Droid Engineer Archive
Thread: Clustering? exploite or not ? What have the DEVs say
I think this manner of addressing others and debating speaks for itself.
Gveedo wrote:
2) FACT nothing anyone says , even a DEV, or CRS, or even C3PO says will change the fact people who exploit, will continue to do so, and attempt to rationlize it for their own pittiful sense of self worth, untill the flaws in the game are fixed.. people are going to use them.
The nice thing about a court of law is that it provides a neutral arbiter to resolve disputes after two sides present their arguments and are required to be civil. What we have here is a difference of opinion based on the stated definition of a socket cluster. Read it yourself. I'm also not sure that adding functionality to functionality-impaired droids is lacking in common sense.
Kitsunetsuki wrote:
Fortunately, though, this is not a court of law, and thus we have a little more latitude to use our common sense and to point out when people are using selective interpretation and transparent sophistry to arrive at an conclusion they personally find convenient.
Kitsunetsuki wrote:
I calls 'em as I sees 'em.
Right. The ol' "I'll know it when I see it." That's a great standard. Trouble is some people "sees 'em" different.
What we need is a neutral arbiter. If the devs say its wrong or change the cluster's definition, I'll abide by it. Certainly it's the case that we all feel its a bug that should be fixed along with the others.
I'm ok with agreeing to disagree. There seems to be little room for that on this board, however. I've said my peace about this topic and, having learned frommy mistake of responding to other inflamatory posts like Geevo's above, I'll say no more.
Kitsunetsuki wrote:
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
The nice thing about a court of law is that it provides a neutral arbiter to resolve disputes after two sides present their arguments and are required to be civil. What we have here is a difference of opinion based on the stated definition of a socket cluster. Read it yourself. I'm also not sure that adding functionality to functionality-impaired droids is lacking in common sense.
A court of law is most certainly not a neutral arbiter. A court is quite rightly required to be biased in favor of the accused. When you say an argument is good enough for defense in court, you're actually applying a very weak standard. You're applying the standard that let O.J. Simpson go free to find the *cough* "real killer." Had I been on that jury, I likely would have had to let him go too, because of the much higher standard of proof in a court. Out here in the real world, one is perfectly free to say, "oh, come on... of course he did it."
Furthermore, are you implying I've been anything but civil?
Anyhow, yes, I see a difference of opinion here. What bothers me is the self-serving reasoning going on. You say you exploit the (benefit of the doubt) "poor design" because you truly believe that's the way it's intended to work. I just find those claims disingenuous. I believe you'd blink and act innocent and make absolutely any claim you thought permitted you take advantage of the situation, and since I'm not in a position to abrogate your civil rights, I don't really have to tiptoe around them in saying so.
Furthermore you are invoking "functionality-impaired droids" as an excuse to rationalize doing something that compounds the impairment of droid functionality for anything beyond an MSE. Whether you sincerely believe they meant it to be this way, or you're just determined to cynically exploit a known bug, this is an enormous problem with the profession which must be fixed.
Here's my point about trying to rationalize why it shouldn't be the way it is now. The only arguement put forth as to why it is a bug is it doesn't make sense. This is not like the exploit that currently allows architects to get past a critial failure or the old exploit where people item duped.There are a lot of things that don't make sense in DE. Does this mean all of these are bugs as well? I think not. They are working "As designed" even if it is a poorly thought out design. Being an exploitable bug (bug being a defect in the code causing the program to not work as intended) and being of bad design are two seperate issues.
I also think most everyone agrees that it should be changed along with all of the other things that don't seem right about DE. But I don't see the need to attack peoples character on here at all. Insome people's opinion it is an bug. Just because othersmay notagree with your reasons that doesn't mean they are somehow cheating the system.
As far as "expoiting a poor design" I would assume that all speaking in this language never stacked lower level modules to get a higher rating. The exact same arguments put forth on both sides in this discussion could be made about that as well (along with a ton of other issues in the game as a whole).
Kitsunetsuki wrote:
A court of law is most certainly not a neutral arbiter. A court is quite rightly required to be biased in favor of the accused.
No, American courts of law are required to be biased in favor of the accused, by America's laws.
The world, however, does not consist solely of America. Now I am not saying anything about whether it is right or wrong that a court be completely impartial, in favor of the accused, in favor of the status quo, or whatever. I'm simply pointing out that the statement is wrong.
Recursing back to the origonal topic:
I view the use of clusters in a non-cluster slot to be like the BE's using the Track and Seek as opposed to just Seek at investigation III.
It looks like an ingame system. A lot of BH's who used this didn't even know that it was an exploit.
If you look at Ockale_MDE 's opst above, it certainly looks to be the way it ws intended.
I actually put clusters in non-cluster slots for a while, before I got to know the profession better. I no longer do so (haven't for a few months now).
Just my two cr...
Today I made Master DE and started a long thread for my guildies explaining how Droids work (and moreso how not ;-). The first 1 1/2 pages were entirely dedicated to this issue. I rewrote it about 4 times, sometimes to the effect "guildies, you decide, if thats an exploit and if I should continue using it" (which is pretty lame ;-). I´ve read this whole thread and two things made me decide to no longer put clusters in the service module harness.
The first one is what Drashk ,Rho and others stated: there are bugs in this game concerning names and descriptions. Imho the description of a cluster and what it does is not intended to be about where it fits in but what it actually does: you can put a variety of modules in it. So they talk about sockets instead of modules ? It doesn´t make me wonder at all that they even got that description wrong.
The second reason is the great list Ockale made. That kind of progression in capacity makes perfect sense and gives the whole profession a clear and understandable structure.
People still can have a food/chem crafting station and 110% medical if they take one of the 3-module-droids or even the 2-module-droids if I get to lay my hands on the named ressources necessary for lvl 6 modules. If they want additional item storage it is possible in the 3-module-droids with lvl6-modules or they take an Adv. R2 or Adv. R3.
It may debated, if stacking lvl 4 modules is an exploit too. Since we don´t hear anything from the devs on this issue, I go by feel: cluster nesting is an exploit. Putting clusters in service module harness slots is an exploit. Stacking lower level modules may be by design. Where the other two give a clear advantage without a disadvantage, stacking lvl 4 modules takes away a whole module slot. If you use the capacity as imho intended, one module slot less is pretty much).
Kiom and the others, I don´t condemn you for using this what is an exploit for me. Its understandable, especially considering the state of our profession. I just wanted to state what I wanna and gonna do from now on concerning this issue.
SnowDog2003 wrote:
There is no accused in a civil court. You're thinking of a criminal court. In a civil court, the court tries to be as neutral as possible, and render a judgement on the facts.
This has gotten too off-topic even for me
but even a civil proceeding places the burden of proof upon the plaintiff, though the standard of proof is somewhat lower. But taken in context, this situation more resembles a criminal issue than a civil one, in that there is nobody claiming that the exploiters owe them anything.And Icarus, fair enough, but it's not just an American phenomenon, and there are good human rights reasons for some degree of presumption of innocence in the courts. When a government can bring charges against its citizens and place the burden solely upon the citizen to prove the charges against him are false, it invites political persecution and similar abuses. I'm certainly not saying that the American interpretation of this principle is the only one or necessarily the best -- just that in my view it's generally important.
But all this is fairly irrelevant since the original point was, this is not a court, and participants in a debate are not obligated to respect the same sorts of boundaries as a government holding peremptory authority, whatever those boundaries might be.
Kitsunetsuki wrote:
Aside from abstract principles, the main reason I don't do this is that, for all I know, they're going to suddenly hotfix this tomorrow (yeah, yeah, I know, monkeys might fly out of my butt tomorrow too, as they say, but bear with me) and for all I know it will be fixed in such a way that people who own droids with too many installed modules will suddenly find themselves totally screwed. I don't want those potential totally screwed people to be my customers, and I definitely don't want to be the one who put them in that position.
http://www.gucomics.com/archives/view.php?cdate=20031121
Be careful when you say that....
Sodan-droiddreamer wrote:
The nice thing about a court of law is that it provides a neutral arbiter to resolve disputes after two sides present their arguments and are required to be civil. What we have here is a difference of opinion based on the stated definition of a socket cluster. Read it yourself. I'm also not sure that adding functionality to functionality-impaired droids is lacking in common sense.
A court of law is most certainly not a neutral arbiter. A court is quite rightly required to be biased in favor of the accused. When you say an argument is good enough for defense in court, you're actually applying a very weak standard. You're applying the standard that let O.J. Simpson go free to find the *cough* "real killer." Had I been on that jury, I likely would have had to let him go too, because of the much higher standard of proof in a court. Out here in the real world, one is perfectly free to say, "oh, come on... of course he did it."
Furthermore, are you implying I've been anything but civil?
Anyhow, yes, I see a difference of opinion here. What bothers me is the self-serving reasoning going on. You say you exploit the (benefit of the doubt) "poor design" because you truly believe that's the way it's intended to work. I just find those claims disingenuous. I believe you'd blink and act innocent and make absolutely any claim you thought permitted you take advantage of the situation, and since I'm not in a position to abrogate your civil rights, I don't really have to tiptoe around them in saying so.
Furthermore you are invoking "functionality-impaired droids" as an excuse to rationalize doing something that compounds the impairment of droid functionality for anything beyond an MSE. Whether you sincerely believe they meant it to be this way, or you're just determined to cynically exploit a known bug, this is an enormous problem with the profession which must be fixed.
People keep saying that the Droids will stop working once they fix the Socket Cluster bug, I don' t think they will (not that I am condoning using it, which I don't, you can easily make good Adv. R2's with everything a person wants, Data/Repair modules are useless, so people only ask for Storage/Medical and Crafting Station and I sell them for 35K on Chilrastra and I sell a lot).
I think the reason that we can't switch Modules on Droid is because the Droids once they are created don't know which Modules have been used in them. Once the Droid is created only the final value is kept in the Database for that Droid.
I.E. You use 2 Lvl 4 Medical Modules in a Droid and you get 110 Medical Rating, You use 1 Lvl 6 Medical Module in a Droid and you get 110 Medical Rating, you use 3 Lvl 3 Medical Modules in a Cluster and put it in a droid and you get 110 Medical Rating.
Once the final product is completed I believe that the number 110 is all that is put into the Database for that Droid. They are not putting which modules was used to get to that final number 110. Because if they did input that into the Database, then there would have been no reason why we wouldn't be able to switch Modules on a Droid. Since we can't switch modules, this is (at least this is what I believe) the way they implemented it.
Again, I do not condone using the Bug.
Bearalag wrote:
People keep saying that the Droids will stop working once they fix the Socket Cluster bug, I don' t think they will (not that I am condoning using it, which I don't, you can easily make good Adv. R2's with everything a person wants, Data/Repair modules are useless, so people only ask for Storage/Medical and Crafting Station and I sell them for 35K on Chilrastra and I sell a lot).
That's quite possible... but the devs might decide to impose some sanity checks on existing units... depends on how seriously they see the exploit affecting the future market. Considering that non-combat units last forever, they might just decide to break 'em. Pre-nerf weapons and probots are two examples of things they left "as-is" because they wear out. House storage and harvesters are things they changed retro-actively because they don't.
I s'pose we'll see.
People keep saying that the Droids will stop working once they fix the Socket Cluster bug
Just to clarify, I'm not saying I know they will break. I'm just saying I don't know for sure they won't, and I'm not willing to take the chance, much less force the risk of that uncertainty on my customers.