Messages

16

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 

17

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

18

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)

 

19

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.

20

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

21

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.

22

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

23

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.

24

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.

25

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.

26

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.

27

Suggestions / Re: Additional points

« on: October 10, 2012, 08:19:18 pm »

- This bug that you create x engines in a depot and shoot up your company value i heard of this before. Didnt know if that was true or not but thats a pain indeed. Isnt there a possibility to substract this in the CV-calculation formula? (something like: CV" = CV - (engines [complete trains] that have <=0 income this year * their value) ? Or is that to simply thought?

well in the mindmap linked above i tackled it with subtracting the total value of all stopped/crashed vehicles. but you are right, i have also added "total value of all vehicles without positive income is SUBTRACTED" now. should be technically possible but right now everything is still nothing but theory.

- The thing i mentioned about the different cargo types is also a fragile part because a few short trains with different types and i transported 8/8 types cargo.

yes, good point.
what would be also a way to circumvent the problems of perf. ranking while keeping its positive aspects would be to not use perf. but making the same criteria part of the score algorithm, just in a smarter way.
e.g. we give a reward for cargo diversity too (like +1 XP for every cargo type transported) but only cargo types that you transport at least 20% of the amount of your most used cargo type are counted. that means if you focus on coal and transport 100,000 tonnes of coal per quarter you must at least transport 20,000 litres of oil to have oil count as another cargo type you are seriously transporting.
this won't be 100% accurate as not all units of all cargo types work on the same scale and not all industries grow their production the same, but it should still do a much better job than only checking whether any single object of a specific cargo type was transported.
put that idea also into the mindmap.

- You must be joking that you have the option to send money to other companies on? ... really :/

players like to use it to boost each other and lend each other money, it often leads to a quite social gameplay i often wonder about. and as long as the score system isn't just depending on money or CV alone the advantages of money transfer aren't really big (except in the beginning, as i mentioned, initial boosting...). it has always been enabled and didn't cause any problems in the past.
circumventing weaknesses in the score algorithm by disabling game features is never an elegant solution, rather a last resort of there is no other way to mitigate a potential problematic effect. i still hear you that this poses a higher risk of getting abused than many other features and we should watch it carefully. but this we can still review again when the score idea is finished - then we'll see whether disabling it would be necessary or the benefit from it would be too small to have a considerable effect.

- And if possible calculate the time taken on a monthly or quarterly base. Instead of only yearly

unfortunately one technical limitation comes into play here: the CV value OpenTTD gives out to external applications over its interface is only updated quarterly, so that would be the lowest possible interval we can depend on (i know the OpenTTD client calculates it locally and real-time, but it can do this only because it has more data than our external application and has the exact same formula programmed into it as the server).
apart from that your suggestion is not really clear to me. calculate what against what? the time taken after a quarter...is a quarter. so i guess you mean see how much the CV has raised between quarters? and then give scores for it, more scores the more the CV increased within that quarter? or only check quarterly whether the goal was reached and at the end give higher score the lower the amount of years played is?

That said, im no coder or anything so i have no clue how easy/hard this stuff is

that's why on the right side in my picture i included every piece of information the game is giving me as a coder, but explained as normal text, so everyone knowing OpenTTD should be able to understand it. everything you see there can theoretically be taken, summed up, averaged, calculated against other values, measured on different scales, set in relation to other values, get multiplied by other values, get added or subtracted...whatever helps. which values you consider, how much weight you give each value and the way you let it influence the final score is more a mathematical and logical question than one for coders.

28

Suggestions / Re: Additional points

« on: October 10, 2012, 06:23:28 pm »

I believe your servers are goal games right, not make the most stations or deliver all kinds of cargo's.

actually i like the idea of goals that make features attractive that otherwise nobody would care about. e.g. making various cargo types being delivered a necessity forces players to play the game with all its aspects instead of just playing game number 100 of type "who is the fastest to connect all oil wells".
but that's for sure a question of taste and at least for the goal part they could even be different between servers, so we could satisfy different tastes. as long as the score system is somehow universal...

Otherwise you could just ignore the CV and focus purely on 999 perf rating, which might be interesting aswell (read: also annoying to reach . )

systems that depend purely on a single value can be easily cheated. we started with only CV considered and how long the game takes and people won the games with high scores by buying 300 train engines unused in the depot as soon as they had the money for it.
as perf is already a value consisting of several other things it is not as vulnerable as CV but it's still not enough to depend on it alone. also it has some disadvantages that you have mentioned which also would be compensated if other values are relevant too.

the more values you consider for the score
- the more flaws some values might have on their own compensate each other when used in a mix
- the lower is the chance of something being cheated

Tbh the best thing to do is have your score be highly (read: almost completely) dependant on the time it takes you to reach the goal

apart from the problems mentioned above this would also exclude the idea to give XP monthly. and if the goal is only CV i can play a normal game and short before the end i create a new company and send all my money over to that new company. i wait a bit more until i got enough to reach the CV goal and send this over too, making my new company win a huge goal within only a year = crazy amount of points.
also, "time it takes you to reach the goal" in relation to what? and how would that work on a short server where you only need 1-2 game years to win it?
but yes, currently it IS part of the calculation so it DOES work, but again only as one part in a bigger mix.

basically there is 10 good ideas how to do a score system and 9 of them eventually suffer from all sorts of vulnerabilities.

I dont get why you would use performance rating as a measurement for skill and exp reward.

it would be one aspect among many others so it wouldn't have a very high weight in the overall XP calculation (as everything else).

29

Suggestions / Re: Additional points

« on: October 09, 2012, 05:45:53 pm »

the right side shows what data is technically available and could be used for scoring, so you get an idea what's available. the left side is some first brainstorming based on several ideas that were posted here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/21345942/OpenTTD_GS_data.png

tell me your thoughts on it.

30

Suggestions / Re: CityBuilder - share ideas/comments

« on: October 09, 2012, 05:41:30 pm »

since we set the CV goal to 0 i don't think it is possible at all. the current score algorithm does not consider CV higher than the goal CV, hence your CV is always treated as being 0 and you never get scores. check for your additional points thread for ideas about a new score system, until something like that is in place there probably won't be any scoring on CB servers.