“ Impersonate a member of the combine for any reason. This means you may not steal a person's name on IRC or register on message boards with someone else's handle.

- RULES
 ”

If we read very carefully the above phrase, there are important issues we need to note:

1. The rule speaks of impersonating a

member of the combine, not a character, which is a completely different thing.
The rule is phrased to explicitly, specifically and exclusively refer to out of game comunication methods.


For example, in a game situation, I can walk from the shadows to a certain lieutenant, cover my face with a cloak, let just a bit of my costume rental admiral uniform show from under my cloak, and speak to him in a hoarse voice, giving him specific orders.

This is a case of face-less communication, and if the said person does not verify who the face behind the voice is, it's his mistake.

They need to have a secret pass-word or code-word that changes periodically or whatever, for this specific cases.

I don't see how someone being banned can be considered not a newsworthy event.
I also don't see how a change to a major area of the rules is not a newsworthy event.


If Xior had simply found out the name of a pilot in the GE fleet, and sent a hail, or a DM, stating that the person in question had told NAO he was defecting, with others, would that have been legal?

You May Not:

* Impersonate a member of the combine for any reason. This means you may not steal a person's name on IRC or register on message boards with someone else's handle.
Ok this may be the closest related type of ban for Xior, but he never claimed to be so and so character, and utilized a mass hail, he did change the name of an NAO TIE Scout however, but changing a name of the ship and impersonating a character who is piloting it is a very thin line to even call for a ban

* Fake any game behaviour in order to hide or change your current in-game status. For example, you may not use a Star Destroyer custom picture for your Ugly or unarmed freighter. Similarly, you may not use an avatar picture showing you are under arrest if you are not.
Ok this doesn't fall under this incident since it was truly in fact a TIE Scout, but it may fall under hiding ones current in game status of being in the GE, but not sure how that would work under this rule


You May:
# Spread false information about yourself or another group/person for any reasons.
Xior did in fact fake information by changing the ship name to that of a GE ship, but wouldn't that be false informations?
# Perform Propaganda.
Well this entire action was meant to create propaganda, it may have made the Galactic Empire question the loyalty of the pilot of the TIE Scout

However the line in which a ship can impersonate a ship is a VERY thin line to be labeled as impersonation of a character. I agree with others in that the BAN was too far, but a CP deduction and a message to Xior would have been more appropriate if you still think it was breaking the rules. This temporary ban should also have been on Sim News to let people know how thin the line was toward getting a ban.

-These rules I copied seemed more relevant toward this topic, others didn't really fall under this event

* Impersonate a member of the combine for any reason. This means you may not steal a person's name on IRC or register on message boards with someone else's handle.

If this is the rule Xior broke, as far as I can see there's no message board or IRC involved... besides, he never stated his name...

Hey I didn't break anyrules listed in the rules page but i still got banned..

Why is this different? (As in why does he get a temp ban when i get a ban with a sentence i was never told.)

-Rav Isaar

Tell me, how is it impersonating when the Empire could have simply looked in the TIE Scout's event logs to see if he really did it or not?

Xior "impersonated" an Imperial fighter. He did NOT impersonate any specific member of the Combine, nor did he break any aspect of the rule. He didn't join any message board as the unknown pilot. He certainly didn't use any other person's handle on IRC.

You people are making a very direct rule into something that's very broad.

I'm still waiting for Maximillian Powers to be banned from the Combine for joining a group to hurt it. A perma ban at that. After all, that's what Rav was banned for.

Its as simple as using an IN GAME FEATURE to IC Effect. It is NOT a spying Rules breach in ANY WAY. How hard is this to understand?

The method the pilot used wasn't flawless at that. Had the ship that received the hail been active, they could have scanned the Tie Scout and see who the owner is. They could then, put their arrogant Intelligence Agency to use and by using the law of deduction, figure out that the pilot wasn't their own.

So it wasn't 100% unavoidable IC

So then, if I had a TIE-Scout and I was in a faction to be openly at war the GE, wouldn't my ship appear red on a GE scan irregardless of what my ship was named? What is the IFF for?
What the dont teach scanning in the Imperial Academy? That must be a COMPNOR ability... This must be how Eidola got an entire squad of TIEs to dock on one of their ships. Change the name of the ship and red turns to blue! The downfall of intelligence agencies galaxy wide. Quit deh blooodklaat cryin, mon.
Just my two decredits.

Hey, rules team leader, planning to announce the rules change on the Sim News any time soon? Generally the community needs notification of rules changes that can result in bans.

Obviously the ruling is given and any future discussion on the issue is moot, but on another issue -- can we please not enforce rules ex post facto? If someone does something the administrators think is against what they envision the game for, but not against the current rules, then by all means they should make a new rule. However, they should not punish said person for the offense. This time it was not the case, but it was close, and alarming. Normally ignorance is not an excuse, but like Syn said, if you don't announce it, I don't see how it is player responsibility to keep up with rules changes that go unannounced. In any case, thank you at least for having multiple people take on this issue and showing the player community that administration decisions are not a one-person show. We may have all disagreed with you, but it wasn't with Dreighton alone at least.

To those who are suggesting scanning the ship used to broadcast the message, you have overlooked a few things:
1 - Last I checked, ships are only identified in hails by TYPE and NAME. If you do a scan and see two, three, even five ships of the same type, with the same name, you have no idea which ship sent it.
2 - If I were doing such a thing, I'd exit a hangar bay, send the message, and dock again as soon as the hail was sent. Unless someone happened to hit refresh IMMEDIATELY after the hail was sent, and had a much faster connection, there's no way they would have seen the second ship.
3 - If there were a lot of ships (and I have a lot of ships at Gand, where it's pretty much just Alissma and member ships - the bases of larger factions are much more densely populated with ships) then it may have been almost impossible to notice that there WAS a second ship with the name used.

Of course, all the above is why I think this was a great propoganda/disinformation tactic, and I still don't feel it was cheating. I'd rather see Ship IDs added to hails, and the ability to fake IDs added.

I agree with Hal's Statement

I don't see why we insist so much on the ship name.

Not all the ships have a meaningful/unique name, and it happened to me more than once that I assigned the ship to somebody and he changed the name to his liking.

The mechanics of hailing are that you can't tell the person who is hailing you, and everybody knows that.

You can try to scan. If scanning doesn't work, send a DM to the supposed pilot or something. It's really easy.

Tyr, please edit the art problem off your post. There's enough people abusing that and we dont need more. :p

As others have pointed out, this was an action that common sense would indicate was EXPLICITLY ALLOWED by the spying rules. The 'Golden Rule' says to use common sense, and common sense says that the clauses of what is allowed cover this action.

The justification here is that he was impersonating another member of the combine.

If that's the case, WHO was he impersonating?
'The pilot of the other TIE' doesn't cut it.
Unless he sent the hail claiming to be Bubba Smith, AND Bubba Smith was the pilot of the other TIE, he wasn't impersonating anyone .. unless 'generic possible member of the GE' is suddenly a real character in the game or a person playing a character in the game.

I'd also like to point out the disparity in the punishment .. Jake Kiltar got a 2 week ban for using an exploit to nearly dissolve a government, Isoldor Storm got a 1 month ban for an action that Adam Flyynn later replicated with no ban whatsoever, Wilhelm got a 1 month (?) ban for selling an IRC access list, Rav got an indefinite (at least 2 month) ban for planning IC actions prior to having a character ...

There's no rhyme or reason to punishment levels (even ignoring the rather sketchy nature of some the alleged infractions) being handes out here.

On a serious note from myself:

Veynom, you must reign in your friend Dreighton. She is doing more damage to this game than all the punished people combined. If she continues to use your game to push her own agenda...you will loose donations, players and a sizable chunk of the art team if not more.

Actually Gitane I don't think Lucas Arts would be happy to hear their name being used on a Sim with Admin that make rules out of Thin Air. Vey has a lot more to lose then just Players and Donations.
And speaking of Donations, Hell. I already decided my 300 would be better spent on a RAM Upgrade then Donated to a Sim where people get banned for non-existent Reasons. I see no reason to support a Sim where admin have free reign to do whatever they want.

I.. don't think LucasArts would be in any way affected. They worked their beef out with SWC long ago; SWC's internal policies are of no relevance.