My opinion : people cheating with their game time are really a problem

[slayer]

I play against my score and against the scores of estabilished members.

I think this is an excellent attitude to have. Of course identifying these members can be difficult. In both CW1 and CW2 I assumed some players were cheating right up to the point that I would beat their scores. Now, unless a person "outs" themselves as a cheater, I believe their scores.

What I find more frustrating (in the best way possible ;)) is to post a personal high score and then be unable to match it again. It's doubly frustrating when that high score still puts you behind a bunch of better scores.

This happened to me in CW2 where I posted a very high score once, and could never match it. I'm currently banging my head against the wall trying to match/improve my time on Inceptus>Carcere and can't even match my posted score, although I've come very close.

This is another example of why I LOVE this game. I play to refine my solution to each world I play, to challenge myself and others. And CW3 allows me to do that until my forehead is bleeding.

LOVE IT!!!!

Slayer

[Clean0nion]

What I find more frustrating (in the best way possible ) is to post a personal high score and then be unable to match it again. It's doubly frustrating when that high score still puts you behind a bunch of better scores.

On a similar note, I find it very frustrating when people beat me on maps that I have made. But I guess that makes me the hacker, because I put code into the map...?

[slayer]

FINALLY!!!

Sometimes you have to throw out your old approaches and start from scratch...onward!

Slayer

[chwooly]

I think there should actually be 2 times, Actual game time and Paused game time. I very rarely pause a game to set stuff up so my times are usually longer, I also tend to spend time terraforming when i could be killing emitters  ;D

Next you'll be asking for a time that excludes time spent terraforming, or time that the game was in saved state as well? :P

Terraforming is part of game play so that time should count and save state is not in game so it doesn't really matter.  ;D

[Nephthys]

They are going to be around like forever, but I can go on and have my fun anyway.

I agree. There will always be cheaters and hackers. Always better not to feed the trolls.

But if you absolutely positively want obvious cheats off the posted scores, it seems as though scores under the absolute minimum amount of time it takes to build a Nullifier could be automatically blocked. But again, cheaters will just add .1 secs to that score & post it.

Ultimately, all we can do is use common sense (sometimes rare I know) and play against our own times or those we know to be excellent honest players. If you care enough about your score, you'll find your way to this forum & eventually learn the names of those who play fair.

I don't know how to set up a Group, but since it IS an option, it could be utilized to invite honest players in and then look at only those results.

[timotimo]

(this post ended up ten times as rambly as i'd imagined at the start; maybe it still gives some interesting insight to someone, though)

The only robust way to get rid of absolutely fake highscores is to make generating a fake score as hard as playing the game and getting the score actually.

The idea i'm having right now is to send a log of all economy-related events together with the score. This would be a rather small log and could be somewhat easily automatically checked by the server:

• where you place your CNs
• where you place collectors and when they finish building
• what upgrades you get at the forge
• terraforming events
• ...

Since the server knows what the map looks like or at least can generate it on the fly or download it from the maps server, it could make sure, that the collectors, CN, buildings are placed in valid locations, that the collectors generate as much energy as is required to keep the economy going (i.E. if the cheater claims to have built a nullifier 10 seconds into the game, that would easily be detected) and things like that ...

It's a lot of work to make that work properly, especially when considering the power of the built-in script system (custom units, buildings like siphons that flood the economy with energy/packets/ore/...)

And on top of that, this approach completely ignores the creeper so far; adding support for *that* to the extra simulation would make it a whole lot harder to build and make robust :(


It may even be easier to make the simulation deterministic (easier than you think; just save the random number generator seed at the beginning and make sure you have a separate RNG for graphics effects and things like that ... well, you also have to make sure you get the same amount of data at the same times in the game, otherwise you'll get desynchronized ...  actually it's *not* easier than you think. damn.)

...

Long story short: it may be best to only compare yourself to high scores of people who you know to be legit ... just being able to supply someone else's name on the high score list makes that a bit iffy, though :(

[Nephthys]

This subject has been fully covered, I know, but I just wanted to add a screen shot of another (I think) impossible score. If it is legit, I'd really like to learn how to nullify an inhibitor in 14 seconds.

[Grauniad]

Easiest to do is to send a short PM to Virgil with the name of the system. He can then run a check on the poster and the game key and clear things up.

[NFITC1]

I think it's been established that it's impossible to beat a non-scripted map in less than 45 seconds.

[knucracker]

Most of the time cheat scores come from pirates....
Recently, I disallowed posting of scores except from legit key holders.  So that cuts down some on fake scores.  Not all, but some.
This particular score appears impossible and the player had posted a bunch of other scores on other missions most of which were measured in seconds of game time.

I have removed all of these scores.  If they recur, just PM me.

[asmussen]

Most of the time cheat scores come from pirates....
Recently, I disallowed posting of scores except from legit key holders.  So that cuts down some on fake scores.  Not all, but some.
This particular score appears impossible and the player had posted a bunch of other scores on other missions most of which were measured in seconds of game time.

I have removed all of these scores.  If they recur, just PM me.

Wait... So, they steal the game, and then they also come in and jack up the high score tables for everybody who actually purchased the game? Sheesh... Some people...

[Nephthys]

I like to look at the scores before I play a map. Not sure why. Anyway, I will PM with any future finds.