Messages

16

Suggestions / Re: New server suggestion: Temperate, 1980 to 2080, 800perf, 5billion, 400 points

« on: February 02, 2013, 06:22:52 pm »

to the idea of gradual scoring:
1. partially it's already in there, winning fast gives you more points than winning slow
2. i don't want to do any more work on the current score system when we plan to rewrite the whole score system anyway

to the idea of owning industries:
we can do this but we should make sure it cannot be used by early joiners to reserve all the good industries. there would need to be a limit that only industries with low production can be claimed (similar to towns below a certain population in CB).
for the reservation itself we need to wait for the feature described here, doing it as we currently do it for CB would probably put too much load on the servers.

17

Suggestions / Re: New rule - city builder

« on: January 30, 2013, 06:09:15 pm »

the rules are complicated enough, i don't want to start with more rules that are server specific, adding yet another level of complexity.
apart from that you can invest into any other cities for various valid reasons, e.g. just to get the money you need for growing the network around your own city or because you plan to connect it to your city over a long distance later when you got more money. we would forbid such cases too.

usually if a player builds things that barely gives himself any profit but makes the profit of someone else decrease significantly we apply the "no sabotage" rule (part of rule 3) on him.
the problem with that is that you cannot drag a hard line here. if he is like a parasite but at the same time it is the only business he got, you cannot say he is only running the lines to sabotage you, it is also what generates all his income.
of course we also had situations where someone was running only long and big networks - and only at a few spots he let buses drive 10 tiles to move cargo away from an industry someone else was using, barely making any money from these lines. that would be a clear sabotage case.

most of the time it is not an easy judgement, and it is even harder without having been there, so i don't know what was the situation in your case. i understand your frustration but your suggestion is not a good solution, because it would be limiting legitimate gameplay too, which should always be avoided.

the sad story about this is that most of the players that compete in such a forced way aren't even worth mentioning as a competitor. they would never win and often the player they compete with is still the #1 player on the server with a big distance. yet that player complains, gets frustrated and leaves the game he would have easily won. i have seen players leave after being "leeched" that were at 80% when the 2nd was at 30% and the leecher at 2%. from an objective perspective this is not explainable - this is more an emotional thing than anything else. and the best players are those that learned they should just play and not worry so much...

18

Complaints / Re: new company abuse by Guy Smiley

« on: January 12, 2013, 01:48:25 am »

banned him.
about the general problem of such things: i want to write a plug-in that can detect certain kinds of abuses and act on them automatically (e.g. players running a crash train, players reserving too much land, players creating new companies with a suspiciously high frequency...)
it won't be able to detect and handle each and every situation of this kind but at least such obviously abusive/ill-intentioned things.

19

Suggestions / Re: file size

« on: January 11, 2013, 12:09:46 am »

i have raised the limit, please try again.

20

General Chat / Re: My favorite n-ice admin is...

« on: December 30, 2012, 11:19:37 am »

problem is that the vote has to be reset everytime the admin list changes. now with only 17 votes i don't think it's representative 

21

Suggestions / Re: Suggestion: Autocleaning of empty companies with no vehicles

« on: December 30, 2012, 10:41:09 am »

well you can always click the "[good]" link below my name to give me karma

22

Suggestions / Re: Suggestion: Autocleaning of empty companies with no vehicles

« on: December 26, 2012, 01:54:25 pm »

finally after all the time i have made the change. i decided to even go for a more radical solution: empty companies without vehicles are now reset after 1 month already. we can still increase the time if it leads to too much unrest on the servers, but i don't think it will.

EDIT: of course the initial change had a strong impact. a minute after i activated it on the servers it looked like this:

Code: [Select]

[14:51:07] • OTTD-k4 * X shanec (7/Grey) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:10] • OTTD-5 * X Grego Transport (1/Red) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:10] • OTTD-5 * X Oxo Transport (5/Pink) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:10] • OTTD-5 * X Ceulubitiv Transport (10/Yellow) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:10] • OTTD-5 * X Unnamed (11/Pale Green) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:10] • OTTD-5 * X Unnamed (12/Purple) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:24] • OTTD-2 * X gumi Transport (2/Blue) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:25] • OTTD-3 * X Razor Transport (4/Blue) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:39] • OTTD-k3 * X Player Transport (2/Pink) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:39] • OTTD-k3 * X [HUN]Grondy Transport (6/Purple) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:39] • OTTD-k3 * X Wayne Enterprises (7/Dark Blue) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:39] • OTTD-k3 * X Unnamed (8/White) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:47] • OTTD-1 * X Unnamed (4/Yellow) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, empty and no vehicles)
[14:51:47] • OTTD-1 * X Michalrudy (6/White) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, empty)
[14:51:48] • OTTD-k1 * X Player Transport (1/Red) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:49] • OTTD-6 * X shanec (3/Orange) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:52] • OTTD-4 * X Viktor Transport (2/Red) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:52] • OTTD-4 * X Henrik Transport (3/Orange) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:51:52] • OTTD-4 * X LP Trans (4/Dark Blue) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:52:05] • OTTD-8 * X LP Trans (6/Blue) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:52:05] • OTTD-8 * X Player Transport (8/Cream) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:52:05] • OTTD-8 * X Colz Transport (9/Purple) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:52:05] • OTTD-8 * X Unnamed (11/Pale Green) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:52:05] • OTTD-8 * X Unnamed (12/Light Blue) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)
[14:52:05] • OTTD-8 * X DK Transport (13/Brown) has been closed (Auto-cleaned, 1 month without vehicles)

 

23

Suggestions / Re: Alert players who haven't set password for their company/companies..?? whatever!

« on: November 07, 2012, 08:29:40 pm »

there is a line in openttd.cfg which sets default password for any new company

[network]
default_company_pass = mypass

i guess for the "average consumer" it's easier to just press the "default" button in the company password dialog. this will make the password you entered for the company the future default password for all companies.

Instead of asking an admin to move us to our company, in case of disconnection/powercuts, can this be automated..? like clicking on join company will match our ip with that of the ip that created the company and move us to that company? can this be done? anyways i'm skeptical about this! coz most people have dynamic ip's assigned by their isp's.... enlighten me someone!

imho that's independent from the alerts to set a password, because in the end setting a password is the best solution and our company protection is just a secondary solution because too many people forget to set a pass or they don't care (which usually changes as soon as the first griefer joins them and destroys their game...).

anyway, we have this thing in the pipeline. if you read my comment there especially the "smart" option could improve the situation a lot in your favor.

24

Suggestions / Re: CityBuilder - share ideas/comments

« on: October 20, 2012, 11:51:38 pm »

CityBuilder test servers #1 and #k1 have been updated, changelog two posts above

25

Suggestions / Re: CityBuilder - share ideas/comments

« on: October 20, 2012, 09:10:33 pm »

good find, there was a small mistake in the code so that the signs didn't get removed when a company was closed or merged. fixed it now, i think we are ready to upgrade server #1 and #k1 then.

26

Suggestions / Re: CityBuilder - share ideas/comments

« on: October 19, 2012, 06:29:00 pm »

and here's a quick heads-up of what has been changed to the CB development version compared to the version still running on our CB test servers:

• protection area signs now change accordingly when the company name was changed
• improved performance and stability of code for protection area signs (signs should be placed faster now)
• it is no longer possible to build in a protected area by placing the end of a road/rail/canal outside of the area
• towns can no longer be claimed when their protected area would overlap with the protected area of another claimed town
• fixed not all road stations getting removed from protected area when several were built by dragging the mouse
• fixed protection area not working when town was too close to the map edge
• fixed protection area signs not appearing when town was too close to the map edge
• added punishments for repeated protected area violations of a player (warning and move to spectators in first step, kick in second step)
• added protection area exceptions: companies that already built something in an area that is claimed later can continue to build there despite the protection

this will go live onto the servers at some point this weekend, but they will still stay TEST servers. what i think is still missing before the servers can become official (and drop the "TEST" from their names):

• new score system (see this thread)
• protect players from having their town destroyed (or their protected area in general)
• support for loading a savegame, right now CB games cannot be restored from .sav files (GS doesn't work anymore afterwards)
• bugs found during the next test period

27

Suggestions / Re: CityBuilder - share ideas/comments

« on: October 19, 2012, 06:20:41 pm »

If you discover an exploit which creates wealth, gives an unfair advantage against other players or prevents the normal operation of the game server, report it to the OpenTTD developers so the vulnerability can be closed.
Don't abuse bugs or exploits because this only harms OpenTTD gameplay and destroys the gameplay of other people.

station walking is an exploit so it's already covered. but i still agree that it might be good to explicitly list it on the rules because it's quite attractive to do it on CB servers.

28

Suggestions / Re: CityBuilder - share ideas/comments

« on: October 16, 2012, 01:15:40 pm »

thanks already for your efforts, i hope you will be able to find how to reproduce it, otherwise it would be really hard to fix.

29

Suggestions / Re: Fixed Game Lengths

« on: October 16, 2012, 01:13:45 pm »

this would be quite a huge game changer, so probably nothing we would change on all servers tomorrow just because the idea sounds good right now.
but yes, your idea does sound good and you got some valid points there, it's at least worth to try it on on some servers and see how the community likes it.

however, note that some of your arguments would also be affected by the other idea to give scores (or "XP") on a quarterly base (originally brought up by AlexAlex on this thread). maybe we can combine those ideas and create some mixture of it.
would appreciate if you could also contribute to this other thread. with my work on the basic CityBuilder mechanics slowly reaching its end i will start to put those score topics into focus, so we got to get a more complete picture of our ideas soon.

30

Suggestions / Re: Additional points

« on: October 15, 2012, 08:40:43 pm »

thanks for pointing this out, we should make it "delta to last maximum CV" then.