Okay, so I'm writing an online game (nation management, not that it's important for this question), for which I intend to allow players to have multiple accounts. (Okay, not quite; I intend one account on the server to be allowed multiple nations. But since the nation is the important thing and not the player the effect is the same.) Now, in this game I have a public market (place items for sale at whatever price and anyone can buy them) and also a private trading system (trade items for other items directly with another nation). The question: how do I stop players from starting many nations and immediately 'trading' the starting items for nothing to their primary nation? I've thought of a couple of solutions so far:

• Don't give any starting items or money. However, this would make the game less attractive to new players as they couldn't build anything until they had collected a couple of days of revenue (method still to be decided).
• Make it so that trading requires a technology that can't be researched immediately. That would at least add a time lag and make players actually upgrade their new nations, but not stop the exploit.
• Only allow trading to take place if nations have a certain capital reserve, equal to the money given to them at the start. Thus nations can't give away more than they've actually earned. Seems slightly artificial and could be annoying, but would work and the annoyance would be much reduced if it was clearly documented.

Don't suggest only allowing one nation, that's a deliberate design decision ;) (and besides it is difficult to police). But if there are other obvious solutions I've missed then please hit me with them :).

There's always the "monitor logs for people doing it and warn/ban them" approach.

Well if you have any form of tech tree, that's a candidate-

If your nation starts with wooden clubs, and your primary's looking for nukes... well, you get the idea.

Actually, that's a good point I'd overlooked. More advanced nations will be able to produce manufactured goods (processed steel, refined oil fractions etc) which will hopefully have a higher market value than the raw extraction that new nations could do.

I still need to stop the primary 'selling' them one unit of wood for $25,000, though.

I like your third option best...

Make sure the nation can only trade money/materials it has produced. Make the player invest any starting funds into themselves. This way, if a player wants to get anything out of another nation, they need to put work into it first.

Just make sure as a starting player you never have to rely on a trade to begin some sort of production.

What I suggest doing is make your starting gear seperated from the real stuff. Such as a basic sword resembles your starting item yet the starting item is another a whole new structure. You could also make the starting items connect only to the character and have them newbied (meaning you don't lose them apon death) so you can't lose them if you die or what not. There is always like stated above keeping a log of everyone and randomly scout people who look suspecious and have a penalty system like Warn, Strike 1, Strike 2, Strike 3 ban. And have it go down depending on how many hours in game they have stayed. I suggest roughly 48+hours. The problem with that though is having your online game be new and having those assholes who just love to try the game and piss people off and purposely disobey which is why I would go with have a whole new system for newbied items that can not be traded. Have the starting gold in like a check form assigned to that player only and have it used like a VISA at the shops. Ok i'm rambling now haha hope it helps.

Instead of giving starting players resources to build, why not give them the necessary buildings/etc to begin production right away? If they try to raze the buildings and sell the rubble as raw building materials, give them an excuse not to, like the buildings are government funded, and cannot be demolished. This is technically LedL0afs idea of starting items.

You could try to merge the nations so resources are shared between them on a per player account basis. This way you allocate the money and starting resources when a player starts a new account, instead of when they construct a new capital. Of course this would steer the game towards empire management, which may not be the direction you wish to take.

Two Suggestions:

1. Just make it inefficient. Design it such that the time and effort that it takes to create a nation and trade the goods to your main would be better spent just developing your main. Make them fill out a form for each nation, or have a little e-mail verification hassle.

2. Alternately, just set it up so that you can't actually initiate any trades until you've been playing for x number of hours, or require them to build trade caravans before they can send resources abroad.

Quote:

Original post by LedL0af What I suggest doing is make your starting gear seperated from the real stuff. Such as a basic sword resembles your starting item yet the starting item is another a whole new structure. You could also make the starting items connect only to the character and have them newbied (meaning you don't lose them apon death) so you can't lose them if you die or what not. There is always like stated above keeping a log of everyone and randomly scout people who look suspecious and have a penalty system like Warn, Strike 1, Strike 2, Strike 3 ban. And have it go down depending on how many hours in game they have stayed. I suggest roughly 48+hours. The problem with that though is having your online game be new and having those assholes who just love to try the game and piss people off and purposely disobey which is why I would go with have a whole new system for newbied items that can not be traded. Have the starting gold in like a check form assigned to that player only and have it used like a VISA at the shops. Ok i'm rambling now haha hope it helps.

This is how I would solve the problem too. Essentially, you give your players starting equipment that is inherently valueless. Even if it has the same statistics as regular items of the same type, the starting equipment would not be considered a valuable trading commodity, and hence players would gain nothing by creating additional fodder accounts.

Yes- I like the idea of somehow "ringfencing" the initial items so that they can't be traded, or if sold, only net a pittance (or nothing at all).

In any case if you allow player to have multiple "nations", you'd have to put a limit on, otherwise players can effectively gain more stuff by playing several hands at once (Ever played Monopoly where each player has several counters?)

Bear in mind that they can pool the income as well as the capital.

Mark