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The Whole Problem of Good Intentioned Mods gone Horribly Wro

The general place to discuss MOD''ing Freelancer!

Post Sun Sep 14, 2003 10:44 pm

The Whole Problem of Good Intentioned Mods gone Horribly Wro

if more people thought about the negative applications of a mod before continuing to work on it, there'd be less cheating these days. Case in point is the infamous cloak mod, which we all were so curious and desperate about to work on, and in the end it became the Public Enemy No.1 of mods.

ALL of you who continue to work on mods that could _potentially_ become cheats without asking yourselves if they could be, and exploring every possible way it COULD be made into one, are fools!
You are blind to the cheating applications of these mods you create until its too late and cheaters are using them.

This cannot go on, or it will destroy everything.

In your modding adventures, if you dont at least ASK yourself THE QUESTION "Can this become a cheat", you are contributing to a future of Freelancer gaming where all the servers are clones of Calgary 24/7 and the admins can't do a damn thing about it...

Post Sun Sep 14, 2003 10:57 pm

two mods I am currently a little afraid of:

Auto Turret (see other thread)
--- Description: Auto-aiming AI-controlled ship turrets.
--- Progress: At the least, the AI ships are known to have this already.
--- Cheater's Description: AIM-Bot. Perfect accuracy for all players using it. No one ever misses a shot.

Warp Drive (teleportation device), under dev by Starfyre Studios for TNG 2.0
--- Description: Teleport to other systems w/o Jump Gates.
--- Progress: UNKNOWN. However, I have seen that FL contains references to a "debug mode" teleport function.
--- Cheater's Description: Acts as a portable Jump Gate mounted on your ship. Lets you go anywhere at will; escape enemies and sneak up on your prey. Never take the trade lanes again.

Edited by - Gregstar2k on 14-09-2003 23:58:00

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 1:01 am

Should be more worried about the 'internal' guns.........
why? Couple with uber hull means kick/ban is only problem solver for the ultimate in pker tactics. Add uber, cloaks and this little number - and they are truly invinsible - you can no longer even shoot their stuff off.........

But hey - these days admin seem to be more vigilant on servers, which is great!

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 1:07 am

umm...what if you torpedo them? and uh btw...plz do not lump the term PKer with the term cheater. I myself love to PK and id hate to be classified with all the...riffraff... *grin* sigh* so many mods that are good intentioned but horrendously bad if "repurposed..." you know what i mean... =P

Edited by - Gregstar2k on 15-09-2003 02:08:37

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 3:08 am

Even standard FL had internal guns. The Liberty cruiser forward gun model is actually a blank model without a collision or mat file at all and is placed inside the ship. It can still be knocked out though. All it takes is explosive weapons. So internal guns aren't really a problem.

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 4:09 am

Sorry!! Meant cheating pking dock camping people, the type that go on servers to cause havoc amongst the non modded cos they have no life!
Hope that avoids confusion

uh - wanderer - what if they change the damage due to explosions to be, well, explosion resistant? or is that a server side thing (ie - works in SP, but not in MP)

Edited by - chips on 15-09-2003 05:10:25

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 4:49 am

personally i think thats a server side deal, but i dont really know..........

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 8:49 am

Weapons have a hp setting but so far i haven't seen an explosive resistant variable yet. Nothing sufficient firepower cannot take down.

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 9:01 am

Can someone actually shoot a weapon?

i my self only aims at the hull, that's what the targeting reticules aims at.

So internal weaps is not much a treat as an ordinary mountable weaps. The only downside of internal weaps i think is its incapbility to be upgraded, unless some created many many internal weaps to be bought.

this is only my viewpoint.

Working hard to earn... but too lazy to do something...

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 5:37 pm

Is it possible to put the weapons too far into a ship that it shoots down your own hull? Or don't the game mechanics work that way? If it is the case, people can go around saying "I'm my own worst enemy." And be right.

Spectre

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 6:52 pm

next to the scan ship button in the hud there is another targetting one. If you target a ship (click on it), then click on this button, you get a little picture of the ship. You can then click on the weapons (blue) and shoot em, or hte shield, thruster, mine, counter measure......it can be good fun sometimes........hehe
best bit - the blue bits (things mounted on ship) turn from blue to red as you kill em (see hit point values for guns in the weapon_equip.ini) so you know how much grief to give em. The same way you can also target things like wings etc and shoot them off too.......

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 7:51 pm

HELLO...this is getting off topic. My point is that people need to look at the big picture when they mod and not focus entirely on what their mod is doing. They need to look at it from a cheater's standpoint.

The idea is to give cheaters as few MAJOR tools as possible. Currently, "major tools" includes the cloaking device, uber hull, cruise speed mods...etc...

...a teleportation device would fit this category as would an aimhack which I think autoturrets is destined to become

granted they arent intended for those purposes, but someone could "repurpose" them.

Post Mon Sep 15, 2003 9:05 pm

Well I was avoiding this for a while, but please get real will you. As a mod author I have no real control over what people will do with the mods I make, the best I've been able to come up with was to make the mod so complex and encompassing that they might as well figure out how to do it themselves because a little cut & paste isn't going to work thanks to Freelancer's nightmarish file dependencies.

But basically, you are telling me that I shouldn't incorporate features in my mod that could be put to use other than what they were intended for by somebody without the intestinal fortitude to challenge opponents on level ground. In effect this is no different than telling Ford they shouldn't make cars since somebody may use it to kill another person even though that isn't what it was designed for.

My suggestion, rather than worry about what the urchins will do, worry about what you will do. Go find a nice server with a good crowd and enjoy the game rather than getting involved in a battle you'll never win. Do what I did, find the servers that are password protected, email an admin if the contact info is available (which it usually is), and chances are they'll let you in and if you get along with the rest of the players well enough you can stay. I've avoided the open public servers since cheating became a problem and as a result I have never been "dock camped" nor have I ever had to deal with anyone using "uber ships" cloaks or anything else they weren't supposed to be using.

Post Tue Sep 16, 2003 9:38 am

hey Chips, I don't know that, or never tried that before, thaks for the info. Now i can shoot anything i want.

Working hard to earn... but too lazy to do something...

Post Tue Sep 16, 2003 4:32 pm

You are a bloody wimp Gregor.

I know of a few Mod/hackers that can cloak and kill you from 3 k away.... mods can be bad but if you good enough you can avoid being killed by them....

Cloaked players for example: GET A CLOAK REVEAL MOD there is one in the DL or make one after reverse engineering the current one
Hacked Guns: Dodge, I know a great pilot who still kicks these cheaters' butts because she is the best.

If you suspect someone is cheating, tell the admin or whomever, usually there is someone to contact. And usually they ban the cheater. I also play on non-public password protected servers.........

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