Anti Cheating Measures

[NEWSBOT3]

Ok, as mentioned here this is the thread.

Salomo, and others had some excellent suggestions for things to help improve the anti-cheating efforts, and so I’d like to widen this and ask all of PD.

We have some good ideas for r10 in this department, but of course its always best to ask people that play, what things you would suggest we have, in tools, policies, rules etc, to help reduce the cheating.

Please don’t post silly suggestions, flames etc as I will ask the mods to edit/remove those.

Serious and realistic suggestions, I will do my best to see that we have in for r10. I cannot promise we will, but I can promise I can try

Finally, my apologies if I don’t read this for a few days, I am away until Sunday from tomorrow, but I’ll make sure those who should see it do

[Chax]

Instead of having 3 separate accounts there should be 1 for all the PA needs. Currently we need
1. a registered irc nick
2. a forums account
3. A planet.

People should instead have one account for all three things.
This would lead to account tradng being a lot less popular.
Do you really want to give away your forum account and your nick when you swap planets? And if you do, how will you claim victory?
Board nick and P nick should be the same.
Also noone should be able to pick your nick as their ruler name, it should be reserved for you. Alternatively nick could be automatically used as ruler name.
you keep your account for forum and irc regardless of wether you're playing the game, and to play the game you pay for a credit for your account.

[KaneED]

There are plans for something like that already afaik Chax.

[General Martok]

didn't Spinner announce there was gonna be a Player-passport with all your data etc?

edit: KaneED beat me to it...

[NEWSBOT3]

Originally posted by Chax
Instead of having 3 separate accounts there should be 1 for all the PA needs. Currently we need
1. a registered irc nick
2. a forums account
3. A planet.

People should instead have one account for all three things.
This would lead to account tradng being a lot less popular.
Do you really want to give away your forum account and your nick when you swap planets? And if you do, how will you claim victory?
Board nick and P nick should be the same.
Also noone should be able to pick your nick as their ruler name, it should be reserved for you. Alternatively nick could be automatically used as ruler name.
you keep your account for forum and irc regardless of wether you're playing the game, and to play the game you pay for a credit for your account.

at the moment all i can say is a similar system is planned, but i cant say it will happen for definate. we hope to have it in place though, yes

[Andy_r]

irc-nick as planetname has several problems.

Firstly, half of PA (the low scoring half) doesn't have IRC, and a high percentage of new players don't have it either.

Secondly, it would become common practice to check a planet's irc activity before attacking. This would lead to people setting up irc spambots just to look active.

Thirdly, anyone remotely well known/disliked in the community would be a target at tick 73.

Lastly, it's a useless security method, since it's trivial to hand over your irc auth info at the same time you hand over your PA login/pass.

[masochist]

95% ppl players cheat. it's against the rules but we can't do anything.
but: if most of ppl cheat, then the best wins...

[Supernova9]

Originally posted by masochist
95% ppl players cheat. it's against the rules but we can't do anything.
but: if most of ppl cheat, then the best wins...

Incorrect, the best cheater wins. And none of those 95% deserve it, the 5% do, or however small the non-cheating population is.

[The_Fish]

Originally posted by Andy_r
irc-nick as planetname has several problems.

Firstly, half of PA (the low scoring half) doesn't have IRC, and a high percentage of new players don't have it either.

Secondly, it would become common practice to check a planet's irc activity before attacking. This would lead to people setting up irc spambots just to look active.

Thirdly, anyone remotely well known/disliked in the community would be a target at tick 73.

Lastly, it's a useless security method, since it's trivial to hand over your irc auth info at the same time you hand over your PA login/pass.

I dont think he meant it like that. At the end of the round when the rankings were out it would have your irc and forums nick next to your planet.

[Chax]

Originally posted by Andy_r
irc-nick as planetname has several problems.

Firstly, half of PA (the low scoring half) doesn't have IRC, and a high percentage of new players don't have it either.

Secondly, it would become common practice to check a planet's irc activity before attacking. This would lead to people setting up irc spambots just to look active.

Thirdly, anyone remotely well known/disliked in the community would be a target at tick 73.

Lastly, it's a useless security method, since it's trivial to hand over your irc auth info at the same time you hand over your PA login/pass.

If you haven't got an irc nick already you'd get one reserved for you that's identical to your forumname. If youi haven't got one of those either then you get one that's identical to your ruler name, that's what most newbies use anyway when they go on irc. Wether you actually ever go on irc or post in forums is irrelevant. Noone will at least be able to pose as you.

It already is common practice to check a targets irc activity, main difference being that most people haven't got the ability to while some do.

I've played with nick as ruler name in round 5, 8 and 9.5. In round 5 my whole galaxy did it, and so did another galaxy in c20 with well known people in it. Neither of these 2 galaxies were killed because of it, on the contrary both were commended for the size of their genitalia. In round 8 I didn't get extra incomings due to having Chax as ruler name either. I did in r9.5 get 10 ship incomings every day for 2 weeks though, quite a nuicance. Either way it takes about 2 weeks for everyone to know where you are anyway, so no big deal.

Indeed people can give away their account still, but the person taking over the account would get no credit. The owner would.

[Salomo]

Originally posted by Chax
Instead of having 3 separate accounts there should be 1 for all the PA needs. Currently we need
1. a registered irc nick
2. a forums account
3. A planet.

People should instead have one account for all three things.
This would lead to account tradng being a lot less popular.
Do you really want to give away your forum account and your nick when you swap planets? And if you do, how will you claim victory?
Board nick and P nick should be the same.
Also noone should be able to pick your nick as their ruler name, it should be reserved for you. Alternatively nick could be automatically used as ruler name.
you keep your account for forum and irc regardless of wether you're playing the game, and to play the game you pay for a credit for your account.

This would quite possibly reduce account trading (unless people set up multiple accounts, one for playing that they can give away, and one only for their irc/forums nick), but imho account trading is the smallest of the problems in a private round which iirc r10 will be. In fact in private rounds i'd even be in favour of creating methods of legally transfering a planet to a new owner (with the new owner being properly registered then and the old owner being completely locked out), but i guess thats a different issue

[Mit]

As NB3 said, a system is being developed now... it does some of what is said, but IRC nicks cannot be linked as the network is no longer irc.planetarion.com but instead irc.netgamers.org - more than one game on the network.

*thinks*

[Salomo]

I don't know how and whether at all this can be implemented, but somehow a way needs to be found to check whether a computer logs on to several accounts. Simply checking IP probably wont help much since most people use dynamic IP's and can hence just disconnect and reconect before logging into the next account. Cookies probably wont work either, since cookies can simply be deleted and making having a matching cookie on the computer maditory would make it quite difficult to play from work, a computer pool in uni/school, a friends place, etc. Both things should probably be implemented if they aren't allready just to make login sharing a bit more difficult, but are there any other ways of checking for multiple logins from the same computer besides cookies and IP?

Only thing i can think of in that area is to check the country part of the IP (i suck at those techincal things, but iirc usually a persons country can be determined by the first digits of the IP or smthg) and have alarm bells rings when someone logs into an account from a different country than before. But that ofc is still far from a truly good detection system.

Unless there is a better way, perhaps more focus should be put into the detection of cheating-typical behaviour: As mentioned in the other thread, any planet that is online 24/7 should make the alarm bells ring automatically (and for that purpose the time one automatically remains logged in should probably be reduced to 1 hour).

Perhaps a similar detection system could be implemented for attacks launched without pods. Every time a planet launches on someone else without pods a program could perhaps check the other incommings on the planet and create a file containing the fleet info of all attackers. These files would then be stored for multihunters to check when they are working on a planet mentioned in there, and regularly a list is then generated from these files listing the top escort users and top escort providers. Ofc that alone would be no hard evidence for cheating, but it would certainly be a hint towards it, and those at the top of the list sould allways be more closely inspected. Perhaps we could even have a top 100 escort users just like the players/galaxy ranking top 100 to make the whole thing more transparent and possibly to discourage use of escort fleets, though for that the creation of the list would probably need to be refined a bit.

A similar system could then be implemented for recalls: When several planets attack the same target and some attackers pull but at least one doesn't the fleet info for defense and attack is stored. If attackers losses are smaller than defenders losses and attacker gains roids this attack stays recored for multihunters to have available when inspecting the planet and the attack is added to the involved planets' escort list.

every week without politics board post could also be recorded.

The goal of all that recording would be a browsable database for the multihunters in the style of the elysium/virus/etc. planetarion tool sites, just with different lists. Instead of top 100 ranked planets you would e.g. have a list of top "escort" givers and users. Individual planets could be selected just as on those PA tools webbies and instead of roidgraphs etc. you get a display of who the planet was escorted by or escorted, the total number of attacks and defences, an overview of the fleet the planet has, a chart at what times someone usually logs in, and basically any other info that could help the multihunters gather hints at cheating.

Ofc that would give multihunters much data they could misuse, but i guess multihunters will simply need to be selected extremely carefully and/or get payed for the job (and forced to pay high fines if they are caught misusing the system).

[Backbone]

I'm pretty sure the first digit of the ip is given to certain providers, ie all north american aol users have the first digit identical, same with all the t-online customers in germany.
So if your first digit changes this can be due to two things: you changed your provider (there are tools that automatically connect you to the cheapest dialup connection) or someone else logged into your account. Of course this would not work for people who have the same provider.

As I see it the one-account idea is the best so far, remember that your pnick must not necessary be your irc nick, it just is your pnick. Maybe the unique nick can be the login name to planetarion instead of the ruler name.
Also I would only allow pnicks/forum nicks that are connected to paid planetarion accounts, even if you played only once. If you make it possible to create other nicks (like now) then people will just never use the forum account that was created with their planetarion signup and accountswap like they did before.

[Gerbie]

I'd like to see measures taken that harm alliances that harbour cheaters. This should encourage alliances to get rid of cheaters themselves. Different measurs can be considered: a fine to the alliance fund, reducing score, disbanding alliances that harbour too many cheaters.

Forbid escorting. I know this is not an easy decision to make and I know it's not easy to prove this watertight. Don't tell me you can't attack a top planet then, because we all know the difference between an attack against a top planet and an attack against a planet 20-30% of your score, using a handfull of escorts.

Make sure cheaters do as little damage as possible. Repair damage when possible. As proposed elsewhere by hAl:

'When planets are caught doing illegal acts pull their fleets before closing them.'

'If someone has advantage from cheating but is not actually possible to find the planet owner responsible punish them to the extent they are profiting. Like when many multifleets are found defending a planet you could for instance take a portion of a planets roids but preferbly take a portion of a planets fleet away. Off course only when significant number of cheating defenders are closed (this can vary on the total amount of defenders and their size). In short make profiting from the efforts of other cheaters less interesting. '

TeraHertz suggested:
'Force log out every second hour on the half hour.'

Another suggestion is doing damage payments to those that were wronged. Return illegally stolen roids, or get damage payments done for lost ships when closing or punishing a planet.

[Backbone]

I think it will be VERY difficult to repay players that were damged by cheaters, but punishing the ones that benefited from cheaters would certainly encourage players to choose their friends more carefully and probably would get a lot of alliances (I don't say all alliances) to kick cheaters

[hyfe]

on a total sidenote:

With all planets having to belong to the same tag to attack together, I think we'll see a drop in cheating. Atleast from several of the larger alliances.

As the multi planets actually have to be added to tag now to be effective, the HC's *will* know about them. While alot of HC's are very fond of the 'pretend not to see the cheating going on'/'not having enough proof'/'my friends would neeever doing anything like that'-approaches, with the multiplanets actually having to be members they won't be able to claim innonce anymore. I think it will make all the difference in the world.

[Gerbie]

Originally posted by hyfe

With all planets having to belong to the same tag to attack together, I think we'll see a drop in cheating.

Has this been coded into the game? I never noticed any anouncements on this subject, only about reduced defence eta for people with the same ingame alliance. It would be a good measure to reduce piggying and escort planets. Though I personally liked piggying.

[Baco]

Originally posted by Gerbie
Has this been coded into the game? I never noticed any anouncements on this subject, only about reduced defence eta for people with the same ingame alliance. It would be a good measure to reduce piggying and escort planets. Though I personally liked piggying.

As far as I know/was told 2 planets, with a different tag, attacking the same target will attack each other as well as the ships defending.
This will indeed drop cheating....

[Banned]

Go to #coder-com on undernet and talk to the people that make DS.

[Mit]

Originally posted by Banned
Go to #coder-com on undernet and talk to the people that make DS.

it was JK afaik, and how is talking about the coding of a Drone Scanner relevant to this topic?

[Supernova9]

Originally posted by Gerbie
Forbid escorting. I know this is not an easy decision to make and I know it's not easy to prove this watertight. Don't tell me you can't attack a top planet then, because we all know the difference between an attack against a top planet and an attack against a planet 20-30% of your score, using a handfull of escorts.

Cheaters don't use escorts to hit planets 20-30% of their score, they use it to hit larger targets, so that they can get a higher amount of roids, thus making attacks more profitable.

TeraHertz suggested:
'Force log out every second hour on the half hour.'

Forcing a log-out doesn't stop anything. If they're logged out it means nothing apart from the fact that the cheater will have to log in again later, and as he/she's already done it many times to run the account, what makes you think they'll be caught if you make them log in a few more times?

[whoop]

Originally posted by Gerbie

Forbid escorting. I know this is not an easy decision to make and I know it's not easy to prove this watertight.

So you're telling me that you've never seen this ? I've done it myself, numerous times.

player one - damm, my target just got def, I am eta six.  
    anyone has some FI to spare to scare 
    away the def ?
player two - sure - coords ?

If all you are doing is looking for specific actions which typically are indicative of multi behaviour, then the only thing that will happen is that the uage of multi planets will become even more imaginative as a result.

This is especially true of this game, because you don't have a feedback loop.

The key is not to look for behaviour patterns, but rather to limit the ability to create and manage fake accounts in the first place.

-whoop

[mazzelaar]

Try to make alliance HC root out cheaters, make sure everyone is doing thier bit. If a planet is closed take 5% score/roids from the alliance with the same tag as the cheater. It is evidently very hard (although they do sterling work) for the multi hunters to come up with a watertight case to close someone so the best thing to do is increase the damage done by closing a cheater. In the past a top planet is caught cheating - they are closed. Thier alliance gets a bit of flaming on the boards, they lose a high ranked player and thats the end of it. I'm fairly sure it's true to say several members of that alliance knew about said cheater and said nothing. Surely they would say something if, when the cheater was found out/closed they would be punished with a loss of score/roids aswell as him losing his account? Wouldn't something like this promote the idea that cheaters will not be tolerated and force any HC that are aware of cheaters in thier ranks to eject them from the alliance and therefore turn the cheaters chances of doing well in a round to nil?

Mebbe I'm a mile off but creative thinking was never my strongpoint

[Andy_r]

hmm, planets have to be in the same alliance to attack together?

I can't see how this could be implemented, do targets suddenly get forbidden if someone from a different alliance is already attacking? If so we'll see a lot of tiny planets from alliance A attacking the big planets in alliance B with 1 ship every 3 hours, and vice versa.

Also, how can you tell the difference between choosing the same target as another alliance by sheer bad luck and 'escorting' that other alliance? If 'escorting' another alliance is possible, that's a big incentive to powerblock.

Escorting is a fact of life, and a legal tactic. I think the solution is for everyone to stop whinging and get on with trying to do it better than LDK

[Andy_r]

ok, here is a suggestion for a radical anti-cheating/alliance power reducing measure...

Get rid of clusters and parallels. Players are only able to send ships, (hostile or friendly) and scan the 20 'nearest' galaxies.

Each day, the oldest galaxy is taken off your 'near' list, and a new one added, so galaxies are 'near' to you for 20 days.

This means a continually changing set of local politics, you will need to constantly form temporary alliances with 'near' players.

PA-wide alliances will not function well, as it is going to be quite rare for randomly scattered players to be able to reach each other.

As a side-effect, this also solves the problem of people's rounds being ruined by being in a 'weak cluster', and should allow less active or solo people to perform better.

[K-W]

Originally posted by Supernova9
Cheaters don't use escorts to hit planets 20-30% of their score, they use it to hit larger targets, so that they can get a higher amount of roids, thus making attacks more profitable.



Forcing a log-out doesn't stop anything. If they're logged out it means nothing apart from the fact that the cheater will have to log in again later, and as he/she's already done it many times to run the account, what makes you think they'll be caught if you make them log in a few more times?

Wrong on both counts, cheaters often use escorts to hit planets that are much smaller, especially once they get big. they can hit 3 targets with minimal ships while escorts keep def away. They wouldnt hit bigger targets because they tend to get def and hitting big planets is a good way to get allainces pissed at you.

This is assuming now war of course. Then when small targets dry up you start to see bigger planets getting hit.

And as far as the forced log out, it stops bots that just refresh pages to stay logged in while the cheater is sleeping/working/not at his pc.

[Al_zz]

Legalize accountswapping !!

Yes this sound like a contradiction to the topic but why not. Many people regard accountswapping acceptable because it would hurt their alliance/gal if they quit and the planet was closed. But off course accountswapping can be abused to create stronghold gals/cluster/regions or whatever. That is why an accountswap should be costly so no benefit can be gained from it.

* I myself would think that about 50% of a planet's fleet/score should be removed on an accountswap.
* Also the planet should go to an account that has not had a planet in that round before.
* No accounts can be swapped in first week of a round

Optionally the creators could also charge a small fee for it as it obviously costs something to implement.

hAl

[Leshy]

Originally posted by Al_zz
Legalize accountswapping !!

I doubt anyone will choose a legal account swap with disadvantages over an illegal account swap without any.

[hAl]

Originally posted by Leshy
I doubt anyone will choose a legal account swap with disadvantages over an illegal account swap without any.

I disagree. Having a legal way to transfer an account not only gives the oppertunity to sswap the account but it also emphasises the illegallity of any other ways. Currently there just isn't a legal way to keep an account alive in a gal.

Since many people swap the account for the benefit of someone else and not for their own personal interest a legal way with give them the oppertunity. And since their own interests are less at steak losing score is less important.

Also, it is fairly easy to play an account that is fully developed for the round even if the score is lower. And in a random universe a legal swap does not have the risk of discovery that you would have with an illegal swap that would need consent of all active galmembers. A no risk accountswap will certainly be an option then. In a private universe where you could easily hide an accountswap in a private gal legalizing accountswapping would not work probably but in a ranom universe it will probably do ok.

hAl

[Gerbie]

Just legalize it. I've done it myself. In a payed round people this shouldn't be too much of a problem. You can limit it to people from the same alliance. Possibly with a HC agreeing or by sending a msg to a PA admin that has to agree. Don't make a fuss about things that are hard to controle and hardly disturbing for the rest of the players. Focus on the big problems first.

[Andy_r]

If you legalise account swapping, you give people an excuse to 'babysit' and share their login/pass, if caught they would simply say it's an account swap.

Is this a bad thing? Possibly not. I think it would mean that the big alliances would do each other a LOT more damage than they do at the moment, which would make the game better for everyone.

While you're at it, how would PA be if they legalised EVERYTHING? Bots, multis, account sharing, farming, and ship donations, the whole works. Swap the payment system so that instead of 1 planet for $10, you get 5,000 page views (or whatever is economic) for $10, and planets go into vacation when they have no views left.

Maybe the roidfat farmers will be wiped out by the multis, the multis will be wiped out when they sleep, and the big alliances will find all their ships crashed into each other when a few members get angry?

How about setting this up with the old code in parallel with round 10? Give all the cheaters a game to prove they are the best at cheating, while the rest of us play the new game? It might just work!

[hAl]

Originally posted by Andy_r
If you legalise account swapping, you give people an excuse to 'babysit' and share their login/pass, if caught they would simply say it's an account swap.

My suggestion firstly ment that there can still be only one owner at any time for each planet and also means the swapped planets loses score for being swapped to a new owner. Clearly therefore it can never be used as an excuse for account sharing.

hAl

[Naris]

I agree with chax, his ideas will limit the cheating a whole lot more..

[Fakhiri]

Have no rules.....

Everything is legal in love and war. And PA is War....

Despite what some of you think, this is a business and the guys r here to make money. Multis and other cheat planets may be closed, but only a small fraction.... Multis = more monhey to spinnah and the gang so they realllly like 'em. However, officially the multis "are scum". Tsk, Tsk !

The New Slogan for PAX should be...

One Game, No Rules!


----------------------------------------------
Hey.. even reading this ?... U must be stupid!

The FakaH"

[Eventh]

Originally posted by Fakhiri
Have no rules.....

Multis = more monhey to spinnah and the gang

i belive more multis would make more people leave, so in the end the game would loose money...

it cant survive on only multis who uses stolen creditcards to pay with..

[Raging.Retard]

Originally posted by Mit
it was JK afaik, and how is talking about the coding of a Drone Scanner relevant to this topic?

Because DS is a scanner based in itelligent patterns (rules) that flag up irc channels if they breach a configurable level of rules.

It doesnt take a genious to see the same style of system could be used to flag game accounts for manual checking. Another 'well known' game abbreviated to SS, already uses a simillar system with a high success rate.

[Jeekay]

Originally posted by Banned
Go to #coder-com on undernet and talk to the people that make DS.

Hi.

[NEWSBOT3]

Well, this thread seems to have served its purpose, and is straying a little.

Thank you for all of your suggestions, some of them are already implemented, and i shall see what i can do about the other good ones

[Leshy]

Thread closed on request.