I've been working (off-and-on) on a pbbg that's pretty old school. If you've ever played Carnage Blender then you get the idea.
If not, it's a simple idea that's been done a lot: A player is allocated a certain number of "points" each day, and spends those points to attack other players. Points accrue over time, up to a certain cap.
The point system is designed to prevent over-achievers from completely out-pacing casual players.
In the case of carnage blender, a CAPTACHA system prevents a user from "gaming" the system with a bot or a script designed to use all of their points each day with minimal effort. Every once in a while a random CAPTCHA is displayed, and if not passed the user will be suspended for an hour.
What I'm wondering is how to make this more user friendly for my game. I recognize that I must prevent bad behavior like this, and I could easily take the same CAPTCHA approach, but is there a more user friendly alternative?
Initial research uncovered ASIRRA by Microsoft, but the fluffy/cute vibe doesn't work well with my intended game theme.
UPDATE
What I'm most interested in are alternatives to the standard "spell this word" CAPTCHA. I want to try to keep game-play as uninterrupted as possible for the good players.
I've seen what I call One-Time-Use CAPTCHAs, like asking a user "what is five plus six minus two?" But this would require too much effort compiling a large enough database of questions to foil the malicious users. Especially since the CAPTCHA is intended to be used so often.
UPDATE #2
As Joe Wreschnig pointed out in his answer, having a CAPTCHA system to limit bots from playing the game faster than humans is a bit redundant if turns are limited per day. I didn't explain my point system to-the-letter, and that was my fault. In reality, 10 or 20 points accrue every few minutes, and cap off at 200. So, a very competitive player could return every few hours and use his points. I want to reward those people who like my game so much that they return so often. If I prevent them from playing until the next day when they get their points, I would be turning away players who would otherwise be enjoying my webgame. This prevents a player from spending points constantly while still giving them a few points every few minutes.
This is open to abuse.