WesWorld

LordArpad
Spammer wanna be
Posts: 16
(4/23/03 9:33:10 am)
Cheating with the Treaty
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Hi all

historically all nations cheated with the WT. Nobody can verify the displacement of a ship short of espionage. All it takes is a slightly higher block coefficient than stated (or more draught). The pocket battleships were about 20% over, the Iowas are closer to 55ktons than 45, Bismarck was around 39ktons etc...

What do we do?

- stay straight? unrealistic IMHO
- allow a percentage?
- ...

cheers

Benhard

The Rock Doctor
Spammer wanna be
Posts: 45
(4/23/03 12:17:48 pm)
Re: Cheating with the Treaty
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From the perspective of India, cheating is part of diplomacy. However, it also demonstrates a lack of regard for one's own signature - making other diplomatic agreements suspect at best. India would not feel bound to respect any agreements that are being willfully violated by other powers.

Bear in mind that espionage is very difficult to prevent in any kind of open society. Unless you're running a police state, people can and will be subverted.

There is, I think, a need to acknowledge that unintentionally large ships may result from miscues - the ship was designed to just fit within its limitation, but actually turns out to be a few hundred tons heavier because it's a foot longer than intended. India can deal with that, if a slippage of, say, ~2% is the limit.

From my own perspective as a player, I acknowledge that cheating as a nation may happen. However, I expect absolutely none from other players. A nation can claim whatever it wants, but I expect the controlling player to have posted the actual stats for the ship, and I should be able to reproduce it in Springstyle.

J

King of Riva
Spammer wanna be
Posts: 56
(4/23/03 1:19:49 pm)
Cheating
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I agree with J on this issue. The players should do anything they could to stay within the treaty boundaries. Otherwise we will not be able to compare things. That being said, there´s surely not a problem if a capital unit is a few hundred tons over the limit - if the player writes a nice story about it or the roleplaying part of all this. A mere ~2% can hardly be called cheating, though.

So if a nation cheats on a ships tonnage (call it a sloop while it is 500ts beyond the limits for example) it can be excepted but the player has to post the real stats.
Further more, everybody else can write a story were cheating is discovered/revealed - with all the consequences (the cheater being forced to scrap his units for example or the Cleito Treaty being shot down). The cheating nation will most likely be isolated!

So it will be best not to cheat, simply put.

The Rock Doctor
Spammer wanna be
Posts: 47
(4/23/03 4:50:29 pm)
Re: Cheating
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I was using the word "slippage" to describe going over by 2% or so, rather than "cheating". Anybody who cheats by just 2% isn't being very creative anyway...

thesmilingassassin
Spammer wanna be
Posts: 34
(4/23/03 7:16:05 pm)
cheating
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I think if a battleship comes out as built 40,800 tons that wouldn't really be a big issue, as in my eyes the 40,000 ton limit is preaty much a guide limit used to curb the move to larger warships. If a ship comes out 2% overweight it could be because of a last minute change to the design to correct a flaw. Realistically with springstyle its preaty much out in the open, what we build is preaty transparent so we would need a good story like "the new welding technique did not save weight as projected" or "the addition of the new AA mount instead of the old version increased weight".

LordArpad
Spammer wanna be
Posts: 17
(4/23/03 9:08:35 pm)
Re: Cheating with the Treaty
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Ok folks let me rephrase this.

I am quite happy with posting the actual specs of any design I come up with. What I am looking for is a mechanism to simulate the amount of cheating that was used in history. And no, espionage did not solve it because with all the treaty violations we know (and how may are we missing) nobody in history got called on it.

Ideally if this was a full blown RPG we would have a chnace of being caught that is proportional to the infringement of the treaty, but this is unrealistic.

I see two options:

- we accept that we are unhistoric in our use of springstyle and live with it as suggested (me not happy but I will accept it if agreed so)
- we find a "cheat factor" that we are willing to let people get away with. This involves posting two sets of specs. (My favourite, but I am unoptimistic)
- we develop a full blown RPG out of this - unlikely

cheers

Bernhard

thesmilingassassin
Spammer wanna be
Posts: 37
(4/23/03 11:59:19 pm)
the cheat factor
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...well i would say we have to be truthfull about the dementions and gun caliber used, but cheating on the block co-efficient and armor could be used abit?
If someone really wanted to do their home work they could use the dementions, work it out on springstyle and deduce themselves if indeed the design is significantly over the displacement set, and decide if they want to play that game. At the most i can see someone hiding an extra 5000 tons on a design due to cheats and "oops i'm slightly over sorry!", anything more would get noticed for sure. Some designs won't need cheating as an all forward arangement would reduce weight.

King of Riva
Spammer wanna be
Posts: 58
(4/24/03 4:10:33 am)
Difficult
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On your last sentance: All forward isn´t saving that much weight in springstyle for whatever reason. I tried it several times and finally got a better 4x2 design on a given displacement than a 2x4!

To the issue of cheating:

I still think players should post the original specs. This is what this SIM is for. I want to see how others handle the problems and limitations of springstyle to learn how I can work out better designs of my own.

IIRC, right at the beginning of all this we said something like "In news etc. we can write whatever we want. We can hide information or alter some specs, it will be okay. But below the news, we add [Players note:] and there we add the original specs for everybody to notice and to discuss. For the roleplaying we can use only what is written in the news but for discussing designs we need the original specs."

I still think the latter is the best of all options we have. Let´s play this fair. Everybody should try to be within the limits but if he comes out with something slightly over, he can say he´s within the treaty limits for the RPG part but the players should know the real facts. And if someone is over the limits by far, he maybe needs to redesign his ship.