MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Oh how nicely done Spinner,

You just decide that what people apparently have been telling you for ages has now been 'proven' to have been abused. I don't get it how technically getting points for scanning is abuse; its a feature in the game!!! If you fekked up your code and give people 3 times the score for making scans then it's expected people will use this feature to boost their score in the last days of the round, as they know they won't be using any new built ships regardless.

I can understand that the 'side effect' of your lousy servers (which we players pay for) going down is a reason to remove or limit the wave capabilities, but I do *not* agree on just removing those planets scores as they did not for any reason cheated or abused a bug in the game.

I don't mind changes improving the game but both the way this was handled and your timing was again terrible and I can understand certain people will be pissed about this. I wonder how you are going to try to worm your way out of this one Spinner expect from the obvious excuse that 'the server can't take the abuse and I didn't know scans gave 3 times the points compared to building ships' <- which are bogus arguments imo.

Thank you people move on nothing to see here but bad management,

Regards
Lord Dain

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

This is a war game - not a scan game.

Deal with it.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

That is not the point. The point is in this game you don't just get points for waging war but you get points for scanning and 'covert opping' as well. Hell did you know you don't even get any points for certain military actions, like killing thousands of hostile ships? If the game allows people to get points for certain actions they can perform then it's a pretty bad call 2 days before round end to suddenly decide that these features are implemented unbalanced and therefore players using them 'abused' the system -> they can't help it the infrastructure can't handle some page refreshes. So no - I won't deal with it.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

no, i do believe that is the point exactly. this is exactly the same sort of thing as the gal fund abuse. its a bug, it was abused, it was corrected , those abusing it got punished
simple as that
except the actions of those abusers also caused the rest of the game players problems as they took the servers down so its a little worse imo
if i was on i`d have been calling for closures, so count yourself lucky it was only XP removed, and resources not given back

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Being pedantic its not actually a bug.

The gal fund one was a bug because something unintended happened with the limit being circumvented.

This however is not a bug, due to the fact that scanning gives score. Just because they scanned repeatingly doesnt make it a bug. There are rounds gone by where using a certain ship type was much better than anything else - was that a bug? No, it was a flaw with the game balance.

While I applaud game balance being addressed, you can't really say this was a bug imo. An imbalance that is now corrected.

I do agree with the score being removed from the people who were canny enough to find this. But I also feel they should be refunded the resources.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Phil if things are really that simple shouldnt you start closing some multies at well then?


Seconded

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

That's not really their fault though is it?

Are you saying the mass launchings in previous rounds that took out the servers was also 'abuse' and anyone who did that should be closed?

They had no idea scanning over and over would cause the servers trouble.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

from what i heard there were periods of downtime that matched with the scanning frenzy, thus they must have done it, then stopped and then started again i wasnt on at the time so cant be exactly sure of that though

as for closing multis - i`ll have you know we DO close them. fs if there was a count on the number of closed accounts it`d be well over 200 by now

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Phil you just lost any last credibility as MH with this comment. I've repeatedly during this round reported multies and farms but all I get to hear from you is 'not enough prove, i need a letter signed in blood from the persons involved so sorry' but you want to close people because they used a feature that was caused by an imbalance/bad coding. Laughable and undefendable.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

perhaps you didnt give any evidence which matched up with what i could see on the tools?or perhaps you were giving irc logs ( which are easily faked and thus NEVER used as direct evidence, but used as a reason to look into someone )
there are countless reasons why there wouldnt have been enough evidence also, perhaps they were innocent?
Consider all the possibilities before deciding to flame, we do a hell of a lot of work investigating planets for cheating, its not as easy as point, click, delete

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Regardless of if this is bug abuse or not, it is game abuse.

The game was not created to be played this way - and by using this 'tactic', you were either concious of the fact that you were avoiding the rules and regulations of Planetarion, or not smart enough to handle those resources in the first place.

That method hurt gameplay for the rest of us, why would we look upon this as anything less than a malicious assault on the server?

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

If the XP and score gained from scanning is implemented into the game, how is it a bug if they scan.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

It's game abuse as making useless scans was not intended to be a way to play. Futhermore it is harmfull as it took out the servers. No better reason for changing the code as when using the code takes out your game. Furthermore Spinner was not aware of the fact scanning did give 3 times as much score. He thought he knew it didn't.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

they were using a script to run their scans - isn't this against the eula?
it affected the game so badly at points ticks had to be stopped

grow some bollocks and delete them

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Completely incorrect.

It is a well known fact that scans give score. It has been one of the most advertised features of this new style of PA for the past few rounds. Same as co-oping.
We calced that scans gave more score than ships. So obviously we would use our own research to most efficiently spend our resources.

Just because Spinner only had the forethought for a scanner doing *only* useful scans for his alliance, is not our problem. Its been in the game for about 3 rounds now ? Ending it 2 days before round end, is an unacceptable way to treat the players.
This is not some bug where we do some fancy trickery to achieve something, we are doing standard, in the way they are meant to be.

Our galaxy had 28k roids when the rest of the universe only had 20k, we could have chosen to conitinue to keep that lead, and well let's face it, we could have chosen to accelerate our lead. Instead we stopped, we pulled back, because we had the resources to win with the current game.

Now if a week ago, there had of been a change we would have been able to compensate, by resurrecting our attacks, and resuming our domination of the universe.
Instead, the game has been twisted, to disable us.
2 days to go in a round, is *NOT* how you go about keeping a game balanced.

If you wish to do something as drastic as this. You remove every scrap of score that every single planet in the universe has *ever* receieved from scans.

---------------

I think we should all count ourselves lucky that you have as little as possible to do with this game mate. It would already be dead otherwise.

Cordially,
Sonny.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Sorry but it -is- abuse in my viewpoint.

I feel you should get your resources back.

But if that is not possible I agree with your statement for a change to remove score gained from scans for *all* planets.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

haha thats not true. at least know the facts and dont make silly assumptions..

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Sonny - while you make valid points, not once did you address any of my arguments.

While not written in stone, the purpose behind the 'score for scans' development had to have been to reward planets that dedicated their time, energy, and resources to scanning. I'm fairly sure even we can agree on that.

If you had used those resources to scan with purpose, you might have a legitimate claim, but you werent. You may have not exploited a bug, per say, but you did exploit the intentions of Planetarion.

I would also suggest your resources be returned, unfortunately, the scripts you used to scan 5 times in one second would erase that sympathy, and I'd like to see your planets closed.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Oh, and good job on changing the scan calc now.
Currently you *lose* score from scanning. The way it stands, you could eraidcate your entire XP by scanning.

How about the formulas get created by someone other than Count von Count.

One scan, hah hah hah.
Two scan, hah hah hah.
Three scan, hah hah hah.
Negative Score, hah hah hah.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Learn the facts or just don't post at all. K - THANKS BUDDY!

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

You're ignorance astounds me.

Go click on the scan link a few times per second. The page doesn't reload, and you can drill through hundreds of scans in a minute or two. All that needs to happen is for the page request to be sent, and the DB gives the score.

Go test it for me, and when you're actually educated on the topic, try again.

Cordially,
Sonny.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

While i'm wasting my time entertaining you're inadequate intellect.

This is a strategy game.

Cordially,
Sonny.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

I love you too.

If the people in charge of closing your account think you ran a script, then I'd tend to believe them.

Like you so articulately pointed out, I'm not the deciding authority here, nor do I have all the tools available. I'm commenting on hearsay, so shoot me. This is after all, a discussion board. The only possible reason you'd be posting here is to satiate some burning desire to legitimize yourselves in the eye of the public opinion, its hard to believe that arguments over resources would be won or lost here, as opposed to in private communcication with the creators.

I don't intend to call you ignorant or stupid, I simply think that the course of action you and your galaxy members took isn't one that is ethically sound. The game suffered because of what your galaxy did, and either you didn't realize that, or you conciously subjected the game and its players to the reprocussions of your actions. Either one - its not kosher.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Leshy I believe that this passage was written to lil kids who like to DoS servers.

Not to cover up fk ups by the coders which cause extra load, do they?

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Gerbie you come across hypocrite here. Wasn't it you last round who decided to just covert op resources all round to try to get the #1 position in the end by spending all your resources gained in the last couple of ticks? Yes you did; a valid strategy because the covert opping and resource capping formulas allowed it.

However after a couple of weeks PA team changed the formulas because they seemed to be 'unbalanced'.

- Spinner did not remove your resources you gained from what appaeared to be an 'imbalance' in the game. However you had time to use this 'imbalance' to gain a lot of resources for some reason Spinner thought it was okay just to change the formulas a bit; so what justifies taking away xp/resources this time?

- Spinner had been confronted with this but denied the fact this could be true. I wonder if he even bothered to verify this by testing this but I have to assume NO HE DID NOT. This makes me believe now that he actually found out it's true he took measures like remove peoples XP just to cover up for his own incompetence earlier when he should have investigated it.

- Didn't you store all the covert opped resources in the fund in R10? Yeah, and that's because Spinner knew he should put a cap on the resource fund but he didn't want to change it midround and affect a lot of players, why the hell would he do that now and 2 days before round end?

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

I believe the score for scans were written for lil planets who like to scan for their alliance.

Not to create a loophole for large galaxies to blow their resources.

If the rules become subjective, nobody wins.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

you've just made my round.... :o

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Barrow, are you actually readin what you just said. So it's okay for small planets to gain lots of score because they want to scan for their alliance, but when the big bad ass planets do it it isn't? There no discrimination possible on rank regarding to what features you may use in the game is there?

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Because the planets Barrow meant scanned for a PURPOSE, not just for the score? You think the wrong way around maty...

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

I think score should be given for scans. I also think the coders think score should be given for scans.

But two to three times more than ships? No way in hell.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

I'm going to step in here and say something that will piss a lot of people off..... I reported this as a possibility some time ago and have been working with spinner to find a better formula for round 11 (I will be interested to know what he implmented for this round). The reason it is an exploit is the the only way to do enough scans to break the game is to in essence be doing a jp of a single target repeatedly forever. That is not normal use of the scannign feature and hence can be regarded as abuse of the game.

In a way I am dissapointed that the bug was not fixed when I reported it, but I will forgive people becuase its near the end of the round, and SPinner has been lsitening to improve things for round 11.

Note: I do not say it was a bug, as it was intented - just a feature which can be abused - i term it "XP farming"

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

It doesn't matter whether you believe that pigs can fly or not - the rules anyone agreed to contained the passage that it is unallowed to create a disproportionately large load on the server - seeing as the game has been off and on for everyone as a result of people scanning 50 times a second, I would say this qualifies as creating a load that is not to be considered normal usage - regardless of whether it was manually activated or script-triggered.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

what if we just say go to hell 22:8 and be there for a while... we dont want to see you on the top!

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

nothing wrong with scanning manually, as getting score from scans was intended.

The problem arises however, when certain ppl were using scripts to scan several times per second. This WAS being done, ive seen it being done, I just couldnt gather enough evidence to have it proven.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

do we actually have an accurate figure for the scan rate - I have seen various reports ranging from a couple of times a second to 50 times a second. 2/3 times a second is easily possible to do manually, anything else starts to stink of script.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

50 times a seconds? Whoever said that? Unless they are referring to the time earlier today when we were all doing it at the same time.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

So you were actually at the guilty party's house, and they went:

"Hey Forest, look at this. I can perfoem a scan multiple times a second!"

As they were saying this, you saw them setting up their script to allow them to do this?

I assume the reason you don't have enough proof for this is because there is no proff for this. We could iterate all day that we did not use scripts, but who would believe that. Anyone up top has to be cheating. It just has to be.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

This is not an argument for us to get anything back, it can not be that, for the simple fact that PA has already killed itself so many times by not listening to the players, I never expect it to change.
What this is, is defence of my actions, and it is not an "attempt" to legitimise my actions. It is already solid fact I used an appropriate and valid gameplay method.

Ethically my arse. It's a strategy game, if you want ethics, maybe this game shouldn't allow attacking, since that's not ethically sound. Maybe we shouldn't allow scanning, since invasion of privacy, isn't ethically sound. Sorry bud, but playing the game in any facet of strategy, is perfectly fine.

20 people apparently were scanning at the time the servers came down, and Spinner trapped the people scanning, and hence penalised them based on that fact.
Firstly, our galaxy doesn't have 20 planets.
Secondly, check the timezone, and feel free to check if I was online. Money on the fact I was not, since I was sleeping.
Thirdly, check my rank history, I barely dropped, since for the last week or more I have scanned maybe 100 times, for the plain fact that our galaxy had made guidelines that we would not scan till the last day or two. Hence I didn't lose score from any removed scans.

I argue here, to defend a perfectly valid tactic that our galaxy positioned itself into for the finale of the round, it is the upcoming end of round that I am angered about, not the past.

Yogi has stated this answer in another thread.
And none of those people conspired to do it at the same time, or even had knowledge that their actions were inline with others.


Exactly, everyone should have the same rules imposed on them. Small alliance scanners get score from scans, so should big planets. Thanks for standing up for us.

Goodo, so that means that when you attack to fleetcatch, you shouldn't get roids, because that's not your purpose ? Or maybe if you attack for roids, you can't kill ships ?
Scanning is the purpose, and score is the result.

I'll tell you my purpose, I wanted to scan a planet to see when he gained defence, I scanned every second because it is quite legitimate and fair for me to keep an eye on his defence.
So now there is purpose. Scans will now go back to normal, and our score restored.
Thanks. If you have a problem with this, get a clue.

Cordially,
Sonny.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

No, there's a big difference, the galfund had a limit peoples had to get around, the waves had no limit.

and that's a extremely big difference.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Like i've posted in the other thread. I supported CBK with the gal fund feature, and I support you guys on this as well. It's unfair, fix the feature, is ok.. But removing XP or in the other case 600 Mil, is totally unfair imho.

Also like in the other thread, WHY o WHY do people want to win this game with work arounds.... Personally, if I would win that way I wouldn't feel proud at all, but that's your choise, not mine.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

What about those not using a script? It's possible to do like 2-4 scans/secs manually, and it wasn't a bug that you guys gave suchs a high score for it.

And why take action now? Two days before the end? What about certain planets with 7-8mill score and 1mill value? If the admins say they havent seen that planet before now, i dont believe you.

How was this meeting when you found out to give 2x score for scanning than building ships?...
"We give twice the score for scanning than building ships, which means a planet with 2k roids can boost like a planet with 4k roids if he wants too. We don't expect this to make people scan alot." ???...

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

You sacrificed the quality of the game play for others for your own personal success.

That may be strategically right, but it does give us a good glimpse as to who the men behind the mask are.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

I don't know exactly who you were aiming that at, but it's clearly to the "scanners".
The fact is, we were already well ahead of the rest of the universe, far before we scanned.
Even when we had over 1.4 Billion in saved resources, we were *still* ahead.
It's not quality of the game, we had 2.5 months of constant and successful attacking.
We were in an unbeatable position at that point (assuming we kept playing the same game), so why put ourselves in jeopardy by continuing to attack ?

Will you attack right up to the last tick ? The fact is that as the round draws near, people will attack less, and gamble on losses even less, since there is no use in going *down* in score, when the roids won't pay off.

The fact was, we had already won, you cannot justify that we should have attacked this last week or so, since there was no reason for us to put our ships in danger.

Cordially,
Sonny.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

just a few hours before this scan abuse thing i was in #support when a newbie came in asking how much score stuff gave him. Kal said that scanning gave twice as much score as anything else per resource, so this newbie was contemplating just doing scans for the rest of the round.

this to me suggests the thing was a feature. you can't put features like this in the game and expect them not to be abused! it's also a little stupid if it's true that you lose score for scanning now; typical overcompensating...

all resources used in scanning in the 48 ticks in question should be returned. this is the only way to resolve this issue properly.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

I agree.

And i find it very hard to believe that the scanning was the cause of serverproblems, why would all "abusers" scan 2-3mins before tick? Seems like your servers has problems with the ticker.

Why not just reduce score from scans to the same as building ships? or maybe same score as resources give? It would be common sence to do that.. But you had to give first twice the score, than 10% of the res score...

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Actually, it was previously 3x the score, and has been changed to a negative score.
Literally negative.

Tests show:
36k Res are worth 180 score left as resources.
When spent, are worth 360 score for ships. And worth 120 score for scans.
Subtract the res loss from each, gives you:
36k res spent gives 180 score for ships or -60 score for scans.

You are better off leaving them as stored resources.

Cordially,
Sonny.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

It was 360 score / jumpgate, which is 2x the score you got from building ships..

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Incorrect, a jumpgate, costing 7000 of each res, gave you 70 XP.
You would then lose 21k of res. Which was a value drop of 105.
Then your score was calculated, you gained 70*6 score, and lost 105 score. Hence a gain of 315 score.

As opposed to spending that 21k of res on fleet, which would give you 210 score, after losing 105 score. hence a gain of 105 score.

Cordially,
Sonny.

Re: MASSIVE abuse of Scanning
 

Jumpgate Probe This scan can be used if you have a fleet travelling from you to the target. It will reveal any other fleets traveling to the same target.
This scan costs 6000 of each resource.

When you spent 10mill res on scans, the score increased with 150k.. This mean the score of scans had to be twice the score from building ships..