Cheating through rule violating cash transfers - a new epidemic?

[spiff23]

Hopefully  you guys are having fun flaming each other and basically starting a thread that becomes barely readable.  Not exactly sure who did what to who, but ultimately it seems we have SAMI working on enough crazy things to counter someone else crazy things.

Thankfully the days where one alliance could gang tackle you in the multi stop world...running every flight imaginable to your base and then onwards are over.   That's about all I think was really over the top wrong and long ago addressed.

Frankly I find it annoying that I need a certain plane and I see it on the UM via an alliance member and I can't buy it because it's over priced and the alliance member is MIA.  Can I have a special SAMI program /work around for this? Of course not. 

I ultimately don't even know what this whine is about.  If you want a high demand plane, then you are going to pay up.  If someone wants to sell a plane to someone else to D check and then sell back, so what?  What are they saving ...up to $4m?  I can't think of a more time consuming , boring thing, but to each there own...and if you are struggling to Pay for D checks...are you really all that viable in long run?  I have a feeling no.

If someone in or out of an alliance wants to lease / buy any planes from me; I have about 20 listed at a price well below book value and only accessible to non alliance members...they aren't moving so should SAMI program in a plane fairy to buy the unloved planes I thought I wanted but then changed my mind and apparently no one else wants either?  what rule does that fall under when I list a plane well below the alliance limit and possibly another airline in another alliance benefits by getting an absurdly cheap plane?  There's a certain guy in GW1 that got a bargain.  Was I purposely giving him a competitive advantage? No...just happy to get rid of them and not have to wait 5 weeks to scrap them.


As far as two alliance members in same hub.  Seen it before.  Thought there was already a rule that two alliance members on same route are subject to the combined 200% rule vs 200% each.   So it's not really different than 2 US carriers each with 4 hubs having to code share the routes between them. 

If the two alliance members are specifically targeting one airline, then Send SAMI a PM to deal with it as he has done in the past.

The game is already getting beyond complex for the casual player who didn't get a major in accounting and just likes sim games that we don't need to have a major in government regulation on top of the accounting degree. 

Seriously if there something nefarious then by all means send a not to SAMI but this over-engineering every minute detail of the game is getting nuts.

[Jona L.]

Spiff, you haven't gotten a single bit of what this is about. Please read what we are discussing (apart from what LemonButt said, because he just as well missed the point).

I'll explain it (again) briefly:

We are asking for a clarification of the rules as to what certain things mean, as many things are open for interpretation, and thus it is hard to tell if it is breaking the rules or not.
For example:
What does the section on new airlines mean?

The game worlds receive new players and airlines on regular basis. The longer the game world has been active the more likely it is that a new airline will be based to an airport with one or more other airlines already operating from. In such cases the owners of the existing airlines should keep in mind that coordinated attacks or other uncompetitive ways to use their power as a larger or more dominant airline may be disallowed.

What is a "new airline"? 1 real life day? 1 AWS year?

This is just an example, there are quite a few more points that are written like this, where it is unclear what exactly is a breach of rules. And especially for newer players or people with little time it is hard to know or recall every bit of clarification sami may or may not have given on certain rules in some reply to a thread far down the list. Or worse even, those made in PM to only one or a few players.

Another example:

Competition is generally free in the sim but any clearly unfair competition measures such as flying routes with huge overcapacity and with very low prices and deliberately targeting many/all routes of a single airline are considered unfair competition, especially if the "target" is a new / small airline.

What are "very low prices"? Default -10%? -25%? or -80%?
- If you had an annoying competitor and you were to lower prices, and you go to -50%, because you consider it not to be "very low", but sami does, it is a breach of the rules without you intending to, or even knowing. That is because this is not clarified.

THAT is what this topic is about.
Those cases given in my OP are just there to not discuss theoretical problems, but have examples to use for making points.

---------


As there hasn't been much said lately, I'll just ask: are there any further opinions on this whole thing, or is something unclear? If you have anything to add or to say about the topic of clarifying the rules, please do so. If you want to discuss player to player (P2P) sales, please make a new topic for that, LemonButt has had some ideas about that, and will likely help you with it

cheers,
Jona L.

[bdnascar3]

you haven't gotten a single bit of what this is about. Please read what we are discussing.

I'll explain it (again) briefly:

We are asking for a clarification of the rules as to what certain things mean, as many things are open for interpretation, and thus it is hard to tell if it is breaking the rules or not.

I think most of us got the point of this post. But what I think your missing is 1) if you had wanted to make your point you should not have attacked anyone, just explain the facts. and 2) Black and White rules almost never exist. There is always some sort of interpretation in rules. If you feel there is a violation, report it, but if it is investigated then that should be it. Maybe at some point there should be a complete revision of the rules and clarification of the grey areas.

[Curse]

1) if you had wanted to make your point you should not have attacked anyone, just explain the facts.

I don't see where Jona attacked someone. To claim his point he gave you guys three examples from a real GameWorld to show there is a real problem, not just a theoretical one.

and 2) Black and White rules almost never exist. There is always some sort of interpretation in rules.

I don't know how these things are in other countries, in Germany (and the countries that are based on German like, like Austria or Japan) and the European Union laws are exactly that - black and white. The interpretation is basically about the intention of the law (not in all countries) and words, however, these words are also defined somewhere else, either due to law or due to jurisdiction.

In short: We need clear rules. Every country has them, except maybe some failed states like Somalia.

If you feel there is a violation, report it, but if it is investigated then that should be it. Maybe at some point there should be a complete revision of the rules and clarification of the grey areas.

Why do you think there was no report to administration? Why do you think one of the key points is administration actually investigates before one of the participants BK and sends status messages?

And why there should be a revision of the rules "at some point" - and not now, when rule violations are common?

[Andre]

We have "Operational History" for each aircraft.  Adding an extra column - Price - is all that would be needed.  It would be a great anti-cheating tool.

Here is an example of Operational History:
11-Feb-2014  Bought by Jumbo Shrimp World 
30-Dec-2013  Returned from lease 
24-Mar-2008  Leased by VOVAIR 
15-Nov-2007  Delivered to North Africa Expedition 
25-Oct-2007  Aircraft constructed 

Any transaction would have the price at which the transaction took place.  All prices would be normalized to aircraft price - meaning lease transactions would not have monthly lease, but aircraft price from which the lease price was derived.

I agree, simply publishing the prices/transaction costs next to the history would be a good solution. I don't see this whole thing as a big problem, airlines help each other all the time in the real world, so why can't we?

[Curse]

So, the rules are still the same and it seems many people - unfortunately also some that were caught and used as example here - tolerate, promote and use rule breaking.

Is this really the way we want this game go?

[Sami]

Really, stop these unnecessary accusations. (just had to bump the thread again for that..?)

You said that this thread was about talking of new rules, but really don't think so... I am yet to see any single real suggestion on improvements here (that wouldn't have been already discussed), so this thread is locked since it's going nowhere other than unnecessary fighting.