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Ashtar -> RE: The possibilty of manipulation (1/15/2008 3:15:11 PM)
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I am sorry to insist, but THERE ARE ways to avoid much of the cheating with pre-generated random numbers and to beat much of the "reloading and doing things in a different order" stuff. Here it is my proposal:
1a. Combat phase - Non trivial combat. Simple way of doing it:
a) The attacker choses his chits and sends to the defender.
b) The defender choses his cheats and the program generates the needed die rolls. None of them are shown (so no reload is possible), and
the file is sent back to the attacker.
c) Results of the first turn are shown to the attacker, he decides about guard commitment and sends back to the defender.
d) The defender receives, check for first turn results and decides about guard commitment. Needed die rolls are secretly generated
and stuff his sent back to attacker...
Go on until the end of the combat. No way of cheating here, large battles are often the crucial and more important ones in a game
and are now secured. Moreover, no more file exchanges then now are required.
1b. Combat phase - Trivial combat and assaults. Random numbers (different from the ones used in foraging duing the land phase) are
pre-generated during the previous player land turn (or naval phase if this is the first turn of land phase).
True, wicked players can alter the order of assaults and trivial battles to look for the most convenient die distribution, but still
these are generally non-decisive gains. Moreover, if you do not trust your opponent, do not give pre-assigned order to single corps.
Otherwise, the order in which assaults and trivial combat are taken can be fixed (by ascending area number, for instance) to avoid
cheating. It is a small price to pay (order of larger combats need not to be fixed) to avoid cheating.
2. Naval phase. This is the most delicate one. Intercept rolls and naval battle rolls here. The player playing the previous
turn pre-generates two different sets of random number, one for interception and one for combat. This way there is often
not so much room for reloading and rearranging order. Still, if you still do not trust the French from trying every turn
to beat GB blockade and invade, only to sistematically cancel his move when his ships are sunk, introduce a Naval combat phase.
It will not take too much time, just a single extra file exchange is needed per battle (and naval battle are much rarer then land one).
Procedure: attacker send out his naval battle file, defender generates the needed die number without seeing them, the file is
sent back to attacker and combat is resolved. Easy, fast and bullet proof.
3. Land phase. Only rolls here are foraging ones. Lets have your foraging rolls be pre-generated
by the player playing the previous turn. Of course, if you do not like the outcome of foraging
you can change their order or decide to pay for supply. This is (almost) unavoidable, but
advantages from this kind of cheating are at best mild.
4. Diplomacy and Economic phase: rolls here are not of extreme importance (influencing minors,
spanish gold, piracy...), but they can be pre-generated for the entire phase when the last
player playing the previous phase ends his turn. This will avoid reloading issues.
It is long to explain in detail, but as you can see, there are really no programming issues here. I guess it is pretty easy to implement.
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