The NAVGAP Policy

	The NAVGAP Policy
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The two most important things to remember when you use NAVGAP are:

NAVGAP is not perfect and I don't anticipate that it ever will be (it is always being modified). As a result, errors will occur on occasion, and people (including myself) will be unhappy. I'll try to fix any problems that arise as quickly as I can, but since NAVGAP is a hobby for me, and not my paying job, I will not always be able to fix problems immediately.

By using NAVGAP, either directly or indirectly, you are allowing me to do whatever I want with any information I receive about you, should I so choose, within the limits of the laws of the Australia. (we have privacy laws)

If you decide to play games on NAVGAP, you should read the complete 'Policy' so you understand what I provide and what I expect you to know (It will help us to avoid getting in to trouble). At the very least you should know and understand the section of this policy that relates to 'General Policy' and 'Game Rules Policy'
If any of these facts are unacceptable to you, please do not use NAVGAP.
If you have a question, comment, or would like something clarified, please send a message to the NAVGAP Help Desk at navgap-help@navgap.com.
This policy is subject to minor changes without notice.
Index to information on this page (click on one of the below to move to that section of the Policy:
General Policy
DataBase (Privacy) Policy
Game Hosting Policy

General

None of the NAVGAP Staff may be held responsible for any problems that arise through the use, or lack of use, of NAVGAP. All of NAVGAP's services are to be used at your own risk.

Flaming is not acceptable on NAVGAP, nor in the VGA Planets community in general. Penalties for flaming will vary in severity depending on the circumstances. The following penalties are proposed.
If you are caught flaming another player, you will be banned from NAVGAP, and a message will be sent to the alt.games.vga-planets NewsGroup detailing your unacceptable behaviour.
If you flame NAVGAP's Operator, a message will be sent to your Internet Service Provider detailing your unacceptable behaviour and requesting that action be taken to prevent a similar situation in the future.
In addition, if the matter is serious enough, you will be banned from NAVGAP and publicly blacklisted. In such a case, your full name and E-Mail address will be included as well.
Flaming is generally considered to be the sending of a message with the intention of offending the recipient. In all cases, NAVGAP's Operator will have the final decision on what constitutes flaming.

The source code for NAVGAP will not be released, nor will copies of NAVGAP, or the rights to NAVGAP, be sold.

The Human Host of NAVGAP takes a personal interest in the people that use his Hosting Service and, as such, he will send out emails to players whenever there is a need to send out information.
The Human Host of NAVGAP likes to talk to his users, so please do not feel it is any inconvenience (bother)(trouble)(annoying) to the him, if you want to send him an email.
It is better to send an email and ask a question, especially when you are unsure of something, than to have to answer an email sent to you from the host when the host does not understand why you did something.

NAVGAP User Database (Privacy)

Your real name and E-Mail address will not be released to anyone without your permission except as noted in the next item. You will be known by your user number and nick name unless you choose otherwise (please note that by breaking these rules, you are granting me permission to release this information).

The following people have some level of access to the NAVGAP User Database:

Stephen Simms, NAVGAP's Original Operator, has full access to the NAVGAP User Database.
Neil Grigg, NAVGAP Operator has full access to the NAVGAP User Database.
The Ladder Committee may be given user information, at the discretion of NAVGAP's Operator.

You may only have one account on NAVGAP.
If, for some reason, you end up with more than one account, please send both account numbers to the NAVGAP Help Desk, so that they can be merged into one account.

You are responsible for your own account. Do not send your password to any address other than 'navgap@navgap.com' or 'navgap-help@navgap.com' or 'admin@navgap.com' or 'help@navgap.com'. Should these addresses change, a notice will be posted.

Web site statistics collection
Selected pages of NAVGAP have been placed in a 'free to use' web page statistcs service called 'Nedstat Basic' located at NEDSTAT.
This service collects information about the time and country of origin of the person accessing that page. It does this each time a visitor visits a page that has been listed with NEDSTAT. The icon is retrieved from the NEDSTAT servers and as your computer gets that icon, the NEDSTAT system obtains information.

NAVGAP VGAP Games Hosting Service

Index to "NAVGAP VGAP Games Hosting Service" information on this page (click on one of the below to move to that section of the Policy:
General Hosting Policy
Hosting Rules Policy
Game Rules Policy (You must know these rules)

General

The NAVGAP Hosting Service is run for the enjoyment of VGA Planets players. Please respect this by joining only games that are at your skill level. If you've never played a game before, or if you've only played one or two, join a Beginner game. If in your first game you placed in the top three or four, or if you have played more than three or four games, join an Novice or Average game. It will be far more interesting for you and for the other players.
You are limited to a maximum of 10 games at any one time on NAVGAP.

NAVGAP will sometimes experience hardware or software difficulties. These will be kept to a minimum as much as possible, but are ultimately unavoidable. In such cases, the reliability and/or hosting schedule of NAVGAP may be compromised, and may remain in such a condition for an extended period of time. You must accept this is a potential consequence of using an automated host run voluntarily by a person with an unpredictable schedule.

Before you are allowed to join a game, hosted by NAVGAP, you are required provide your Real Name. (Defined as a First and Last or Surname)
If you provide a false Real Name, and the host finds out about it, you will be banned from using NAVGAP and YOUR details will be made available to other hosts and players.

Once you've joined a game, you are expected to continue playing until the game is over or until the race is dead - in other words, when you control 0 planets and 0 ships. If you feel your race is unplayable, you may send NAVGAP's Operator a message requesting leave to quit the game without penalty. Your position will be examined at this time, and a ruling on the race's playability will be made. This ruling will be final, and a new request may not be submitted for at least ten turns.
If you join a new game (defined as game not yet started) and the game starts (after you confirm you want to play in the game), you are not allowed quit the game before turn 20, without first getting permission from the Human Operator of that game. Quitting, without first getting permission, will cause NAVGAP to apply a penalty to the player who quit (for RCCL ranked games, this will be a minimum of 500 points).

NAVGAP is connected to the Internet 24 hours of the day via a dial up connection. (Occassionally, it is forced to redial to reconnect to the ISP, as the line may drop out).
NAVGAP interfaces with the Internet via a D-Link DI804v router and analogue modem.

NAVGAP gets its email from, and sends its email to, an email program called Pegasus Mail. The process is as follows:
Pegasus collects the email from the POP3 address (about every 3 minutes) and any email sent to the navgap@navgap.com address is copied and saved as a file.
NAVGAP looks at a directory on its Hard Drive for any file that is placed there by Pegasus. (this 'look' is done every minute) NAVGAP processes the newly received email and generate replies, hosts any games due to be hosted, generates new email in response to commands it received and sends them to Pegasus.
Pegasus will send out those emails and then look for new emails at the navgap@navgap.com address.

NAVGAP is programmed to monitor incoming email and if it does not get any email for more than 40 minutes, it posts a test email to itself.
If that test email is not returned, NAVGAP will alter the http://home.aone.net.au/neilgrigg/navgap.html web page to show there is an email fault and it will then try to upload that page to the web site.
(If you do not get a reply to your email, and you see the web site is not updating, then you can assume that there is a fault with my Internet connection.)

NAVGAP Web pages are uploaded using internal code contained within the NAVGAP program (VB Inet.dll control).

NAVGAP runs a checkturn on trn's sent to its games and sends out a reply indicating success or failure with reason, to allow players the possible chance of seeing the checkturn result before the game is hosted.

If all TRN files have been submitted for a game, the hosting deadline for that game may be set to Twelve hours after the latest TRN file was submitted, provided the existing deadline is not sooner.

NAVGAP will automatically ensure a minimum amount of playing time for a turn, should it not recieve all activ player trn files. If the next scheduled hosting time would not give players this minimum amount of playing time, it will skip the next due time. An email will advise the players of this.
The minimum playing time is dependent on host frequency:

7 turns per week: 18 hours (0.75 days)
3 turns per week: 42 hours (1.75 days)
2 turns per week: 64 hours (2.6 days)
1 turn per week: 120 hours (5 days)

If all TRN files have NOT been submitted for a game, and it is less than Twelve hours before the due date/time for the game to host, a reminder email is sent out to the players that have not yet successfully entered a trn file for the game concerned.
NAVGAP Hosting Rules
Games will host on the time and the days advertised, unless one of the following conditions occurs:
(1) - no turns are in before the due host time:

Game will not be hosted;

Game will set the "host due" date to the next date in the game's hosting schedule;

NAVGAP will apply the "should game host" check rules, based on the new "host due date";

EMail will be sent to players in that game, advising the game missed the advertised scheduled date/time.

(2) - all trn files are in, with more than 12 hours to the next due host time and most recent trn "in" had check turn result email sent to player more than 12 hours ago:

Game will host;
Game will set the "host due" date to the next date in the game's hosting schedule;
RST files will be sent out to players;
NAVGAP will apply the "should game host" check rules, based on the new "host due date".

(3) all trn files are in with less than 12 hours to the next due host time and most recent trn "in" had check turn result sent to player more than 3 hours ago:

Game will host;
Game will set the "host due" date to the next date in the game's hosting schedule;
RST files will be sent out to players;
NAVGAP will apply the "should game host" check rules, based on the new "host due date".

(4) one or more trn files are in before the next due host time and that scheduled host date/time has arrived and NAVGAP has polled for email within 15 minutes before that due time:

Game will host;
Game will set the "host due" date to the next date in the game's hosting schedule;
Any check turn result files (for trns that arrived with less than 12 hours before scheduled host run date/time) will be sent out;
RST files will be sent out to players;
NAVGAP will apply the "should game host" check rules, based on the new "host due date".

Additional Information Important to "trn" submission.

The connection to the Internet is not 100% reliable. Always check the web site for your game to see if it has hosted. If not you have nothing to loose by not trying to submit your trn after the deadline.
To assist you in understanding when your trn file was/is processed, in the "check turn result email" will be the time (in GMT) that the file was processed by NAVGAP.
Additional information is provided in the game information page for your game. In the table showing players, rather than just showing either "trn" or "---" in the status column, it shows the the date and time (in GMT) that the trn file was accepted. If you sent in a trn and it failed, the failure reason will printed in that column.
The web site is your back up information source, as it is uploaded at the same time the check turn email is posted out.

NAVGAP keeps archives of its game files for the latest three turns. These will only be used to restore corrupted data. Games will not be restored to a previous turn for any other reason, including NAVGAP-related programming errors, unless such a roll back is easy to do (will not create too many problems in a game - example no rst files sent to players)
If a player misses 3 turns in a row, they will be sent a warning, advising them that they have missed 3 turns in a row.
If a player misses 5 turns in a row, they will be removed from the game.
If a player is not able to do their trn, they may use the 'vacation' command, to prevent the above from occurring.

NAVGAP Game Rules

Most games are 'Mastered' by the Human Operator. The position of HomeWorlds is selected and placed manually by the Human Operator to ensure each player has their HomeWorld located in the best possible playing position to eliminate unfair placement that can happen via automated placement. Due to the design of the Standard Tim Map, the placing of HomeWorlds is extremely limited when trying to give every player and equal opportunity to have many single hop planets close to their HomeWorld.

Using a program that allows you to 'cheat' will result in you being investigated. If you are found to have used such a program to deliberately and 'knowingly use a' cheat, you will be banned from this Hosting Service and your personal details may be publicly released to VGAP Hosts and/or VGAP community via the VGAP NewsGroup

Pre-game alliances are not encouraged and if you intend to play in a game that does not state 'Pre-Game alliances allowed', you MUST contact the Host and obtain permission to join that game. (If Host agress to your alliance being in that game, Host will 'Master' the game to have your alliance HomeWorlds located in the same area of the Map)

What happens when a players miss a game turn?

When a player misses 3 game turns in a row, they are sent an email asking them if there is a problem.
When a player misses 4 game turns in a row, they are sent a warning email saying they will be removed from the game.
When a player misses 5 game turns in a row, they are sent an email saying they have been removed from the game. They are kicked out of the game and if the game uses a Cplayer, that Cplayer takes over playing their race.

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NAVGAP & NAVGAPlite including logo are (c) Neil Grigg
VGA Planets and the VGA Planets logo are (c) Tim Wisseman
This page was last updated Monday, 24 March 2003 at 23:17 GMT.