I think its sorted now.

Michael Rosen
13:22
i agree that this was allowed by game mechanics

Indeed. If its allowed its valid. Simple.

Hey guys.

Only now catching up on this issue.

As BD Founder i see the following long term of strategy as follows:

Players will always find innovative ways to gain the upper hand in Battle Dawn, that what makes it such an interesting game.
However, some of those ways are unbalanced to my taste.
As a game designer of BD I'm obliged to limit the 'dirty tactics' while not limiting 'smart tactics'.

How do you judge smart from dirty? simply by seeing how much fun vs. frustration that tactic generates in total on both sides.

so my purpose is to make the game fun for all, even for the losing side.

That will always be the nature of battle dawn, game mechanics will change, balance, tweak always to make the game live, changing, and interesting.

The admin's job is to identify these issues, and pin point to the development team the current problems and identify the possible changes requires to fix the problem.

we'll address this new 'tactic' as well, by modifying the game rules to make it obsolete as i see it as more frustrating than fun feature as a whole.

The last month the dev team was inactive due to traveling & apartment changes. but we will release an update in September for sure once we're all settled back in.

So, stay tuned, and Enjoy the best strategy game ever made
we will keep making it better.

p.s.
the admin's role is to keep everyone as happy as possible in the world. that's almost an impossible mission, as there's always someone hurt and holding a grudge, before attacking any admins for his actions, first put yourself in his shoes and see how do you think you could have done better for all sides.

There is only one blame for 'unfair tactics' and that's me, the game designer. and my job never ends i'll hunt all those down i guess as long as BD exists.

Cheers!

Seth,

How did the NO alliance GATE to brand new colonies?

Were those colonies IN their alliance? If so, how, exactly are they slave colonies? Kevin recruited me late this era seeing the NO threat from several of his friends. I came in around tick 450. Kevin kicked someone, gave me that person's conquer and crystals and accepted me in the alliance.

Did I partake in a slave colony exploit?

More, once I arrived, I tried to send oil to someone with a big army since I had boosts to burn and no army. But, the game precluded me from sending resources WITHIN MY OWN alliance until I'd been there for 100 ticks or something.

Stupid, honestly, but, the code worked.

In NOs case, do you have evidence they multi-played these new colonies? By adding these colonies into NO, as the chat you link suggests, if the makers don't want new alliance members gateable, stop them from being. But, once a new member is a member of your alliance, it ceases being a possible slave colony.

And obviously when you kick an alliance member and cannibalize him, it's not a slave colony either. When GIFT used a THOR silo to get out of Europe into Iceland and in to Greenland JUST two days ago, did the THOR silo owner become a slave colony to GIFT by agreeing with Kevin to let us take his silo so we could get in without our enemy putting us on camps?

Obviously not. Kevin worked an alliance with THOR and used that friendship to help our alliance. But, if you were inclined, you could, and your personality type is YOU WOULD, cite that as utilizing a slave colony to issue a ban. Because you like stretching rules to fit a case.

As Michael says to Ilona, your job is to help identify things you want the coders to fix.

If you don't want new alliance members to have active gates available to that alliance on Tick 1, code it, as you have resource sending. Or, hell, code in you can't send tokens for 100 ticks too, as that will have a similar effect and be easier as the code already exists and it's a one line change to have it include tokens too.

I assume these colonies existed for less than a day, right?

What you need to stop doing is believing something is not to your liking and discovering creative ways to apply a rule which does not fit. No one, anywhere, thinks an alliance member is a slave colony, though, honestly, playing with Kevin so long, I am, indeed a slave.

In a PM to you I even told you I was one of his lackeys. I do not play for myself.

I play for his alliances. By definition, I'm a slave colony.

You need to ban all alliances who share a goal together as they are not playing for themselves. I follow orders and I don't attack people who could help me because it benefits Kevin and the Gift alliance.

We are all slaves by your new slave rule.

Well done.

Michael,

Thanks for taking the time to post here. What you posted is reasonable, thoughtful and well communicated. These are not traits common to Seth's method of administration of E4 in my experience. Seth is not just helping identify possible exploits for coders to improve their code.

In fact, as you state here, YOU ARE JUST CATCHING UP on all this. I contacted you about it. Ilona did. Did Seth? If so, when? My guess is the last person to bring this "exploit" to your attention was the admin himself. As to keeping things fair, there's only one way.

You issue NO bans until you've taken the time to speak with someone. If you need to issue a ban, do so, and correct the damage done from it. Seth bans first, demands some level of tribute for even tolerating the time to hear your side of the story, and reluctantly, as a favor you should be grateful for, lets you back in.

This is with me. It's with many.

Seth needs to take the time to contact the people involved and ASK questions. Give him the power to stop a tick from turning if you're worried about actions until he can make contact with people. But, as I wrote above, he has essentially now made a slave of all alliances. And he's done so with his typical, "Be glad I'm not mean," flair.

Your call was completely wrong Seth.



As far as I see from the convo, Michael was in agreement with Ilona that it was allowed by game mechanics.

Now to farms. A farm is a colony solely built for the purposes of resources or spamming or laying outposts or whatever. In this case we did not have any advantage, other than get the player into our alliance and use him as a gate.
Like Michael has said, if this "tactic" is perceived as "abuse" and people dont want it, then please go ahead release an update removing it. We are not against it. However, this feature has remained in battledawn for quite sometime now. We thought of it, others did not. That does not make it abuse. The act of conquering a colony who was used as a gate was pure strategy and DOES NOT by any means amount to farming.

Farming is abuse. For the purposes of resources. We did not abuse by conquering one colony. We did that so we could use him as a gate in future since that was our only way out. Please note the differences between conquering for the purposes of resources and for the purposes of tactics.

Though you may be allowed to make judgement calls, you seem to over use them to a point where your decisions are completely abusive and in most cases bring the game to a halt and ONLY create ill will. And it is not just me saying that. You cannot simply ban someone, over technicalities. You knew full well that we conquered that colony so GIFT may not conquer him and get us stuck in Africa. You knew full well that it wasnt for the purposes of resources. Infact we suffered by losing 2 armies, resources earned per tick etc. Infact it seems as though, you were waiting for an excuse to ban someone. And what damage are you really talking about? Damage to gift? An alliance with around what 700 squads vs our 320? You feel that tipped the game in favor of us?

If at all after everything, you were still in disagreement, you should have done what Michael said. Reported that particular instance to the developers, probably made a forum topic about it explaining why it was wrong. And told NO not to use something like that going forward. You immediately jumped the gun and gladly banned 3 colonies, for an issue, that has never been addressed before.

We deem it not fit to be acted against because:

1. This has been in battledawn for quite sometime. WE do not know what is considered abusive in any situation by an admin or other players. We can only work with what we have - features available ingame. Neither is this tactic specifically mentioned in the ToS, so bending rules and misinterpreting them wont work.

2. You determined the landmass was of greater value than resources? And may I know for what reason you determined that? Did you determine that because GIFT had more income, more squads and more area, and we gated a mere 300 squads to Africa, while they had 700 waiting for us? The landmass in reality was not of any greater value. Gift could immediately relocate to Japan, and we wouldn't have been able to do anything about it, than be stuck in Africa with a paltry 300 squads. Your judgement here was totally wrong. Nor does this tip the balance in anyone's favor. The advantage was still with GIFT. Infact it tipped the game in THEIR favor, so we actually lost our advantage of holding our ground and protecting our colonies. In that it could even be considered bad tactics. Anyone with a deep understanding of how this game works, would have been able to see that.

3. The administration can discourage what they feel is unfair to others. As long as you guys get them implemented, and dont provide us with such an option ingame.

Obviously not only the NO alliance criticizes you for your reasoning, every other player does.

Lastly, please stop considering a game to consist of any moral values. We did not ruin the lives of players in GIFT, nor gain anything in RL, to attach moral values to this. We simply played the game with what we had and you cannot honestly expect players to come talk to you before doing anything. That is not an admins job, to tell players what to do, but moderate from a distance and take a reasonable action when he sees something that may be "dirty" - the reasonable action in this case would have been to tell NO, not to do such things again, and reported that instance to the dev team. Then you would have made the right call. And if we did it again, go ahead give us a ban.

In this case you simply jumped the gun and therefore you are wrong.

BTW Seth Michael was not entirely supporting you