Thanks, Farsight! This is what I sent to convince him it was legit to do 70+ orders:

So, anyone can send a PM, containing as many Orders as they like. A valid Order is well-defined, after all, and nothing says you CAN’T sent a PM. This sentence is what we thought stopped us:

“If they have not already done so during the current Watch, a Captain may send the Admiral a private message describing exactly one Order that they wish to give during this Watch.”

Problem is, it doesn’t say “if they HAVE already done so ... then they may NOT send another ....” Nor does it say that extra orders would be invalid!

Then, when the Admiral is to perform the orders, the wording allows for any number of them, and they ALL are to be performed:

“Apply to the Chart all valid Orders received from Captains during the latest Watch.” So as long as they are each valid standing apart from the others, any Captain could send in 100+ Orders to be done.

The Admiral could of course choose not to perform ANY Orders, delaying the Watch, and call out the Scam, so I asked if you would do that in advance. Fingers crossed that nobody can think of another way out of this!

Oh, yeah, I just vaguely asked if he would hypothetically delay the Watch to stop me from scamming a win if it relied on him carrying out Orders. He didn’t conspire or anything.

I, for one, think it’s a very admirable and well-considered scam! Surely all that remains is a declaration of victory?

So it comes down to interpreting whether “If X, you may Y” means the same as the implication if, or if and only if?

Or maybe it comes down to instead whether actions are not allowed or not by default. I’d come down on the side of not allowed by default, since the game is unplayable otherwise. Nothing says I can’t give myself 121 Treasure right now!

(Well okay, I can’t because we’re in Hiatus, which explicitly bans Dynastic actions. But you know what I mean!)

I knew there must be something backing me up; I had forgotten about

The Ruleset and Gamestate can only be altered in manners specified by the Ruleset.

which means (to me) such things as:

* 70 Orders
* Giving myself 121 Treasure
* Failing your DoV just because
* Writing a CfJ that fixes this loophole and gives me some Treasure for my trouble, and enacting it unilaterally

aren’t by default allowed.

This has strong elements of a language-based scam, which is normally discouraged. Its not a pure language-based scam, which makes it better than most attempts I’ve seen, but its still exploiting a kind of loophole we usually ignore.

The intent of the rules is clear, and the phrase “Exactly One” is present. We can argue about if “A private message” refers to exactly one or not, but this scam is on shaky ground.

I’m curious as to how the active players will vote.

Note that the enactment of “Learn to Stop Worrying” and “Pass the Port” has renamed and recoloured some Ports, which I can’t update directly in the Admiral’s spreadsheet.

It appears that Thunder’s M1 tried to Cruise into the Land on square 53, which isn’t possible:

“Cruising moves a vessel from the square they are in to an orthogonally adjacent non-Land Square in the direction of that vessel’s facing.”

Probably they would have stopped in Blue Port with full health, instead?

[TyGuy6 + Kevan] Noted, thank you!