Possible to avoid being penalized for stuck games?

[Jamie A.]

Am sitting here with Lost Cities frozen - it finally stopped dropping the reconnection/resend messages, the timer isn't advancing, connection light is red (the rest of the internet is working in my other tabs, as is this forum), yet it tells me if I back out I will lose the game and be penalized as has happened before. But I finally do anyway and yes now down 13 more points... was already barely high enough in LC to get the 1400+ bots for the daily quests, which is probably why it bugs me.

If there is any way to code for this it would be nice. I understand why you don't want people feeling free to abandon losing games, however it's a bit frustrating when it can connect to smack down my rating but not to continue the game.   

[Jamie A.]

Some number of games later also had a weird rating-dropping event with Migrato... received a message I didn't understand and made a selection trying to continue, then received a code error message (something was 'undefined'), then another message from the game and suddenly it aborted with an 'illegal move' and again my rating was dropped 20 points.

Neither situation seemed like one where I should be penalized for losing a game, especially when I don't understand what's happening or how to fix it.

I do understand there might be reasons for how the coding ends up this way, I'm just reporting and providing feedback.

[Jimmy V.]

Hi Jamie,

Do you get any recollection what the message you did not understand was talking about? A single word might be enough to point me in the right direction.

In any case, this seems really weird. Never heard of anything similar.

Thanks!

[Jamie A.]

I think the first message - a real game message not a code error - was the one about mixed column and uncovering? I'd seen it once before and had no idea if I should select Yes or should select No but did recall I hadn't liked the result and again wasn't sure what to select. I don't think I clicked Yes or No this time, I think I clicked on the cards again. 

The second message was from code, something being undefined, and the third message I'm sorry I don't recall, that was up quickly I think and suddenly the game ended as an Abort.

UPDATE: now I see there are two messages, one is mixing and one is combining, so I can't say which it was. And btw I find them both confusing, and don't know why combining only sometimes appears when combining.

[Jamie A.]

Adding another I'd forgotten, when the animation gets stuck. The code already knows it happened re: the send it again message, so that's another situation where it's frustrating to be penalized. 

[Jeff M.]

Screen shots of the error can be of great use if you get a chance - even if they are too big to post, you would get the exact error syntax.

Press Shift-Command (⌘)-3 on a mac  or    Press Shift-Command-4. The pointer changes to a crosshair and you can capture a part of the screen

For windows, crtl + printscreen

[R-L-K H.]

A day or two ago, I also experienced frustration about 90% of the way through a LOST CITIES game.  It would not take my "move" and I wasn't sure why.  The cards that could be played started having red outlines and I could not place the card that I was trying to add to my pile of played (ordered) cards for more points.  Later I noticed a message saying something about an "illegal move" and I have no idea what ** I ** did to get that generated.  I do know how to play the game and had never had that happen before.  It was frustrating because I was trying to break 1600 and nearly there.  Unfortunately I did not get a screen shot either.