Subject: MN: Re: Year 3, Week 1 Proposals

From: "Wayper, Paul" <WayperP@p...>
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 08:35:19 +1000

I might as well answer the queries on my own Proposals...

On Wednesday, 14 April 1999 23:01, Dunx (Duncan Ellis)
[SMTP:DELLIS@u...] wrote:
> > Proposal 672 - 50Hz Notch Filter [Multiple] 
> 
> I confess I'm not bothered either way - disuse seems like a reasonable 
> argument against, but then there's the Ostrich Hunt Proposal later on
> which is a powerful argument in the Drone's favour... 

Well, seeing the opinion is overwhelmingly negative I'd like to withdraw
that proposal. Unfortunately, according to 0.4.3 I can't due to my stupidly
not considering a withdrawal of a proposal as a legitimate thing to do. I'd
like to raise an emergency proposal that a withdrawal be counted as an
update for the purposes of 0.4.3. Or, more specifically,

Emergency Proposal - Help! They don't like my idea! (Amendment)

Add the following paragraph to Rule 0.4.3:

At any time a Player may request that the Speaker withdraw a Proposal the
Player has submitted. The Proposal is then considered never to have been
submitted and any Votes cast in relation to it are discarded. The Speaker
must then notify the Discussion Lounge that the Player in question has
withdrawn said Proposal.

> > Once the Move is Invalid, it cannot be revalidated by another Rule. 
> 
> Not at all sure that this is fine. Given the order of the points, I think
> that this effectively kills loops. 

You're right. I think the best way to handle this is, as Dunx suggested, to
make Loops another special case in 1.5.0, so, to wit, I'd like to request an
update to this Proposal to be the section between the double lines
hereafter:

=========================================

Rewrite Rule 1.5.0 to read:

There are four ways for a Player's Piece Move to be Valid:

1) If the Move is either the word "Pass" or the word "Timeout", then this
is known as a Passed Move. The Move is Valid and the Piece stays at its
current Station.

2) If the Move uses one of the following Actions (only one of these allowed
per Turn):
* Home (Rule 1.12.1)
* Wild (Rule 1.11.1)
* Marmalade Sandwiches (Rule 1.4.16)
* Striling (Rule 1.7.12)
* Stubbery (Rule 1.7.33)
* Walking (Rule 1.7.10)
In this case, the Move is known as a Special Move. The Move is Valid, and
the Piece is moved directly to the specified Station without passing
through any other Stations.

3) If the Game is in a Loop State according to Rule 1.8.6, then the Move is
Valid if it obeys the conditions of the Loop as set out in Rule 1.8.6 and
the relevant Rule or Rules specifying the details of the Loop. This is
known as a Looping Move.

4) Otherwise, the Move is known as a Standard Move. All Stations in the
Map currently under play (by default, the Map defined in Rule 1.17.1) are
Valid. The Player must then check through all the Rules and checks in the
following list to determine if any one of them makes the Move Invalid.

{Removing the can't-revalidate clause that's sticking in people's throats.}

Actions of other Players may move a Piece before or after its owner's Turn
without that Piece in turn being required to comply to these checks. In
other words, these checks are only applied to a Piece during the Piece's
owner's Turn.

1. LV Checks

* If the distance between the target Station and the Player's current
Piece Location is not precisely the same as that Player's LV, the Move
becomes Invalid.

2. Trivial Fares

* Line Changing (Rule 1.5.11)

3. Blocks, Impediments and Gaps

* Blocks (Rule 1.9.1)
* Damaged Stations (Rule 1.11.3)
* The Podume of Infinite Darkness (Rule 1.4.24)
* Closed Lines and Stations (Rule 1.13.4)
* Other Players' Home Stations (Rule 1.12.3)
* Power Failures (Rule 1.7.8)
* Maelberg Variances (Rule 1.7.17)
* Gapminding (Rule 1.7.7)
* Bridges (Rule 1.8.3)
* Circle Line Polarisation (Rule 1.8.5)
* Construction Lines (Rule 1.5.10)
* Heathrow Traversal (Rule 1.5.7)

4. Non-Loop Progressions

* Parks and Greens Cascade (Rule 1.8.2)
* Charge Spiral (Rule 1.19.5)

5. First Turn

* If this is the Player's first Turn in the Game, eir Home
Station is a Valid Move and all other Stations are Invalid.

6. Unused Actions

* If the Actioning Player performed a pre-Move Action to make a
particular type of Move Valid, and did not play such a Move,
eir Move becomes Invalid.

Stations "passed through" during a Move are all of those along the route
which the Player's Piece has taken, excepting the Station it started and
ended the Move at.

=========================================

> Should this Proposal Pass, I'd like to raise Point of Order to ensure
> that EP 32 be applied to this version of section 4. 

Hopefully that won't be necessary due to the above revisions.

BTW, I'd like to congratulate the Speaker on the excellence and
comprehensiveness of the web pages - I found the relevant EP easily and
simply through the archives, even though the EP was passed while I was off
the lists.

> It's a good fix, but I don't think I've expressed concern in that
direction? 

Oh well, I remembered that someone muttered about that. It might have been
a different conversation about something unrelated.

> > 1c : Costation. At the same named station, not on the same line. 
> This needs a 'in the same map location' clause, because otherwise Turnham
> Green and Shepherd's Bush get complicated. 

I thought of this, but I considered them a rare enough case (and that Range
Class 1c would be specified rarely enough) that this was more a minor
misfeature rather than an actual bug.

> Some amusing names, but I'm not convinced that making them amusing is
> going to make them a great deal easier to remember (although I do like
5a!). 

Kevan commented on this as well - I'd intended that people would use the
Range Classes rather than the Range Class Names when specifying them in the
Rules. Range Class Names were initially me trying to find a single word
definition; as that got impractical it just became a bit of fun.

> It would undoubtedly be a bit duller, but perhaps easier to follow, if 
> relative location classes were defined using some kind of simple code,
> and the Range Codes were defined as a combination of location codes. 

This, and what Dunx describes, is a nice idea. I'd encourage him to propose
it whether this passes or not.

> > Proposal 677 - No more albums [Multiple] 
> I think this is a good idea - granted that we only have any Singuler
> Actions in the Post-Move phase, but we've got several of those:
> Shunt, Shadow and Blonk.

My excuse was that I was going through an old ruleset. You could also
include LV adjustment and Homes/Wilds/etc. as Singular moves. I was, once
again, giving a simple framework that could be used in the future.

> My feeling is also that with a larger Proposal limit, individual Proposals
> can be more focussed. Not that we've had many kitchen sink Proposals,
> but there have been cases where some good ideas have been voted down
> because they were grouped inappropriately. 

I agree. While there's always a danger with proposals that rely on other
proposals in the same week, I think this will encourage people to do more
individual fixes rather than lumping ideas inappropriately. Mind you, my
practice recently has been to send off proposals as I feel like it, and if
they wait an extra week or two then this isn't a problem (especially with
the update-proposals-in-progress rules now.)

> No, and it's practically impossible to do so. But then, if you're prepared
to go to those length I reckon you deserve your moment in the sun. 

I also think that spreading tokens ahead of you is a good clue to other
players as to what you're up to. They still have a turn to foil your plans
if they can...

> :Perhaps we should come up with some Quadrants for Paris...

If there's a way to digitise maps (Kevan? Did you get my mail?) then I
think there's a way to make a program to produce arbitrary zonings for any
map. This would be very useful, as I think not having Zones and Quadrants
is a serious hinderance to non-LU maps.

Have fun, anyway,

Paul Wayper -- DPI ITS Computer Systems Officer
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From: dunx@l... (Duncan Ellis (Dunx))
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 07:42:06 GMT

>simply through the archives, even though the EP was passed while I was off

Kevan must take the majority of the credit here - I've merely continued his
excellent work.

The thought is appreciated though.

Dunx
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