Multi-Player Rule Systems

[darthdroid]

I'm going to go ahead and list the various rule systems I believe occur in Multi-player:

This is how it works: with each set of rules, only the things you cannot do are listed, so if something is NOT on the list, then it is LEGAL in that particular set of rules.

I am interested in any discussion of issues not addressed or thoughts of other players and who knows, maybe we can establish a good set of rule systems for multi-players to avoid confusion and loss of time.

I will add more rule systems as time permits.

Note: Unless otherwise specified, ALL rule systems INCLUDE the base rules-so basically these base rules should NEVER be violated unless explicitly stated or agreed upon among players.

[darthdroid]

1/ Base Rules

Also called "Business Rules", this is the "no holds barred" version of multi-player and the PUREST way to play the game in my opinion as it is most like business and the game is after all a business simulation.

A/ NO Use of the "Online Lag Glitch".
If you see a train that makes $10,000,000 in a
couple minutes, the owner violated this rule...

B/ NO Use of any programs or trainers
Note: Only person so far known to have one is
called "MagicheroGODtrain" but rumors say
at least one other person uses one (a
friend of Mr. Magic I'm told). I recently
found another player who has a trainer,
"Manson". Found another one, goes by
"M[C]".

C/ NO Excessive Station Moving.
This is defined this way: Move your station all
you like, but the station building (not it's tracks)
MUST be touching the city's green circle
somewhere. So as long as some corner of that
building (and again, not the bridge structure over
the tracks, or the tracks themselves, just the
rectangular station/depot/terminal BUILDING
itsefl) is touching the city's green circle, it's legal
Also keep in mind that the city green circle does
indeed grow when the city grows, but at no time
can the building be (completely)outside the
circle (just make sure a corner at least is
touching).

D/ NO Use of the "Cheat Glitches"

1/ NO Ghost Trains (Ghost trains are trains that
happen by accident I believe.) Due to excellent
track laying they tend to appear. You know if you
have a ghost train if you have a train that stays at
a station loading passengers or goods from an
industry, but won't move past the switching point.
So the train doesn't use all the track to the other
destination, just from the switching point to the
station which leads to a huge advantage for that
route. Since these happen by accident, they are
allowed to occur, just not to remain. The player
must FIX the ghost train, usually this involves
deleting some of the track and the stations in the
case of passenger ghost trains and remake them.
As long as they fix it upon noticing it or having it
pointed out to them, it's okay.

2/ NO Ghost Track: You can actually
disconnect a track from the station so the track
stops short of the station, (like about one to two
inches away from the station) appearing to NOT
be connected to that station-yet it is, and
somehow goods are delivered and taken from that
station even though the train is nowhere near it.
I've seen a few do this and refuse to stop, one is
called "Silica". This move is clearly illegal and can
only be done deliberately.

[darthdroid]

2/ "King City Rules"

This is a rule system designed by myself and another player who will get credit here as soon as I see him again and get his USER ID. And this is a very fun set of rules to use, I recommend it.

A/ Includes "Base Rules".

B/ One depot/station/terminal per city.
Once someone plants a depot in a city, it belongs to them and you cannot enter this city. This essentially makes the game a race to the best cities and can be very amusing. Again, in case the race is close: The planting of the station determines who "won" that city. Once the other player has a depot there, you must back off and not plant a depot.

This does NOT apply to resources, JUST cities (which includes villages, towns, and metropolises.

(just to be clear, the only other rules are the base rules, everything else other than base rules and the King City Rule is perfectly legal.

[darthdroid]

3/ "Ownership Rules"

A/ Includes "Base Rules"

B/ This is basically King City Rules PLUS you also cannot invade a resource that already has an annex.
So essentially only ONE depot/station/terminal per village/town/city/metropolis and only ONE annex per resource.

So if someone is in a city, you cannot plant a depot, nor ship to or from that city. If someone has planted an annex (again, tracks don't matter, ANNEX does) they OWN that resource and you cannot go into it or harvest it, etc.

This too is a fun way to play at times, again making the game more of a race to the best action on the map.

To reiterate: These rules include the base rules and Ownership Rules and EVERYTHING ELSE is LEGAL.

[darthdroid]

4/ "Mickey Mouse Rules"

These are the rules preferred by many of the new players. These rules take a lot of the fun out of the game (IMO) and limit what tactics are allowed, but certainly have some merit for training purposes and for those who like to play this way.

A/ "Base Rules" are in effect.

B/ "Ownership Rules" are in effect.

C/ Raising your tracks is not legal at the edge of the
track (this means you cannot make RAMPS).

D/ Subways are illegal.

E/ Tracksneaking is illegal.
(tracksneaking is when you cross over someone's
tracks using small pieces of track.

F/ Blocking is not legal.
This of course means INTENTIONAL blocking, if your
route happens to block another player, well, the early
bird gets the worm.

G/ No deleting your track at any time, for any reason.

H/ No station moving at all.

I/ No track trimming
This is really already covered by Rule G/ No deleting
your track ever.

I think that covers it but there might be more and if so, please let me know if you can think of any I missed lol.

[Sinophile]

I didn't realize that multiplayer was full of so many exploitable bugs. I've noticed a few times that a relatively poor player accumulates a large amount of money in a short amount of time, but they call me a sore loser if I call them out on it.
Personally, I don't like the King City Rules, because it defeats the purpose of multiplayer. The purpose of Railroads is to compete with one another, rather than be isolated. Still, a lot people get annoyed when you steal goods from them. I too get annoyed when someone steals big ticket items(I.E. automobiles, arms, Medicine, gold).

C/ NO Excessive Station Moving.

I didn't realize the stations were mobile.

[darthdroid]

I didn't realize that multiplayer was full of so many exploitable bugs. I've noticed a few times that a relatively poor player accumulates a large amount of money in a short amount of time, but they call me a sore loser if I call them out on it.
Personally, I don't like the King City Rules, because it defeats the purpose of multiplayer. The purpose of Railroads is to compete with one another, rather than be isolated. Still, a lot people get annoyed when you steal goods from them. I too get annoyed when someone steals big ticket items(I.E. automobiles, arms, Medicine, gold).

C/ NO Excessive Station Moving.

I didn't realize the stations were mobile.

First, yes you can move stations. You can rotate them 90 degrees, and you can move them slowly across the entire map... you can move a station hundreds of miles if you're bored and unethical enough!

Also-on the poor player suddenly getting a big cash boost, could be cheating of some sort, could be a glitch, but it could also be good strategy.

Allow me to give an example of how this could happen legally. Game begins, and for efficience reasons, player B deletes his terminal. This immediately drops player B down by about 300k. So the other players all have around 900k (this assumes perhaps tycoon level after 2 minutes of game play) and Player B has perhaps less than 600k (were talking net worth here). Player B then builds a very efficient rail to perhaps a far city. Player B pulls ahead within about 3 minutes of game play due to his/her efficient and profitable route. Soon player B has about 500k more than the others - who had short term strategies. So at about minute 8-10 player B is well in the lead even though he/she started way behind (seemingly).

Here is another example if you are talking about a much bigger boost of cash:

Player B thinks way ahead, laying out moves for mid game very early in the game-perhaps even his first 2 moves are designed for 15 minutes into the game... Those early moves do NOTHING for player B until the right things happen (hint: city growth) and suddenly everything falls into place. At this point, player B lays a good train and low and behold-that train makes 4 million dollars a year. Soon player B is dominating perhaps mostly as a result of this one train. But it is also likely that if player B did this, he made several other long term moves as well that are designed to kick in during mid-game.

This type of strategy is not common, but it is very deadly. Doing such a thing allows player B to lull the others into a false sense of confidence-that is, a "newbie" (and by newbie I mean playing less than a year regularly), will have no idea what he's up to and think he just sucks. Only to have his arse handed to him in 10 minutes by the same guy... thus the "newbie" will think player B is cheating. When the reality is, player B is playing on a whole other level and doing many things that the newbie doesn't understand (yet). A smart newbie asks questions, a foolish newbie yells "Cheater!" and the latter usually stays in the dark, a newbie who thinks that lots of folks are cheaters lol.

Back to Player B. So again, we're talking short term vs. long term. Player B is considering, "what is best for me to do over the course of the game" where the other player, player "A" is thinking "where can I get some money right now?" Player A will invariably lose to Player B.

Here is an example of how Player B thinks: I start the game, I look around and I see a coal mine. I have a power plant in my start city, but I see a village even closer to the coal mine with no industry. I do something to get some sort of money rolling-perhaps a few fish. But I set up my route to be efficient with the empty village.

I lay my tracks to the village, I build a station. I wait... and wait, finally my fish have brought me to 500k. I build my steel industry and then my coal route to the steel village. Now I ship coal in and have steel. Next I plan to grow my start town into a city. So I try to add more fish routes, or whatever is available via its 2 industries. Finally I've shipped enough, it's a city. Now I build a bomb factory in my start city for the 3rd industry. Now I load up my steel train. Quickly this village becomes a town and now I start shipping passengers.

See? Long term. The plan was there from day 1, but took maybe 12 minutes to execute to completion. And this is oversimplified-perhaps I moved to a 2nd location while waiting for cash, and began another profit center to speed things up, etc. All irrelevant-doing what is long term can allow the third place guy to swoop into 1st all of a sudden and also allow him to be struggling for a looooong time, and then BAM hes making huge $ and it may look fishy-you just didn't realize all the work that went into the plan, and all the plotting, waiting, and so forth.

[darthdroid]

Additional Variations to Rule Systems:

These are variations to the current rule systems that allow for an additional twist or element that changes the dynamics of the game.

1/ "Fierce Bidding"
I recently read on here somewhere (a post by Robinhood02) about an interesting variation that sounded like fun. This variant makes auctions much more valuable-as winning an industry leads to additional rights to build rails and make more $.

This variant would apply to any of the rule systems other than "Base Rules", (which already allows one to do all the things in this variant).

Example: Jenny is the first one to plant a station in City X, she now is the "King" of City X (by King City Rules). Nobody else can put a station there (yet). Jerry wins the auction for the Steel Mill in Jenny's City. Now Jerry is allowed to plant a 2nd station in Jenny's City and begin shipping Steel (nothing else, no passengers, no other goods, just Steel).

Specifics: On King City Rules, Jerry can now make resource routes into Jenny's City on any resource he wants. On Ownership Rules: Jerry can now make resource routes to any COAL (since he owns the steel mill) and any resources that don't have an annex, back into Jenny's City. And take note of this ability-on Ownership Rules, it's "one annex per resource" BUT if you are shipping to an industry you own, you can violate this rule-this means you can stretch tracks across the map, far, far away to coal as long as you're shipping it to an industry you own!

[efast]

its a free world, there are no rules. Its the most ruthless, efficient, deceptive player that wins.

All the Robber Barons in the game made their way to the top like that. John D. Rockefeller even blew up his competitor's factories back then to ensure monopoly.

[darthdroid]

its a free world, there are no rules. Its the most ruthless, efficient, deceptive player that wins.

All the Robber Barons in the game made their way to the top like that. John D. Rockefeller even blew up his competitor's factories back then to ensure monopoly.

None of the Robber Barons had something like a teleporter. So your point is moot if we're talking about at least 2 of the 4 base rules. Not relevant, hardly comparable. A teleporter would indeed create what 2 of the rule breaks allow to happen.

[darthdroid]

Also, blowing up factories is indeed ruthless. It is not however comparable to getting a trainer program, or the online lag glitch. Rather, it would be comparable to ruthless strategy-like building the same industry closer-and thus making their industry worthless-same outcome as "blowing it up." So called "stealing" is ruthless and naturally fair. Cheating is just stupid. The robberbarons used their financial power and capital to "win," there is no evidence that any of them rigged the Universe-which is what the cited rules being broken would be doing.

It never makes sense to call a turd "gold" or to call a dog a "lion," the robberbarons knew that too....