Alliances and cheating

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by Willzzz

That's an argument you should aim toward PA Team not the cheaters themselves.

Agreed.

[booji]

Originally Posted by BloodyButcher

You and the former alliance Rogues is a prime example of why this community will not get rid of cheating.

This seems to imply that cheating was well known within rogues which I am pretty sure was not true. I thought we had a scan bot from quite early but was not certain until near the end of the round when I told reapersix. At that point he agreed with my suspicions and it was acted on and promptly agreed to stop and not do again in future. Though I should note that I am also in the camp that thinks that there should be no need for scanners. Or if there are to be scanners there should be sufficient playing space that they can play a competitive planet.

I had no information about bot planets fcing. It was clear that cardi organised fcs as he sometimes asked for others to join in the channel but this is hardly unusual alliance activity to raise suspicions, if you have cardi in an alliance you accept that he is likely to be doing some things outside of it. We had no knowledge or evidence these were fcs by bots. There was never even anything that raised suspicions within Rogues in this regard with the exception of you and when you raised it we failed to see any connection with rogues.

Where I did have suspicions, again late in the round, but never sufficient evidence was of ship farming by an already mentioned player. I admit that I never took these to the mhs and to a certain extent agree that this helps ensure that the community will not get rid of cheating. On the other hand who wants to play a game where we all accuse each other (even in the same alliance) of cheating at the drop of a hat? It would be just as poisonous to the game. It did not help that said planet was competing with my brother for a T10 spot so anything I might raise would have been decidedly sour grapes.

[Munkee]

So I found this conversation quite interesting and so I decided to have a trawl around to see what these "scripts" are.

http://pastebin.com/bKYX73UR

So a bit of pastebin searching brought back the user script that dftw used. From the looks of it there is an assumption you are using the merlin tools (on git hub) with Arthur (the website).

Arthur has a look up bar so you can enter coords into this and it would find a planet like sandmans/kia. It also serves a second purpose and that is you can fulfill scan requests by pasting scan links in to the lookup bar instead of coords.

Ther user script simply injects a bit of extra code into your pa webpages and then sends these on to arthur, specifically into the http post method that would be used by the arthur website. This would technically fulfill scan requests AFTER you click the link to do the scan.

The bottom of the pastebin I've added in some mirc script which was sort of mentioned earlier. It was mentioned that mirc was being used to do some of the scans and as you can see its quite simple. To automate the opening of scan requests, to allow your arthur user script to work you just need to match a scan request url and fire off your favourite browser (which also has the user script installed into it).

This then completes the full loop, scan requests come in mirc picks them up and opens the url for the user script to send back to your tools. All nicely automated. You could add in some random timer to mirc to make this seem more "human" like but it does mean you can essentially log into pa and walk away for 2 ticks whilst the scripts do the rest for you.

After doing this test it raised 3 thoughts for me:

1. Anyone with some coding knowledge would attempt to do this. Coders are humans and humans are lazy, so you would naturally try and automate. I believe the above script under pa terms would be classed as "cheating" but to some people I can understand how they see it is just cutting out the middle man of clicking links and pasting them back. You need a pc on, you need to be at it to login to pa if needed and you need to build constructions still. It's a nice addon for everyone to be fair but yes more than likely it is cheating.

2. There is a distincting between these scripts run by genuine users and those who sign up an actual "scanbot" planet where multiple people can screenshare/vnc into a machine to get through the login script. Thats then falling into account sharing which we all know is a big NO NO.

3. It only takes a small extension of what we have seen to expand this into bot planets who can send at any whim. I dont actually need to login to other peoples accounts if they can just run a machine for me and I can do a !attack 1:1:1 fleet1 type command and it executes the required code on the pa side for me. However I dont have much knowledge of the typical bot planet scripts to be able to confirm thats how it works but its quite obvious if you run these scan scripts you may toy with the plans of running planets too.

Ultimately I think PA team has little chance to stop these things being exploited, infact you have no chance. There is nothing stopping user scripts being extended and the way in which you expected your browser game to be run. Also whilst the PA team keeps its database dumps and Api's hidden I think you are going to keep getting the same issues happening over and over.

From my perspective, open it up for everyone or do away with the system all together. It will be abused by those who are capable and those who arent will feel hard done by.

[Zh|l]

Originally Posted by BloodyButcher

I thought BF(Hi Zhil!) claimed that their scan bots were infact, legal, even being supported by a few of ex TGV HCs(Hi influence!), ChronoX did all what he could to sabotage any investigation on all the BF "multies/bots", and he actualy seemed(to me atleast) to take great pleasures of all the none BF "bots/multies" flying alongside the Rogues planets.

I honestly don't know why I've been dragged in or mentioned in regards to BlackFlag and cheating accusations.

The one full round I played with BlackFlag I didn't have a planet - I was an advisor for their politics. With all the accusations that happened, Clouds stepped down from politics and I was asked to run politics for BF that round.

At no point did I hold a High Command rank within BlackFlag, nor did I have a HC vote. I simply stepped up to run politics since if I didn't it would have been a disaster.

I remember having gm and Butcher push quite hard for me to 'clean' out BF, and I said I would investigate the claims. However, since I didn't hold rank in BF it would be very hard for me to actually do anything if I concluded cheating to have happened and offered to work 100% with the Multihunters.

With the chaos of politics that round, I didn't really have that much time, nor was I very technical minded. I asked Bashar to look into things for me and gave him what information I had and Butcher/gm to contact for more information. I trusted Bashar implicitly from our days in Spore, 1up and Fury and I know his stance, along with mine and Forest were very much anti-cheating (to the extent of where in our history we have kicked people for cheating at a result of our own rather than any official PA investigation)

During my time within BlackFlag that round I saw no cheating internally, nothing was ever used or displayed within all forms of communications I had with them - this includes all command channels, all officers/dc's, WhatsApp, IRC & Slack.

As for the scan script, I admitted I was not technically minded enough to look into it and messaged Appocmaster personally to take a look at it as I honestly didn't understand the technicalities of what is legal and isn't - I remember Bashar having issue with Remy and CT's own tools even after it was proven they were fine. It was Bashar that basically vetoed Spore using CT tools and Remy can confirm this despite me being highly in favour of them.

My last act within BlackFlag was to suggest Sevenseas as a successor despite no previous experience and the to help mentor Sevenseas while I did my ill-fated Ascendancy role.

At no point did I even get approached by PA Team or Multihunters.

[Mzyxptlk]

If my old scan had had 'run <scanurl>' instead of 'echo <scanurl>' in it, it would've been a scan bot too. This shit is really ****ing easy.

I've considered making a PA bot at various points, just for shits and giggles, but it never came to anything.

[Influence]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

If my old scan had had 'run <scanurl>' instead of 'echo <scanurl>' in it, it would've been a scan bot too. This shit is really ****ing easy.

I've considered making a PA bot at various points, just for shits and giggles, but it never came to anything.

And to think you don't even need the mirc script, but just enable the option that mirc opens every link in a certain channel.

[Munkee]

Originally Posted by Influence

And to think you don't even need the mirc script, but just enable the option that mirc opens every link in a certain channel.

Where is this option? I haven't used mirc in like 10 years until yesterday.

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by Influence

And to think you don't even need the mirc script, but just enable the option that mirc opens every link in a certain channel.

Still need to convert 'AU on 3.5.2 and 2:1:9, please' to a scan URL, though. If not in your IRC client, then somewhere else.

Originally Posted by Munkee

Where is this option? I haven't used mirc in like 10 years until yesterday.

Options -> IRC -> Catcher.

[Influence]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

Still need to convert 'AU on 3.5.2 and 2:1:9, please' to a scan URL, though. If not in your IRC client, then somewhere else.

Merlin does that for you in the scan channel . You just need the other people in there to abstain from posting malicious links.

[Mzyxptlk]

Originally Posted by Mzyxptlk

If not in your IRC client, then somewhere else.

[oil]

Originally Posted by BloodyButcher

I thought BF(Hi Zhil!) claimed that their scan bots were infact, legal, even being supported by a few of ex TGV HCs(Hi influence!), ChronoX did all what he could to sabotage any investigation on all the BF "multies/bots", and he actualy seemed(to me atleast) to take great pleasures of all the none BF "bots/multies" flying alongside the Rogues planets.

I think you are mixing it all up tbfh.
From what ive seen so far, from your comments only, ChronoX wanted to remove the scan bot after Appocomaster confirmed what everybody knew allready, http://pirate.planetarion.com/showpo...3&postcount=96 . At this point he had allready claimed he had retired from the "playing scene" aspiring to become a multihunter.
Lets put it short that he havnt managed to become a multihunter yet.....

Not read anything after this and presently drunk, but I'm not absolving chronox of anything here. I'm saying his comment regarding the scan bot was a tacit admission of more overt cheating etc