Friday, March 22, 2013

Proposal: Can we fix it this time?

Times Out and Passes 2-1-1. -RaichuKFM

Adminned at 24 Mar 2013 08:33:26 UTC

Rewrite the rule “Space Stations” by replacing the text

If you pay the refueling fee you may increase your energy by five and decrease the space stations energy by 1.

wherever it appears with the text, with the following text

To Refuel, a Captain must transfer the Resources named in the Refueling Cost associated with a Space Station to the Captain who controls that Space Station, increase their Energy by 5, and decrease the Space Station’s Energy by 1. No Captain may Refuel at a Space Station whose owner has not specified a Refueling Cost or if Refueling would reduce the Space Station’s Energy below 0. A captain with the ship class “space station” can not gain energy by refueling.

 

 

Comments

Purplebeard:

22-03-2013 15:22:48 UTC

against ‘Can’ is defined as a keyword in rule 3.1, so “can not” means “is able to not”, common sense be damned.

MurphEngineer:

22-03-2013 15:23:14 UTC

for

RaichuKFM: she/her

22-03-2013 15:33:50 UTC

“Can not” does mean “is able to not” in regular English; but this is fairly obviously a misspelling of “cannot”.

RaichuKFM: she/her

22-03-2013 15:46:33 UTC

Well, it can mean that, anyway, depending on context. But I forgot the for.

Purplebeard:

22-03-2013 15:53:33 UTC

It can mean both as you say, but that’s beside the point. I wouldn’t call this an obvious typo since 1) the sentence reads perfectly well as it is and has a well-defined effect in the game, and 2) it could conceivably have been intentional; if I were to write a loophole that let me refuel as a Space Station, this is how I might’ve worded it.

RaichuKFM: she/her

22-03-2013 15:57:57 UTC

It’s just, it is ambiguous and- Wait, we just had this same debate last Dynasty, and I’m going with precedent here: Where it is ambiguous, and equally valid interpretations exist, go with the one that seems obviously intended. So the issue is whether or not this being a typo is a valid interpretation. Anyone else have thoughts?

Purplebeard:

22-03-2013 16:20:28 UTC

That’s been our method of handling ambiguous rule text; what we’re settling here is whether this is an ‘obvious typo’. When in doubt, we leave it alone. If the two positions (typo or no typo) are equally valid as you say, the assumption that it’s a typo is clearly not obvious.

RaichuKFM: she/her

22-03-2013 16:26:33 UTC

Alright, thanks for the more applicable precedent. But it is still debatable if its an obvious typo or not; I’ll leave that to consensus. imperial

Cpt_Koen:

22-03-2013 18:13:47 UTC

“To Refuel, a Captain must transfer the Resources named in the Refueling Cost associated with a Space Station to the Captain who controls that Space Station, increase their Energy by 5, [..]”

“their” was probably intended to refer to the Captain who’s refueling, but if I were the Caption in charge of the Space Station I would strongly argue that it refers to me.

As for the “can not” issue… I can’t see this as a reason not to vote for; the text being replaced already allowed space stations captains to refuel.

(On an interesting note, if “their” actually refers to the Space Station Caption, and if the rules state that such a Captain cannot gain energy by refueling…)

Larrytheturtle:

23-03-2013 04:04:58 UTC

While I know that it is based on the wording and not on intent, I still would like to say that was a misspelling of cannot.