Arranging Battles is prohibited

[Captain Jack]

Ahoy everyone,

I want to inform everyone that arranging battles before hand is prohibited.
It falls into the Milking Rule (DR manipulation section mostly).
Such violations are penalized harshly - up to permanent account bans.

All players are requested to report such battles or even messages that contain such requests.

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We know a common case which involves attacking a player for a nation mission and then making reparations. This practice, by the moment that it does not include any pre-arrangement has always been overlooked as a non-issue as administration does not wish to participate in such depth. However, this is not always easy to discern on our side so even this case should be avoided.

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Bounties have made this a common sport once more. This will not be tolerated. It is unrealistic to ask someone to attack your own ship. This is solely done for DR manipulation or Bounty Skip which is a way to bend the game rules. Any rule bending or even walking at the border of a rule is an automatic harsh penalty.

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This announcement aims to inform the playerbase regarding arranged attacks (Plunder/Skirmish).
We also intend to send a warning to all those who have already done this.

If you see our general policy regarding cheating ( viewtopic.php?f=13&t=515 ) you will realize that we prefer to ban over change the game rules. Players that exploit the rules and hope that the game will change will face the cruel reality of a permanent ban. In particular, we already have a list of about 4 players that have arranged battles with no penalties issued on them yet.

Somehow, I felt that a public warning is better than penalties at this moment. We will not hesitate to ban permanently these 4 players in our list on next violation. Especially one of them who is a very influential and a long-term player. We want all our long-term players to be role-models for the newer players in terms of rules.

So, consider this as a friendly warning - do not come asking why later. It will not matter if you are a credits-buyer player. It will not matter if you are a long-term player. It will not matter if you have helped administration before. Nothing can save an account when it conducts a rule violation.

As I have said in private discussions, it is better for the game to issue 4 permanent bans or 10 or 30 (a whole guild) instead of losing its integrity. Let's not reach that point though.

Thank you for your understanding,
Cpt Jack