Ethics

[GROND]

Something that had disapeared for a while has come back and I need to hear from you guys about it.

There are certain players who always seem to have emergencies come up when they are losing. These same players also have autosave problems with those games. Now while I can understand that it's a great way for them to artifically inflate their score it's also a thing that tends to leave a bad taste in the minds of those who are expected to put up with it.

My solution has been to stop playing with those people and that is what I recomend to the newcomers who have complained to me about this.

It seems to me that to use this forum to accuse or ban would be to turn it into a war zone. We all know each other now but with the release of Warring Suns this community should explode in size. Please let me know if you think that this is something that should be considered now or even if it's something that needs to be considered period.

Thanx
Hetzer

[firestorm]

i agree with you whole heartedly on this one. it's not cool to do this kind of thing...
now i know i recently did something along these lines with Steel, but you have to realize some things:

a) Technically, I'm not supposed to play any games of any kind on the computer. At the time I wasn't supposed to be on the computer at all, period.
b) My dad was about to walk in the front door. If he'd seen me he'd have gotten pissed, and i'd prob never have comp privilages again.
c) I was in a hurry to get off, and i didn't realize about the save file part until Steel asked me about it.

so plz nobody call me a hypocrite... *g*

[EDIT]
i just talked with hetz, and i apologize to anyone to whom i've refused to restart for when they had a bad starting pos.
most of the times i can remember, the requests sounded far less than even half-serious ("Plz plz plz, i really want to restart, can we restart?" vs "Hey, would you mind restarting? i've got a crappy-*** titan."). either that or there wasn't even a request. on one occasion (can't remember who vs), both of us had really crappy titans and start pos. i try to be cool about this game. like hetz said, we all know eachother; i don't want to make enemys.
anyways... yea...
also realize the difference between a 13-yr old (when i did most of my playing) vs a 16-yr old (me now).

That being said... who wants to die this weekend? *g*
(I'm a cocky bastard, aren't i? *g*)
[/EDIT]

[rosary]

My attitude is that once you actually log into a game and start playing the game. You play till the end. If you can't play the entire game don't start the game.

But that goes for any online game and not just TOS.

[Thorgrim]

Now you see why I banned ties from my rankings? And I pushed for automatical losses on broken connections? I knew this issue would come back... it's sad.
Rule should be, if you think you'll not make it to the end, ask for an "unofficial" game or simply don't play. If you do and break, counts as a loss.
I've had my share of 'have to go to town' and 'disappearing saves' (when I had advantage of course), and they opened my eyes.

[Peter Yearsley]

A problem that I have that's related to this thread is that my ISP enforces a two-hour connection time limit. The line just cuts off. Admittedly, it's possible to get the ISP timer to display on the status line, but it's easy to miss in the midst of a battle. I generally warn my opponents that this might happen, and we've either saved before my time's up or relied on the lottery of the autosave.
I *do* admit to making a different move after one unexpected autosave .. but don't think it won me the battle.
No easy way round this until my ISP changes its rules.