Preventing mass land leveling in multiplayer

[benc]

Ah, waterworlding. I agree that this is a major annoyance in Internet play. Destroying land is so much cheaper and faster than creating it. It's no wonder there's a problem. The community definitely needs a fix.

Using a grf to tweak terraforming costs is an imperfect solution; it's just too inconvenient for the casual player. There's no way to download grfs in-game from the server (yet).

My take is similar to dihedral and elmex's -- let's add an option for server admins to specify how much turf a player can chew up at once.

It won't stop griefers from compiling their own modified version to get around the limitation. But it will stop casual rudeness, and that's 90% of the problem, I think. The main culprit is simply being bored with too much money and an all-powerful leveling tool.

Others have pointed out that limiting the leveling tool could trip up players who are legitimately flattening ground for straight tracks. I agree -- we need to step carefully.

Bottom line, the least invasive solution would be to limit leveling, but only at sea level.

I've made a quick patch to do so, check this thread in dev.

[maartena]

Bottom line, the least invasive solution would be to limit leveling, but only at sea level.

I would agree. I like to level a certain amount of land when I have master-plans to take over the world and want to build a monster station, with lots of space for tracks etc..... and I wouldn't want to be limited by year just to create the space needed.

The biggest problem is really at sea level. I am currently simply banning people (that is, placing their IP address in my firewall to reject packets, saves me from having to ban on all servers) when I find that they are flooding large areas on purpose, but 8 out of 10 times it happens when I am not around, asleep, at work, etc....

If we can limit the number of tiles you may flatten to seal level to say 200 or so per year, one can choose to create a lake of 10 x 20, or one can chose to make a canal of 1 tile wide, 200 tiles long. That way you won't disturb those who want to make a 40 tile long canal for boats, but don't have the millions yet to pay $20.000 per canal tile and $50.000 for a lock.

[elmex]

Bottom line, the least invasive solution would be to limit leveling, but only at sea level.

I've made a quick patch to do so, check this thread in dev.

I agree completly Thanks for the effort to make a patch!