This also exposes one other problem; the administrators failed to ban the offending element as soon as its presence became noticeable.
Do you mean the player in particular, or the strategy he used? If you haven't read the entire article yet, I encourage you to do so -- the story about the girls' basketball team is enlightening, because, in the end (and, yes, I'm giving the ending away), a referee
does squelch the team's completely legitimate strategy in order to defend the status quo.
Pertaining directly to the
Trillion Credit Squadron tournament, the player in question was accused of violating the spirit of the game, not the rules. The first time around, the tournament organisers required that all craft be mobile, so he adapted his strategy to that rule. The second time around, they pouted and, realising they didn't have any truly legitimate grounds for expelling the competitor, declared that they'd cancel the tournament if he entered again. Now, understanding both
High Guard and
TCS as I do, another solution occurred to me almost immediately. Lenat and Eurisko were winning because, by Lenat's own admission, they were devising inhumane, "socially horrifying" strategies that violated the spirit of the game. So,
codify the spirit of the game -- all ships in
High Guard/
TCS have crew ratings. Enforce a penalty for loss of life. The willingness to embrace "acceptable losses" eventually develops a diminishing return, and at a great enough scale becomes a losing strategy.
The point of the article still stands: The status quo does not like the underdog that beats them at their own game.
!i!