to enable spying of the higher level techs. I assumed gropo techs worked the same way but it seems not (is the chance of a tech equally weighted then? So that invading after stealing the lower techs will guarantee the higher ones? (assuming you get any))