Warning: Sirian-length post ahead.
Ruff_Hi said:
As I said in the proposal - all elements of the BUG mod can be turned off. Can I get a quick reply regarding how you would feel if we stipulated that the BUG mod could be used if selected elements (Alerts, Glance, etc) were disabled via the ini file? What if we put together a mod that excluded these elements (that is actually pretty easy - just hard code the parts that read the ini file to test for access to those components to return FALSE)?
Good question. Obviously some of the elements of the mod are relatively harmless. (Adding a clock to the corner of the screen isn't exactly gamebreaking!
) My concern is that when you start piling up dozens of small changes, any one of which may be innocuous, the net result starts to turn into something else. I know some people just like modding, but I don't quite understand the thinking behind some of the changes. If presenting the information in a slightly different fashion is so trivial, why bother to make the change at all?
Anyway, since you requested looking at the elements individually, here's a more thorough break down:
General: Even though most of these seem trivial, I'm dubious about any mod that adds new functionality to the game engine. For instance, the raw commerce/raw production is definitely NOT something that exists in the unmodded version of the game. I know, I know: anyone can calculate the information by hand. But it's still not the same thing, because it provides a bean counter that does not otherwise exist. This section overall has to get a veto stamp for now. (I am not going to go through every little individual aspect of each section. The Culture Turns and Great Person Turns would probably be fine, but since they are
SO trivial, I don't see the point of jumping through hoops to get the approved. Just mouseover the bars!)
Advisors: This one too is a no-go. It's simply not fair to have some players customizing their domestic advisor in ways that other players cannot do. We already mentioned the Glance tab, the improved Espionage screen was already added to the main game in the v3.13 patch (correct me if I'm wrong on this), and is the SevoPedia really important enough to go through the mod approval process? If people care enough, I suppose we could approve that one, I just don't understand why it would matter...
Clock: Everything here is a non-issue, and in fact many of the features were added in Beyond the Sword anyway. Besides, we more or less already approved this mod when it was called the
Simple Clock Mod, so I can't go back on that now.
Scoreboard: The Display names doesn't affect gameplay in any way, aside from the possibility of a confusing "Allow Unrestricted Leaders" game, but that doesn't seem like enough reason to disapprove it. I personally detest the smiley faces to indicate relations (I think they look incredibly ugly), but again all it does is save the effort of a mouseover. That's not enough reason to ban its use. Dead civilizations display is meaningless. The power ratio is definitely
not OK, however. That adds new information that is not available to the player without performing a series of calculations. This will not be allowed in RBCiv competitions.
Alerts: As mentioned previously, when the game is modded to issue reminders that it would not have given otherwise, this is an alteration to the gameplay. These changes will not be accepted.
Logging: Ugh, what a can of worms this one is. I think it's well known that I detest the auto-logger, but I'll try not to let that color my opinions. If used solely for the purposes of an aid to report writing, there's no reason not to allow the logger. The problem is that there's no way to ensure that players won't look at the logger until after the game is finished. If the player is actively using the autologger as an aid while playing, it can provide an enormous quanitity of information, so much so that it falls into the "MapStat" category mentioned in the previous post. There is unfortunately absolutely no way to ensure that players are using the logger legitimately as an aid to report-writing, rather than as a gameplay aid.
For these reasons, I am planning on disallowing the logger for RBCiv competitions. On a more personal note, I really do dislike the logger and would vastly prefer that our community members use alternate ways of putting their reports together. However, I'm prepared to be reasonable on this one; if there's a huge groundswell of opinion asking for use of the autologger, I will accede to the requests of the community. Personally though, I hope that that does not happen.
Unit Naming: This has no effect on gameplay. I don't entirely understand the interest, but sure, why not. Maybe it will even make for more entertaining reports.
To summarize:
General - not approved
Advisors - not approved
Clock - approved
Scoreboard - approved aside from "power ratio" (which is not approved)
Alerts - not approved
Logging - not approved
Unit Naming - approved
I hope this clarifies things, and answers what you're looking for.
(not now, though), and to translate it in Italian... [I have not found a note on copyright, so... better to ask 
]
Equally you probably need to make clear that this applies specifically to BTS 3.13.
