TOPIC:

Greetings everyone!
I don't play on this server often, but every once in a while I get the urge to play on-line and used to do so on your servers. I am indeed grateful that people are indeed spending their free time running things like this, including the admins. However, today I had the absolute worst experience ever with an admin. Shortly this is what happened:

I spent the greater part of the afternoon (about 4 hours off and on) on one of your servers creating a big network. I'm not one to care much for a win or the points, but I enjoy making an efficient network where most of the work is in efficient stations, crossings and mergers. Needless to say a lot of effort had gone into my network and with the top player only at like 10 % I was confident I could play with the network more well into the evening. The network was obviously big already with a 4 track corrider across the map and branched off resource deliveries and gathering tracks on both sides.
Then however around 16:00 I get the offer to buy a bankrupt company. And, in hindsight most likely my mistake, I bought the company. I like buying companies and seeing what they have, sometimes stumbling upon a nice little network that I can implement in my own. I look at my new prize and it's obviously useless (usually is but hey). The company consisted of a steam age track with a steam train bringing goods from an oil refinery to a 300'ish population town about 30 squares away. The train was full and naturally fruitlessly driving it's full goods carts back and forth due to the town not accepting goods. The oil refinery however was being supplied by another player and the goods taken out by that same player. I figured however, this thing has been running for ages, it's not doing anything and I need to take a piss and do something, I'll see what to make of this after that.
Then 10 minutes later I return to find my entire company reset. Everything deleted and gone. I received no visible warning or query nothing. It appears that the player who I was “leeching goods from” placed a sign, the admin found I was leeching goods and reset the entire company. In short he reset a huge well thought out company over 1 tiny just bought line that ran a useless goods train back and forth.
Now I understand that there is no way for an admin to see that I just recently purchased the company with the goods line. And I know that in the strictest sense I had a line with somewhere remotely (if the town somehow magically grew) the potential to steal secondary goods. However it was at the present a useless non functional line, that was absolutely of no harm to anyone other than my profits.
My advice for the admins here is to please think about everything and possibly try to make a judging of if a player is truly a troll or not. Upon complaining to the admin in chat however I was informed that “Any rule breaker is immediately reset”. Anyone who would've looked closely at the line or my company could've seen that I had no serious intent of stealing anything from anyone. Yet the admin felt it was in everyone's best interest to destroy the hours of work I had on the network and future hours of fun I would've had on it over one non-functional line.
I for one have been very turned off with this type of admin decisions. Other solutions in my eyes would've been:
Try and contact me for a reasonable time notifying me of the line that is “in offense”
As admin join my company and destroy the line, or the station “in offense”
Ignore the useless line since it's not delivering goods at all and never will
Both of these options would've resulted in the grave offense cleared and everyone happily playing on. The current solution of just resetting the company results in a grumpy me that is doubting if I should be on your servers again with these black-and-white admin decisions.
Worst part of it all was that after complaining on chat to the admin there was not a single thing even remotely towards “That was not handy” said. The admin was certain of his own good rights and that he handled the situation perfectly. Which is exactly what makes me hesitant to join again.

Now I realize this is most likely a useless wall of text since the admin in question is most likely the only one to respond here anyhow. Just to be clear I have no grudge or hate for you whatsoever mister admin, I respect all the free time you spend on this. In this case however a little humanity in the decision would've been very appropriate and I dearly hope you will do so in future likewise cases.

TurboTukker

TurboTukker wrote: However it was at the present a useless non functional line, that was absolutely of no harm to anyone other than my profits.

That's not true. Just having a station is enough to take significant amount of produced goods (that will quickly disappear on your station because of bad rating). So I'd guess you were taking about 20-30% of entire factory production.

UPD. removed part of message, apparently I misread the irc logs, sorry ^^

First of all thank you dP for taking the time to read through the text wall and irc logs and respond. I have no idea what you edited out so nothing to say sorry about there.
You are however very wrong in your calculations of the amount of goods the station would take. The calculation for this is:

For two possible stations the calculation is more complex. First the rating in points of station 2 is divided by 2 for the further local calculations. The amount available to station 1 is calculated as follows: (station_rating_in_points1 * (amount + 1)) / (station_rating_in_points1 + station_rating_in_points2); for similar ratings this is about 2/3 of the production, it increases for larger differences. The result is subject to the same calculation as in the single station case. This is delivered to station 1. If station 1 doesn't get the full amount available to it then that part won't be transported at all. The remaining amount of the production, if any, is subject to the same calculation as in the single station case and delivered to station 2.

As found here: wiki.openttd.org/Game_mechanics#Cargo_delivery_to_stations
Long story short, my station most likely had a rating of 0 to 40 since it had a slow arse steam train not picking up any goods plodding back and forth. The only rating received would’ve been from the goods present in the station due to goods deterioration. Now there is no way to calculate max deterioration, cause for the rating to be 40 the station has to lose 601 goods in 2,5 days (it’s entire stock). I rather doubt it deteriorates so quickly.
Assuming the other guy had a max rating, which he likely had. I would receive 0 – 13 % of the goods. With most likely the lower end of that range due to deterioration not going that fast. So I’d guess around 0-5%.
For me to receive 33% of the goods my station would need equal rating to the top station. So my station most likely took a VERY minimal amount of goods. Most certainly nowhere near the 20-30% you claim.
All of this is however beside the main point. Is there in the future any possibility for some more humanity and grey area in decisions made by the admin? The attitude of “you broke a rule, company reset, don’t whine I’m an admin” will only serve to scare off players.

Edit: Some miscalculations in there.. not anymore.. I think

I'll give out the reasons why your company could've been resetted. Keep in mind, they are still humans after all.
1. The admin was in a bad mood.
2. The admin was busy.
3. The admin had enough of rulebreakers that day and was (however you kindly say mad, English is my second language )
4. They were tired.
I have no idea why they didn't take the time to actually join your company and then destroy the line or something else rather than resseting.
5. You broke some other rules.

It wasn't me, and i didn't see your company, so i can't say much about this case. However, there is a few things:

"Upon complaining to the admin in chat however I was informed that “Any rule breaker is immediately reset”
This is not true, and no admin would say this...

Admins always try to contact the player that's breaking the rules, if the player doesn't respond, the company will get locked (not deleted).
If you didn't break any other rules, it's likely that the admin would've simply deleted the station (the one at the oil refinery in this case) and put a sign up with the rule number in it.

I for one only delete entire companies if the owner doesn't respond and he or she is breaking rules on a much larger scale (or if it's just a tiny company with a few small lines that break rules). Another reason would be if the player is being uncooperative (throwing insults, not listening, stuff like that), although this would most certainly involve a (temp)ban aswell.

@DumbBuilder:
Indeed either of those may have been the reason for the harsh behavior. And as I said I realize an admin spends his free-time here and is only human. However this admin, even upon confronting him maintained that he did nothing wrong, as if he’d do it again straight away. If he’d said then “Sorry man, totally my bad! I thought it was just the one line, stupid of me this was too harsh sorry!” I would’ve been fine with hit. But I did not even remotely get a sense that this was anywhere in the range of replies from the admin. He kept stating he was in his rights, and a rulebreakers company gets reset.

@Hawky:
I know it wasn’t you and I know who it was, but I’d rather not make this too personal on here. First of all let me say I’m very glad there is an admin on the server with some grey solutions and a human side to him, that’s hopeful!

"Upon complaining to the admin in chat however I was informed that “Any rule breaker is immediately reset”
This is not true, and no admin would say this...

I didn’t make screenshots of anything, I probably should’ve. Please let the guy who watched the IRC logs back look it up then. But I am 100 % certain that the admin said something like “I always reset the company of all rulebreakers” or something along those lines. There was no grey there, just reset company or nothing.

Admins always try to contact the player that's breaking the rules, if the player doesn't respond, the company will get locked (not deleted).

Upon returning to a reset company I looked back in the console to see if I could find any warnings but I saw nothing, not by the player nor by the admin. I saw no “Pink are you there?” or anything whatsoever. The blue player popped down a sign and asked “Is this allowed?” or something along those lines. The admin said it wasn’t and reset the company. Simple as that really. I repeat again no communication was had with me at all!

If you didn't break any other rules, it's likely that the admin would've simply deleted the station (the one at the oil refinery in this case) and put a sign up with the rule number in it.

I to my knowledge didn’t break any other rules and certainly didn’t break any other rules willingly. Hell I didn’t even break this one willingly. I was also in the chat afterwards not informed of any other rule I would’ve broken by the admin, just the useless station leeching. And as I stated before, my station was not just deleted nor a sign put up there, my entire company was reset.

I for one only delete entire companies if the owner doesn't respond and he or she is breaking rules on a much larger scale (or if it's just a tiny company with a few small lines that break rules). Another reason would be if the player is being uncooperative (throwing insults, not listening, stuff like that), although this would most certainly involve a (temp)ban aswell.

Which seems like a very reasonable way of acting, but once again this admin 100 % didn’t act even vaguely like this. Nor did he come back on his reset when confronted with it afterwards. Before the reset I didn’t have any communication with anyone so I couldn’t be non-cooperative and I wasn’t breaking the rules large scale. Once again I’m absolutely dumbfounded why this was done to me hence my post.
Admittedly I did call the admin something along the lines of a grumpy idiot or some such in the chat afterwards, receiving a kick, but that was well into the chat where the admin just went “I always do that, I did fine”. And obviously that rather annoyed me, my apologies for the (minor) outburst there.
Hawky your approach sounds reasonable and fair and I wish I would’ve received just that treatment! Could someone please contact the admin and let him know that that is the correct treatment? Cause he clearly doesn’t feel like it is.