In this week’s devlog Michi talks about the aftermath of the recent election on Promitor.
You can find the full issue of the development log here.
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Thank you very much for your attention and work on this Molp!
I would point out one thing though. While your point that being supported by bots is not enough to be a TOS violation and that you can’t directly link the bots to the supported accounts (probably due to VPN usage, which they would have to use in certain countries) - that an innocent player would not then have gone on to empty the treasury and run with the money - with the only support being the bot supported accounts. An innocent player would not have done that. So to my mind the actions of the EUU account are different then the other two accounts - it might not be enough for TOS violation - but it is definitely not the actions of a purely innocent player who got supported by third party bots.
EDIT: So people understand - I am not lobbying Molp to change his current position - just pointing something out and maybe an idea to modify the TOS so in the future something like this might be against the TOS - but I don’t have a good idea on how to modify them now, and they aren’t mine to modify.
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I have to agree with CraftsmanThirteen here.
This “resolution” leaves me with a very bad taste for this game now. It’s never a good feeling when cheaters prosper, and that’s what’s happening here. You can try to say there’s no evidence, but the motive is clear based on the very public actions taken upon winning the election.
Cheaters gained 25m. Honest players get stuck holding the bag.
Edit
I am aware that draining the treasury and running isn’t against the rules of the game, by the way. It’s the combination that matters here. The botting, and the actions. That seems to be something you want to keep separate, but you cannot in this situation. The one lead to the other, they are connected.
I appreciate the recognition that the voting system itself is the core problem here, molp, and I thank you for prioritizing work on it. The approval system sounds like a sensible approach that should avoid requiring tedious strategizing to defend planets or confusing less invested players. I look forward to seeing it in action soon!
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Imo the voting system wasn’t the real problem, or at least not the biggest part. The new system is better in some aspects and worse in more.
Anyway, the problem with the election on Promitor was the low voting participation (~100 votes on a planet with 2000 bases) which is because there is no interest in politics which is because there is no politics being made by players which is mainly because the government system only has only one solution on how to run a planet (at best you can vary the amount of the pop reserve you want to keep available).
Everything else like “do we want to increase taxes to fund public stuff” is being discussed in discord and planet chats and not through an election. Though this is also partially because of the “we are glad to have found someone to manage the planet” and because the voting system isn’t great for that kind of voting as every split is weakening your party and is making takeovers easier (the same with the new system but now you don’t know how many votes you need)
These problems are remedied by the new approval system. With that in place it becomes easier to a) get a majority and b) vote a fair and consistent ballot that represents more of the total voting population’s opinion
I agree, the low voter turn-out is a problem. As a small immediate action we deployed a new notification for all inhabitants that is fired 24h before the election ends.
The politics system surely can be improved. One thing we had in mind is to have a campaign feature of sorts, where each candidate can post campaign details, what they want to achieve if they get elected. This could be a summary of their arguments in the discussions in the mentioned communication channels.
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That 24hr notification is a big help. I’ve forgotten to run for election on planets I run by myself multiple times because I missed a “the election is starting” notification and then there’s no government for an entire month.
As far as voter participation, I agree that the biggest problem is that politics isn’t interesting or crucial enough to get more people involved. For most people the attitude is, as long as SOMEONE is willing to run the government I don’t care who it is. And any one of the people running for election is probably going to do that competently so it doesn’t really matter if I vote.
Actually, if a malicious takeover of the government was a more common threat then voters would get more involved. Hey, maybe the solution is just to have more rogue players running for office (just without the bot/puppet accounts).
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I have also forgotten to run on my own planets (which is why I want to be a warlord and just stay in government until other people actually join the planet).
But maybe we are looking at this from the wrong direction - in the sense that maybe the player base is signaling that they don’t care about politics and that running a planet is not fun for them - and gets in the way of enjoying the parts of the game that they want to play?
When I see devs try hard to get players focus on something the players aren’t doing - I start getting concerned (I do know others devs as well) - are you listening to your playerbase and what they would enjoy - or are you trying to tell them what to do so they have fun?
Frankly, if you give members of government a 5% production boost on their buildings while they are serving in the government - you will have players fight to be in government and alot more attention to the running of the planet - because players will want that boost and they will compete for it.
I’ll speak for myself: I love the governance system. Something about matching out how to run things, combined with some accounting and a dash of PR on top is actually a ton of fun to me.
I think there is lots of potential in politics and government, but not for everyone. The people that aren’t interested in that shouldn’t be forced to interact with the topic more than nessesary, like reading through a list of candidates and for what they stand and then place their vote (<2 min per planet, <5-10 min for the faction)
Since not much can be done about what has gone on, perhaps we can discuss what could be done going forward when similar rogue actions take place. I know it has been mentioned elsewhere that the only thing we can do today is blocking users from the LM. If that could be expanded to the CX, then “bad” players could potentially face actual repercussions for their actions, some sort of embargo.
I agree that more in-game actions would be nice, but my overall problem with the response here is that the rules only seem to apply if you get caught red-handed.
VPNs, bot nets, there are so many ways to dodge bot detection rules. If I had less integrity, I’d look at what was done here as a template for more exploitation rather than being deterred. So what if fake accounts are banned? The end result is ill-gotten proceeds and disposable accounts being disposed of.
That’s my issue. Put as calmly as I can.
The dev’s response isn’t simply a CYA situation. It is also intended to protect the honest players. If they set the precedent of banning an account because that person benefitted from cheating but they can’t PROVE that person is responsible then it could lead to the following scenario:
Someone cheats, gets elected, then sends you all the money in the planet’s coffers. Now you have to be banned. I know, you’d say “I would never accept such a contract.” But maybe someone else would because they weren’t paying attention or didn’t realize there was anything wrong. And maybe that person isn’t on Discord or doesn’t read the in-game messages so never learns that this largesse was the result of cheating. Still, by the precedent set above that person would get banned. Also, does it have to be ALL of the money in the coffers? Is $5M the cutoff for obvious fraud? Is $1M?
The better solution is going to be to improve the game to either make these exploits more difficult to achieve or retribution easier to exact.
Here’s one suggestion - allow more dynamic control of government rules. In other words, allow players to set voting requirements for certain condition. For example, “Our constitution now states that any payout contract or combination of contracts totaling more than $2M over the next 30 days requires unanimous consent.” Such a constitutional change itself would have to be approved unanimously.
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I would really appreciate the ability to form a constitution of sorts like youre outlining. I agree that that would make things a lot easier to manage from the government side. If this were coupled with some more proactive measures that can be taken by the player base to reprimand those caught, I think we would end up with a very excellent form of justice that can be applied, as well as some actual game rules that dictate where and when that can be applied.
Good ideas, but I still disagree that they’re protecting honest players here. I’m just exhausted, so there’s no point arguing.
I honestly don’t know how long I’ll stay. These sort of bad feelings don’t just go away, they fester. There’s no closure here, no justice, and that means I will likely not trust many people in this community outside of those I’ve personally come to know. That’s the real damage here, and it’s unfortunate. Who knows how many others feel like I do? I could be alone, for sure. Or not.
I speak up because I care about this game that scratches some very specific itches of mine, and I’d rather not find a replacement. But it feels like the community (and dev) have spoken, and Euu is free to go. So I’ll just shut up. 
Yay, I guess?