Feature, Bug or cheat? Survey

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Number of daily responses
These are the results from a survey conducted by Gible from March 2010. In all, 35 responses were received.
Conclusion
The results slide reasonable smoothly from the generally acknowledged feature (Chaff), through the bugs that are infeasible to ban, those that we would hope to be fixed and finally to the one out-right cheat (Free-pop hack). As expected, the top four bugs are generally allowed, and there is a long tail of generally banned bugs. More interesting are the 3 bugs immediately after the accepted bugs (listed as 5-8) where responses are most evenly divided. Two of the three are (relatively) recently discovered bugs whose impact are acknowledged to be significant but there is no consensus on an effective method to cope with them and the third was fixed over 10yr ago.
Method
The survey was titled "Feature, Bug or cheat?" and was introduced with:
The standard cheats disclaimers reads: "All cheats are banned except chaff and split fleet." Should this be changed? Below are listed all of the known player exploitable bugs. Which ones do you think should be allowed in a normal, vanilla game.
For each bug/feature the description from Known Bugs was provided and the options of Allow, Ban or Other - where the user was able to suggest any alternative. You can submit a response here.
Results
In this result summary, the various cheats/features have been sorted according to the response from most in favour of being allowed to most in favour of being banned along with other responses where given. Not listed are repeated other responses, "fix it", "who cares", "irrelevant" and obscene responses.

Chaff

Chaffresponse.png
Allow: 29 85%
Ban: 3 8%
Other: 2 5%

Other responses:

  • Not a bug

Split Fleet Dodge

Split Fleet Dodge Chart.png
Allow: 25 71%
Ban: 4 11%
Other: 6 17%

Other responses:

  • Restrict within reason.
  • Not a bug

ISB Trumps IT Gate Scanning

ISB Trumps IT Gate Scanning Chart.png
Allow: 18 60%
Ban: 6 20%
Other: 6 20%

Other responses:

  • bug but not sure you can ban it.
  • Enforcing a ban makes USB
  • you can't really ban ISB, nor a specific gate when there are reasonable uses for both. if you see obvious abuse, maybe.
  • Not a bug. Cloaking.
  • Not preventable

Repair After Gating Loophole AKA SFX Merging

Repair After Gating Loophole AKA SFX Merging Chart.png
Allow: 17 58%
Ban: 10 34%
Other: 2 6%

Other responses:

  • Up to the host. Rather hard to police

Exploding Minefield Dodge

Exploding Minefield Dodge Chart.png
Allow: 14 46%
Ban: 13 43%
Other: 3 10%

Other responses:

  • Horrible bug. But avoiding it disadvantages the player.... So can't really ban it.
  • Not preventable
  • I think you have to allow this because I can't think of a reasonable way to ban it.

UR/CE Scrapping

CE Scrapping Chart.png
Allow: 13 40%
Ban: 14 43%
Other: 5 15%

Other responses:

  • no longer a problem, no minerals generated .7*.7=.49 < .5

Starbase Friendly Fire

Starbase Friendly Fire Chart.png
Allow: 11 36%
Ban: 16 53%
Other: 3 10%

Other responses:

  • mostly not done intentionally and often a reason to regen (only once per game, of course)
  • Ban use of "Attack Everyone", allow "Attack (Player#)" only if the player's presented a decent case that they have a legit reason.
  • "Attack Everyone" banned, "Attack player#" must be cleared with host first (legit situations exist).

Mine Damage Dodge

Mine Damage Dodge Chart.png
Allow: 11 35%
Ban: 20 64%
Other: 0 0%

Target List Overload

Target List Overload Chart.png
Allow: 8 25%
Ban: 20 62%
Other: 4 12%

Other responses:

  • If hiding real fleets ban--there are real reasons to havE more than 100...ie. Playing the odds slamming fleets through mine fields so most of your fleet arrives and only some get stopped
  • Resrict within reason
  • Really annoying... But there is legitimate case (split fleet during crash sweep)

False Public Player Scores

False Public Player Scores Chart.png
Allow: 8 25%
Ban: 17 54%
Other: 6 19%

Other responses:

  • If anyone is fooled by this it serves you right for not scanning diligently.
  • Explicitly ban in non PPS games too (resource total not shown)

0.2% Minimum Damage

0.2% Minimum Damage Chart.png
Allow: 6 20%
Ban: 24 80%
Other: 0 0%

Battle Board Overload

Battle Board Overload Chart.png
Allow: 4 12%
Ban: 29 87%
Other: 0 0%

Mineral Upload

Mineral Upload Chart.png
Allow: 2 5%
Ban: 27 77%
Other: 6 17%

Other responses:

  • There are other methods of denying spoils
  • I want to say ban, but how do you enforce this? Except where the world is completely stripped, it'd be hard to know it'd happened.

Cheap Starbase

Cheap Starbase Chart.png
Allow: 2 5%
Ban: 29 82%
Other: 4 11%

Other responses:

  • Thought rc4 fixed this.

Space Dock Armor Slot Buffer Overflow

Space Dock Armor Slot Buffer Overflow Chart.png
Allow: 1 3%
Ban: 30 93%
Other: 1 3%

East-West Speed Bump Minefield Immunity

East-West Speed Bump Minefield Immunity Chart.png
Allow: 0 0%
Ban: 33 97%
Other: 1 2%

North-South Minefield Immunity

North-South Minefield Immunity Chart.png
Allow: 0 0%
Ban: 33 94%
Other: 2 5%

Other responses:

  • Only Ban If you are purpusly going to a planet to attack.

Freepop Hack

Freepop Hack Chart.png
Allow: 0 0%
Ban: 33 94%
Other: 2 5%

Other responses:

  • Fixed

See Also