Indicators of cheating and measures to take

[binTravkin]

Some of the cheats that have more frequently begun to surface are mentioned below.

What to look for signs of:

Multiple reloads without a reload warning

One of the cheats that has begun to appear recently is a trick to circumvent the reload warning when doing multiple loads of game files. Being able to reload a game multiple times enables a player to amongst others redo pod pops and attacks to get a more desireable outcome. So signs of this would be that chance events related to that players actions to an unusual degree turn out in that players favor such as:

Pod pops giving results that significantly differ from what one would expect. Combat outcome of attacks that significantly differ from what one would expect Unit movements through fungus or with only partial movement points left tend to succeed more often than they should Other fortunate chance events (such as probes always succeding, returning unharmed and getting exactly the tech that was most needed)

Map extraction/extrapolation

There are strong indicators from a recent game that some sort of map extraction or even savegame editor may exist. Needless to say a player gains a significant advantage from knowing the exact map. Indicators of this would be units moving directly towards favored places that should be unknown.

Much of this won't be visible to other players even if they have infiltration. What will be visible is usually a player doing unusually well and if you are at war he is winning attacks he should have been loosing.

While single instances of this can and does occur due to chance/luck it starts getting suspicious if it does well beyond what one would expect.

What to do if cheating is suspected

Rather than starting to yell cheat all over the forums and getting into a fight with the players you suspect contact your CMN and inform him of your suspicion and what you base it on and ask him to check it out. As preferred the game can be halted or continued while the investigation is carried out. If the CMN is unavailable feel free to contact me with a PM here at Poly or at bintravkin[@]gmail[.]com (remove "[" and "]").

How CMNs go about investigating allegations of cheating

First of all detecting a cheater based on a single turn is normally next to impossible. Thus the first thing to do is to get as many back-turns as you can. Go through the turns one by one and notice what the player in question has done and if the rules of the games is being violated. (ie: probing without informing, use of stockpile if not allowed etc.) Note the outcomes of chance events (attack wins/losses, pop pod results, fungus bounces/not bounces, probing results etc.) Look for other unusual/unexpected game behaviour

What to do if cheating is uncovered

If a clear undisputable pattern emerges inform the player who requested the investigation of this and work out with him and the other players how to proceed. A CMN who has no doubt that a player has cheated is free to evict the player from the game and to publish why he does so. One should take care not to give the recipe for how cheats are done when doing so.

If a clear undisputable pattern emerges inform the player who requested the investigation of this and work out with him and the other players how to proceed. A CMN who has no doubt that a player has cheated is free to evict the player from the game and to publish why he does so. One should take care not to give the recipe for how cheats are done when doing so.

Alternatively a player can be ordered to make remedies and be put "on probation" or "under watch" if the cmn and remaining players feel this is preferable.

One would typically be less severe towards a generally well behaved first time offender that did a bit fiddling than one would towards a serial offender pushing every exploit to the max and who is also an ***hole.

The final decision is with the CMN.

What to do if the CMN thinks there has been cheating but is not sure

Get a second opinion from another CMN and ask the involved player for an explanation of the suspect occurences. Then re-evaluate based on the information/opinion gotten. You are likewise free to contact me on the matter.

If it is really not clear the obvious choice would be to let the game go on and watch the further progress carefully until it swings one way or the other.

Keep in mind the main purpose is not to hunt down and ban everyone who ever did something that violated the rules, but to ensure that the games played are fair and interesting.

Recourse for players who are incorrectly accused

Players who claim to have been unjustly found guilty of cheating in pbems are always welcome to contact mods. They would then invoke some other, more independent, persons to do the investigation. Just keep in mind that if they review the situation and still find your guilty, they might even increase the sanctions put on you.

Don't request a second investigation unless you really are innocent.

And keep in mind that you should keep a store of all your turns at least for the first 40-50 turns of the game, as cheating usually becomes visible in early game and it is also much easier to investigate and find signs of cheating in early years' files.

This text has been compiled by official CGN SMACX forum mod Buster and modified by binTravkin to fit Apolyton, 2005.

The original text

[Archaic]

Yikes bT, format that post! *Huge* white space at the top.

[binTravkin]

I know and I don't know what to do as everything is correct as my own post.
It's Poly who's changing it.

I have already requested assistance from the staff.

[Archaic]

Simply remove all the line breaks from your post and it'll work. Old versions of vB like the one 'poly runs have this thing about HTML.

I don't know why you didn't simply just c/p the post from the other forum though, rather than inputting it with HTML. Seems a rather round-about way to do things.

[binTravkin]

You can't copy formatting by copy-paste.

[binTravkin]

Just deleted the line breaks, but still no result..

[Flubber]

To the content


Has cheating gotten rampant in SMAX?? I always was aware that there were numerous easy ways to cheat but has it become an issue?

When I PBEMed I always just assumed other people played fair since what else can you assume?? I did have one game where I got probed by a ship REALLY early though and after I found my opponent I counted backwards. I discovered that his route around several islands and fungus must have been amazingly accurate (counting from the first turn that he had both plan nets and doc flex and assuming a one turn rush build). I wasn't sure and was on the point of discreetly contacting someone for advice when my opponent disappeared from the boards completely. Skirting the islands in the most direct route to me COULD have just been luck I guess but I still have doubts (particularly that he MUST have avoided the fungus as well).


I do agree that :

1. a request to your CMN to look at you gamefile would be the most appropriate step
2. In cases of uncertainty, you must give a person the benefit of the doubt-- I would hate for a player to get their name besmirched by having 3 fortunate pod pops in a row or something

[binTravkin]

Well, it has not gotten rampant, but the player accused of it has been a very active one and thus ruined quite a good bunch of games.

I also would like to admit that I recall some people trying to decode the map files hex by hex.
This effort may ave gone unnoticed by someone with programming skills and being able to make a program which extracts the map from the savefile.

And, yes, in the game which one of the reasons why that particular player got banned and why I am posting this here, he managed to track very precise routes to enemy and favourable locations, which hints at illegal map knowledge.

[Flubber]

Ouch

That type of cheating is game altering. If I know where my opponents are and where the best terrain is, it can radically alter game strategy

I guess one "solution" is to always play on known maps but I hate that as I always thought the dicovery of the map situation was an interesting part of the gameplay

[Illuminatus]

Could you try formatting the text by using only tags?

[binTravkin]

What do you mean by only tags?

You mean like getting rid of "style="font-weight: bold;"" type params?

[MarkG]

remove all line breaks from the part with the html code

[binTravkin]

Fixed, thanks to Illuminatus!

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by binTravkin
Fixed, thanks to Illuminatus!

And Markos.

[binTravkin]

[binTravkin]

Could someone please sticky this?

I asked Solver, but he appears to be offline.

[Kataphraktoi]

you should link to the same mssg on cgn,and mention the cc-ing to the database thing

[binTravkin]

Well, the CC thing is a CGN effort, but the link can be added.

[Kataphraktoi]

ya srry.ill pm you after this.should be there tho

[binTravkin]

nothing new in it.., but let's not spam in this thread and thanks for stickying whomever did it.

Will add the link shortly.

[Illuminatus]

This will also become a news item in future.

[DanQ]

News item published.

http://apolyton.net/smac

---------
Dan; Apolyton CS

[RGBVideo]

Here's a quick solution: Play at the same time as your friend(s?) with simultaneous moves on instead of playing tedious PBEM games.

Seriously speaking, has anyone ever found any AC cheats/hacks which you can annoy other players with while you're multiplaying?

[Chaos Theory]

Some known cheats can be executed in simultaneous-turns multiplayer, including at least one game-breaking bug.

[Kataphraktoi]

Solution: play with players you trust

There are people that know my login here\elsewhere, because i trust them enough not to abuse it...if you dont have people even halfway like that, expect cheating to be a PITA. If im playing in a game with herc\laz\senethro\etc i wont even bother looking at them to check cheating, nor even think anything other than skill when they succeed.

SMAC PBEM has had maybe 1 cheater per year. Thats amazing even in percentages compared to most other places.and even then the cheaters were very obvious BEFORE getting busted