EAB/Lemon Super League 2015: Round 7 - Wings

[lifeschool]

@ ED - I can assure you we do take this competition seriously. I would normally ask for your death roster; but you made it to mission 25 without dying. This is difficult when players survive all 25 as its even harder to check for legitimacy. This game was never built with this compo in mind, and as such its far from ideal to play.

Can players use the 'death roster' screen to post like Graham above. This is just so that we can clearly see the date of defeat, as starting later in the war is supposed to be much easier. Squadron Roster screen gives the impression the game is still in play (which, if you survive 25, it is), while the death roster shows the player has died. Secondly, we can check the dates on the Death screen to see where you died. The starting date is always based on a random date of birth, but the death screen should be April (or May?) 1916.

Legitimate scores are difficult to check at the best of times, so at least with this game it gives the player death sheet showing some more details, so lets use this screen - where possible. 8)

[john1979]

Originally Posted by ED-209

Not mention other random factors such as the guns jamming or damage to your plane.

Something that seems to be making my guns jams less, and sometimes never is to put your mech ability a bit higher than all your other stats when creating a player.

Maybe it's just been luck so far, but the last time I remember equalising all my stats at the start I had jamming guns more regularly.

[vagrant]

Originally Posted by john1979

Something that seems to be making my guns jams less, and sometimes never is to put your mech ability a bit higher than all your other stats when creating a player.

Maybe it's just been luck so far, but the last time I remember equalising all my stats at the start I had jamming guns more regularly.

I did try a build focusing mainly on the 'shooting' stat to reach erm.. "marksmen II" I think it's called? But couldn't really notice much difference in how long it took to take enemies down.. Had a pretty good run with the above score and even stats, think the guns only jammed maybe 3-4 times

@lifeschool
Yeh mate I would have supplied the death roster had I died. Beyond that I understand very much how hard it is legitimize this round in particular

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by ED-209

either you really are that good and deserve some respect, or you are taking us all for a bunch of idiots.

I am veering towards the latter.

[ransom1122]

Originally Posted by ED-209

how about honoring your own suggestion of a "gameplay video" to put some minds at ease, because at this time; either you really are that good and deserve some respect, or you are taking us all for a bunch of idiots.

I don't think I'll get time to play the game all over again.

[capehorn]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

I am veering towards the latter.

I've can't comment on the mechanics of the game as I haven't played it yet, but to my knowledge, whenever someone has produced a score way above anyone else they are usually asked to explain how they've managed to achieve it (it happened to me on Batman). Looking at Ransom's posts in his only other appearance in the comp (Giana last round) his posts look entirely genuine so I'd be surprised if there was anything amiss. Regardless, it would probably be best if he opened up a bit and told us a bit more about how he achieved this score (any why people try to use the methods he described - taking down friendly planes etc. - it doesn't seem to work). Often in week 3 of the comp, the more successful players spill a few secrets to make it more competitive (like the location of the bonus room in Crazy Sue).

After he was beaten in the last round, he wrote

Originally Posted by ransom1122

The only way I could work out how he's done it is to purposely Die on levels with many Gems, and re do them whilst building up powers and not missing on head butting bricks etc etc.

To my knowledge a perfect score is about 80k. Let's hope after the round is over he could tell us his secrets.

There's no need to wait until after the round, if you really are that worried about people catching you up, you could just PM a mod to make the suspicion disappear.

[Graham Humphrey]

Shame. You won't have to though. I'm booting you out, sorry. I have never known someone to cause such bad feeling amongst so many players and I'm not going to tolerate it. If you were trying to prove a point then it's backfired. And no, I can't actually prove anything, but I'm the boss and I can do what I want, so that's my decision, please don't submit any scores from now on.

[capehorn]

I'm going to try and play peacemaker here.

This is only the second round that Ransom has played. That's interesting for me because the second round I ever played was Atom Smasher. I discovered that if you put the three special tiles together, you got a score bonus. I ended up winning that round, beating you Graham IIRC despite that fact that you got further in the game than me, and I never spilled the secret, because I wanted to get my first win.

If the high score table of Atom Smasher had the round reached listed on it, all these questions could have been posed to me, about how I hadn't got as far as you but had got a much larger score.

As I played a bit more in the comp I realised that I probably shouldn't have kept that a secret, and nowadays I would post that kind of thing to make it a more level playing field.

Ransom is new here, and he doesn't strike me as an MS-Amiga type. Maybe he just wants his first win like I did and doesn't want to give away whatever it is about this game that he knows and we don't.

I think the best thing to do is to make it clear that there is a question that needs answering and invite him to answer it before making a final decision (I don't know if something has happened over PM that I'm unaware of but I haven't seen a mod officially ask him for an explanation). If he has used some method that is vastly different from the rest of us, playing in a different timeframe or whatnot, then it would be for a mod to decide whether that's legal or not. I just think he should be given a final chance to explain.

[Graham Humphrey]

I (or any other mod) haven't discussed this with him via PM. He did send me a particularly whiney PM during the last round complaining about people playing WinUAE and how they should be in a separate competition because how do we know if they use save states or not? And he'd done enough moaning during that round anyway. He obviously has a low opinion of a lot of players here and I think he has made a rod for his own back.

Personally I think this is all nothing more than to prove a point and show us how wrong we've all been for all these years and I'm not the only one who thinks that. Now of course I could be wrong about his score and he could have got it legitimately like you point out, however the bad feeling this has caused amongst several players (especially on Lemon) is something that isn't just going to disappear regardless and I'd rather not have that feeling hanging around for too long.

[capehorn]

Fair enough. I only read the Lemon thread after posting here and you're right, he does seem to have upset a few people. Maybe if he shows a bit of goodwill in the future he could be considered for re-acceptance.

[JanciB]

There is no point to split the competition into real Amiga and emulator.
One could play on emulator, make super score then transfer the captured png to Amiga and display it with some image program and make photo of it.
Proves nothing.

Hmm, only 4 days to end, I should start to shoot down some planes...

JanciB

[john1979]

I guess I'm one of those players over on Lemon.

I feel sad things have turned out this way. I was hoping that some kind of dialogue had happened in PM, evidently not.

I think this was a difficult call for you Graham since 38 kills in one run is theoretically possible, just like monkeys eventually typing the complete works of Shakespeare, it's just not been done yet. You can watch the serialised Wings longplay on youtube for proof that it's possible, but the uploader admits in the first video it is done over a fair few tries.

I have no personal bad feelings towards Ransom, I just was naturally suspicious at probably the most insane score I've ever seen in the compo, and then Ransom's reluctance to really talk about it, especially when asked by ED for a video in good will. It was all rather... odd. He was offered plenty of space to shed light on things.

I'm leaning more towards fake than real, but I guess we'll never know.

[vagrant]

Originally Posted by Graham Humphrey

I think he has made a rod for his own back.

This.

On a lighter note, here's another cracker of a game review from John Gage
[ Show youtube player ]

[JanciB]

The assigments of the points when I create new pilot, does it actually have impact on the game?

JanciB

[vagrant]

Well I tried focusing on the shooting stat to reach "marksman II", but it didn't make much difference (if any). Over on Lemon they seem to have success increasing the mech stat to reduce gun jams.

According to the manual your stats increase/decrease depending on how well you do during strafing and bombing runs.

[JanciB]

208

I did not get the death roster. I got the ceremony and then the table with pilots. My pilot was not there. Where is the death roster?

JanciB

[Graham Humphrey]

On the Flight School screen, quit out, which takes you to the main menu, and then review pilots. Not intuitive, admittedly...

[capehorn]

504

[JanciB]

409

[capehorn]

1219