Twobagger wrote:Unibot III wrote:You could of course cancel approvals upon a WA Delegate’s resignation, which would effectively prohibit approval hacking too, on top of prohibiting approval raiding. But I wonder if invaders may have an issue with one tactic being taken away from them (approval raiding) without another tactic being made more available to them (approval hacking, for lack of a better term)?
That is an issue, yes. But the larger one, for me, is that there is nothing about this mechanic that requires fixing.
Approval raiding isn't mechanically difficult to do - any competent R/D organization can do it. People who wish to counteract it have several different methods (e.g. defending the raid,
contacting delegates who got bumped to re-approve their proposals, manufacturing their own approvals, getting more approvals, getting approvals from delegates that can't easily be replaced) available to them that have been successfully employed in the past, none of which are mechanically difficult to attempt and some of which are mechanically easier to attempt than approval raiding itself. In addition, many proposals can't realistically be approval raided for various reasons - sometimes there are too many approvals, sometimes the approvals aren't vulnerable enough, and sometimes the approvals update too closely together (time-wise). If anything, the mechanics of approvals seem to disfavor approval raiding: since approvals are counted at the beginning of update instead of at the end, authors who suddenly find themselves short of approvals have a time window to get more, and approvals gained in the last 12 or so hours can't be raided away.
It would be one thing if we were here because this gameplay mechanic was too difficult to do except by scripts, or if there wasn't a way to counteract it, or if it could easily be done to any approval. But none of those are true. In short, I think it would be inappropriate to attempt to "fix" this gameplay mechanic with a technical solution. However, I must say that part of me wouldn't mind if this was changed, if only so I can figure out how to loophole it for my own benefit before (and better than) anyone else can.
The problem is that proposals that run out of time are removed instantly if they fall off the queue. There are also some
features that do not fit with normal raiding and why it is allowed to stand:
An active, competent founder can stop normal raiders.
Only a password, a severe action drastically hampering recruitment, can stop approval raiders. A founder - the ultimate weapon in regional security - can't do anything here.
Regions that were subject to a raid due to insufficient security can simply strenghten their security if they survive.
Regions that are hammered by approval-raids can only do a password (bad) or stop approving(terrible, chilling effect) to stop approval raids.
Getting approvals from delegates that cant be easily replaced, nice idea, but there are lots of small regions vital for any proposal to reach queue. If approval raiding were impossible due to too many approving delegates, then junk would flood the WA queue if there is no approval raid.
Stamps are an advertized way to get delegate support. Stamps cost real money. With approval raiding countermeasures(vast nets of 2-people, passworded regions to control approvals) sale of stamps for WA proposals will drop to near zero.
The countermeasures in itself are not
clean because they artificially increase the number of WA delegates, making it harder for ordinary people to reach enough approvals even without being approval raided.