Dec 16th 2013, 16:02:33
1. O-allies are already removed, so the only leeching that remains is tech leeching. Tech allies can be fixed such that the TECHING player gets a TPT boost (10% of tech allies' TPT). So basically, a player needs to actively tech his turns to get any extra tech from his allies. ALTERNATIVELY, tech allies can also be fixed by multiplying the current gain from tech allies (when the allies tech their turns) by your (labs/land) ratio. This one is much much easier to implement, it is a 1-line code change.
2. Slow down the Express turn rate by half (and everything time-related by half). Have 2-week long resets instead. This means cheating players have a much larger window of time to be caught, and moderators have enough time to delete them before they can cause too much harm. The pace is simply TOO quick, innocent players suicided by multies or whatever can do TOO much harm. On Alliance or Primary or other servers, the pace is slow enough that if it takes 24 hours for a moderator to respond to a report, the damage is minimal. Not so on Express. Otherwise, you really need to have 4 or 5 moderators on Express covering all time zones.
3. Another reason why Express is broken is because of the qz/pang policy that a player should be able to be absent from the game for 2 days and still come back without having lost any turns. This leads to the 360(360) stored turn scenario, which is very unhealthy for the server. Change this to 240(240) or 240(160). Anybody playing Express should know that they are expected to log on to the server twice a day. Otherwise don't play it. Or implement suggestion (2) above.
4. Change the DR reset to something reasonable like 2 hours instead of 24 hours. DR-abuse is rampant. There is a lot of talk/discussion on how to combat DR-abuse. See http://www.earthempires.com/...omment-15332?t=1376854014 and guess what happened? Absolutely nothing, for 1.8 years. So Tellarion, I am very dubious when you say that you "CAN guarantee that they will be discussed in detail, with the end result being some worthy changes." I mean, yes, changes will be discussed in detail. But the end result is that nothing happens. Look, we've been discussing for years. Martian started the thread, Warster's posted in it, iZarcon even. Here is a related thread, around the same time: http://www.earthempires.com/...rs-should-be-...--16867/1 where again, Warster was seen posting in it, and defending qz/pang that they were busy.
5. There needs to be feedback from the mods if a cheating report is "in progress" or "resolved". I've heard Palemoon posted (see http://www.earthempires.com/forum/post/514628/perm) that reporting cheaters using the in-game tool doesn't work sometimes, where he had to contact a mod on IRC, and the mod said they never received the in-game report. What then? Is the reporting tool broken? Maybe the field that says to put in country numbers separated by commas doesn't work? Does it matter if I type in "1,2" in the box or "1, 2" with a space, or "#1, #2"? Or what?
6. Owners of deleted countries should be exposed at the end of a reset. Maybe not during a set because there is a possibility that the deleted country could be undeleted after an appeal. In fact, I think profiles of all countries should be public after a reset is over. There also needs to be more repercussions for cheating. Again, there has been a bunch of discussion on the B&S forums about it in the last 2 weeks, and again there hasn't been any result or actual action, or planned changes announced.
Edit:
7.
This is yet another problem, being unable to access pass reset data. Another reason that being such a fast paced server contributes to (see suggestion 2 and 3). Moderators need to be able to access past data of at least the previous 1 or 2 resets, if only to also be able to check for online behaviors, login patterns that could indicate multies across multiple resets, and the like. Moderators should also be able to access/view all ingame messages sent between COUNTRIES on that server (not forum PMs) in past resets as well as present ones (otherwise, how do you deal with reports of countries sending spam/advertisements?) if this isn't already the case.
2. Slow down the Express turn rate by half (and everything time-related by half). Have 2-week long resets instead. This means cheating players have a much larger window of time to be caught, and moderators have enough time to delete them before they can cause too much harm. The pace is simply TOO quick, innocent players suicided by multies or whatever can do TOO much harm. On Alliance or Primary or other servers, the pace is slow enough that if it takes 24 hours for a moderator to respond to a report, the damage is minimal. Not so on Express. Otherwise, you really need to have 4 or 5 moderators on Express covering all time zones.
3. Another reason why Express is broken is because of the qz/pang policy that a player should be able to be absent from the game for 2 days and still come back without having lost any turns. This leads to the 360(360) stored turn scenario, which is very unhealthy for the server. Change this to 240(240) or 240(160). Anybody playing Express should know that they are expected to log on to the server twice a day. Otherwise don't play it. Or implement suggestion (2) above.
4. Change the DR reset to something reasonable like 2 hours instead of 24 hours. DR-abuse is rampant. There is a lot of talk/discussion on how to combat DR-abuse. See http://www.earthempires.com/...omment-15332?t=1376854014 and guess what happened? Absolutely nothing, for 1.8 years. So Tellarion, I am very dubious when you say that you "CAN guarantee that they will be discussed in detail, with the end result being some worthy changes." I mean, yes, changes will be discussed in detail. But the end result is that nothing happens. Look, we've been discussing for years. Martian started the thread, Warster's posted in it, iZarcon even. Here is a related thread, around the same time: http://www.earthempires.com/...rs-should-be-...--16867/1 where again, Warster was seen posting in it, and defending qz/pang that they were busy.
5. There needs to be feedback from the mods if a cheating report is "in progress" or "resolved". I've heard Palemoon posted (see http://www.earthempires.com/forum/post/514628/perm) that reporting cheaters using the in-game tool doesn't work sometimes, where he had to contact a mod on IRC, and the mod said they never received the in-game report. What then? Is the reporting tool broken? Maybe the field that says to put in country numbers separated by commas doesn't work? Does it matter if I type in "1,2" in the box or "1, 2" with a space, or "#1, #2"? Or what?
6. Owners of deleted countries should be exposed at the end of a reset. Maybe not during a set because there is a possibility that the deleted country could be undeleted after an appeal. In fact, I think profiles of all countries should be public after a reset is over. There also needs to be more repercussions for cheating. Again, there has been a bunch of discussion on the B&S forums about it in the last 2 weeks, and again there hasn't been any result or actual action, or planned changes announced.
Edit:
7.
Originally posted by tellarion:
Just so you all know, I can't go back and check specifics after a set has ended. Unless I'm online at the very end and someone passes me the info VERY quickly, there's not much I can do about that. Not to mention the sets always end when I'm asleep :/
This is yet another problem, being unable to access pass reset data. Another reason that being such a fast paced server contributes to (see suggestion 2 and 3). Moderators need to be able to access past data of at least the previous 1 or 2 resets, if only to also be able to check for online behaviors, login patterns that could indicate multies across multiple resets, and the like. Moderators should also be able to access/view all ingame messages sent between COUNTRIES on that server (not forum PMs) in past resets as well as present ones (otherwise, how do you deal with reports of countries sending spam/advertisements?) if this isn't already the case.