Should Navy Going Over Land be Considered an Exploit?

I find it interesting that even after a huge discussion in the IRC and Cola_Colin asking people to give their opinion on the Gentleman's latter thread that no one ever did. In fact this issue had completely disappeared entirely. Now the problem I have with this thread is the fact that should there not have been a graphical bug, it would have looked like water and there would be no problem. It was not a clear exploit of a glitch or an unfair advantage. It was simply my knowledge of the map in general.

The fact that this is being blown up WAY out of proportion and being called a "exploit" is ridiculous! There is no exploiting! The game counts it as water. Therefore, ships can move over it. The end. Just as they can with the shore and the like.

I ask that you remove the "exploit" part and also change the wording on the poll since you clearly understand it is not an exploit. Should you not update your post to show the correct information as posted by these people on this forum post, I can only assume that you are trying to besmirch my name and propagate false accusations and slanderous lies.

If you can not update the poll or the OP, then I request that you have this thread closed.

Thank you.

Yes. Yes I did, You must have missed where I said

Even if we don't change that, Even if they DID lose their units to the naval, they had plenty enough units to steamroll BL's base, and that's shown in the video. They did amazingly well at coming back from the naval bombardment at the beginning, so obviously they would have done even BETTER than they did. IG should have seriously won this. They very well could have, including the naval attack as legit and they even had the right army at the right time. It's their choice not to press.

I'd give that game to IG, even with the naval attack at the beginning because of their tremendous comeback. But because they threw the game, it's their loss.

I always enjoyed ships with legs in the past, but in the other games (sup com 1 and 2) they ended up appearing a bit overpowered vs most land units.

naaaah one OC in the mug and he's not making any more trouble.... now if there's an army of them........

That was an issue with ships being designed from the ground up as strictly superior to land units in general. They used less unit cap, had more health, superior range, and superior firepower. It has nothing to do with them having or not having legs.

The real world navy is pushing to use smaller boats, faster boats, and subs that make automobiles look slow. Big ships exist mostly as logistics platforms, which isn't important for an army of PA robots, or as a necessity for housing missile artillery.

Keeping a rich variety of movement options will blur the lines between land and navy so much, that the theaters will break if they aren't balanced against each other from the get go. Fortunately each theater has plenty of unique problems to deal with (hills, forests, subs, ocean floor, lack of oceans in space, etc.), so that they do not have to be carbon copies of one another.

I think it cannot be considered an exploit simply because:

• It is not discrete. How far into the coastline is on land?
• It is possible to do this accidentally.

The maps are randomly generated, so nobody can say whether or not a specific path was "designed" to be there or not.

If "by design" you mean the unit going through the mountain, then obviously units should not graphically clip through objects (or shorelines).

I think the moral of the story is that all players should keep in mind that this is an alpha, and things won't exactly be fair or balanced because of this. Taking matches played in a buggy game seriously is rather illogical to me.

Only in SupCom2, in SupCom1/FA the Salem was very vulnerable on land and easily flanked where it's main gun couldn't actually target.

Mike

"An exploit, in video games, is the use of a bug or glitches, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers."

An exploit in video games is the use of a bug to an advantage.

Visually, that area looked like land. Code wise, it behaved like water. No one is disputing the code wise. But visually, it looks like land. By game design, ships don't drive over land.

So due to a bug in the game, ships traveled over what looked like land. That is not by game design and is a bug. By using a bug, that is, by definition, an exploit.

OathAlliance, I am by no means trying to personally attack you or smear your name. I'm simply trying to initiate some discussion from the community on a by definition exploit that should be added to the gentleman's rules. I enjoy your videos, now that the image quality has been fixed (Thanks!), and continue to post them on PA Matches.

Even if this was going to be added to the gentleman's rules, how the hell would you police it? How small of a gap is "too small" for ships to be considered "allowed" to pass through? What if a player issues a move order intending for his units to go a different route but they find a shortcut through an area "banned" by the rules? What if a player lies and says his units went there on their own when he actually ordered them there?

Player 1: This shoreline looks passable to me.
Player 2: No it doesn't
Player 1: sure it does look at the waves
Player 2: Screw the waves its not deep there
Player 1: You're just afraid my navy will win the game
etc etc

The game has its own rules for a reason, let the game figure out what is allowed or not.

You have to bum rush them and get hover tanks or just regular tanks if they are on land around their legs.

Cost for cost a land army out DPS's any navy, and the long travel time and arc they take to shoot at targets really starts to let them down once players start using the advanced mobility options like teleporting or jump-jets.

In most respect the Cybran walking boats still suffered like the FA ones, but in great quantity's they are hard for anybody to handle.

It's an exploit. Contrary to what everyone's saying here, the game does NOT track what "water" is. It tracks elevation, and puts water below a certain elevation. Between the "visually looks like water" and "is below the baseline elevation to be treated as water", is a small sliver of elevation which looks like land (not waves on land, but ACTUALLY land), and the actual land. This is a bug

I played a match where there was an isthmus across two oceans. The waves did not behave in such a way as to close the land.

The enemy sent naval units through that isthmus. Although it was CLEARLY rendered as land, it was below the water elevation TECHNICALLY, allowing boats to cross it. The other players, realizing that there was a bug in the rendering of water/pathfinding of naval, used this as an advantage, crossing the isthmus and destroying my emerging naval base, and winning the game.

It's a bug. Any normal person would look at an isthmus and say "Boats can't go over that". But my opponent saw that isthmus as a bug to exploit in order to gain an unfair advantage.

If I was a ref at the IG vs BL match, I wouldn't have necessarily disqualified BL, but I would certainly have done a cease-and-desist, and possibly restarted the match. The navy's prescence in that lake DID make a difference, and may have been a factor in IG's loss.

It isn't really important if the thing's an exploit or not, it is an unintended consequence of how things work right now.

There's a workaround available, and I would suggest that in a tournament people just get informed of both the bug and the workaround no matter if it's going to be allowed or not.

really? everyone? have you tried f11?
really; try acually reading the thread next time.

Sorry, I should have posted this earlier: http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned.html
I remember agreeing fully with the page when I read it. If anyone wants to argue that this exploit should be banned in tournament matches then argue against that page.

Nobody is saying that ships moving over areas which look like land is an intended feature of the game. But banning on what is intended is a slippery slope, there are a lot of things which some people think are intentional while others think it is not. PA is not horribly broken by this bug and it would not be significantly less broken with a workaround. Finally, this bug can be triggered accidentally, is not discrete and one would have to view the entire replay to properly enforce any ban.

Well it's kind of a bug that can be exploited.

So if people are going to use it to win whatever tournament you guys are creating then you shouldn't be using it.

It's not OP, you just need to be aware it's possible.

Why aren't people kicking up a stink about the leveller patrol exploit?

f11 is an experimental debug mode. It's not something you actually use in game unless you want to exploit a bug.

Land showing water "is" is a bug. If I see a crack, and units start driving over the crack, I would question the legitimacy of that move. Sure, maybe the crack actually doesn't exist and is a graphical bug. But don't tell me I need to turn on the debug console to check if the crack actually exists -- before I place my **** there. I should assume that if there's an obstacle shown, that it's an obstacle. It's like, maybe there's not collision on one of the walls in a stage in Counter strike: Global offensive. So I can literally walk through and shoot through this wall, to the enemy's base. That's called exploiting a glitch. I could, you know, turn on the developer debug console and check the collision planes and see "oh that wall has glitchy collision and actualy doesn't exit". But I shouldn't need to, because I assume that it's a fair match between gentlemen, and that neither of us would be cheap enough to use it to advance our position in the game.

What's the Leveler patrol exploit?

Set single patrol point at desired target. They creep forwards and stop to fire immediately in range without moving forwards and they shoot stuff you can't see.