"we should standardize it because criminals will use it anyways" is a pretty bad argument if that's the only argument being made alone.
Works very well for the N.R.A.
Arbitrary play standards centered around a players ability to code, rather than their developed skill in the game are bad for the community, and bad for the game in general.
So you say, but I'm persuaded to the contary that rewarding coding ability over reflex is a good thing.
There's a reason why you can't currently press a button on your interface and have every unit of your opponent explode. It might be theoretically feasible to modify the engine to allow that, but it's not legitimate play in any context, and we'd pretty much ban anyone defying that standard. It's not default, and it's not supported. It has nothing to do with implicitly agreeing it's a bad idea. Anything a developer wants to NOT be in the game should NOT be in the game. Including lua scripts that allow me to micro a commander in such a way that he can Dgun passing scout planes. The player is NEVER allowed to say "oh well, screw you developer, I want to do this this way, so you can shove off!".
This is strawman and slanders! Even theorically, it is impossible to use LuaUI or group AI to make all enemy units explode with a press of a button. In case you don't know, there is a very precise set of things LuaUI and groupAI can do, which are mostly the action a player can do with his mouseclick, and anything else is forbidden.
Maybe you got confused by all the "Lua can do everything" posts, but you should not confuse the Lua code that goes with the map or the mod, which has to be the same accross all players or game doesn't synch, and the Lua of the User Interface, which can be personnalised by each player but is very limited compared to its Spring LUA brethen.
The dev who coded the LuaUI and GroupAI interface took great care selecting what can and can't be done with LuaUI and GroupAI, removing all control that would give cheating-like ability, keeping only what can be used to achieve better control of existing actions.
Anything the developers wants to NOT be in the LuaAI or GroupAI is already NOT be in them.
If a player said "oh well, screw you developer, I The plwant to do this this way, so you can shove off!", well
The player, and even the LuaUI coder, canNOT say "screw you developer, I want to do this this way, so you can shove off!", since the player, LuaUI coder, and groupAI coder, can only do what's possible within the calls and stuff allowed by the dev. Well, it's ludicrous to think the dev wouln't have the last word anyway.
K, I'm arguing that they shouldn't want it then, because the negatives of this type of usage outweigh the positives.
Essentially, anything that modifies the way the game plays on a level deeper than interface or visual preference as opposed to default.
"Deep" and "positive" are very relative values.
I've seen that phenomena literally tear other gaming communities apart. "scripting" is the source of 90% of drama in CS for example, CS is a frigging nuclear bomb when it comes to internet drama, and the scripting system there is ages less sophisticated than spring's lua is in comparison.
CS (I suppose it's Counter-Strike) is bad comparaison, because it's a FPS. So a game where the skills are reflex, a game where a bot can outdo most human, a game where you only control one unit at a time so that one unit better not be on full auto, etc... This is entirely different from a RTS which is supposed to relies more on analytical thinking than reflex, where you have so many units that there's never enough time to give even all important orders, a game where even average humans can beat any AI. Just as an exemple of how different they are, an aimbot would ruin a FPS, but in a RTS all units have "aimbot" by default.
If we look at all exemples provided so far, none has broken Spring so far:
- Giving everything in comm end team game was already possible manually, the lua wigdet just render more apparent the flaw in team + comm end + sharing.
- Dgunning plane is just an aimbot, while aimbot are considered as cheat in FPS, they are supposed to be on by default in RTS. If any modder feels planes should not be dgunned, he has plenty of varied way to prevent that.
- That stuff about nanotower... well it sounds like it just make them useful, as opposed to standing idle until you get around to give them orders. Not a cheat, just a very needed feature.
) that can ive a human an advantange over where it matters in an RTS game - planning and timing. Look at rAndy - he clicks god knows how many times a minute, but the reason he's good is because is because he has a sense of timing and planning. If you automated the mundane clicking somehow, he would still be near the top, because of these two things.
