hallucination

wait ... you know that he intentionally multi-clients sometimes ? just to temporarily increase freq size for his turrret ? i wouldnt be surprised if he reaches those new heights of lameness Yes I've also seen him do this. Frankly, it's not ok - the "two machine" rule covers it, but I'm working on a reworded version of the rule to clarify for those that are are confused by the concept that using two or more instances/machines is cheating/not allowed. FYI I have upon rare occasions given temporary permission for people to do whacky things while scores were down (i.e. not affect Reset Winners). Gad has also brought in those instances (usually with Turkey in the name somewhere) and killed them repeatedly at times -- one time with permission while scores were down, but more than once after that while scores were up (i.e. without permission). I told him to stop (DUH!), and now I see that he did it again a couple of times a few days ago probably while he was doing his freq size increasing trick. Opinions on what should be done about that? --hallu

Thx for clarifying Caer -- you help point out the fundamental game design problems of bonuses with regard to Chaos. It brings up another possibility -- bonuses being reset based on some interval (session, day, week, reset)? Bonuses _need_ to be reset at some point. Thoughts on that? --hallu

Jazz has recently been persistently giving coords of gad's turret in pub chat. He and capefire and perhaps others are less than happy about it from what I gather. He gave out my coords both on a turret and solo for a while last night, and for me, that was fun. I'd like a discussion on and people's thoughts on giving out coords in pub chat. First some info: There is no way to prevent people from doing the exact same thing on priv chat, or team chats etc. If I have high bty I just always assume that someone is spec'ing me and giving out coords. If they give out my coords (or the coords of a turret I'm on) in pub I consider it a sign of recognition of achievement -- but it can also be a sign of lame play. This has never been illegal previously. Excessive spamming of pub chat is illegal and giving coords often needs to be frequent enough to be classified as spam. We could never completely eliminate it in any case (just like spam). Giving coords in chat is not remotely as helpful to hunting as watching a second Continuum client spec'ing the object of the chase -- it allows you see to the hunted's energy, direction, speed of travel, items, mines, traps, bricks laid, etc. all in real time. There is no comparison between the usefulness of the two. It is virtually always done as a macro, so players can ignore public macros and not see any of the coords/spammage. Probably there are a number of ppl who don't even realize it's being done. In the old days, for example, if someone mine repped a Warlord (or otherwise diss'ed him/her), the squad would band together, with one person spec'ing and giving info over squad chat, to hunt that person mercilessly, and embarrass them in chat by calling out their lame behavior. Ok -- now what are your thoughts? I thought I'd give people a place to discuss and vent if they want Just fyi I'm highly disinclined to make a new rule about this, but as always, I'm willing to listen to reasonable arguments. --hallu

You might try rereading this comment you responded to over two weeks ago: http://forums.ssgn.n...post__p__273547 --hallu

First, spending too much time focusing on very low population problems is not a good use of our time imo. It is better spent focusing on how to increase the population. Now, on freqsizes, I'll repeat what I've said since Chaos-Bot started controlling them more than 10 yrs ago. I think players staying for more than a couple of minutes on an X person freq when the freqsize is less than that, are unsportsmanlike -- whether they are turreting or not. It demonstrates they are more concerned with winning rather than playing fairly/on a level playing field. The one situation I can think where it could be justifiable to stay on a higher person freq is if you're in a hotly contested flag game with another freq of the same size (until the game ends) -- that occurrence is quite rare (ever?) since in a hotly contested game the population rarely drops much. It does appear to drive people away at times, but other times not. A high bty target can draw people in to play. At least when a newbie gets killed by a several man turret, he can see that it's several people aligned against him with lots of firepower. This is better than getting killed by a mine repper (or worse, a cloaked mine repper) as the newbie will have no idea how/why he died in one shot. A mine repping turret falls into this category. Things that could be done: 1) Do what we've always done in Chaos to lamers -- call them out publicly for it and hunt them down mercilessly. 2) I have requested and continue to request that vet pilots voluntarily redistribute freqs when they get smaller. 3) Force people off freqs when the freqsize reduces. I've never liked this as a solution because it is going to make people mad and they will leave (in addition to some gnarly bot logic to make this happen properly in all situations -- it's ugly and punishing however it would be done). What usually happens is that people leave the freq voluntarily and freqs naturally redistribute on their own. 4) Not reduce freqsize until all freqs are down to that size. This way, for example, if there is a three man turret out there, you can gather a three man hunt freq even if the freqsize should be two. 5) Leave as is. In the vast majority of situations, the way it works now is fine. I see mine repping as a far bigger problem than a few man turrets that run when a single pilot chases them. Mine repping used to be done to a certain extent, but nothing like it is these days -- talk about the lamers that would get called out and hounded down. Turrets that mine rep as a style of play was something that virtually never occurred in the old days -- mining, yes; mine repping as a strategy, no. Why do we see so much mine repping now? Mine repping is an almost riskless way to play. You can !bonus more reps. There are a bazillion greens to get more reps. 50 start bty. It is a very easy way to get a high ratio - no actual fighting involved! I see mine repping as a bad game design since it is the only 'one shot kill' we have in Chaos -- should have none imo. It's easily avoided by vets, but is very bad for newbs -- and newbs is what the zone needs. One could argue that bursts are also one shot kills, but it's harder to kill someone from full nrg with the burst strength today (SVS was 550 per burst bullet; it's been 350 per burst bullet for a very long time now) -- it's more obvious to a newb how they died (many orange bullets!!!). You never said "there will never be changes made to turrets" or anything similar in our conversation - perhaps you thought it but did not state it. The choice between "chaos has always had large turrets and always will" and "no changes to turrets ever" is a false dichotomy -- there are many more possibilities. If you or anyone else is interested in learning more about what's possible, you can start here: http://www.minegoboo...erver/ssos.html I'm of course willing to listen to any ideas on the topic. I have many private conversations with people in the zone and out -- I value creativity, clarity of thought and the ability to express them coherently/concisely and also the ability to listen (just to name a few). I don't value being asked the same question multiple times when I've already answered it. You can ask about a timeframe, but if the answer is 'undecided' then that's the answer. If you ask "when" and I say "undecided" and then you say "yes, but WHEN?" -- that's badgering to me. And my further comment was not veiled in any way -- I said it would backfire. If you (or anyone) tries to get more info from me by doing that, you'll probably get less (via private conversation at least). Overall our conversation was a good one I think. Also, fyi I did not say changes "only at a reset" I said "I usually do major changes at a reset" -- my positions are rarely absolute (ok so limiting turret size is an absolute ) and I'm always willing to listen to specific, coherent, concrete, and feasible ideas. Thank you for the comment on "has to be PERMANENT" -- that's always my position. --hallu

That's not remotely what I said. You said: I replied: --hallu

I went to the zone they setup for themselves for about a half hour and talked to them and played with them some. There were only two... Told them to come by any time and I'd help them get started. Maybe some will come by on Tuesday night...? --hallu

heh I already had this new feature ready to release when Nude started this thread. I called it 'fullship' (!bonus fullship). Caer -- I *think* you mean that bonus points should only accrue for kills when they meet the same threshold that streaks have (>75 bty)...? (I can think of at least three diff ways to interpret "tie bonuses to streaks") I'm not surprised to see vets advocating to get rid of bonuses and (particularly) ranks. They break the game design of Chaos imo. See item I.h in my Chaos Philosophy doc (which I mostly wrote in 2002) http://chaos.sscentr...chaosphilosophy Making bonuses only available from Safe would at least take that advantage out of real-time game play. I think launching 120 bursts in a row (which I could do right now with my 80 bonuses) is a game-wrecking ability/terrible game design. Similarly, if you've been hunting someone and have caused them to use up their toys, they shouldn't be able to just prize themselves new ones in an instant. --hallu

I wanted to highlight what some of those outside the game think of our little game of spaceships. CNET gave a 3 star (of 5) review a couple of years ago. http://download.cnet...4-10261821.html The text of the review has nothing that would entice anyone to play imo (except the fact that it's free). Some quotes from the review: And here's a user review from someone who tried it: [/color]Now clearly the CNET ppl didn't try for very long, but they spell out in clear terms why they gave up. Newbs need to get some kills. The difference in skill levels was clear to these people, but they did not see any fun in trying to climb up that learning curve. We need to give new(er) players a place where they can have fun (kill something) without getting squashed like a bug and then trash talked. Newbs won't know they're in newb land and won't care if they have some fun. By the time they figure out they're only playing other newbs, they are ready to move up a notch. No, it's not the same -- now there are only "merciless veteran players" in all of the zones, and that's a problem. --hallu

People are revamping the ssgn site and they'd like an updated zone description. Marketing materials always can be improved, so I'm soliciting community input. Here's the page it will go on: http://www.ssgn.net/flared/zoneinformation.php Here's the current description on the Chaos Site: Elevator Speeches are a fun challenge! Suggestions? --hallu

First, thanks for posting, everyone. It's good to have a civil discussion of the issues in depth. The situation of few/no players is a bad one and I'm very concerned. fresh speculates that it's the greening that is discouraging people from playing. I'm skeptical that it is a significant factor... Immediate play and greening are topics of interest though. First some facts: -- The number of greens, green dispersion, has been dynamically adjusted since 2000-1 along with the freqsize. There are wildly more greens than SVS settings. Polix suggested dynamically changing Initial Bty along with freqsize -- it could be added. -- Nude is right that you almost always get a full ship except for max nrg (the biggest reason to green), x, and aw. Toy amounts are random. Yupa said "If they haven't been fully greened, then they were at least incredibly well greened compared to classic Chaos." which is correct. -- When Jeff et al were actively working on ss, settings changed _very_ frequently and for the most part the general population was not consulted nor informed. Settings have continued to change since Chaos became player run, albeit more slowly, and there have been very few changes in recent years (the shark being the notable exception). The population has always been informed of any permanent changes. The cumlative changes are mostly "none to tiny" but some of the changes are hugely different -- like the two points above. -- Yupa said, "They already have population-based on-the-fly adjustment, and it doesn't work. For that matter it hasn't worked in any zone that has implemented it," When I first did Chaos-Bot with dynamic freq and green adjustments, Chaos had a very significant population increase and dynamic adjustments worked here quite well for 10 yrs. Polix points out that when Yupa was playing Chaos, Chaos-Bot had already been dynamically altering these settings for years. -- Under passplay the initial bty did get raised from 30 to 50 (narrowing the difference even more between Chaos and Alpha). -- Originally, greening was part of the penalty for dying. When you die, you are weaker and need to green for a few minutes to get back to a full strength ship, so -- don't die! As Yupa implies, with the initial settings and huge number of greens available today, it's not much of a penalty, and imo has significantly altered the game design consequences of Chaos. Dying used to mean something -- now it means little -- you have a very good chance of immediately getting a ship that's good enough to fight with. -- DZ had full ship spawns as fresh suggests, and yet they were losing population and merged into Chaos many years ago. League pub had full ship spawns, yet one of the driving factors of League merging into Chaos was that League Pub was losing players. Btw, I loved DZ and played it often. -- There are strong arguments for both leaving settings as they are/were and going forward. This controversy is an old one, and not everyone will be pleased by whatever is done. I have some radical ideas for changes, but I'm very much worried about it 'not being Chaos anymore.' Yupa and others already feel this way -- with good reason really -- the vast majority of settings are very close to/unchanged from SVS settings, but a few are very different (like greens) and substantially alter the game dynamics. -- All zones are losing players, including Trench. Chaos still actually has about the same percentage of players that it has had over the last years (about 10%) -- that doesn't make the number of players we have ok. There are many factors that have influenced the population flucuations over the years, but I think greens and greening has been a minor factor. No possible change in green settings is going to get very many people out of spec (or out of pracs, or out of TW) and playing in Chaos. I think Camel hit the nail on the head -- the fundamental problem is retaining new players. Why do new players not stay? Basically, because getting killed over and over by multi-year vet players is no fun. The problem lies in the maturation cycle of the game (and recurs in many settings) -- Chaos always was an intermediate zone and hostile to new players -- early on, however there was Alpha. After Alpha, there was EG and TW where newbs could get some kills and figure out the basics. Now, there is no "Alpha" at all. TW is suffering from the same problem now -- too high a percentage of experienced players -- they too are not keeping new players now (I've heard 99% loss rate there recently). In a sports program, you separate players by ability level. Put an advanced player with a beginner and neither player has fun or learns much -- only a teacher-student relationship is viable for that situation (and most advanced players really aren't teachers and don't want to be). Chaos historically has been an intermediate level zone. Newbs did not belong there. Chaos' players are even stronger now (overall), and newbs still do not belong there. Alpha had a point limit of 5000 which discouraged players from staying -- only lamers would stay by getting a new nick. The removal of the point limit was a bad thing imo -- that is when alpha ceased function as a place for newbs to learn by playing other newbs. The only new players we get are people who are very experienced from other zones (like EG or TW [though they have a huge learning curve to overcome]), or brave souls who are brought here by a friend who helps them start to get up the learning curve to compete (a very high percentage of new players without friends will not talk, and leave after going somewhere between 0-3 and 1-10). League players are not going to play in Chaos because of the stigma of being killed by lowly Chaos Players. Many of the League players that do play Chaos avoid engaging other league players -- a death in Chaos is a bad thing no matter who they die to since it's perceived as "Intermediate" and not as "Open/All levels" (which is would be better -- not sure if that's possible though). I think the key for Subspace going forward would be to 'force' new players, all new players, to play each other -- create a new Alpha. This means routing new players to a single arena/zone, preferably with teachers (NOT grief players, mine reppers, cloakers etc. that enjoy easy kills on newbs/weak players). In this arena, or better yet, series of arenas, you learn the skills needed to compete in SVS (the most complex and deep form of the game) in an appropriate sequence. Flying first; then shooting; then dodging/prox; then energy management; then repelling; then x radar. That's the minimum set to start to compete in Chaos. This is both a very old idea (I kicked around the multiple learning arenas back in the early 2000s) and a new idea (get all the zones to sign on to forcing newbs away until they learn the ropes -- not sure about how willingly others would do this thing). I know this is not a very satisfactory post, but it's one current line of thinking I've been having. I am not averse to doing experiments, and having a DZ day/time and a Classic SVS day/time is something I'd definitely like to do as "In Chaos" events (i.e. won't count toward Reset Winners, but takes place in Chaos). So trying out fresh's idea is doable. --hallu P.S. What is this "chaos pub" of which you speak? I don't know about you, but I play Chaos; or sometimes I call it Chaos Zone.

iFrame attack can be used for many purposes, but probably financial ones: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/031308-hackers-launch-massive-iframe.html I would not trust that IP location. FTP is a good question -- also there are exploits that look for commonly used FTP progs that store the pw and look there: http://www.thepicky.com/internet/how-hackers-viruses-steal-ftp-passwords/ That pw in a cookie somewhere? pw was obtained either by your machine being compromised in some way or by the pw being intercepted (e.g. clear text through a compromised router [ftp] or a man in the middle attack) or by password storage location being compromised (doubtful) -- other thoughts? --hallu

Scientific testing usually requires at least a single blind design. User bias can be a huge issue for the acquisition of valid data. For example, you erroneously think the flag currently has a downgrade, and so your behavior changes based on what you think is going on, or what you think the effect will be, rather than what is actually going on. I agree that it would be nice for players to be able to drop a flag if they wish -- better yet to not even pick up the flag in the first place if they wanted that. Chaos has had a flag since about 2000 when a rabbit flag was added. The current Jackpot flags have even less effect since they don't alter game play at all. There are many ideas being considered to try and keep more new players in the game long enough for them to start to understand the complexity and depth of our apparently simple little game. If anyone has some specific ideas on that, please post them. --hallu

Truth is that I thought the settings file I used to restore to the previous settings had that reset to the previous value, so thanks for pointing that out in the zone in your typical, diplomatic manner. I'm leaving it at one minute (instead of two) for now to reduce mine stacking a bit since it is anti-newb. I will start another thread on the topic of settings in general. Next Saturday we're going to have RR-SVS settings (retail release standard vie settings) for a day. That should be interesting. --hallu

Upgrades were obvious -- guns and bombs +1 samgunn was right -- speed was cut by 300 when carrying a flag. Even with the flag, Javs would were still noticeably faster than other ships. 20 noticed another downgrade in that it cost 25% more to fire weapons. That was it -- no other changes. Experiments and user testing need to be done to determine actual impact of settings changes rather than speculation of what they might do to game play. This test showed that the downgrades were a little too strong, but not much. btw, flags are back to normal Jackpot settings -- i.e. no upgrades/downgrades -- the reward of jp flags is to win the flag point jackpot via your freq gaining all 8 flags at once. The JP flag game after MoC last week was a good success -- I'd like to run this regularly if possible. --hallu

Wondering how ppl like the current version of the rabbit flag... It has upgrades (obvious) and downgrades (maybe not so obvious, but potent). Any guesses on what the downgrades are? --hallu

In a unique MoC finish, mutli-time champion BurstMonsta, using a lanc, won in a final duel with Captor after a very fun third round in which Legatus got trapped in a tube, and RenderGod lost a close gun battle with BurstMonsta. Immediately following MoC was a big, high stakes Jackpot game. Lots of teams trying to win -- lots of fun. What did you think? Big Winners were: RenderGod a portishead remix nivaG 20 who won the Jackpot of 48342 flag points Legacy Captor nillerk kattster who won the Jackpot of 58429 flag points samgunn Cozmic Jetta TDI Turret Gunner who won the Jackpot of 50833 flag points Next MoC will be Saturday April 2nd at 5pm ET! Everyone welcome! --hallu

Master of Chaos Sat Mar 5 at 5pm ET in Chaos/League SVS zone Last month, mindriot wrought mental disturbances on the other pilots to win his first Master of Chaos title. Can he do it again? Since 1998 the top pilots have vied for the title of Master of Chaos! Are you up to the challenge? All players welcome! Update: In a unique MoC finish, mutli-time champion BurstMonsta, using a lanc, won in a final duel with Captor after a very fun third round in which Legatus got trapped in a tube, and RenderGod lost a close gun battle with BurstMonsta. Next MoC will be Saturday April 2nd at 5pm ET! Everyone welcome!

This Saturday March 5th at 5pm ET -- Master of Chaos All pilots are welcome to play and see if they can pass the test to wear the crown of MoC! Can mindriot defend his Master of Chaos title??? Spread the word!

Thanks for the input everyone -- here and in the zone too of course. Obviously a mix of opinions here. Overall I think the map was pretty well received. It has excellent flow imo. We'll probably continue with the middle ground here of new maps every so often... Nude's idea is interesting, but I wish that putting up a new map in Chaos wouldn't recycle the entire zone. The idea of having maps in for a single weekend (fri morning - mon morning) is also a possibility. No new votes for a week (I had only intended to keep it open for the reset), so I'll closing the poll in a couple of days. --hallu

What is this 'outside' of which you speak? --hallu

Congrats! Inspired by the bottom seed Packers no doubt http://forums.ssgn.net/public/style_emoticons/default/drinks.gif --hallu

What's your opinion? Add your comments below... --hallu

Not quite right: So if you had 100 bty, you get reprized to 100 or less (bot doesn't know your exact bty for sure); if you had 1000 bty, you get reprized to 1000 or a bit less. So if you have high bty and have run out of toys, winning the flag game is a good strategy -- one that a number of players/teams have been employing for quite a while. The server is hard coded to reset bty when you win the flag game. This is supposed to be a disadvantage when you win the flag game -- and it is if your start bty is 0 (like it was in the real Jackpot zone) or something very low, and bty hunting is not a factor. But in Chaos bty hunting is a big factor. In general, people like going after high bty targets, not negs. So it's a double win -- the team the wins the game gets specials refreshed (not always a good thing but usually!); everyone else gets to keep going for the high bty targets. Just be careful if the high bty guy you're fighting suddenly wins the flag game -- odds are he got a full charge as one of his re-greens --hallu

Today! Saturday Feb 5, at 5pm ET -- Master of Chaos!!! One of the toughest and oldest competitions in Subspace!! Can Shiku defend his title? And speaking of TOUGH - the best pilots in Subspace are in Pro League, and the best teams of the best pilots play THIS SUNDAY at 3pm ET in the PRO LEAGUE FINALS. Defending Pro League Champs, The Dark face off against Outlaws. At the same time in the Amateur League Finals, it's Happy Mob vs. Morph. This top quality action can only be found in Chaos/League SVS zone. Can you compete with the best?