TOPIC:

Hi,

No matter how many times I ask or report to admins, people keep on breaking the rules in the Citybuilder server - it seems like nobody is ever interested in following the proper rules any more. Time after time I see station spreading and going round corners in towns, and people just ignore it when it is brought up.

Is there anything that can be done about this or is it something that will keep on making it pointless to even bother playing on that server?

Hi, thanks for pointing out this issue. The problem appears to be two-fold in nature.

Firstly we lack adequate admin coverage of all our servers. As you are probably aware during certain times on the day. This can be solved partly by recruiting more people. However their availability to perform admin functions fluctuate quite siginificantly over time.

Secondly and probably more important is that most players joining our servers appear to be new instead of returning players. These players are ignoring admins and are incapable of even looking at the rule list that can be found ingame, on the forum and on our wiki. To overcome this issue for fair play on the servers, a large amount of company resets will be performed on rule breaking players! Followed by banning. The behaviour on server 10 citybuilder is just becoming unacceptable!

cxc
Server Admin

My guess would you to inspire yourself about how we used to manage things on Luukland's. Yes it wasn't perfect but we found a way to have both an enjoyable and manageable environment to play.

1) inside claimed town, no rules apply: since rules are there to prevent players from getting advantages over others (station spread), or prevent other players of enjoying their game, there is a fairly small advantage gain by using spreading. Blocking other player into claimed town ?? well that other player shouldn't be there so ...

Station spread is useful to avoid having huge stations into the city center, slowing down its growth. It has small impact on smaller town goal (< 10k population) but when we'll reach 20-30-60k .. it will have a huge impact. (You may have to reduce the station spread setting to the maximum train length value since there is no point having station bigger than trains)

2) no usused roads... espescially around .:city:. so that competition can get into the pax/mail/valuable markets. Some players tend to build 1 train station then have a few buses transfering into it and build big road grid around the town, hence preventing anybody to get there with trains (bus + transfer which is time consuming and inneficient)

3) no competition with yourself (rating push and friends cheats), for obvious reasons, that should actually be added into your rule list.

4) loading under sign: well that's if station spread is allowed on the server ... only to prevent station name spread abuses (economic cheat).

Also, lowering the loan to 400-500k so games starts get harder ... and activate Fund new buildings in cities

To some extend, I guess the goal won't keep to 6k which is quite low, concidering we used to grow 20-30k towns solo in 3 hours in sub-tropical. To give more flexibility in the town's layout management up to the optimal structure that got developed over the years on LL and now Novapolis (and maybe attract more of those players here,).

</grain of salt>

Hi Blup and Thankyou for your comments regarding the rules on Server 10 (CB)

1. When i am doing admin work on the above mentioned server, I do not look @ peoples home towns, as this has no effect on how other players play.

1a. Other people cannot build in claimed towns, it automatically gets removed.

1b. It is well known that whilst playing our version of CB that transferring goods,food,water from outside of the home town to inside is one of the best ways of constantly hitting monthly targets. Watch some of the better players that play the server and you will see.

2. When this happens i know it annoys a lot of players. But there is a work around, Ask the other player to remove *parts* of the road so you can put a Train Station near to the city. If that doesnt work You have no choice but to put the station on the outside of the city and transfer from inside to the station.

3. I rarely see anyone competing with themselves for resources.

4. station spread Is NOT allowed on our servers. See rule 12 for an explanation.

5. Why activate fund buildings? that just makes it easier, we are trying to keep this competitive and fun.

5a. The loan i agree with should be made lower 400k i agree with.

The goal is at 6k for test reasons Hence TEST SERVER. 20-30k towns are achieved as ive seen for myself by breaking half of the rules we have, Yes ive played on nova and seen *the big boys* play.

Our system is different and that is a good thing, Its nice to have different variations of things and gives a wider choice to players of all types.

Comments are always welcome.

Regs

HS

1) I find that funny comming from you. Wasn't you who called for ST about my spread abuse on my town ? If not, accept my appology for confusing but it does not change the fact that there is a grey area right there that should be discussed among moderators. Consistency about rule enforcement should be more ... consistent.

1a) you can build statues (-1 house)

1b) no comment

3) I guess you know much about ottd internals. Rule #3:
- Sabotaging other players to prevent them from accessing resources
- Increasing the station/town rating
Self-competition does both. It increases the rating of both station, and prevent a 3rd stations to compete on the station. You don't want me to start pasting code. (hint: station_cmd.cpp function MoveGoodsToStation())

4) You meant rule #3. And inside town, you do not enforce rules so... no point

If you do what you say you do, to quote:

1. When i am doing admin work on the above mentioned server, I do not look @ peoples home
towns, as this has no effect on how other players play.

Growing 20k/+ town would be possible without breaking rules... since no rules apply into claimed area.

What I am proposing is not about creating a new novapolis. What I am saying is that up to a certain level, some addaptation has to be made. On LL and Nova, we pushed the concept of citybuilding to the degree of science and studied the code and algorithms, tested concepts and theories and layouts and ... With time, players will ask for these changes; some of which are already proposed by Aphid.

Greetings,

I agree with the rules, however I must admit in some conditions I do things wich im not sure if its breakin the rule or not.

for example, in a city where the streets were made rather messy, (only where 1 lenght straights) I build a 1 bus station tile and 1 cargo tile. wich were on 2 ways of a corsroad, thus making it 1 station with 2 types... i'm not sure if this is also wrong, or only if both are the same type.

secondly, while building a large city, it asked for a resource, I think it was goods, but none of my stations could actually deliver this. only deeper into the city this could be delivered... I therefore did add a short track paralell to my station on city side to be allowed to deliver this.. as there was no proper place to build a station at that time that could deliver it.

I do not wish to intentionally break rules, but it remains difficult to know exactly where and when what is allowed. as sometimes it is needid.