Anti Cheat

What sort of Anti Cheat will be used? Some engines made from third parties or and new unique for pa?
EDIT: what about a report Cheater feature which includes replays upload and Community votes?

I think Mavor said something about that in a videoblog or so... basically cause this game will use a server (where most of the game will be running on) cheating won't be possible. A wall-hack in an RTS won't help much... and resource cheats and stuff should not be possible, since the server coordinates everything... DATA incoming from the client that does not fit, does not fit... ^^

Really? :O doesnt it costs lot of ressources to run so many games on server?
And even with server, it will still be possible to cheat... like faking inputs Scripted buildorders, bots for unit control, or even ressources(resources cheat obvious tho)
The System would be realy great vs maphack tho, the most important one. But i realy wondering how they want to realise it...and what about offline games?

offline games would be at the discretion of who ever is hosting the lan server.

im sure it would be more obvious in that environment

Input scripts aren't cheats, they're legal. The rest of the stuff is guarded by the server indeed. Of course, should someone set up a cheat-server, that's his choice, but only the owner of the server will be able to cheat. And he'll lose his players pretty fast I guess.

As well it should be. I'm having a blast screwing around with the Shift+F6 menu in FA. Haven't figured out how to make tanks fire nukes yet, but 300 rounds per second 180 degree spread tanks are hilarious.

Cheating should be a lot harder than with synchronous RTS games because you don't have any way to get direct control of the simulation. Issuing orders of any kind isn't really cheating IMHO as long as you have the same information as everyone else (which is also controlled by the server telling you what you need to know).

Wait wut?
You are telling me that bots are allowed? oO
Scripting to?
but then u can just time everything exactly for ms or multitask like crazy

Whether they are allowed is up to the server operator. There is no way to absolutely make sure nobody is using something like that though. We can watch replays and report/ban people who do it but all anti-cheating tech on the client is fairly easy to hack around.

Will there be dedicated server? or how does the server system works?
isnt it very complicated to simulate every game on server?

There has been alot of discussion about it. The short answer is that you will be able to host your own server anywhere you like and that the server wont need to be more powerful than your average gaming pc, if you only play normally sized games. Additonally UBER will provide servers as well.

One of the basic ideas of a game like this is that most of the decisions you make can't be automated. It's not starcraft where your build order is strict, your timing is exact and your units are dumb and need babysitting.

As such, there is far less to gain from automating things. Mostly, automating trivial tasks will help you control even larger armies on even more fronts, which means the game will only be better.

Many of which are already part of the game, like Infinite Repeat on Factories and such.

Mike

BUT i dont htink it makes sence, if players who are better with scripting win easier

Uh... not really. It's better to say that most of the decisions you make are automated. Resourcing, production, intelligent assisting, smart fire, it goes on and on. Sorian is planning for air units to divide against their targets to maximize efficiency. Many commands are going to be done in the most efficient way possible, at least from an AI view.

Of course, the game won't play itself. And you will have friends to help out with bigger games.

You're both saying the same thing here, just in opposite ways. The original was suggesting that you only have to make decisions when it can't be automated - which is pretty much what you're saying.

In regards to the OP, I would be very surprised if what you're predicting is even close to reality. The idea that in a game like this having scripted inputs would give you a large advantage just doesnt jive with the way this game is being built. On top of that, even if it were to be that scripting gave you an advantage, everyone would just download the same scripts anyway.

-Stretch

Yeah, usually scripts will end up free to download pretty quick. There's a very strong modding community around games that cultivate it.

The difference is a bit nuanced. You can certainly automate just about everything- that's what a computer player does when you fight the AI. But players ultimately have to make the strategic choices. Otherwise it wouldn't be much of a game.

Once again, turning back to the Spring engine, there are tons of bot control scripts and the most effective ones are the ones that are used by most players. Games using the Spring engine, like Zero K, often incorporate the best scripts into them so that everybody is on even ground.

Remember, the whole point of the game is to focus on strategy, and things that a computer can do better than a player, such as unit management, should be left to the computer. The player can focus more on advanced stuff that a computer can't do.

Why should a mathematician avoid using a calculator? The calculator is faster and has less of a chance for error. Instead the mathematician can focus on things that no computer can solve, like those pesky traveling salesmen.

If the Scrips are build into the game i am ok with it, but if only few people can use them and get huge advantage of it, i dislike the idea.

Furthermore some script suggestions:
Ressource management/splitting
Automated storage building
Automated retreat of army, if weeker, unless player decides against it
Priorities for buildings, if ressources getting less some buildings get more some less.