Cheating

Jamminji · Post by **Jamminji** » Fri Aug 01, 2003 1:43 am

Hi All,

I am playing a new person... He seems to always be in the perfect place to kill me. Maybe I am just a terrible player but was wondering....

How can I tell if he is playing his turn once, to find where my units are, then reextracting the zips files that I sent him, and playing his turn again this time knowing where my units are located. It seems that he could do this as many times as required to get the outcome he wants.

Any way to tell? or any other possibilities?

jam

rbrunsman · Post by **rbrunsman** » Fri Aug 01, 2003 2:21 am

Just type the number "1" and the bottom of the screen will show how many loads/saves each player has done.

Example: You are Player #1. It's turn 10 and you've only saved out of a turn once to go get dinner; all the other times you played your turns straight through.

Your opponent, plays his turns and then Ctrl,Alt,Deletes out of the turn to replay it any number of times.

The screen at the bottom would look like this:

Player #1, loads = 11, saves = 11.
Player #2, loads = 60, saves = 20.

Or something like that. If you see a HUGE disparity between your loads and saves and his loads and saves then your opponent is probably doing something funny. There are ways to cheat without letting your opponent ever find out. But the above method catches most cheaters.

If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it could also mean you suck as a player and your opponent is simply able to run circles around you, so don't be too quick to call someone a cheater.

I thinks it's best to just not play the cheater again. Don't call him on it in a public forum. The cheater will get the message when noone will replay him. And, this saves the embarrassment caused from false accusations and such that can't really be proven anyway.

Belisarius · Post by **Belisarius** » Fri Aug 01, 2003 3:07 am

rb is right, although if he's sneaky enough to delete the files and re-unzip the files, I guess the game won't be able to tell?

Jamminji · Post by **Jamminji** » Fri Aug 01, 2003 5:17 am

AHHHHHH... so deleteing them and re-unzipping would be an undetectable cheat...darn it!!!! I thought so. I guess then.. it means that ya must trust the people you play with.

rbrunsman · Post by **rbrunsman** » Fri Aug 01, 2003 7:22 am

Originally posted by Jamminji
I guess then.. it means that ya must trust the people you play with.

That sure enhances the experience!:D

chief · Post by **chief** » Fri Aug 01, 2003 7:23 am

Jamminji, are either of you using Airunits ?

Jamminji · Post by **Jamminji** » Fri Aug 01, 2003 8:47 am

First off...lol RB, GOOD ONE!!!

Second... Chief, yes I have strike aircraft in one battle but not in another battle. He has no air in either.

BTW... these are the battles from the big Board game that I posted about.

jam

Toontje · Post by **Toontje** » Fri Aug 01, 2003 8:17 pm

If someone has a spotter you didn't see that may also look like that.

Or (s)he may just be incredibly lucky.

Marek Tucan · Post by **Marek Tucan** » Fri Aug 01, 2003 9:34 pm

Originally posted by Toontje
If someone has a spotter you didn't see that may also look like that.

Or (s)he may just be incredibly lucky.

Or another option from my painful experience: I have quite small HD, and still full, so I have only a little of the Virtual Memory and I got me quite often report 'Less than 5 megs of Virtual memory' while playing PBEM with my buddy:( Of course I had to reload:( And guess what: the OP fire that was missing before was now hitting:(

Vathailos · Post by **Vathailos** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 12:09 am

What happens to those numbers if you're playing 2 or more games out of the same slot?

Currently, I'm playing 3 out of slot 8 (using Jess' tactics) and wonder what that looks like for that slot. Surfing from work and can't check now, but can't wait to see.

In addition, on a pretty regular basis, I'll watch the "combat-only" portion of the VCR playback, and then kill the application before the artillery. Then I'll load my turn and play it out. I almost always play on a long message delay setting. I used to have everything set to "0" but once did it slow and realized all kinds of useful messages. I'd never seen "Gun Optics Damaged" or "Crew Stunned" before. I learn a lot this way, but I hate sitting through (in one particular game close to 6 minutes of rounds falling) endless artillery bombardments. If a vehicle is shown as dead when I start my turn, and I didn't just see it killed, and there's small dots of smoke around it, I just assume it was an arty kill and move on. Does this add to my "numbers"?

If it does, is there a work-around? I'd prefer to continue to see that I've damaged a main gun, or have lost my smoke generators, but again find it unbearable to sit through Viking's 40 artillery pieces firing 8 rounds apiece

.

Bottom line, I don't want to appear as though I'm cheating, as I think that cheating ruins the flavor of a victory.

Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT:

And as evidince in my favor, I'd like to introduce the "Jagedpanther Incident" as Exhibit A. I don't think you lose 7 in one turn, in one place, parked directly in front of enemy AT guns if you're out to win. :p

rbrunsman · Post by **rbrunsman** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 12:46 am

Vat:

Playing multiple games out of one slot doesn't effect anything.

A solution to your quiting out of the bombardments is to change the message delay setting. This is a freely changable setting. I often shorten it (~0.1 sec) if I know there is going to be alot of arty falling. I will make it longer (~0.8 sec) if I am really interested in seeing the results of combat. Quiting out of the bombardment phase of the replay seems like a no-no to me. You want to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Any <cntrl,alt, delete> activity should be avoided.

Playing with unreadable messages or skipping the vcr replay is just not a good idea. You can miss a "main gun destroyed" report, or the almost as good, "optics destroyed" messages if you can't read the battle results that flash by. Only V2, to my knowledge, regularly skips the vcr replay and does any good in a battle without knowing what happened during the opponent's turn.

VikingNo2 · Post by **VikingNo2** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 12:51 am

I know what got killed, and what is suppressed. :rolleyes:

Buzzard45 · Post by **Buzzard45** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 4:53 am

Originally posted by Jamminji
AHHHHHH... so deleteing them and re-unzipping would be an undetectable cheat...darn it!!!! I thought so. I guess then.. it means that ya must trust the people you play with.

I once did an exhaustive search for proof that a player was replaying their turn. I set up three computers on the same desk and looked at the speed of each unit as displayed at the end of each turn or the beginning of the next. I replayed turns using the re-unzip method and looked at OP fire from the replay of the turn sent me and what happened when I moved units into LOS/LOF of my units as they were stated as spotted in the AAR. This was after passwords were exchanged at the end of the game.

I satisfied my curiousity. Did it enhance the pleasure of the game? NOT ONE LITTLE BIT. In fact it took away from it. I took to winning fairly and satisfied that I had done so. OR I lost the same way. Either way, I win. The alternative is....., either way I lose. I do use the tricks of the game that I learn by experience. One of them is to use spotters that hide before my turn is out. I spot you during my turn but when I send you the file there is no longer a "*" on that unit because he is no longer spotted. You will likely know that they have been spotted because next turn he will be attacked by a bigger fish.

"There is always a bigger fish" IIRC Quagar in Starwars.

I am like Rb. I play very carefully and deliberately, sometimes opening the game three times and only looking around. Not the replay, necessarily, but just looking and thinking. My opens and closes always match, unless there is a power failure, which happens. Like a chess player. Calculating ranges and targets and spotting and holes in the terrain and ammo and movement points and distance. The answers are usually there if you look for them.

My biggest bugaboo is the lack of OP fire from my carefully laid ambushes. If there is only one route through an ambush and my opponent takes it..... He is very lucky. Next time there is NO safe route through the ambush and he does not advance in that route. You see, you only need to play more carefully. There are plenty of turns to use. Don't be in a hurry to spring his ambushes. At a rate of three hexes per turn you can cross the whole 100 wide map in 33 turns. If you are part way and only need to go half-way, you can move much slower and with stealth and likely unseen and un-shot at.

Everyone who has been in any army can tell you that you will always need to " Hurry up and wait". That may be what you are seeing.

Belisarius · Post by **Belisarius** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 5:04 am

Originally posted by Buzzard45
I am like Rb. I play very carefully and deliberately, sometimes opening the game three times and only looking around. Not the replay, necessarily, but just looking and thinking.

As long as you do not move a single unit I guess that's OK. Otherwise you're on my list...

:p

rbrunsman · Post by **rbrunsman** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 5:14 am

Bel:
You're not seriously saying that we must play our turns in one sitting from first move to last without a save in between?

VikingNo2 · Post by **VikingNo2** » Sat Aug 02, 2003 11:18 am

Well Buzzard has given away one of my few remaining secrets, spotting then hiding the unt that did the spotting, it drives the guys that use the "*" allot nuts:rolleyes:

Belisarius · Post by **Belisarius** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 1:09 am

Originally posted by rbrunsman
Bel:
You're not seriously saying that we must play our turns in one sitting from first move to last without a save in between?

Hmm that's what I do.

What I meant also was, ofcourse, that you don't restart the turn. :p Otherwise there's lots of recon to be carried out without your opponent suspecting a thing....

rbrunsman · Post by **rbrunsman** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 5:03 am

Restarting is a definite no-no, but that leads you to the obvious explanations you have to give when your loads exceed your saves. Try to explain that your computer crashes every time you play...

Capt. Pixel · Post by **Capt. Pixel** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 11:17 am

Originally posted by VikingNo2
Well Buzzard has given away one of my few remaining secrets, spotting then hiding the unt that did the spotting, it drives the guys that use the "*" allot nuts:rolleyes:

That's what I like to do. Move out until you're spotted, and then back up a bit to prevent being spotted through the next turn. This way, you may not know exactly where he is, but you've got a pretty good idea.

Marek Tucan · Post by **Marek Tucan** » Sun Aug 03, 2003 9:16 pm

Originally posted by Capt. Pixel
That's what I like to do. Move out until you're spotted, and then back up a bit to prevent being spotted through the next turn. This way, you may not know exactly where he is, but you've got a pretty good idea.

My friend still complains to me that something's taking out his recon troops and he doesn't see it:) KV-1S over the hill:D And a battery of 85mm AAA;)

Cheating

Cheating

However...

There are ways of testing for replays but they are inconclusive

Re: There are ways of testing for replays but they are inconclusive