EDIT: Figured the log out

[Alexander_Fel] hey yo ulot
[Alexander_Fel] do me a favour
[Alexander_Fel] http://rules.swcombine.com/?Spying
[Josef_DeLaurel] she's very on the ball for a young lass
[Alexander_Fel] go there , and tell me what the first rule you see is
[Hadrian] Bribe, threaten, or intimidate any member of the combine Out of Character for any purpose or reason.?
[Kiari] Infiltrate another group with the intention of killing their members via any method other than a red scenario.
[Lan_Solarian] "Infiltrate another group with the intention of killing their members via any method other than a red scenario."
[.Mekum_Campbell Infiltrate another group with the intention of killing their members via any method other than a red scenario.
[Alexander_Fel] so hadrian doesnt see that one then
[Vrogard_Delahon] Bribe, threaten, or intimidate any member of the combine Out of Character for any purpose or reason.
[Alexander_Fel] vrogard neaither
[Lan_Solarian] Maybe only our unit knows how to read.
[Alexander_Fel> no somethings wrong
[Vrogard_Delahon] What should we be seeing?
[Alexander_Fel] im not sure
[Alexander_Fel] i see the Infiltrate one
[Alexander_Fel] but there are some who dont




it looks like something something is off with the rules page, orph linked me this

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/9727/spyingpagefr2.jpg


The only thing i could remotely approach to being plausible is the statement that had this all worked smoothly without the bug, would we have been able to get all the NATS before they were looted? I can attest to being here ready to take Primus from the go, i was here for at least five hours working on this with Orphaea. I also know that Inara was also online at the time. Beyond that i personally dont know who orphaea had ready but i assume he would a have grabbed any old GE crewman or w/e from the channel if he didn't have enough.

Its not the same as Gand and Centarra. Gand had been a member of Centarra for a while as an active, normal member, and later stole it when the chance presented itself. There was nothing to suggest it had been planned from the time he joined. So the argument was it wasn't infiltration, just being opportunistic.

Orphea's stealing was clearly planned from the way he joined our faction, the role/privs he wanted, and the coordinated way in which he and his friends immediately went about it. He was never an active member taking an opportunity, his only objective in CSA was to kill Max and steal it.


The difference is planning. There was nothing to suggest Gand had his coup planned when he joined the faction, while Orphea's and Rav's were planned from the start. That's what the rule specifically states can't be done ("Infiltrate with the intention of killing") According to the Simnews on Rav, that was the point that got him banned.

According to that, a reversal is very much more than inminent.

Someone elese's failure/confusion should not end up in the end of a goverment and several factions. And with 20 to 50 good players abandoning the combine. Past does not matter that much, its written on the rules, its textbook spying rules violation as Zorba explained.

That rule does not appear on the rules page I see (forgive me not providing a screenshot - I'm currently at work. I can provide one later). It has not appeared for a long time. I do not doubt that your screenshot is genuine, but clearly (as evidenced by the above log, so it's not just that I'm crazy) different people are seeing different versions of the page. The question is why, and which is supposed to be correct?

It was found that the Firefox version and IE versions are different.
But the IE code also show the first missing line...

Might be why

The rule has been there for years, as long as I've played. I've seen it every time I looked at the spy rules. When the admins changed the spy rules a while back, Vey listed which ones no longer applied. That rule was not one of them.

So unless there was a secret rules change that only the GE was told about...

Well ive never seen that rule ever, and i used to pour over the spying rules.

I would have noticed since it talks about Red Scenarios (Something NO longer done in the combine)


I now see it, no clue why, its a recent thing appearing on my page

I find (using Firefox 3) that the phrase, "Infiltrate another group with the intention of killing their members via any method other than a red scenario." appears above the "You May Not" heading and "Back to Top" button if the window is not maximized, but below them if the window is maximized. Perhaps therein lies the discrepancy?


EDIT: Eh, Paparrin, any chance of maybe shrinking that image or trimming the sides a bit? It's stretched my screen so much I'm worried a baby might fall out.

Interesting. On IE i get:

1/ You May Not
Bribe, threaten, or intimidate any member of the combine Out of Character for any purpose or reason.

Sell, trade or give away classified information gained by you using a previous character.

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.

Intercept the communications (Email, IRC, MSN etc.) of other players, get files from their hard disks by using Trojan Horses (Back Orifice, Viruses, etc.).

Hack or infiltrate web pages, chat rooms, or any other PRIVATE areas of a group or organisation. This includes joining a private protected channel for the sole purpose of getting a member count and member names as well as retrieving a channel's access list for the same purpose.


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.

While Firefox gives

1/ You May Not

Infiltrate another group with the intention of killing their members via any method other than a red scenario.

Bribe, threaten, or intimidate any member of the combine Out of Character for any purpose or reason.

Sell, trade or give away classified information gained by you using a previous character.

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.

Intercept the communications (Email, IRC, MSN etc.) of other players, get files from their hard disks by using Trojan Horses (Back Orifice, Viruses, etc.).

Hack or infiltrate web pages, chat rooms, or any other PRIVATE areas of a group or organisation. This includes joining a private protected channel for the sole purpose of getting a member count and member names as well as retrieving a channel's access list for the same purpose.

Leave a group with the intention to sell or trade information about your previous organization to your current organization or any other group, EXCEPT if you belong to a group that is publicly known as an enemy of the previous group.

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.

Anyone breaking these rules, or encouraging/ordering someone to break these rules, will be punished. Punishments vary from CPs or asset losses to definitive banishment from the game.

How many people uses IE? 10% 20%? And even then, it is still written on the code, so its more likely "Infiltrate another group.." its supposed to be there than not.

Firefox interprets BR tag differently then IE does. If you look at the source code of the page you will see some more rules that were commented out, but they properly used a BR tag with a slash... so you have people with different browsers seeing different rules!

So not only is the infiltration rule not present on Internet Explorer, but the rule:

Leave a group with the intention to sell or trade information about your previous organization to your current organization or any other group, EXCEPT if you belong to a group that is publicly known as an enemy of the previous group.

Is also absent. If there is a difference of rules on browsers on this page, then perhaps it is also on others? I would like to see what the rules say for a Safari user.

Kyle Rainer:

"This message will be rather quick. Just some comments that should be made due to some things I've seen. If you have a complaint with one of the members of the staff on SWC the place to send those complaints is assistants@swcombine.com or administrators@swcombine.com.

This forum or any other forum is not the place to complain about the staff, that should always be done in private especially if you think someone is abusing their power. We take those charges very seriously but investigating those can take time. So publicly saying someone is abusing power is first just rude. You should show some common decency and tell them to their face or notify the administration team about it.

Secondly it is counter productive in some cases as on the forums these complaints usually end up in one of two manners. A flame fest where people starting attacking one another and pointing blame without evidence or they are caught early and are locked.

Lastly unless it is a one time mistake in judgment, still depends on the judgment of course but is rather a recurring issue. If you public announce that you think they are abusing their power the common reaction for that is to stop abusing power because everyone is watching them closely now.

Now remember this is a game and try to have fun. If you really think someone is abusing their power please send evidence to the places I listed earlier in this post and we will investigate it. This is not to say you will like the outcome, but that we will look into it and make a decision on what to do what we think is the right thing.

Thank you for listening to this and this was only put here as well I'm lazy and I was in this forum when I decided to write it. Also I know I likely have horrible spelling and grammar errors but I'd like to see you type any better with your ears. If only I had an opposable thumb."

That's been up for ages now in the leaders forum.

Anyway, since I'm the supreme being and the source of my own existence, as well as everything you perceive, and everything you don't perceive, my ruling is that Vey's ruling stands.

I've heard from the admins that the infiltration rule may not apply anymore because it wasn't intended to be there. Let me just say, that to the majority of us players that use Firefox, the infiltration rule has always been there. There was never any warning made that the rule might of changed, its always been present, and has been enforced in the past. As I showed above, when the spy rules were changed, Veynom explicitly listed which ones were changed, and the infiltration for killing was not there.

Dozens of people work in the CSA, many of us having been there for years, building it to what it has been. We've played this game actively and advocated it to our friends. I can tell you for a fact, as a member of the CSA's leadership body, if we had known about the rules change we wouldn't have given Orphea the privs he abused to do this; it was only allowed under the belief that doing what he did was illegal and banable, as was stated explicitly in the rules posted.

I find it unconscionably unfair that we should have everything stripped away from us by administrators over a alleged rules change that was never announced or even shown to change on the rules page.

EMPIRE CHEATED AGAIN! GET OVER IT! ITS A GAME! BACK TO REAL LIFE! WOOHOO!
















Kyle, I will give you everything that SRE owns for a Deathstar... pretty please?

A piece from a Simmnews posted 40 days ago:

“If you have a choice in upgrading your browser we strongly suggest Firefox [http://getfirefox.com/], but any modern browser would be fine :) ”

MY belief on why the rules are showing up weird is due to the fact we changed spying rules a while back. (See thread here: http://www.swcombine.com/forum/thread.php?thread=27821&page=0 and SimNews here: http://www.swcombine.com/community/news/simnews.php?display=2&postID=15895) And whoever coded/changed the rules page botched a line in code somewhere. That's all I'm going to say on the matter here. This thread is being locked as we are dealing with the situation.

EDIT: An entire page was posted before I wrote this, including the one about the thread being locked. My apologies.


This will not attract new members. Being one, I think I can say that truthfully. Who wants to join a game or a community in which the Admins and creators favor one group so much that they allow them to ignore and blatantly break the rules? Even when the combine is finished, it will still need rules that are strictly enforced for the game to function. Strictly enforced for everyone, with no exceptions. Such as implementing a system in which employees cannot fire their employers. Explain to me how that's realistic. Actually, you don't need to, it already has a great name. It's called metagaming. And if metagaming is really encompassed by the spirit of the rules, then I seriously regret ever wasting my time and donating to something like this.



Also I think the following solves the rules problem. If you don't believe me, go get firefox yourself. Unless every single person who knew about this plan uses IE, which the admins could verify by checking user agents, then it is the GE that is using a website exploit to get away with breaking a rule. And even if the entire group uses IE, Max and the rest of the CSA assumed that they were safe from something like this and as such didn't have any reason to worry about it.





Just so you know, I was only logged on in one browser at a time. I just didn't refresh the page in IE.