Removal of Ingame Rules

[DPR]

I think every in game rule that has an effect on gameplay should be removed. Now of course the rules on cussing, and WB rules would remain (although I think its time to reevaluate the banning system. It is ridiculous how many bans people get for stupid things. Would a Filter be too hard? But this argument if for another time, another thread). Included in the rules I think should be dropped are: arranged kills, suicides (falling under arranged kills), kicking people off planets (AKA the Lotus maneuver ), and any other rule intended to tell someone how to play the game.

There are many times where arranged kills are a viable strategy. Take this hypothetical situation for example. AoC's top guy need 4k xp to gain one level on Cru's top guy, who is cloaked and trapped. AoC should have the option to give their top xp guy a spike in XP from suiciding someone to him. It's cru's hypothetical top guy's fault for dying, he shouldn't have got him self mined it. Allowing this would make cloak slightly weaker. If someone is going to set up arranged kills to pad their stats, they're a douche, and the community will know who it is and will disregard their stats. I don't think anyone who's anyone will actually do this, but if they do so what?

Not allowing suicides is just plain stupid IMO. There are many times where its a good idea to take the easy way out. For example, I am clearing Cru, and they mine me in. I have no way of getting out. I would rather die to a port than face the guns of cru, and I should be able to sacrifice my self to a port. If Cru, can't get to me and kill me before I get to the port, too bad so sad, you lose the kill. Here's another example. When the "Lotus Maneuver" occured, lets say Cru actually got the bonder, and they got 1.3 bil off of it. All of a sudden they are trapped with no way out, cause Loty kicks us off into their escape route, they are bound to die and give us all our cash right back. Now Cru would rather have noone get the money if they can't have it. And there is a lvl 8 or 9 port where our bonder is. So they should have the option to sac the guy with all the money to the port, and boom we just lose all our cash. AoC should of defended before they got the money. If someone wants to throw a little ;) and suicide a port over and over because they are angry so be it. Does it really hurt you? It's not that hard to read their name in the news a few times. And a lot of people will probably think less of them for being so immature.

As for kicking people off a planet. Its a nifty, interesting, hard to pull of strategy. It doesn't work in many cases, and if an alliance has an instance where it will work, and they pull it off successfully, well more power to them.

Summing this long post up, any rules intending to tell us how to play should be removed. Telling someone how to play is detrimental to this game, and just narrows the way the game can be played. It's one thing to abuse a bug to gain an advantage, but none of these are bugs. I can't think of many games if any where you can do something but you can't. Oh well you can do that, but you're not allowed to. Thats just stupid. Not to mention a lot of newbies don't even bother reading the rules. You guys realize how long the rules page is? Its a freakin' novel. It is ridiculous, and it is uncalled for to have so many rules. If it's coded into the game, then you should be allowed to do it. I think loopholes (as long as its not abusing a bug) should be looked at as creativity, someone found away around something to achieve their goal.

Also while on the topic of expanding the way the game is played, I think alignment from ports should go back to the way it was. From my understanding, the alliance Rebels a few games back all raided ports a bunch to get their allign high so they could park in fed and op from fed. After they did this the code was changed so it was much harder if not impossible to do this (My SMR history may be wrong here. During the time in question, I was on a SMR hiatus). Now as lame as that strat is, if an alliance chooses to do this, they should be able to. I think we should embrace many different ways to play this game, not just the way you find most fun, or the way you THINK is right.

[Ardbeg]

This suggestion demonstrates a complete and total disregard for the quality of gameplay SMR is trying to offer to a broad base of players. The rules we have are there to protect the game and the players from unbalancing abuse and gameplay that is detrimental to the health of the game as a whole.

Take arranged kills for example. If we implemented your idea, a player could theoretically build a sizeable xp standing and bank account by killing his friend over and over - is that fair to the player who plays the game as designed and trades or hunts for a living?

Maybe you think we should drop the alliance cap as well, and we can all watch the game die a slow lingering death as we try to move through 60 stack minefields or are unable to venture out of fed without 5 members of the 50-man hunting alliance jumping on us!

SMR is a dynamic and evolving entity, and the rules are not perfect. This is why we need and encourage constructive and positive debate about how the game can be improved. It does not mean we intend to cater to the selfish, destructive and ill-considered wishes of any players - no matter how vocal they are.

[DPR]

Take arranged kills for example. If we implemented your idea, a player could theoretically build a sizeable xp standing and bank account by killing his friend over and over - is that fair to the player who plays the game as designed and trades or hunts for a living?

It does not mean we intend to cater to the selfish, destructive and ill-considered wishes of any players - no matter how vocal they are.

Wrong! In fact this hypothetical player would make very little xp. XP gained is based on the xp of the person killed. Now if someone is willing to let someone kill them over and over again chances are they have very little XP. But even if they didn't you lose a significant amount of xp after each death, so eventually the attacker will be getting little to no xp. And if ya really got your panties in a bunch over this, then code something in to the game, where if you kill the same person twice in X amount of time you gain much less xp. Not to mention anybody doing this would lose all respect from all players, for what ever thats worth.

Oh and from the looks of things, it seems SMR does cater to the selfish, destructive, and ill-considered wishes of a small group of vocal players. So wrong again?

Also please don't edit or delete this post, this is no more a personal attack on you or anyone else, as yours was on me. Just a rebuttal.

[Harry Krishna]

I can't agree with most of this. The rule against kicking people off the planet was a knee-jerk reaction and poorly thought out, but the rest of the rules are there for a good reason.

[LotuS]

This suggestion demonstrates a complete and total disregard for the quality of gameplay SMR is trying to offer to a broad base of players.

All 100 of them.

Take arranged kills for example. If we implemented your idea, a player could theoretically build a sizeable xp standing and bank account by killing his friend over and over - is that fair to the player who plays the game as designed and trades or hunts for a living?

I agree that this should not be allowed.

DPR didnt say anything about alliance caps which should stay at 30. But I do think that allowing players to do things ingame which are allowable by code shouldent be outlawed by the administration or anyone. But there are the few exceptions of people who abuse these freedoms who have lost them for the rest of us in the past and as HK said most of these rules are here for a reason. But I have to agree with DPR on this one that making the game more free and more open is definetely the direction the game should go.

But not to the extremes that DPR says. Even tho his post rang true when i read it as a great and powerful window to the SMR we all used to enjoy. What I would sugest would be a comprimise, making SMR way more open to do what you want than it is now, but still keep the very imporant rules inplace. The rules I see as not being very important or un-needed would be things like Suisciding as a tactic, kick+launch maneuver, uno fights, arranged kills should be re-written, i like the 2 kills is the limit idea for say, a day, with a warning, and repeats should be bans.

But making the ingame play free of technicalities and rules for every little thing is a great idea. I think it could be linked to the decline in activity the game has seen over the last three years as we have steadily been building on the rules and adding new ones this whole time. We should consider a complete overhaul of them, keeping the good and richeous and loosing the bad.

[Hate]

Take arranged kills for example. If we implemented your idea, a player could theoretically build a sizeable xp standing and bank account by killing his friend over and over - is that fair to the player who plays the game as designed and trades or hunts for a living?

It does not mean we intend to cater to the selfish, destructive and ill-considered wishes of any players - no matter how vocal they are.

Wrong! In fact this hypothetical player would make very little xp. XP gained is based on the xp of the person killed. Now if someone is willing to let someone kill them over and over again chances are they have very little XP. But even if they didn't you lose a significant amount of xp after each death, so eventually the attacker will be getting little to no xp. And if ya really got your panties in a bunch over this, then code something in to the game, where if you kill the same person twice in X amount of time you gain much less xp. Not to mention anybody doing this would lose all respect from all players, for what ever thats worth.

Oh and from the looks of things, it seems SMR does cater to the selfish, destructive, and ill-considered wishes of a small group of vocal players. So wrong again?

Also please don't edit or delete this post, this is no more a personal attack on you or anyone else, as yours was on me. Just a rebuttal.

You would also have to think about the bounty that the person would get for killing the same person so many times. after 1 day a person could have over 200 mill in cash.

[Thennian]

1 for one am very proud of my stats that i get durign a game. I dont want some chump who wants that extra 10k exp getting his friend to die to him 10x pass me in kills becuase of it.

[Harry Krishna]

or deaths!

[Baalzamon]

I agree with most of what DPR says...especially the arranged kills thing, but to an extent. For example. I am possibly condeming three players to a ban for bringing this up, but what about a scenario like this:

One guys with almost 500k, in a cloaker. Knows where this one person trades, and has tried to hit her every time she's on, never manages to get the kill though. So, she and two other alliance members devise a plan. Arm up, and have the trader go back and forth in a FU to bring out the hunter. Trader lets the hunter shoot at her, possibly killing her to get his cloak deactivated so that the two alliance members pop in and pod whats left of the hunter...by rules, i think that would be under both arranged kill and suicide. IMO, thats a viable strategy. But I like the idea on a limit of killing one person X ammount of times without repurcussion

There are ALOT of limits on the way that SMR can be played, as well as many rules on bans that I think need to be looked at again. Many things aren't coded but are deemed against the rules, and something needs to be changed about it.

[Freon22]

If I was a coder! Sound like a start to a good story. If I was a coder, not just any coder but an SMR PHP coder.

I would code it so when a hunter kills someone that hunter would not beable to get an attack button on that trader again for x number hours. I would class that by the type of ship that the hunter killed.

I could do that if I was a coder thing again but it gets corny after the first time.

Anyway I would code it so that if a lone player killed himself/herself on a port that trader would not beable to attack another port for x number hours.

I would code it so that when the planet POPs nothing would happen. No ships would launch, the attack team would kill the defending team on the planet. So it would not make a different if the leader wanted to leave his alliance and kick everyone then rejoin. Why you say that it would not make a differents? Because the attack team would not have lost all their turns and gone through all the pods getting through the planets defenses. It would become a fresh fleet fight instead of a PB.

I would code a badword filter with an ignore button for the ingame messages.

I would code it like Curufir wanted to do with good on a planet. Once goods were placed on a planet they would become tainted and could not be sold for profit or exper, gain.

I would code a kick button for the admin, giving them the ability to remove a player from the game.

But alas I am not an SMR PHP coder. So until we get us a coder and if everyone will try to be nice to him/her. We have rules and why not its a free game that doesn't cost anyone anything if they don't want it to.

If you really want to help get rid of some of these rules try PMing Curufir and ask him to come back.