When Will the Rules Be Corrected?

[PatrickoftheIsles]

There are two rule violations in this implementation of Russian Railroads. One is quite rare in actual gameplay, but the other does impact strategy. I can see on the bug reporting system that at least one of them has been confirmed as a violation since 2017 with no correction. How can we encourage Board Game Arena to correct these rule implementations?

P.S. - I have corresponded with the game designer and game publisher to be sure my understanding of the rule sequence is correct, and I can confirm that the BGA implementation is incorrect in two ways.

[nandblock]

My experience with the programmer of that game is that, while they are still regularly on the site, they are resistant to fixing problems with their games after some time has passed. So I wouldn't hold my breath if the bug dates from 2017.

[Tikhonov]

There are two rule violations in this implementation of Russian Railroads. One is quite rare in actual gameplay, but the other does impact strategy. I can see on the bug reporting system that at least one of them has been confirmed as a violation since 2017 with no correction. How can we encourage Board Game Arena to correct these rule implementations?

P.S. - I have corresponded with the game designer and game publisher to be sure my understanding of the rule sequence is correct, and I can confirm that the BGA implementation is incorrect in two ways.

Didn't notice those violations yet. Are they fixed already?

[PatrickoftheIsles]

Didn't notice those violations yet. Are they fixed already?

No, the rules haven't been changed on this site. I think most of us have gotten used to playing with this variant, but it still seems it would be better to make the small corrections so we are playing officially.

The rule that impacts the game is that officially one is not suppose to be permitted to return a train to the factory until all four slots are filled, rather than just three. So if I want to turn my #1 train into the engineer-scoring factory, on this site I can do that using the "buy train and factory" spot even if I do not have the other train spot filled on that line. That makes that maneuver possible a round earlier in some cases, and changes the timing.

[Tikhonov]

Didn't notice those violations yet. Are they fixed already?

No, the rules haven't been changed on this site. I think most of us have gotten used to playing with this variant, but it still seems it would be better to make the small corrections so we are playing officially.

The rule that impacts the game is that officially one is not suppose to be permitted to return a train to the factory until all four slots are filled, rather than just three. So if I want to turn my #1 train into the engineer-scoring factory, on this site I can do that using the "buy train and factory" spot even if I do not have the other train spot filled on that line. That makes that maneuver possible a round earlier in some cases, and changes the timing.

Ah, I see. This bug can be fixed with no effort. The developers just have to merge the patch I created recently. (Edit: The patch is now online and the bug is fixed!) Could you tell me what the second bug is?

[PatrickoftheIsles]

Didn't notice those violations yet. Are they fixed already?

No, the rules haven't been changed on this site. I think most of us have gotten used to playing with this variant, but it still seems it would be better to make the small corrections so we are playing officially.

The rule that impacts the game is that officially one is not suppose to be permitted to return a train to the factory until all four slots are filled, rather than just three. So if I want to turn my #1 train into the engineer-scoring factory, on this site I can do that using the "buy train and factory" spot even if I do not have the other train spot filled on that line. That makes that maneuver possible a round earlier in some cases, and changes the timing.

Ah, I see. This bug can be fixed with no effort. The developers just have to merge the patch I created recently. Could you tell me what the second bug is?

Hey, it's very thoughtful of you to work on this. This is my favorite game of all time, and it's the only one I would notice these small rules issues.

The second discrepancy is a bit more complex and rare in regular gameplay.

The general principle is that if a player is doing something that another player could do, they must complete it fully or it is not a legal play. But if doing something only the player can do, a partial fulfillment is allowed. That's why a "brown track plus five points" engineer cannot be activated for the points only without the track movement when it is on the main board, but can legally be activated in that way when owned as a personal engineer. So that's all good and correct.

The specific abnormality concerns the bonus tile that allows one to take one of the five bonus power cards. Those bonus power cards are public and competitive, so should not be legally selected if not fully fulfilled. Three of those bonus power cards (the blank-reverse 9-train, the engineer #1 plus a ruble, and the black worker) will always be possible. However, the other two involve industry movement, so should not be possible if the player had reached the end of the track. On this site it is possible to select those cards and skip the industry movement.

How might this affect strategy? If a player has no industry movements remaining, they can still currently on this site select the "buy engineer and two industry movement" bonus power card, usually in order to deprive a competitor of a high-scoring engineer currently on the market, but the official rules would not allow this to occur.

[Velvetlad77]

There are also 3 other bugs remaining

For instance other players can select the same game bonus as you (ex. the loco 9 or the black worker, that normally can not be duplicated). I never do this but you are enabled to.

The x2 markers are normally limited to 20 units for all players (not sure it has been done)

And finally when reactivating the black worker through a 'repeater' (factory 3 or engineer 8), you should get an extra black rail move if you decide to move a black rail once. this works with engineer 11 (1 black move + 1 any color) for which you get the bonus when repeating, but this does not work with engineer 3 (1 black + 1 grey). To be checked with engineer 1 as well.

[Tikhonov]

No, the rules haven't been changed on this site. I think most of us have gotten used to playing with this variant, but it still seems it would be better to make the small corrections so we are playing officially.

The rule that impacts the game is that officially one is not supposed to be permitted to return a train to the factory until all four slots are filled, rather than just three. So if I want to turn my #1 train into the engineer-scoring factory, on this site I can do that using the "buy train and factory" spot even if I do not have the other train spot filled on that line. That makes that maneuver possible around earlier in some cases and changes the timing.

Ah, I see. This bug can be fixed with no effort. The developers just have to merge the patch I created recently. (Edit: The patch is now online and the bug is fixed!) Could you tell me what the second bug is?

Hey, it's very thoughtful of you to work on this. This is my favorite game of all time, and it's the only one I would notice these small rules issues.

The second discrepancy is a bit more complex and rare in regular gameplay.

The general principle is that if a player is doing something that another player could do, they must complete it fully or it is not a legal play. But if doing something only the player can do, a partial fulfillment is allowed. That's why a "brown track plus five points" engineer cannot be activated for the points only without the track movement when it is on the mainboard, but can legally be activated in that way when owned as a personal engineer. So that's all good and correct.

The specific abnormality concerns the bonus tile that allows one to take one of the five bonus power cards. Those bonus power cards are public and competitive, so should not be legally selected if not fully fulfilled. Three of those bonus power cards (the blank-reverse 9-train, the engineer #1 plus a ruble, and the black worker) will always be possible. However, the other two involve industry movement, so should not be possible if the player had reached the end of the track. On this site, it is possible to select those cards and skip the industry movement.

How might this affect the strategy? If a player has no industry movements remaining, they can still currently on this site select the "buy engineer and two industry movement" bonus power card, usually in order to deprive a competitor of a high-scoring engineer currently on the market, but the official rules would not allow this to occur.

Thank you for the detailed description. You are right, this should not be allowed and fortunately, it is not too complicated to fix. I have just sent the developers my patches for bugs https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=7110 and https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=22076 (for the completeness I have quickly created a report). Let's see if they agree with that Edit: The patch is now online and the bug is fixed!

There are also 3 other bugs remaining

For instance, other players can select the same game bonus as you (ex. the loco 9 or the black worker, that normally can not be duplicated). I never do this but you are enabled to.

Really? But this is not happening every time, is it? I have never seen anyone select the same bonus again and I have never been shown bonuses that others have already selected. When was the last time you had the opportunity to select the same bonus as someone else already did? Maybe this issue was already fixed? Edit: This bug was already fixed.

The x2 markers are normally limited to 20 units for all players (not sure it has been done)

The limit of 20 is already implemented, but I wanted to add a counter visible to everyone that indicates the number of doublers left (see https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=13326). I think this would help because many people do not know that they are limited to 20.

And finally, when reactivating the black worker through a 'repeater' (factory 3 or engineer 8), you should get an extra black rail move if you decide to move a black rail once. this works with engineer 11 (1 black move + 1 any color) for which you get the bonus when repeating, but this does not work with engineer 3 (1 black + 1 grey). To be checked with engineer 1 as well.

I tried to reproduce it and it seems like the problem a little bit different (see my latest commen on https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=7670 for more information. Engineer 1 cannot be used with the black worker anyway as you cannot get them both at the same time Edit: I created a patch that still needs to be tested. I am confident that he will correct all errors in relation to the black worker.