Master Command Index

Send comments or corrections (only for the HTML version of this file) to Doug Massey (masseyd@valhalla.btv.ibm.com).

You can receive a copy of this file via E-mail by sending your local Judge a message with "get master" in the body.

To become a master for a particular game, you must be signed on as the only player and then use the "become master" command. Thus to create a new Youngstown variant game called "older" with yourself as master send the following text to the judge:

create ?older <password> youngstown
become master

If anyone else is signed on to the game you will not be allowed to become master. If you wish to relinquish your master slot to another person the best way is to just give him your password and then he can submit a request containing:

signon molder <oldpassword>
set password <newpassword>
set address

If you wish to become the master for an existing game that has other players and/or observers signed on or if you would like to become a secondary master you should contact the administrator of the adjudicator.

To set up a "private" game you can use the set nolist command immediately after creating the game:

create ?older <password> youngstown
set nolist
become master

The nolist setting will prevent any announcements about the game to be distributed to anyone not signed onto the game. People can still use the list older command to get a status of the game, but a list command that lists all current games will not display this game. People cannot find out about the game unless they've been told. This is useful for games that you want to set up as "by invitation only". Once the invited players have signed on and powers have been assigned you can use the set list command to allow other people to begin seeing the game. Note that you don't have to be the master in such a game, it could be unmoderated with you as a player if you wish. The point demonstrated here is that the set nolist must appear before the become master or before another player signs on since either of those actions would generate an announcement on a "listed" game.

Once you have become the master for a game you can sign on to your game using the "m<name>" syntax and use the following commands:

become <power>

This allows you to submit orders for a particular power if, for example, the player for that power gets disconnected from the network and calls you on the phone to give you orders. Note that when you use the become command the password for the power is written to the reply file and the reply file is sent back to both you and the true owner of the power. For this reason (and other implementation details) you can only use one become command per mail message. Caveat: If you forget about this and try to do something like:

become russia             \
army rum support bul-ser   \
army sev-ukr                \
                             \  *** DON'T DO THIS! ***
become turkey                /
army bul-rum                /
fleet bla support bul-rum  /
army arm-sev              /

the Russian player will see the orders you're trying to submit for Turkey (since they'll be displayed followed by "The unit in xxxx is not owned by Russia") and he might possibly get wise to a stab.

Actually, all commands following a become command submitted by a nonmaster will be ignored to prevent the above potential disaster.

The become command is not really necessary to submit a power's orders. Orders for units belonging to one or more powers can be submitted as the master, but the true owner of the power will not receive the confirmation reply from the judge. Orders for multiple units can be specified on the same line, but you shouldn't mix orders for units belonging to multiple powers on the same line. Also note that the "orders have been received" flag will not get set for a particular power if their orders were submitted by the master without the become command. It this case, it may be necessary to use the process command to get the phase processed.

process [phase]

This forces the judge to process orders immediately with whatever it has in its list. Partial or nonexistent orders do not cause powers to be considered in civil disorder. This can be useful after a rollback command or if you want to not wait for a player for some particular reason. If the optional phase is specified, the process command will be ignored unless that is indeed the current phase. Specifying the phase allows you to avoid potential disaster if the judge processed the phase shortly ahead of getting your request. Without it, your command would process the subsequent phase which could potentially expose orders that players had pending. A typical phase specificiation might be "fall 1905 retreat".

rollback turn

This allows you to roll the game back to the specified turn number. The turn number is displayed in all the reports and lists, starting at 001 for spring movement of 1901 and incrementing for each actual phase that's played. Retreats and adjustments that are not played do not increment the turn number. History is kept for at least a month, but it may not be possible to go back too far -- this command is intended to go back one phase for the case where one person's orders get messed up and need to be resubmitted. Orders for intermediate turns that were skipped over should remain intact, but if the change in processing causes a retreat phase to [not] be required the previous orders may wind up being meaningless. Any pending orders that existed will also be reprocessed so if they were revised by hand the first time the replayed phase was processed the revisions may get lost.

set [un]moderated

This command sets or clears the flag that disallows the other players from adjusting the deadlines and other parameters associated with the game. By default the moderated flag will be enabled when the you first become master. Clearing the flag with set unmoderated will allow the players to control the game while still giving you the ability to use the other commands accessible only to the master.

set [no]proxy

This command sets or clears the flag that allows one player to give control of one or more of his units to another player.

set comment text

This command sets or clears the text that appears in the brief listing format. The text consists of the remainder of the line. A null text field will clear the brief comment. The brief comment should be less than 60 characters.

set comment begin

If the text of the comment is the keyword begin the remainder of the mail message up to a signoff command will be used for the full comment. Placing a signoff command directly after the set comment begin command will clear the full comment.

set all press

This command sets the flag that will cause all partial press between the players to be copied (silently) to you as well. This is useful in a gunboat game to see what devious plans the players are preparing. It is not too useful in non-gunboat games as players may communicate directly rather than going through the judge so you may miss traffic. Note, if you use this option you must pay careful attention so that you don't leak any information to the other players.

set normal press

This command clears the "all press" flag.

See the file index for a complete list of the rest of the flags that you can set or clear as the master.

The reply that you get back from the judge after signing on as master (unless you relinquish the master status by using the become command) will include the [partial] orders that the players have submitted. It is assumed that if you are taking the role of master that you will not leak this information to the wrong people.

As a special note about finding replacement players, the proper way to get a new player signed on is to allow him to submit the signon himself for an abandoned power. You can use the become command to resign the old player, but if you use set address and set password the judge won't properly update the internal tables that indicate who is playing that power. The dedication ratings and site access info may not reflect what is really happening if the player doesn't go through the taking over of the power himself. It is possible to submit mail to the judge and make it look like it came from the player, however. The judge only pays attention to the last "Reply-To: " line that it finds in the mail, or if there isn't a Reply-To, then to the last "From: " that it finds. Thus you can submit a message to the judge that looks like:

Reply-To: user@host.domain.org
signon xname password

to ensure that that player gets signed on properly. You won't, however, get a reply from the judge (it will go to the player) so you're really operating blind if you do this. It is preferred to have the player do the signon himself.

For further information, see the files ep.house.rules, index and how2gm which are available via mail to the judge.