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Anti-cheats

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by thevlad, Aug 1, 2017.

  1. thevlad

    thevlad Big Damn Hero

    Hello!
    You have a great game! I never regretted having bought it. However, she has a very big problem. The game can be easily cracked. (Cheating)

    Because I want to offer several strategies of anti-cheats.

    1. Turn off stacks wherever possible.
    (Such a mechanics has already been implemented for farming)
    I understand that I will have to remodel the economic system, but the changes will not be significant. They will be expressed in reducing the cost of crafting to 1-4 units. However, cheating does very serious damage to the game.

    2. Use server characters.
    Player data is on the server and is changed only by the server. The client only sync with them. This would allow organizing an anti-cheat check when adding new units to the player's storage.

    Thank you and sorry for my english =)
     
  2. Masiakasaurus

    Masiakasaurus Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    I'm not opposed to a server option for server-side characters, though I think the performance hit will be considerable given how frequently character files are updated and how many redundancies are built in. But if they remove stacking on everything I will quit playing, full stop.
     
    IxFa and MysticMalevolence like this.
  3. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Remodeling the economic system is absolutely significant. Plus no stacking would mean completely reworking crafting as well. And would make resource gathering take forever.

    And I really don't see how item stacking is "cheating". I mean it can't be by definition since it's built-in and intentional, but beyond that? What is it supposed to stop? WHY would turning off stacking "help"? What's the benefit? They turned off stacking for Food in order to make the hunger system a challenge. Turning off stacking elsewhere would only make everything else take a long long time for no benefit.
     
    Never and MysticMalevolence like this.
  4. Masiakasaurus

    Masiakasaurus Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    I think the assumption here is that people are admining in crafting materials, and by making them not stack, it prevents a player from benefiting from that because their pack will fill up. But cheaters can just as easily admin in finished products, or store materials across multiple chests, so this really isn't anything but an annoyance.

    Starbound isn't a competitive game anyway, it's a sandbox for building, so I'm mot really sure admining in mats is even cheating per se.
     
  5. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Yeah, it's not like it takes a lot of time to top-tier your gear normally anyway, nor are there buttloads of enhancements and enchantments and such arglebargle to contend with.

    And man, no stacking would make building a pain beyond words. Like, game-killing.
     
    IxFa likes this.
  6. thevlad

    thevlad Big Damn Hero

    Do not worry =)
    Turning off the stacks will mean reducing the cost of crafting to ~ 1-2 units, as an example. 2 * ore + 1 * coal -> 1 * ingot, 2 ingots -> armor element ...

    It's simple!
    If there is a small stack of 5-10 units, then using the programs (ArtMoney, for example), you can increase the stack to the maximum. But, if there is only 1 unit on the stack, then such programs are powerless.

    I do not even know what to say =)
    According to experience, if you play with the company, then the cheating of one kills the interest in the game for everyone. Any changes in the game require a balance. Do not think that turning off stacks will end only on "disconnecting stacks". Some aspects of the game will also be rebalanced. Can the bag be expanded? Why not?

    3. Encrypted variables.
    Another way to antic-cheating. The variables are represented in the non-standard number system:

    struct encint {
    byte a, b, c, d, e, f, z;
    }

    Where:
    A, b, c, d, e, f - bits from low to high
    Z - a randomly chosen variable, the base of the number system

    This way of the program for cheating can not pass =)
     
  7. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    Again, I really don't know what this is supposed to prevent. Starbound is not a competitive game. All armor and weapons have set stats and are easy to obtain through normal play. It does not take long at all to get the best gear, you can do that in an AFTERNOON. It doesn't matter if a player can have 1 or 1000 ingots in an item slot, that's not going to significantly change what gear they have access to.

    You're talking about a ton of work and game-ruining player inconvenience to solve no problem whatsoever.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2017
    Never, D.M.G. and IxFa like this.
  8. Mooncalf99

    Mooncalf99 Spaceman Spiff

    If people want to cheat, they will find ways to cheat. Forcibly putting in inconveniences will not magically make that want disappear. Conversely, players who don't want to cheat are free to do so by... not cheating. It's an open-ended sandbox game, and people are free to play the way that makes them happy.

    If the players on your server are cheating to the point that it ruins your enjoyment, take it up with them. Persuade them to stop cheating, or find other players who share your sensibilities. If the fact that players can potentially cheat is causing you so much distress that you want the "problem" "fixed", you may want to take a reprieve from the game. Talk the matter over with someone, perhaps a professional therapist, because it would appear that you have a problem. The rest of the player base is not responsible for your personal happiness.

    I can assure you that Chucklefish is not ever going to rewrite the stack handling and economic model in a way that will cripple gameplay and massively upset the majority of the player base just to make it slightly harder to cheat in certain ways.
     
    MysticMalevolence likes this.
  9. Jerln

    Jerln Oxygen Tank

    It takes thousands of blocks to create a decent sized build. Having such small stacks would dissuade people from ever building more than a dirt shack.

    If the bag becomes expanded, then what was the point of reducing the stack numbers? Now you'll have the same amount of items in your inventory as before, but now it's less convenient because the items are spread across multiple slots.
     
    Never likes this.
  10. Masiakasaurus

    Masiakasaurus Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    /admin
    /spawnitem

    No 3rd party software required, and again, it still doesn't prevent players from just spawning in the item they want. It's just a massive inconvenience all around.
     
    D.M.G. and IxFa like this.
  11. D.M.G.

    D.M.G. Master Astronaut

    I'm sorry to be that guy, but what you're proposing is meaningless considering the game's mechanics since it release
    Had you suggest that back to beta, why not
    Now, it would destroy the gameplay
     
  12. thevlad

    thevlad Big Damn Hero

    The proposal does not apply to everything and everything. I talked only about the expansion of the principle, where no stacks are used to craft some items. Food, weapons, clothing and so on ... do not have stacks. You can include something here =)

    I do not see any problems =)

    Only if the character is an administrator

    Everything will be fine, friend =)

    We're not talking about hackers. If there is no easy way to hack the game - ordinary people will not do it.
     
  13. DraikNova

    DraikNova Spaceman Spiff

    You do realize that people can go into admin mode when playing privately, give their character whatever item you consider so important that you want to mess with stacking, and then go onto the server with those items?
     
  14. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    I still don't understand what the problem IS in the first place that this measure is meant to combat.
     
    MysticMalevolence likes this.
  15. Masiakasaurus

    Masiakasaurus Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Not to mention that having a theoretical server-side character like the OP wants already makes cheating in this way impossible, so the suggestion is moot.
     
  16. thevlad

    thevlad Big Damn Hero

    Server-side characters... I talked about this =)

    Cheating =)

    It depends on how it is implemented. Whether the server will trust the client or not. This still depends on the performance =)
     
  17. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    ............................................................

    [​IMG]

    seriously at this point it's a waste of time
     
  18. Masiakasaurus

    Masiakasaurus Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    There is no way server-side characters can be implemented that wouldn't render stacking a non-issue because players would not have access to their own character files. That's the definition of server-side characters.

    Edit for clarity: either stacking is a non-issue due to having server-side characters, or it is a non-issue because players can just admin in materials in single player. In either case the stacking change is an annoyance that accomplishes nothing.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2017
    MysticMalevolence and DraikNova like this.
  19. thevlad

    thevlad Big Damn Hero

    If the server characters are implemented on a principle of complete mistrust to the client, there is no need for other means of protection. Here you are right. But we do not know how they will be realized.

    Your can see the work of the program "ArtMoney"
     
  20. MysticMalevolence

    MysticMalevolence Oxygen Tank

    So basically, make mining even more pointless than it currently is by making materials worthless, or else maming kt more annoying and unfun my forcing players into the deepest reaches for the basic materials they need for most crafting projects.
    Make building absolutely terrible because one can't make enough iron blocks on one inventory to cover their build, or else make one iron bar produce a ridiculous amount of iron blocks that might be unused then.
    Make inventory management even worse than it is now by adding more inventory spaces in an attempt to counterbalance this.
    And make storage, of any form, pointless.
    All because of some percieved cheating that doesn't really affect the game. A change that does not affect anything with serverside characters.

    What do you propose this would do to current stacks? Delete them? Is my hard work gathering materials to be entirely wasted because other people, in a multiplayer server I don't play, didn't want to grind as much?

    I didn't like it when food did it. This is somehow worse.
     

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