Out of character thread XIX

[econ21]

The issue is not that Warluster does not want to patch his game but that he does not have the means to do so in the near future, meaning he is prevented from doing so.
That and he needs 1.3, meaning double the size of 1.2.

I know - I am not unsympathetic. If von Salza's life (or Ruppel's) depended on it, I would compromise. I don't want any player to lose their avatar because of OOC technical problems, still less becase of a disputed ruling by me. But we are not in a life or death situation here (yet). Bear in mind we are not talking about Warluster being unable to patch in the near future - we are apparently talking about not patching until June.

Subbing was considered for situations where people were away for long periods of time. Not patching your game is not being away. Kotr switched to 1.3 a long time ago and having a properly patched version of the game should be a requirement of full participation in the PBM.

By the same token, I am not going to allow Roadkill to use a sub if he is still without M2TW. When Roadkill was new to the PBM, we allowed that to cut him a break but it does not seem a proper long term solution. Now he has a new avatar, and given the current Swabian case, he should be considered to be on reserve duty unless he confirms he has a fully patched and kotorfixed game installed.

At the time of posting, there are no players with arrangements for proxying in place. If a player's avatar is involved in a battle, they or another player whose avatar is in the same battle, has to fight it within 48 hours or it will be autocalced. This has quite serious implications for the game - not just for Swabia, but also for the Magdeburg three (who might all be killed if an autocalced siege assault leads to their defeat) and also the Kaiser's army (which seems now to have no commander who can fight Monday to Thursday). Personally, I think the constraints introduced by the risk of autocalc go some way to offsetting the weak AI and add some needed tension to our game.