How to Simulate an Anarcho-Capitalism using Minecraft!

This isn't that complicated.  It's a moral question, not a question of tactics.  Someone is breaking the rules.  You have perfect tools to stop him.  What do you, as a society of equals, choose to DO about it?

You have the authority and you have the capability, and your opponent is equally matched with you.  How do you resolve a conflict?

Well, it is a simulation, and not meant to be 100% accurate to reality. I think a ban command is a close enough approximation to real-world lethal force. Even if it does mean that the world is populated by people armed with Death Notes, rather than guns.

The right to use deadly force is pretty much on by default in computer games, and Minecraft is no exception.  The problem you need to solve is the other default, where anyone killed immediately comes back to life, making deadly force almost meaningless.  I don't think turning everyone into Valentine Michael Smith is your best possible solution.

As already discussed, /ban is the rough equivilent to permadeath.  Death by conventional weapons is really more of a mugging.

Exactly.  You could probably even apply statistical data from IRL gunfights to arrive at a good guess as to how messy the Death Note numbers would have been if they'd been using guns.

Besides, if you're following the ZAP, the ban command should hardly ever need to get used, right?

Obvious solution is to make it probabilistic, and that if you use it, counterfire can stop both your name and your IP.

So if Bob attempts to ban Carol, there is a thirty percent chance that Carol is banned, a ten percent chance that Carol's IP gets banned, a ten percent chance that Bob gets banned and a five percent chance that Bob's IP gets banned.  There is, however, a seventy percent chance that Carol is not banned, is notified of the operation, and gets the option of responding.

What?  So we simulate a society in which all guns randomly misfire?

We simulate a society where you cannot take someone out without a risk of yourself being taken out.  The simplest way to do this is to simulate a horrible misfire rate.

A better way to do it, would be to have a PVP minigame where the loser gets taken out, and the group who starts the minigame has an large, but not insuperable, advantage.

We simulate a society where you cannot take someone out without a risk of yourself being taken out.  The simplest way to do this is to simulate a horrible misfire rate.

A better way to do it, would be to have a PVP minigame where the loser gets taken out, and the group who starts the minigame has an large, but not insuperable, advantage.

Wait, so now it's the attacker who has the advantage?  So, a griefer who shoots first has an edge over the innocent people being fired upon?  Yeah, that seems conducive to a zero aggression policy.

Making the tools harder to use just muddies the issue.  There is no magic "balanced and realistic" system that will cause players to take your game as seriously as you do.  Just like in real life, the death penalty doesn't prevent crime perfectly.

But your AnCap server doesn't need to be perfect.  It just needs to be better than a typical server, where bans are handed down by some guy who runs the place.

We simulate a society where you cannot take someone out without a risk of yourself being taken out.  The simplest way to do this is to simulate a horrible misfire rate.

Wait, so now it's the attacker who has the advantage?  So, a griefer who shoots first has an edge over the innocent people being fired upon?

Sure - but griefer offends everyone, so, will get taken out, while most innocent people will not be taken out.

As already discussed, /ban is the rough equivilent to permadeath.  Death by conventional weapons is really more of a mugging.

It's the state of being banned that is roughly equivalent to death, though, not the /ban command itself.  This isn't pedantry, a popular use of the banned state is for 'hardcore' servers to temporarily ban players upon death, be it for an hour or a month, in an effort to make death more than an inconvenience.  For the purposes of this simulation, you could make that 'temporary' period one year, although it might be best if this only applied to deaths directly caused by others.  Or you could have an automatic one day ban upon death, then allow aggrieved citizens to extend that time if they see fit.  A double tap, if you will.

Look at these efforts to add licensing laws and statistical simulation to the /ban command...  By the time you have enough rules and exceptions nailed onto your modified command to cover all objections, it'll be functionally equivalent to the projectile weapons that already exist in the game.  At that point, you're better off just adding an ammunition type with a /ban effect.

My central thought here is that while you need permadeath as well as 'game' death, it makes little sense to disconnect them.  Provided you needed to kill someone before banning them, most of the problems would go away.

This isn't pedantry, a popular use of the banned state is for 'hardcore' servers to temporarily ban players upon death, be it for an hour or a month, in an effort to make death more than an inconvenience.  For the purposes of this simulation, you could make that 'temporary' period one year, although it might be best if this only applied to deaths directly caused by others. 

Or just not make it temporary at all. Player death + permanent ban is pretty much exactly what we're looking for. I agree, we should probably make that only the deaths caused by players, though. I'm not sure if falling damage is implemented or not, but it would suck to trip and be kicked out forever.

Falling, drowning, starving to death (recently this mechanic was nerfed because it was too frustrating to make food, which takes a long time to grow, your FIRST priority,) being killed by monsters, suffocation (usually caused by having a tunnel cave in on you or a tree grow around you, though physics glitches are not entirely unheard of either,) TNT explosions, falling into lava, having lava fall on YOU, and logging in to discover that the space you occupied when you logged off has been edited, are all interesting ways to die in Minecraft that do not involve malicious intent on behalf of a player.

Or just not make it temporary at all. Player death + permanent ban is pretty much exactly what we're looking for.

Don't know offhand if pre-existing mods support that explicitly, but if you just have the ban last longer than the experiment...

I agree, we should probably make that only the deaths caused by players, though. I'm not sure if falling damage is implemented or not, but it would suck to trip and be kicked out forever.

Yeah, the standard game has plenty of environmental hazards, as detailed by WarpZone.  It can all be adjusted or disabled on the server, of course, and players can do a lot to make themselves and each other safer, but yes.  If any mistake kills you permanently, that's worse than real life, which allows for prompt medical attention and healing.  I don't think you'd get enough population.

Oh, here's a question: Do you have the server publicly announce kills?  Default behaviour is to name the deceased, the cause, and if there is one, the killer.

No interest in playing the game, or if it's possible, but seems to me like having a moderate "time out" for the killed player, and possibly a shorter "freeze" time for the killer might work...  In addition announce the death, who did the player in, and offer the option to review records on killed and killer, and where the dead player will reanimate...

Test cases - John gets done in by Harry...  John is gone for 24 hours.  Harry is tied to the scene and can't take any action for 30 minutes...

John was being an ass, Harry did him in to stop his being a problem - no vengance, the "public safety committee" stops by to hand Harry a thank-you note...

John was being a really big problem - Public Safety Committee has someone stick around where he'll be coming back to pop him off again (or maybe build booby trap?)

Harry was being a problem and shot John as part of it...  John (who has made a few friends) is out for the day, but his friends do in Harry while he's "frozen" - revert back to situation above in re: Public Safety...

To close to call - both were being idiots - ignore, or have shootout between eachother's friends, or have freeze time as cool down period and let arbitration co. step in to resolve issue...

Just what occurred to me as a possible solution to make death painful, but also make doing another player in risky enough to be a disincentive to doing it w/o good cause...

ex-Gooserider

Just what occurred to me as a possible solution to make death painful, but also make doing another player in risky enough to be a disincentive to doing it w/o good cause...

ex-Gooserider

Except we're trying to simulate AnCap society in the real world, not in a perfect world where murderers are frozen in place for half an hour.

Default behaviour is to name the deceased, the cause, and if there is one, the killer.

This seems to be more than sufficient. If we want to simulate real life a little more closely, we could remove the killer notification, Or we can leave it in to help nip killing sprees in the bud. Personally, I'd rather leave it in, so people could use the chat to hash out what happened.

Just what occurred to me as a possible solution to make death painful, but also make doing another player in risky enough to be a disincentive to doing it w/o good cause...

ex-Gooserider

Except we're trying to simulate AnCap society in the real world, not in a perfect world where murderers are frozen in place for half an hour.

Default behaviour is to name the deceased, the cause, and if there is one, the killer.

This seems to be more than sufficient. If we want to simulate real life a little more closely, we could remove the killer notification, Or we can leave it in to help nip killing sprees in the bud. Personally, I'd rather leave it in, so people could use the chat to hash out what happened.

You can, in MC, build a prison from which a player can't escape until you let them out, provided that you can force them to surrender their tools.


I agree that there should be no /ban command for dealing with regular miscreants.  To give it to a person would make them god.  To give it to everybody would make things too easy.  No society could survive if it were *that* easy to kill people.  Ban should only happen when a player kills another or dies due to environmental hazards.  I can see maybe a small number of respawns for environmental deaths.  Call this 'childhood'.

Biggest issue with no /ban that I see is the ease by which a player can set off a server-freezing trap.  Infinite chickens or melons are always fun.  When this happens, it becomes impossible to step in and kill a person by conventional means.  If it's stated up front that such things result in perma-ban and the threat is always carried out, this could be considered the conditions of the universe.  Alternately, this could be an endpoint for the experiment; one of the triggers to say "This is how long run X lasted before society fell apart."

Ultimately, the biggest problem is that in real life, a person has only one life to give for themselves.  Barring religious belief, of course, but a true belief is a hard thing to have in this world.  However, in MC, the penalties are much lower.  If you're a dick on server A and get banned, you can hop right on to one of a hundred more servers.  Maybe they're not quite as good, but it's a fairly small price.  So, with an assurance of an 'afterlife', it becomes much easier to have the MC equivalent of suicide bombers:  Those who get fulfillment from destroying the lives and works of others in the sure knowledge that when they leave this life, they will be reincarnated and able to do it all over again.  A server with the avowed purpose of running such an experiment, and a clear statement that there is no banning or reverting, would be a magnet for griefers.  If MC had an overarching method for completely banning people once they'd been banned from, say, 4 or 5 reputable servers, this might work.  But as is, it'll be grief city and the honest players will never be able to get off of the ground.

Biggest issue with no /ban that I see is the ease by which a player can set off a server-freezing trap.  Infinite chickens or melons are always fun.  When this happens, it becomes impossible to step in and kill a person by conventional means.  If it's stated up front that such things result in perma-ban and the threat is always carried out, this could be considered the conditions of the universe. 

Hmm. I would need a little more info. How does the infinite chickens/melons thing work? I don't need instructions, mind, just what happens when someone does it, to prevent murder by normal means.

Is it something that could be detected by the server, and autoban? Or would a mod need to be active to watch for something that is impossible to stop via "normal" means? Can the infinite chickens thing be prevented?

We may need to go back to the "everybody gets a death note".

Biggest issue with no /ban that I see is the ease by which a player can set off a server-freezing trap.  Infinite chickens or melons are always fun.

There are anti-lag mods that minimise the effect of such tomfoolery, but if someone achieves this kind of thing, they've really stepped outside the bounds of the game and made an attack against the actual server hardware in the real world.  At that point, admin has to pull out the ban hammer, and will probably need to roll back time too.

Is it something that could be detected by the server, and autoban? Or would a mod need to be active to watch for something that is impossible to stop via "normal" means? Can the infinite chickens thing be prevented?

You could potentially autoban some of the standard trolls, but that gets into false positive issues.  Given the creativity of internet dickery, you basically need at least one guy with god powers to protect the game world and work out who dunnit.  Probably better if he doesn't have an avatar in game.

Infinite, or at least indefinite chickens are pretty much built in, they're the only animal that breeds by simple geometric progression.  (Every chicken lays a constant supply of eggs, 1/8 of which can be hatched.  Simultaneously, if you build a big enough egg hatching machine.)

A server with the avowed purpose of running such an experiment, and a clear statement that there is no banning or reverting, would be a magnet for griefers.

That is a fundamental problem.  It may be better not to publish the server address on the open internet, and to distribute invites across the friend-of-a-friend network.  Not to limit population to AnCap enthusiasts, but to any who will engage with the experiment in good faith.

Use of the Technic Pack mentioned in the original proposal would also help to alleviate this problem, as it requires that the players modify their client software.  Most griefers won't have the time for that, when there are so many other standard servers to vandalise.

Also, lasers.