posted 05-01-99 05:47 AM ET        

most of you who use e-mail-multiplayer will know that problem: one player disappears without saying a word, especially without saying his password. So it's sensible to store those pw's in some other place, but there further problems arise:

- Can the pw keeper be trusted?
- Are the other players good losers so that, when for pure luck the pw keeper will survive a surprise attack or something similiar, they will not acuse him of foul play?

So, here's the solution (trumpets, please: ta-taaa!)
As the moving order always remains the same, there are only two login screens that I will ever get to see: my own and the one following directly following my turn.
However, the password of the PRECEDING PERSON is useless for me. I will never even have the theoretical chance to login there.

So here's the plan:
Everyone gives his password to the person directly following in the list.

Advantages:
- If one person disappears, the others have the password and can give it to a substitute player.
- The powers and responsabilities of password keeping are distributed equally among all players.
- Absolutly no chance for misuse.

How do you think about it?

posted 05-01-99 01:29 PM ET            

Only one slight problem. The possibility exists that you might accidentally send the file from the beginning of your turn. In that case the following player *could* use your password and hack into your game, and then tell you you sent the wrong file. There was a better solution posted in the Multiplayer forum where everyone's password length was limited to one less than number of human players involved. Each of the other players would receive one character of each of the other players passwords with the next human player after you receiving the first, 2nd human the 2nd character and so on.

For example, you're Morganites in a 5 player game. Gaian's and Believers are AI. You're limited to a 4 character password. You send the first character to Spartan player, 2nd character to PK player, 3rd to Hive player, 4th to UoP player. That way, when you're run over by a train (as we all know, no SMAC player worth his salt will stop for anything less) and your opponents dredge up a new player, each of the still living players will send on the the password characters they have to the new player.

Of course, all of this assumes that all players have at least a modicum of honor to begin with.

BTW this is not my idea. Some very helpful soul posted this but I jumped the gun in replying and was too lazy to go about finding out who it was. I'm sorry I've not given proper attribution.

posted 05-01-99 01:36 PM ET            

JAMiAM