Nice word. Although ersatz meaning an inferior substitute is probably a better one in this case.

Anyway I have 11 non-submissions although I certainly may have missed a submission. I have the following as not yet submitted.

A Team
AF_Ronin
PlayJeff45
Silverbeacher

Blade Runners
Lethrin
MarshallONeil
TheGreatEmperor
VegJed

Celestial Crusaders
FireBender
Wyndstar

Domination of Death
General Homsar
GeneralEtrius

Everyone from the Eternal Villainy has submitted.

I've checked all of these players' metaverse profiles as of earlier today and both Lethrin and TheGreatEmperor have medium galaxy military conquests in the timeframe of this round that would qualify as "automatic" submissions although clearly an explicit submission is far preferable, hence ersatz.

OK cool. There's also FB and Silver that are in question as well. But it seems our counts are consistent.

Working on a case, may not submit.

~ Wyndstar

Not late yet. Still have more than a day left to go.

Sorry, Team. I had a game lined up that I thought I could get in, but I started working at a new job recently and found my gaming time diminished. Being used to procrastination, I said to myself, "Hey, no problem, I've got Tuesday and Wednesday night to finish the game," but, alas, things didn't work out as planned in that game. Anywho, I feel like an ass for not completing a viable game, and the only consolation at this point is that the other team members pulled through, we got the 4 necessary games. Great work, Blade Runners, I'll try to step it up next round.

It's not really my place to say whether or not PlayJeff's game be accepted since I'm the captain of the Team he's on. However I do want to mention that PlayJeff has made frequent mention of working some crazy long hours of late and given that, I am thankful he was able to submit any game whatsoever.

Generally PlayJeff puts in a whole lot of effort playing multiple games that gives a captain a lot of flexibility, particularly in a multiple victory round. One the other hand he also has had a history of cutting his submission close to the deadline and a bit beyond.

If I felt this was the current case and he had other games previously posted to the MV then my take would be to prohibit the last minute submission of an obvious best game and to force the use of a less than optimal previously posted game. However in this case I honestly believe that PlayJeff made every effort to post a game in time and that most other folks with his real life workload wouldn't have bothered to submit anything at all.

On that basis, plus the fact that the game in question doesn't miraculously allow the A Team to steal the victory this round, I believe this game should be accepted. I'm not saying this in any capacity as the MVL rulekeeper because to accept this game is really an exception to the rule, I'm just saying as an ordinary MVL member that the obvious effort that PlayJeff made this round to submit when many others wouldn't warrants the exception being made.

The results for the round are still pending, but here is some other data that people may find interesting:

average score: 37,773
average speed: 4.48 years
average difficultly level: 9.27 (between crippling & masochistic)

Sentient species taste better...

One point that came up in this rounds scoring is a tie for first place team speed. By rule individual bonus point ties are broken by the opposite category and if tied in both then all ties receive the same score.

In the case of a tie in a team bonus category the teams tied receive the same score. In this case it was two teams tied for first place team speed and so both teams received 2 points but since in general only two teams get a team bonus there was no 2nd place team speed bonus awarded.

If there were more than two teams tied for first then again all teams would get 2 points but no 2nd place team bonus would be awarded.

Finally the only other possible case is if there is a single 1st place team and multiple teams tied for 2nd in which case the first place team would get 2 points and all teams tied for 2nd would get 1 point.

Hopefully all this makes logical sense.

Also as far as the overall round scoring I think we're all set with the winner although how the other places sort out depend on whether or not PlayJeff's game is accepted. We're currently waiting for a ruling from Silver or Neilo on that matter and expect an answer soon.

That is a legitimate argument except it's just not how things have been done. We could certainly change the rules as they stand but all in all I think we've hammered out a fairly good system even though it's by no means perfect.

You probably remember we had a *lot* of discussions about non-submissions. Initially we even had penalties associated with it. We very quickly decided that we didn't want to be in the business of asssigning penalties to people that did no wrong of their own other than be on a team where someone failed to submit.

We quickly got to the point we've been at since which is that if someone doesn't submit the only negative the team gets is that they don't get the possible benefit of a game that didn't get submitted. Otherwise we've bent over backwards to try and avoid penalizing the team. This does end up in some sense putting a team in a situation where they can actually be more hurt by a late submission than by no submission at all. The submission bonus is particularly sensitive to this, but similar things happen with score.

Should we encourage players to not submit low scoring games or long games that bring down the teams average? I don't think we want this. I would rather lose because a teamate submitted a low scoring game than win because he kept it in his back pocket and didn't submit. That goes counter to everything I think this league stands for.

Obviously as long as a team has the requisite 4 submissions then fewer submissions will be better than more because the most likely games to miss being submitted are the later games giving that team a better overall submission score.

The problem is then what do you do. If a player announces that he won't submit then you don't count his game as a non-submission but if he fails to announce then you do count him as if he submitted at the last moment? Is this really fair to the teammates? In either case the teammates did nothing different but one set gets penalized and other set wouldn't be. And if you count a non-submission as a submission at the last moment for submission purposes shouldn't you also count it as a 0 score for average score purposes. Perhaps an unannounced non-submission should be counted as a 100 year 0 score game submitted at the last moment. That's rather harsh but it's a logical extension of your argument.

On the other hand I think I could make a reasonable argument that submission time shouldn't be used as a bonus criteria at all because it penalizes people with more "real world" concerns. But we've been through all of this before and have what I feel is a reasonable compromise.

All in all I'm for leaving things as they are. My team never gets any submission bonuses anyway and some teams always seem to get a piece of it. So the one time they fail to get a piece of the submission bonus it's a source of complaint?

You win some, you lose some, and some are rained out, but you always save the stub. Winning is important but it's not the only reason or even the most important reason we play. I think you know that very well but sometimes it helps to remind yourself.

I don't think any team is proud of any member that doesn't submit a game. But I also truly believe that it's a losing proposition for the league to get into the punishment business. Yes perhaps this results is some unfairness but I think the other way results in even more unfairness.

I understand your frustration and it's perfectly natural to want to vent that frustration. I'm sure everyone understands this. But the best way is encouragement not punishment. It's easy enough for people to drop out of the league and someone that doesn't submit in their first few rounds is very likely going down that path. I think we all want to reach out and try and help those people stay in the league and become better players and better teammates. In some cases we'll be successful and in others we won't, you can only do what you can do, but punishing folks is the least helpful thing we can do.

From the Desk of Commissioner Emeritus (at least I think thats my title now, maybe it's just 'Former Commissioner'...hmmm) Silverbeacher

I was contacted about some "issues" that arose at the conclusion of this round that needed some help in sorting out. Since Neilo is apparently unavailable for comment, I have come to make the following conclusions.

Item I: Round 9 submission by PlayJeff45. It has been an unwritten rule of Neilo, and later myself, that a grace period has followed the end of a round for submissions. In the past, we have given a one hour span that we have allowed games in and still count. This came up I believe last round and KP asked me about it, and I told him of the grace period. So that may beg the question why isn't it in the Rulebook? As I told KP, it is so that we don't actually encourage people to submit late or after the official end. It is my opinion that if people know they can do something and get away with it, they will.

That being said, I am inclined to accept the effort of an individual that takes the time to play a game, but I must also insist on making an example so that it is not followed and propagated again by others. As such, it is my opinion that Playjeff's game be counted for submission in Round 9; but is ineligible for any individual bonus points it may have received. Any team bonuses earned or lost by his submission will stand, as it is also my opinion that the team should not be punished for the actions of one, or multiple, players.

Item 2: Non-Submissions. In all, Mumblefratz has already said everything that I need to say on the subject. There are pros and cons to the current structure but I believe that it is still the best working method that we have at this time.

Item 3: Commissioner Office. Obviously, the MVL needs to move on a new commish. I can set up Round 10 if need be (most likely I'd send a PM to Mumblefratz or KP with the round criteria as i will be in Michigan away from my home PC with GCII on it) because I am not that busy.

Hope this helps. I will check back in tomorrow for a quick moment to answer any replies or questions that may have arisen.

-Silverbeacher-

I want to make a comment about PlayJeff's game in my capacity as MVL rulekeeper.

Basically I look at this latest occurance of a late submission differently than the previous occurances. One obvious difference is the degree of lateness. The previous games were late by a matter of a few minutes. This latest occurance was late by a matter of 3 hours. This is a matter of degree like the difference between petty theft and grand larceny. If this was the only thing going on then my stance would have been that enough was enough and you have to draw the line somewhere and you can't just continue to expand the deadline because that sets a precedent that once allowed needs to be allowed the next time and the time after that.

If this was all that was going on in this particular case my stance would have been simply that a game that was three hours late doesn't count. Period. The rule that everyone knows is that there is a deadline. Apparently there was an unwritten rule but followed by commissioners so far that automatically allowed games up to an hour late. That also is fine. That was the rule before and that still remains the rule.

But that wasn't all that was involved in this case. It may not have been apparent to everyone as it was apparent to me and anyone else that kept up with the conversation in the A Team's private forum, but PlayJeff had been putting in 16 hour days at work for *weeks* on end during this round.

It was this fact that caused the game to be late and in fact to me, it was because of the dedication to his teammates that PlayJeff demonstrated by continuing to work on his game in spite of his real life workload that I felt it was important that this game be counted. The extra 2 points for the round or the season are absolutely meaningless to me. It's just the fact that for someone to make this kind of effort to not let down his teammates I felt it was important for such a game to matter.

However with all this said I feel this is an exception to the rule and doesn't set a precedent that any game three hours late will automatically be accepted. The only precedent it sets is that if someone has posted a concern about "real life" issues that are interfering with their likelihood of being able to submit but still manages to submit a few hours late then perhaps at the commissioners discretion a similar exception to rule may be allowed.

I would liken PlayJeff's game in this case to if Wyndstar after reporting he was on a case and would be unlikely to submit actually did mange to get a game in a few hours late or if FB after mentioning that he was moving 1/3rd away around the world managed to submit a game a few hours late.

Basically the exception is that when someone announces the likelihood that they won't be able to submit for legitimate and significant real life issues but puts in the effort and manages to submit anyway then such an effort might be worthy of a commissoner granted exception to our normal rule.

I hope that people see the logic of this and can agree that my motivation here is not just scrounging 2 lousy points but that the effort spent in spite of "real life" problems should matter.

@Neilo: KP was waiting for a decision by either you or me. With the way I made a "judgment"; The A-Team would have gotten the 2pt Score Bonus anyhow; but now gets all 8 Base points.

As a continuation of Mumble's statement in capacity of Rulekeeper- I do want to say that yes, this is an example of the rare, but sometimes necessary, Commissioner's Privilege set out in MVL Rule 1:




Additionally, I think that in the future, barring similar extenuating circumstances, that a game submitted after the Grace Period would normally NOT be counted. I was aware that Jeff was working A LOT (more than me, thats for sure) and I even checked with Mumble (though was unable to myself) about getting a game done just in case.


As for Non-Submittals; I seem to recall in earlier discussions (rounds and rounds ago) that we had a Polite Notice on submissions- that is it is Polite to Notify the MVL/your Team at least One Week before the deadline that you may be unable to submit a game. Obv. even notice on the day of the deadline is notice; but may I suggest that future Commissioner and Team Captains try to make contact with their players at the One Week Remaining to check their status. At that point a Commissioner would have the time and ability to grant the playing of back up games that can be used "in case".

Also, please note that non-submittals are NOT counted in submission time; they are not tacked on at the end as "ghost" games. Only a Valid Game (whether by that player by Auto or by Back-Up) is counted in any and all of the Categories.



Edit: As for the Submissions Bonuses- I understand the frustration that some of you may have but it can work for or against you with those later submissions. Thats the whole issue with them to begin with. Remember the point of the Submission Bonus was to counter Cherry Pickers (or Vultures as I called them). By submitting early you are setting yourself up to be countered in the score and speed departments. By waiting you give yourself the chance to beat what's already been done. You can't fault a team because most of their players got their games in on a timely manner and you didn't. You have to decided your strategy and play it to the hilt, you can't be in between on it. In summary, I see no reason to change how submissions are handled at this time.

I actually seem to recall discussing that in order to get any Team Bonuses, a team had to have the Valid 4 Base Games. Does anyone else (Neilo, DA, Mumble, KP) remember this? As long as they had 4 valid games, they received the bonuses. I seem to think we had said this because for example (though this an extreme one) let's say Mumble was the only one to submit for the A-Team but had the highest score, fastest game, and was first to submit he would then get 2 Base + 2 Team Score + 2 Team Speed + 2 Team Submission + 1 Ind Score + 1 Ind Speed giving him 10 pts; probably not enough to win but maybe still be competitive- especially depending on how the other points panned out. I am not saying this is for sure; I just seem to remember discussion on it