Monday, January 26, 2009

Proposal: Snap out of it, Bomb

Timed out 8 votes to 2, enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 28 Jan 2009 04:30:24 UTC

[ A lurking, triggerable “if this number is ever zero, repeal all rules” effect seems very risky, for the small benefit of being able to kill off stagnant Dynasties without taking a quick vote first. ]

Repeal Rule 2.11 (Countdown).

Comments

Yoda:

26-01-2009 12:46:23 UTC

imperial

Qwazukee:

26-01-2009 13:13:31 UTC

against

Rodlen:

26-01-2009 15:37:56 UTC

against

Kevan: he/him

26-01-2009 15:56:27 UTC

My specific concern is that having a thin, one-input wire leading to “repeal all rules” leaves the game open to disappointing counter-scams (“if I can’t win, I can at least delete the ruleset to stop you from winning”), which are much less interesting than actual victory scams.

We also risk blowing the ruleset up accidentally, if we ever do something careless like “reset all numerical gamestate values to zero”.

What problems have we had that the timebomb solves? We can easily propose to kill off stagnating dynasties; if we’re mired in one that people neither want to play nor to euthanise, we can bring in some sort of timebomb proposal for that Dynasty. Having it ticking away in the background of other, perfectly healthy Dynasties seems like a very bad idea.

Amnistar: he/him

26-01-2009 16:00:47 UTC

for I personally don’t care one way or the other.  The Timebomb was introduced in a stagnant dynasty and hasn’t been needed since.  It also means that a dynasty can’t hit a point at which the rules are done being made and the game is actually being played (I think there was a week during my spy dynasty where there were no rules proposed, but it was still an active game since people were doing game actions.

arthexis: he/him

26-01-2009 17:16:09 UTC

for I think this dynasty may face something similar: at some points very little proposals may be created if all the rules are already in place.

Klisz:

26-01-2009 17:31:17 UTC

imperial

Wakukee:

26-01-2009 23:04:05 UTC

against

Darknight: he/him

26-01-2009 23:07:33 UTC

imperial

Qwazukee:

26-01-2009 23:58:36 UTC

imperial => My actual vote.

Wooden Squid:

27-01-2009 02:14:44 UTC

against I see all your points, but I like the bomb.

Wooden Squid:

27-01-2009 02:44:21 UTC

for on second thought CoV

Yoda:

27-01-2009 05:47:27 UTC

The whole point of this dynasty, though, is trying to guess the theme by making guesses and proposals to gauge how close to the theme you are.