ANN - Ghost Ships and Magic Treasure!

[Spaceman Thrax]

Just now, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Are we just brushing past the Akuro's blackmail attempt as well?

 

Seems that way.

 

Honestly what I'm most concerned about is that this was apparently brought up to Alex a month ago and he didn't do his due diligence then.

[Filmore]

Just now, Spaceman Thrax said:

Seems that way.

 

Honestly what I'm most concerned about is that this was apparently brought up to Alex a month ago and he didn't do his due diligence then.

Seems like we might be needing another nation simulator to run off to. 

[Dio Brando]

5 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Are we just brushing past the Akuro's blackmail attempt as well?

 

I don’t like the practice, and really I would prefer that this had not occurred just because of the moral ambiguity in blackmailing an exploiter, but I’ve addressed at least part of this in the past few posts.

As for the general community, I do think we’re stuck up on the fact that $210bn of resources was generated. 

 

[Sisyphus]

9 minutes ago, Filmore said:

Update on Nova Riata

They've just made it so only their members can talk in their public channel. Some credit goes to @KillzBob for helping.

Must be hard for pooball not having anyone to talk to but himself. 

7 minutes ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Are we just brushing past the Akuro's blackmail attempt as well?

Yes.

[WISD0MTREE]

Damn, what a thread. Nice find, @Akuryo

14 hours ago, Malal said:

>inb4 55 day rollback

Nice to see morgan didn't fall off the horse after terradoxia and is back at it with the spawning

Bringing back memories of the good old days.

13 hours ago, Buorhann said:

You know, I understand the game is boring from time to time, but why do some players have to be utter shit lords to cheat in such a simple designed game?

You would have to be bored enough to play, intelligent enough to cheat, and yet still bad enough to need to cheat. Quite a rare combination.

9 hours ago, Noctis Anarch Caelum said:

Some alliances will have their banker jump into vacation to protect their resources from war & VC mode is the perfect way for a nation to disappear for a while. So I don’t think people coming out of VM & causing spikes would be that unlikely.

I wanna meet the alliance who has ~50% of all resources in Orbis. Theo/Keegoz/Horsecock, I'll be leaving KT within 24 hours of the time Noctis gives me the alliance name.

8 hours ago, Filmore said:

Sounds to me like every alliance now has a valid CB against Nova if @Alex doesn't do anything about it

Then everyone would have fake resources.

5 hours ago, Sketchy said:

By the end of this war we'll have probably burnt more wealth than the amount spawned into the game anyway. 

I doubt it.

4 hours ago, pooball said:

NR runs 100% taxes for any members who want to grow to city 20. This obviously brings in alot of money so that's how alot of nations have been able to grow faster then normal.

Them trades was done though because some people are web scrapping and managed to tell me exactly what was in my nation without spying me. Not all trades get logged on trade activity so I thought it would hide a % and give them false information on what's in my nation. I later found out that web scrapping wasn't to blame and that actually the person has api keys from most major alliances and knows exactly what's in each nation and alliance banks.

NR also didn't have a 10 billion loan to pay back we actually had less then 2 billion debt. We also didn't have orion money. 

Way better than NPO, I see. Even better than TEst's 100% tax days, which I must say is quite a feat, considering TEst was one of the most, if not the most, competent alliances in the game ever.

lol wut

This is next level stuff here.

3 hours ago, Micchan said:

inb4 Grather is Alex and he's trolling us 

I mean, IIRC, Sheepy is getting an econ degree. This could be some sort of simulation to see how the market reacts to magical resources entering.

3 hours ago, Frawley said:

I think a rollback is overkill, delete the cheaters and those who received the ultimate benefit, the game absorbed the resources and cash as a 'free market' does.

This appears accurate.

3 hours ago, Filmore said:

Alex and the mod team better come up with a solution and a fix fast. The more information I learn about this, the lower my trust and competence in them drops. If this was heavily abused by Nova Riata for months before we finally had enough proof to bring it to Alex's attention, even though he has access to all the resource numbers,

just imagine how many other nations or alliances are abusing this on a smaller scale.  

Alex and SS are the only 2 capable, not the entire mod team. Even then, I doubt SS knows enough about the game's code to effectively handle the situation.

I doubt many since nobody has reported the problem in the past. People have reported ways to duplicate money to Alex in the past. Someone would've likely done that now if it was easy to find.

3 hours ago, pooball said:

People still don't get it.  Not once has NR bank had 206 billion in cash/rss. I've not once said the people didn't cheat. What I'm saying is we didn't know where it was all coming from and so reported it myself. Clearly its wrong and I'm waiting for Alex to reply so I ca. Give more details. 

"There are no accounting issues, no trading issues, no reserve issues, no previously unknown problem issues." -Kenneth Lay

Edited May 31, 2019 by WISD0MTREE
My bad, Inst

[Shadowthrone]

Jealous of @pooballS superior 100/100. Clearly gotta upgrade roq to pooball.

[WISD0MTREE]

21 minutes ago, Shadowthrone said:

Jealous of @pooballS superior 100/100.

You're right. I would like to redact my previous comments. Furthermore, I grant Nova Rita the title of "Politics and War's Most Innovative Alliance" for their advanced accounting techniques and outstanding ethics.

[Kelsi]

Meanwhile at ports across Orbis.

Embargo Time!!!

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Are we just brushing past the Akuro's blackmail attempt as well?

 

While i've stated i don't feel bad about doing that for various reasons, i do understand the morality is ultimately irrelevant. 

Good or bad or neither extorting a cheater may be, it was a clear display of my continued need to develop greater self control. If a time existed to do such a thing in this situation i had certainly picked the wrong one, one of the worst ones.

Still think he deserves it, but he should have gotten his 'trial' as it were before any such behavior from anyone.

[Lu Xun]

I think we're all out of upvotes, so sorry for latecomers that can't get upvoted any more.

[Utter Nutter]

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Are we just brushing past the Akuro's blackmail attempt as well?

 

I really hope not. Wanting to benefit from this glitch is also exploiting.

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

Just now, Seb said:

I really hope not. Wanting to benefit from this glitch is also exploiting.

My problem with this line of logic is that it's too late for that.

If benefit and profit from an exploit is unavoidable (something we're about 75 billion lightyears beyond, mind you) i'd argue the world would be served best if as little of that profit reached the exploiters and instead reached the people they were utilizing these cheats against. 

Though i suppose with the scale, that would be literally everyone, and so if done properly it would have been sent in bits and pieces to everyone.

 

Deletion of these resources would be best for the game, but i honestly don't expect alex to go tracking all of it, deleting it, compensating players so they don't riot over the unfairness, just to restore balance the best way. And a rollback of a month minimum, or even two, is not the greatest approach ever itself.

[War Hawk]

pooball:

[TheRebelMan]

 A lot of people have been talking on how NR grew to be so big. 
But if you really look at them, apart from a select few, it just seems like NR spammed their members with cities to c10 or something. They have absolutely no middle tier, which, while it makes them look big, is really inexpensive. Which would make sense on how they grew so quickly without using a cheat. Not sayin they cheated or that they didn't. That is up to Alex to decide. But I think a few people overlooked that here. 

Edited May 31, 2019 by TheRebelMan

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

2 minutes ago, TheRebelMan said:

 A lot of people have been talking on how NR grew to be so big. 
But if you really look at them, apart from a select few, it just seems like NR spammed their members with cities to c10 or something. They have absolutely no middle tier, which, while it makes them look big, is really inexpensive. Which would make sense on how they grew so quickly without using a cheat. Not sayin they cheated. That is up to Alex to decide. But I think a few people overlooked that here. 

It costs approximately 150mn per nation to go from 5 cities with 1000/1000 to 10 cities, all 1500/1500 with commerce builds, a basic MMR, etc.

That's not a whole lot, even to my alliance 150m isnt that much, it's not until we're looking at tossing out 4, or 5 or more of these things. Nova's got how many between the 10-13 area, though?
I mean it was a 70-some-ought man AA before Pantheon and whatnot, that's alota money.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Akuryo

[TheRebelMan]

4 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

It costs approximately 150mn per nation to go from 5 cities with 1000/1000 to 10 cities, all 1500/1500 with commerce builds, a basic MMR, etc.

That's a whole lot, even to my alliance 150m isnt that much, it's not until we're looking at tossing out 4, or 5 or more of these things. Nova's got how many between the 10-13 area, though?
I mean it was a 70-some-ought man AA before Pantheon and whatnot, that's alota money.

Factor in raiding, alliance taxes, existing members from when the war ended, etc, and that just cuts it down A LOT. 

[Lu Xun]

Over, say, 40 nations that only comes out to a paltry 6 billion. The biggest evidence has to do with the nation growth of senior government, i.e, the total bill would have been closer to 20 bn once NR's senior government is included and considered.

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

Just now, TheRebelMan said:

Factor in raiding, alliance taxes, existing members from when the war ended, etc, and that just cuts it down A LOT. 

If you assume Nova had or allowed them to raid that high before throwing cities, yes. Most new players if given the option though won't have the dedication to get good enough at raiding to manage it before they're 30 days old.

Errr, you realize nova was like, 23 people the day Knightfall ended, right? I'll admit they nearly doubled in size over the next month after KF or so, but it was 1/3 of what i'm talking about. I remember it being a lot of smaller nations too, because at the time i kept a hawk eyes on the alliances around me, and seeing them suddenly double in size was pretty noticeable.

Alliance taxes, i mean i'm talking grants here, so it's all taxes. RSK ran 100/0, this merge thing does 70/70, it's not a libertarian paradise, but doing multiples at once is still gonna bite the bank hard,and we're talking 5 or 6 of them, not 2-dozen plus. 
Much of Nova is also between 100-200 days seniority, and i would imagine if i checked all of them, many aren't much older than that either. There's alot of new nations that joined after KF.
 

 

Sure, it's not necessarily the result of exploitation, but considering how on-the-verge of death they were, with the largest nations being c15, that cost is not inconsiderable.

[Utter Nutter]

23 minutes ago, Akuryo said:

My problem with this line of logic is that it's too late for that.

If benefit and profit from an exploit is unavoidable (something we're about 75 billion lightyears beyond, mind you) i'd argue the world would be served best if as little of that profit reached the exploiters and instead reached the people they were utilizing these cheats against. 

Though i suppose with the scale, that would be literally everyone, and so if done properly it would have been sent in bits and pieces to everyone.

 

Deletion of these resources would be best for the game, but i honestly don't expect alex to go tracking all of it, deleting it, compensating players so they don't riot over the unfairness, just to restore balance the best way. And a rollback of a month minimum, or even two, is not the greatest approach ever itself.

Bud, if you try to blackmail the person you think is the cheater into sharing part of his profits, that makes you an acomplice. How is that not guilty? You literally tried to exploit this bug by doing that.

If on the other hand you had just benefitted without knowing by just buying this resources, as you actually have, then no blame would fall on you.

Edited May 31, 2019 by Seb

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

Just now, Seb said:

Bud, if you try to blackmail the person you think is the cheater into sharing part of his profits, that makes you an acomplice. How is that not guilty? You literally tried to exploit this bug by doing that.

Because law and morality should not see in black and white. That's why juries exist and why context and intent matters. 

For example, Seb, if someone scammed Bernie Madoff and donated all the money to charities, would he be imprisoned? Sure, scams are illegal, but context and intent means the jury would almost certainly decide he was not guilty before the trial even began.

Pretending these are equal is laughably disingenuous and ignores context and intent. Those don't make me a good person in this scenario, not at all, they merely slap me into a gray area.

I won't write more praragraphs about this, I responded to Hope on page 1. I think it says all that needs to be said from me.

[Buorhann]

35 minutes ago, Seb said:

I really hope not. Wanting to benefit from this glitch is also exploiting.

But he didn’t.  The intention was there, but it did not follow through.

While crappy in of itself, it is not equal to the damages done by those who did actually exploit.

All it means is that Akuryo’s character is questionable.

[Utter Nutter]

1 minute ago, Akuryo said:

For example, Seb, if someone scammed Bernie Madoff and donated all the money to charities, would he be imprisoned? Sure, scams are illegal, but context and intent means the jury would almost certainly decide he was not guilty before the trial even began.

assuming Madoff is some rich dude... I would applaud that someone. But you are not Robin Hood Akuryo, and PW isn't a charitable enterprise. If you truly wanted to do good for the whole community you should have just come forth and told Alex before attempting to blackmail NR.

2 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

But he didn’t.  The intention was there, but it did not follow through.

While crappy in of itself, it is not equal to the damages done by those who did actually exploit.

All it means is that Akuryo’s character is questionable.

ok, maybe being the one to actually exploit the bug isn't as bad as being the one wanting to benefit from such exploits knowingly, but that makes him an acomplice of sorts.

anywayyyyy.............. I have a term exam to go to, don't burn PW before I come back!!!!!!!!! I want to watch the fireworks.

[Leftbehind]

4 minutes ago, Seb said:

assuming Madoff is some rich dude... I would applaud that someone. But you are not Robin Hood Akuryo, and PW isn't a charitable enterprise. If you truly wanted to do good for the whole community you should have just come forth and told Alex before attempting to blackmail NR.

I don't think anyone here believes Akuryo is a saint or what he done wasn't shady but with everyone trying to knit pick what he done is talking away from the real issue. Which is "did Pooball, NR by extension, use a bug to exploit the game?" And what needs to be done. 

[Zei-Sakura Alsainn]

10 minutes ago, Seb said:

assuming Madoff is some rich dude... I would applaud that someone. But you are not Robin Hood Akuryo, and PW isn't a charitable enterprise. If you truly wanted to do good for the whole community you should have just come forth and told Alex before attempting to blackmail NR.

ok, maybe being the one to actually exploit the bug isn't as bad as being the one wanting to benefit from such exploits knowingly, but that makes him an acomplice of sorts.

anywayyyyy.............. I have a term exam to go to, don't burn PW before I come back!!!!!!!!! I want to watch the fireworks.

Madoff ran the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the United States. The hypothetical I mentioned did not occur, though.

Your issue then is the order the events took place in? You know I did already cover that it was weak of me not to restrain myself until after Alex had come in, in my response to SRD.

Seriously last post on this though, I think most people already knew I was a bit of a shady person to begin with, this isn't news.

[Utter Nutter]

Just now, Akuryo said:

Madoff ran the largest Ponzi scheme in the history of the United States. The hypothetical I mentioned did not occur, though.

Your issue then is the order the events took place in? You know I did already cover that it was weak of me not to restrain myself until after Alex had come in, in my response to SRD.

Seriously last post on this though, I think most people already knew I was a bit of a shady person to begin with, this isn't news.

then we agree that it was weak of you not to restrain to the blackmail and that you should have actually posted before the plot came to light and not after the fact  .

And I must have missed that post of yours I guess. Too many pages.

now seriously, good bye.