Rules issues with the TripleA engine

LaFayette

@Cernel It also seems you and @Panther might not be in agreement, unless I misunderstood the comments in: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/2219#issuecomment-326428326

Cernel

@LaFayette I understand that @Panther believes that if you skip a warning telling you that you are overbuying that doesn't mean that you are intentionally overbuying. I think the opposite, as long as the warning is always correct.

I don't think trying to replicate a system by which the overbuy might be sorted as unintentional or not, which would probably entail allowing the other players to visualize and validate your purchase choices, would really make sense, especially in the moment you are not playing live, and especially since live gameplay has no timer.

I think, for all games, the only solution is having the engine fully and flawlessly limiting what you can buy to what you can possibly place, with no warning (you just cannot overbuy, like now you cannot spend more PUs than you have). Then the engine should also oblige you to place all you can. Once this would be done, then the only situation in which you would be unable to place all you have is when combat move and combat results may influence the amount and type of units that you can place (main example is being unable to place in hostile sea zones in v1, but I vaguely remember there are such cases in Global too, for other reasons). So, it would be still the matter of having, then, the behaviour of losing units you cannot place (v1 and v2), keeping them (v3), or refunding them (v4 and following) (only the third one is not offered by the program, yet), albeit I think that at least for v2, v3, v4, v5 and v6 that would never actually happen, as you would never end up having more units than you can place, if the program restricts you.

But I believe v1 and v2 are really not clear on the matter if you are actually allowed to intentionally overbuy and, then, losing the units that you cannot place, but I'm almost sure that intentional overbuy is forbidden in those too, if @Panther can confirm (the rules seem to assume that you would just never want to intentionally overbuy, since you totally lose what you cannot place).

I also wonder if, for example in Classic, if I buy something on the assumption of being able to place it only if I clear a sea zone, am I, then, obliged to at least try to clear that sea zone, in the subsequent combat move phase? This is something I don't know. It is sort of the same deal as the "no kamikaze" rule, but for placing naval units that would be lost, otherwise. If this is true (I'm obliged to make combat moves to have at least a chance to place all I bought), then you would also need a combined purchase and combat move phase, the max you can buy being validated based on your combat moves, and vice versa. I know that there is not such a rule, so I assume that I can buy a battleship that I can only place if I clear a sea zone, but then I don't attack the sea zone, legally losing the battleship for sure, correct?

All this said, it is also very important that all these features are optional, and you still can, like for example 270BC currently, decide to intentionally overbuy, by disabling all overbuy restrictions. This may support custom games in which overbuying is permitted, but it is mostly necessary in case the system would not fully cover all possible situations, as I anyway assume you already cannot feasibly cover them all (for example, custom maps like Napoleonic Empires, where factories can move and even be loaded on ships would probably be better off allowing unlimited overbuy with units destruction if you cannot place).

EDIT: Since those bug tickets seem rules specific, I've instead answered in here, as I think this problem really exists in all rulesets, and it is a collection of several different issues (how to see and handle overbuy when you purchase, especially referring to assuring it is not intentional, how to handle situations in which combat moves and results may influence what you can place, the fact that the engine doesn't oblige you maximize the number of units that you can place during placement, the fact that the refund for v4 and following is not currently supported).

Cernel

@LaFayette said in TripleA engine - Known rules-related bugs/issues:

@Cernel Okay, what a developer needs is:

What does the game currently do?

What should it actually do?

Please chime in on the bug report tickets if you believe the 'expected' is incorrect.

Regarding:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/5194
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/5195
I don't think I've anything specific to say in those. I agree that at least moving from the v3 system of keeping the units to a refund system would bring those games closer to their intended behaviour. For intentionality, or anything else, the matter is really general, instead, not really related specifically to v4 or Global.

Panther

@Cernel said in TripleA engine - Known rules-related bugs/issues:

I understand that @Panther believes that if you skip a warning telling you that you are overbuying that doesn't mean that you are intentionally overbuying. I think the opposite, as long as the warning is always correct.

I don't know how you come to say that, as I never said so.

I have always argued in the respective Github issues that an overbuy warning is pointless if not submitted to the opponents at the time it is committed. If the committing player ignores this warning on purpose he is abusing the rules, definitely.
But when it comes to discuss that after the turn the committing player can always find excuses for that behaviour arguing he did not do it on purpose (maybe because of an incorrect understanding of a rule).

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3506#issuecomment-405458293
and
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3506#issuecomment-410941697
and
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3506#issuecomment-410958133
and
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3506#issuecomment-410966284

Possible scenario:
During purchase units phase the player intentionally buys 2 units more than can be placed.
The engine issues an overbuy warning, that is ignored.
After the turn the opponents notice the refund for 2 units.
After laying out the rules to him the overbuying player argues: "I intended to capture a factory where I could have placed those units but that plan failed. I ignored the warning because during Purchase Unit Phase the engine cannot know about my plan. Sorry, I did not know about the rule that I could not use that factory during the turn it was captured! Man, that was an unintended overpurchase!"

Happy arguing now - after the turn is over. This might not or at least should not happen with experienced players, I agree. But this rule issue still occurs ...

I once had a conversation with Krieghund about the "human factor":

I said:

I have always wondered about the terms "purposely" and "inadvertent" over-purchasing.
On whom is it too prove that an over-purchase has been done intentionally oder inadvertently?
When is this discussion supposed to be initiated by whom? During Purchase Phase or during Placement Phase?
In a real game an over-purchase most likely would become obvious during Placement Phase, when the player cannot place all of the purchased units. Of course the player would always argue that this happened inadvertently.
Do the other players have to monitor the buyer's purchases with regards to the number of units being placeable?
I cannot remember any over-purchase in any of my or others games... so how is this rule supposed to be practiced, in case it is still valid?

Krieghund answered:

There's no way to know what's in another person's mind, so there's no way to know whether or not an over-purchase was intentional after the fact. If it's not caught until the mobilization phase, I guess you just have to take your opponent's word for it. If it happens a lot (or if you don't trust your opponent!), the only defense against intentional over-purchasing is to verify that all units may be mobilized during the purchasing phase (as this can't change during the rest of the turn). This is probably good practice anyway, to avoid errors.

So in case the engine would be enabled to support this verification the fact of overbuying must be issued not only to the player who overbuys but to the opponents, too. Do we want to introduce another phase to validate or discuss what is going on?

@Cernel said in TripleA engine - Known rules-related bugs/issues:

I don't think trying to replicate a system by which the overbuy might be sorted as unintentional or not, which would probably entail allowing the other players to visualize and validate your purchase choices, would really make sense, especially in the moment you are not playing live, and especially since live gameplay has no timer.
I think, for all games, the only solution is having the engine fully and flawlessly limiting what you can buy to what you can possibly place, with no warning (you just cannot overbuy, like now you cannot spend more PUs than you have). Then the engine should also oblige you to place all you can.

I fully agree with that, in case that needs to be implemented.
On the other hand I have no idea how relevant this "intentional overbuy-topic" actually is.
Does it occur that often that the engine needs to handle it - or does it happen only here and there and the players find an agreement (or not)?

Was that the reason why you just created "Display Overbuy Rule to Game Players" , @LaFayette ?

LaFayette

Was that the reason why you just created "Display Overbuy Rule to Game Players" , @LaFayette ?

Some maps enforce it, others refund, some carry over the units, others you lose the units. Knowing which is useful so you don't wrongly rely on the game engine to warn you about purchasing too many units to then lose or not place them.

In my experience, an overbuy is a game losing move. Losing units to not being able to place is essentially giving the opponent one or two SBR without the benefit of even an AA chance. The tactical disadvantage, usually counting on those units to be there, then to find out post-non-combat can easily mean you'll have fewer units than planned and a key position/battle would then fold as you'll be short.

Long answer, less long, users should be able to tell how the game will function without 'just knowing'. It's a UX design principle that you should be able to look at something and figure out how it'll work. Having some sort of indicator to tell you, whether text or otherwise (something), what will tell you would help jive with that. I've also had the rude surprise on maps to realize it did not warn/prevent overbuy and then overbought units. It's a particular problem say on WaW when there are many factories that are spread out. It's actually a bit time consuming there to every turn count up factory capacity, just so you can be sure to buy max, but not too much.

Cernel

@Panther said in TripleA engine - Known rules-related bugs/issues:

@Cernel said in TripleA engine - Known rules-related bugs/issues:

I understand that @Panther believes that if you skip a warning telling you that you are overbuying that doesn't mean that you are intentionally overbuying. I think the opposite, as long as the warning is always correct.

I don't know how you come to say that, as I never said so.

I have always argued in the respective Github issues that an overbuy warning is pointless if not submitted to the opponents at the time it is committed. If the committing player ignores this warning on purpose he is abusing the rules, definitely.
But when it comes to discuss that after the turn the committing player can always find excuses for that behaviour arguing he did not do it on purpose (maybe because of an incorrect understanding of a rule).

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3506#issuecomment-405458293
and
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3506#issuecomment-410941697
and
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3506#issuecomment-410958133
and
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/3506#issuecomment-410966284

Possible scenario:
During purchase units phase the player intentionally buys 2 units more than can be placed.
The engine issues an overbuy warning, that is ignored.
After the turn the opponents notice the refund for 2 units.
After laying out the rules to him the overbuying player argues: "I intended to capture a factory where I could have placed those units but that plan failed. I ignored the warning because during Purchase Unit Phase the engine cannot know about my plan. Sorry, I did not know about the rule that I could not use that factory during the turn it was captured! Man, that was an unintended overpurchase!"

Happy arguing now - after the turn is over. This might not or at least should not happen with experienced players, I agree. But this rule issue still occurs ...

That exactly what I meant. In my opinion, that player should lose the game for intentionally overbuying, as he skipped a warning telling that he was overbuying. If you believe that something in the programs is working wrong, you should stop your game and sort the matter out, possibly filing a bug report, then skip the warning if it gets sorted out that the program is bugged. That to me equals someone that edits something without asking permission or even telling anything, because he misunderstood a rule that the engine was implementing correctly. That is an incorrect behaviour, otherwise everyone would be free to make edits without telling all the time. Or it equals at someone going on playing while the opponent is yelling at him that his purchase was illegal, without bothering discussing the matter (as per what krieghund said, this would be pretty much the only case in which you can be sure the overbuy is intentional).

Cernel

@Cernel As I said: "as long as the warning is always correct". That means that if all players have agreed beforehand that they realize in a game the TripleA warning is not always correct (like in Napoleonic Empires), then everyone is free to skip the warning, but they need to say something like "hey, this game gives wrong warning, let's just ignore them", and everyone agrees. This is also the reason why I personally think that the warning should be disabled in all games in which it is known it doesn't always work. For example, I made veqryn disable it in 270BC, and I would have surely done the same for Napoleonic Empires too, or an official mention in notes in which it says that in this game you are free to ignore the overbuy warning (and maybe just saying that you are free to intentionally overbuying, to make sure there can be no issues; it is a custom game after all, so whatever).

Cernel

@Cernel To be clear, in general, I believe that every time you skip a warning (also for aircrafts crashing) or edit you take upon yourself the full responsibility of that action that, if proved wrong, implies that you have intentionally made an illegal move (otherwise nothing at all is illegal, as everyone could always say he didn't intend to). If you are not sure, you should stop and discuss the matter (with a judge, if you are in a tournament or such), before skipping or editing on your own.

Panther

@Cernel
I see what you mean and I think we don't have a big dissent here at least regarding the consequences. I am not very happy with that FAQ-aspect that introduced the rule "You may only purchase as many units as you will have the ability to mobilize after making repairs to any damaged industrial complexes. The rules for returning excess units are intended only for inadvertent over-purchasing."
While the first sentence is a clear "law" the second sentence opens room for discussing the "human factor". Representing the latter in the TripleA engine appears to be pointless, IMHO.

Panther

The list has been updated to include the NCM-movement regression (issue 7350).

LaFayette

@Panther the list is the same as what is returned by this link? https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/labels/Impact%3A Bad Game Rules

Just want to be sure that we have everything properly labelled.

Panther

@LaFayette
Not in every case. I have compared the lists and identified the following differences:

The above list contains issus # 1645, 1867 and 5195. Those issues have been closed on Github despite they have not been resolved.
Above issue # 6256 is not labelled as "Impact: Bad Game Rules" on Github.
Above issues # 3846 and # 4480 have been partly resolved and thus closed on Github, but there are tasks remaining.
Issue # 4107 on Github is not part of the above list, as it is not affecting core vx-rules.
Issue # 4649 on Github is not part of the above list, because the mentioned error has occurred here and there in the past independently from any ruleset.
Issue # 6032 on Github is not part of the above list as it is not an issue of rules gameplay but of a consequence of special editing, incorrectly handled by the engine.

Cernel

@Panther If this
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/5195
was actually closed under my suggestion of it being a duplicate of
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/5194
I suppose you can obliterate it.

Panther

@Cernel Agreed, thanks.

LaFayette

Thank you for going through those. I took a look and seems we just need more detailed specs to close everything out. Divide and conquer.

With that said, #1645, #1867 and #5195 need new issues created with a more detailed specification of what to do, notably:

description of what the game does today with a call out on what is wrong
description of how to create the problem
save game attached at the location of the problem (nice-to-have)
description of the actual correct game behavior
listing of which rule sets the change should apply to (if no save game then a list of some sample maps)
yes/no on whether the rule set should be optional or always enforced.

#3856 and #4480 probably should closed and any remaining work needed created as new issues with the same details above. (FWIW, I acknowledge it is a lot of detail. To get working code, you need a code specification. To create a code specification, you need a functional specification (ie: the what to do). The above is still not quite a functional specification, but it is quite close; hence we'll need all of that information, as developers we'll interact with the code for all of those details at an even greater level and will be creating games to exercise the changes before and after repeatedly).

Each new issue created, ideally it's as atomic & independent as possible. It's much easier to resolve 5 small issues than it is 1 large issue.

Above issue # 6256 is not labelled as "Impact: Bad Game Rules" on Github.

I'm curious if choosing casualties of lowest movement is a rule, or just the better choice? Would giving players the option of choosing a higher movement plane for casualty actually then be a rule violation?

Panther

@LaFayette said in Rules issues with the TripleA engine:

Above issue # 6256 is not labelled as "Impact: Bad Game Rules" on Github.

I'm curious if choosing casualties of lowest movement is a rule, or just the better choice? Would giving players the option of choosing a higher movement plane for casualty actually then be a rule violation?

As I said above:

On A&A .org this topic was intended primarily for PBF users stumbling over issues during their games. That it could serve as "summarizing tasklist" for developers and contributors, too, has been a nice side effect. ...

So you are somehow correct. While this (#6256) is a question of "better choice" indeed, players often stumble over this issue, when the engine somehow arbitrarily takes out a unit, thus preventing the player from continuing his move as intended. So this is why this issue is part of my list: to acknowledge the fact. On the other hand one could easily conclude that the fact that the engine chooses "any" unit instead of leaving the choice to the player is a violation of the rules.

Technically the player should be free to take out whatever eligible unit with whatever movement left. It is just for simplification purposes that taking out the unit with the least remaining movement points has been discussed.

LaFayette

@Panther could you confirm that the OP is up to date? Better yet, could you confirm that all linked issues are tagged appropriately in bug tracking: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/labels/Impact%3A Bad Game Rules?

Are there any closed that actually require more work? https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues?q=label%3A"Impact%3A+Bad+Game+Rules"+is%3Aclosed

I am unpinning this topic, I want to better focus this category for player-help.

Panther

@LaFayette said in Rules issues with the TripleA engine:

@Panther could you confirm that the OP is up to date?

I have no hint that it is not up to date. I cannot remember a single Pull Request that directly addressed any of these issues. I am aware that @Trevan has dealt with some mechanics here and there that might have partly influenced an issue.

I will put your GitHub-related questions on my todo-list.

I am unpinning this topic, I want to better focus this category for player-help.

I wonder how this topic is not a huge help to players experiencing those issues and constantly stumbling over them. Aknowledging the fact that an issue is caused within the engine is "gaming support" - exactly what this category is about.

LaFayette

@Panther said in Rules issues with the TripleA engine:

I wonder how this topic is not a huge help to players experiencing those issues and constantly stumbling over them.

I'm somewhat familiar with these issues and it still would take me a really large amount of time to go through them to find relevant information and whether they are current and what exactly they are. This is simply too 'raw' and too much information to be generally useful to the general player.

Panther

@LaFayette said in Rules issues with the TripleA engine:

I'm somewhat familiar with these issues and it still would take me a really large amount of time to go through them to find relevant information and whether they are current and what exactly they are. This is simply too 'raw' and too much information to be generally useful to the general player.

I disagree with both of your statements, FWIW. But I am not going to repeat a discussion about dealing with rules related issues we already had some time ago.

Do what you want.