Problem with New Advanced Character Types

[BongoBob]

Admin and/or Somnos,

I've noticed there is a problem with artifacts and scoring with the 2 new character types (Ship Hoarder and Wildcard). It is not possible to score points with any artifact, and yet it is possible to lose points with cursed artifacts. This imbalance should be addressed, one way (remove ALL scoring for artifacts) or another (introduce some sort of positive scoring for positive artifacts, or new class-specific artifacts).

[Tieffdschie]

There is one more glitch that I found in divers3n (game is over) and the currently running starring5f.

I get players/points reported, that aren´t belonging to the game.
Actually I got more player info than are in total taking part (6 in starring5f).

On the website the report of starring5f says
MiTCh 1787
Qadira 1500
Daryl 1442
Jelena 986
Bhavya 751
Ayer 699

My client tells me, there is also a "Fitzban", "Ramadarm", "Martian", "Boedy" and "ploor"....?

MiTCh

[BongoBob]

Tieffdschie,

divers3n was and starring5f is a "no-communication" game. To aid in the "no-communication" aspect, I believe EVERY player will see different randomized names for opponents, and different numbering for worlds and fleets. This is to make side-channel communication more difficult (can't easily email your buddy and compare notes), increasing the strength of the "no-communication" aspect.

Admin, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here.

-BongoBob

[drwr]

This is true, although it's supposed to be consistent--you're never supposed to see the list of actual names in the game (at least not until the game is over), so it sounds like something has indeed gone wrong in starring5f. I'll investigate.

As to the original topic, I think it's a good point that it's unfortunate for the Ship Hoarder and Wildcard. I'm not sure that you can really argue that it's a *bug*, though; it just means you should generally avoid all artifacts. We could certainly change it; I'd be interested to hear what Somnos has to say on the subject. There are only two solutions, neither of which is good:

(1) Remove the penalty for cursed artifacts. This is the wrong thing to do, because it is essentially giving these players a new power: the power to avoid penalties for cursed artifacts. People will then give these players all of their cursed artifacts, making the Collector relatively unimportant (and making it more difficult for the Collector to negotiate).

(2) Add a bonus for some artifact type. This might be OK, but it's a problem because there are more character classes than artifact types now. So these two will have to share preferred artifact types with some other character class, resulting in perhaps an unfortunate competition for those particular artifact types, which the other character classes don't have to deal with.

David

[Tieffdschie]

Tieffdschie,

divers3n was and starring5f is a "no-communication" game. To aid in the "no-communication" aspect, I believe EVERY player will see different randomized names for opponents, and different numbering for worlds and fleets. This is to make side-channel communication more difficult (can't easily email your buddy and compare notes), increasing the strength of the "no-communication" aspect.

Admin, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here.

-BongoBob

Right,
I appreciate these "firewalls" very much.
But I never should see more players listed than there are actually in the game !
MiTCh

Have a look - it´s a game with 6 players / one-position.

Bild2.jpg

[BongoBob]

Right, that's a totally different problem. Did the sign-up names (e.g. Ploor, Fitzban I recognize from previous games) leak into the anon game as ghost players?

[drwr]

Seems like it. Sorry about that! I'll get a fix out shortly.

[drwr]

OK, I've fixed the problem on the server. It will no longer send ghost reports of players under the wrong, unmapped name. Unfortunately, the data on starring5f has already been polluted with the wrong data, and it's difficult to extract it now, so I'm afraid you'll have to live with seeing more names in starring5f than are actually playing for the rest of the game. But at least you can tell which of the names are legitimate from the web page; and future games will not have this problem.

My apologies once again for the trouble.

David

[somnos]

Sorry - I haven't been following the forum. I've addressed all the artifact issues with new characters for the upcoming Expert level RSW. Each player will have unique art; nonspecific art is eliminated and the only art in a universe will be for actual characters types active in that particular game. Unfortunately we must wait for this to be coded into the game by the moderator - and that will take time.

Somnos