Should Navy Going Over Land be Considered an Exploit?

In the 2v2 Tournament between Ballistic Logistics and Ikon Gaming, OathAlliance and Lokthar from BL sent their navy over land causing some major game changing destruction.

The glitch can be seen in action here: http://i.imgur.com/eUc80Hl.jpg

These naval units are going over what visually looks like land, but the units treated it as water, connecting two bodies of water that the defenders thought were not connected, so they didn't defend that area.

Personally, I think this should be considered an exploit under the Gentleman's Rules as it is a big time game changing bug in certain situations – like this tournament match.

Thoughts?

The Match: http://pamatches.com/2013/2v2-tourn...vs-oathalliance-lokthar-with-commentary-from/

Edit: Yes, I am aware that it is a visual bug, as stated above.

While I would strongly suggest that tournament rules discourage the use of landboats. F11 shows you very clearly what land is passable by boats and what isn't. They are essentially rivers that are just barely visible.
Pathfinding isn't working well enough to prevent accidental usage.

I however don't think they should be in the gentlemen's rules as the beta is probably going to change this anyways.

It's the player's personal responsibility to make sure they defend areas correctly. If they don't defend it because they thought wrong, then it's a tactical error, and they will suffer for it. Considering it's water, not land, I don't see why boats shouldn't be allowed.

That said, The game's visuals of very shallow water are nigh impossible to tell unless you view it at the right angle. I've seen that personally. I've lost multiple battles because of this, yet I still consider that a tactical error, not an exploit.

When ships have checks for minimum depth, this will completely cease to be an issue. I'm hoping that land units will have a similar depth detection so they can wade in shallow water like they could in TA.

In the current execution of the game, it isn't really an issue of water depth. I specifically watched this area and the water never touched. Meaning, this technically water area never actually looked like water. It was land 100% of the time. So from the defender's perspective, the small lake next to their base was not connected to the larger area and didn't need to be defended.

So the enemy took their boats over what visually looked like land and attacked the defender's base.

I was gonna vote no thinking that this was talking about walking boats (which according to logic should be in PA)

other than that what Ghostflux so insightfully pointed out both about f11 and the gentleman's rules. Maybe in this case the boats wern't glitching, and in any case the pathfinding for boats will surely get some work.

saw the vid, you know, PA has waves breaking in and out quite far, this is what made the boats look a bit like they were shipwrecked a bit but actually they were respecting the limits just fine. when the waves pushed out they were far from the "shore"

Uh.. kay, so I'm watching the video, JUST got to 34:20, which is the time which you took that screenshot. I've seen that area from multiple angles during the video. Not only is it a very shallow area of water, the video shows it connected multiple times, sometimes only for half a second, but the lakes do connect.

It is completely an issue of water depth. All naval units go over surface water irrelevant how deep it is. The visuals of the current game make very shallow water look like land. If boats had a check for how deep the water is, they wouldn't be going over the shallow areas like the one shown here. It's a lack of implemented mechanics, not an exploit. You can only exploit something that's broken. This isn't broken. It's just not implemented yet.

As soon as this visual was added, I made sure to look extremely well at bodies of water close together to confirm if they connect. When you don't confirm the bodies of water aren't connected, and just assume so by visuals alone, I consider that a tactical error. An error by choice.

you have not even considered that the 'land' the ships went over was the result of a visual bug? which i think is clearly the problem.

Please reupdate your poll to with an option of 'graphical bug'.

in all honesty... this is alpha!
why make a tournament in alpha with numerous bugs like those...
also you didn't even consider the possibility of a graphics bug... this could be water for the system but not animated correctly because of interference...

also it was not even close to be a gamebreaker... they wone the game not because of a few cruisers being able to jump over...

Agree with this. No doubt. The result of the game wouldn't have been any different if the ships wouldn't have gone over. They did very little to the end result. In which the team that lost didn't take their army and attack when they should have. They did nothing, and in doing that nothing, lost the game.

I am fully aware that it is a graphical bug, and even said so.

It's a graphical bug that greatly changes how the game is played.


And yes, they would have won the match. They had a large number of their units lost trying to deal with those boats. They also lost large amounts of power early on in the game as a huge set back. If those boats were confined to the larger lake, white would have played the match very differently and taken much fewer losses.

They still could have won the game. Ikon Gaming lost their cool and were too distracted by the glitch and those boats. If they had kept up the offensive and the multi pronged attacks Ballistic Logistics would have lost the match.

If you know that it is a graphical bug, then what the hell is with the wording of the poll? besides, anyone bitching about losing because of naval clearly has their priorities wrong =.= its not like 2 bombers cannot kill any naval ship in the game?

This is why IG lost. They would have sent those units at the navy anyway, since it was specifically shelling their base from the water. They shouldn't have since the navy wasn't moving inward, and would have taken fire from the catapults. If they didn't, which was, yet again, a choice, they could have easily mopped the floor with BL. They didn't attack, and let BL run them over by being distracted by something that shouldn't have distracted them in the first place.

Like I said, the loss wasn't because of the naval. The fact that IG not only came back incredibly strong, could have chosen not to throw away their units, and actually attacked BL with their army as a large mass, they would have completely steamrolled through BL's nearly undefended base, which at the time, did not have the immense advanced tank army they won with.

But they didn't. That lack of assuming command over the entire arsenal at IG's base, and leaving their distraction to wander was the cost of the game. The turning point of the game was when they chose to not attack, not when the naval hit them. It was a severe setback, no question about it, but they still came back but lost due to choice. I think it's fair to say it was their loss, irrelevant naval on land or not.

in all honesty... if you let yourself get distracted from your WHOLE tactic by a minor glitch... and lose because of that... you deserve it :-D

Losing to something that looks completely wrong isn't a minor glitch. However it is a mostly visual issue.

Did you watch the video all the way though? The first time the bug was exploited a bunch of Bluebottles got into the back of the base. They killed off 4 (all) advanced power plants and a bunch of other buildings. That is a massive dent in the economy. The only way they could stop them is with catapults and by that time the damage was already done.

Around the same time iG had massed a large army and pushed its way though BL's production. They could have easily won after all that damage. They just got angry over the exploit and threw the game.

The bit at the end with the advanced ships played a much more minor role. I wouldn't look at that when judging if it was fair.

I love to see the back and forth in communites, that being said, fact of the matter is boats don't travel on land.

Arguing that it's someones responsibility to defend against it, is obsured. It's obviously a defect, and I'm willing to put money on the fact that it is not done so by design.

And as such, any player who uses a system outside of it's original design specifications to their advantage (however so slightly) is considered an exploit. As much, anyone who argues otherwise promotes the abuse of said aforementioned exploit; which makes my eyes rain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploit_(video_gaming)

so? it's not like leviathans raining on a base built next to the shore can't level said base entirely, next to that the two ships are nothing.

The boats didn't travel on land, the game clearly marked that area as water in its data. The problem is it visually misrepresented that data. The two players then interpreted that visual data differently, causing a discrepancy. One teams assumption was correct, and the others was incorrect and they suffered the consequences.

If you were fighting on a planet with tons of mountains, and you assumed one mountain range on the side of your base was solid and impassable then that is your choice. However, you deserve the consequences you will suffer when the enemy discovers that your assumption was incorrect, and that there is indeed a path through the mountains. The player driving through the mountains is not at fault for your incorrect assumptions.

I full heartedly agree, providing that the path through the mountain side was by design, and not due to an inproper boundery line, visual defect or otherwise. That would have nothing to do about assumption over expectations, but just bad coding.

The difference, to me, is: I may assume that a nuke cannot reach me, and I get nuked, my fault. Versus, I assume a tank can't travel through solid matter (Using the moutain example) because, well, that's just science.

It really just boils down to, "it doesn't look right, and needs a solution".

look at the video, giger, you'll see the boats did nothing they wern't supposed to.