Seerver RuleZ are posted right onthe server news on Elite.

I understand that the server rules are posted on the server news. And I have read your post about the Server Dep's on Elite (cool idea by the way).

Here is the question for you then Stinger. I have seen may posts by you and from what I can tell from that, you seem to try to be fair to everyone. How would you handle a case like this on Elite? I'm a new player on Elite, not ever joined another server before, maybe I don't even know about these forums. I have read the server news, and know that I shouldn't have any mods. I make sure that I am clean and then head out into the safe new world on Elite. I am approached by someone I don't know, I am un-aware that there are ways to cheat in FL and I am offered $10,000,000. I question the guy, he says, "It's nothing for me to make this kind of money. I have really good weps and am good at fighting and trading and know where all the wreaks are." I take it and am insantly jumped up to a very high level.

What do you do.

And please, remember, I just am trying to figure things out before I do any thing wrong.

Me personally, I would tell you that unfortunately you learned a hard lesson. Being that you have never played elsewhere you should loose anything from creating a new MP ID. Guide you through doing so and send you some recommendations on things that will potentially get you flagged as a cheater on servers.

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Ok, why not list those things here or in a new thread and make it a sticky? I, for one, would like to know that stuff before getting too far into an MP game.

Look, let me be real frank with people for a change.

We have more tools at our disposal than all FL servers out there. We can and do eventually find most people that don't stick ot the very simply server rules.

The Player vs Player safe zone in Liberty Space was put in place for the sole purpose of providing a safe place for people to log in as new players and not get their clocks cleaned by someone who has been there for a while, has gotten strong, is extremely bored and feels some sort of God complex by killing new people. We enforce this rule as strong as we can because the server software won't let us flip a switch and do it automatically. This is also know as a nightmar for a server admin because they can not be on-line 24/7. So the only alternative is to slam people extremely HARD when they do get busted to make an example of them so others will spread the word and everyone will know the risk and we're serious.

The No hackin', No cheatin', no moddin rule is strictly enforced because it has been proven time after time after time that even a single pilot on a server will absolutely positively bring a server to it knees and create nothing but lag for ever other pilot. Not only it that rude and obnoxious but downright selfish. ZERO tolerance means ZERO tolerance. The excuses we here of "I'm sorry I use mods on others server and forgot to turn it off when I logged onto Elite are not acceptable. This website has been the main fansite for Freelancer for several years and the chances of someone actually not seeing this rule for Elite is remote at best. With this stance comes a lot of people with it trying to circumvent the system and thats why we hav eso many tools at our disposal to bust these people. Yes, we do unban people from time to time but NO ONE has been unbanned that does something even once to hog the bandwidth of the server with hackin, cheatin, or moddin.

No for the money question, it has been proven also that trading money doesn't cause an auto-boot from the server patch. Anyone who says that is dead wrong. But for someone to give out large amounts of money by default is doing something wrong because every one will tell you it takes a lot of time to get rich playing the game clean. If they say it's easy, it's really only a relative statement because they are a well established player or they're just braggin. If it is not either of the reason stated in the previous sentence, they are using a money hack and will be busted soon. If someone offers you a large sum of money, you should question them why. If is smells wrong, tastes wrong, looks wrong, it probably is wrong. Just steer clear of them and you'll be fine.

Edited by - Stinger on 31-07-2003 23:40:36

Just for my own clarification, what would a large sum of money be equivalent to in a ballpark figure?
I ask because I will occasionally bring a friend on to a server and set them up nice and proper so they can get going quickly.


"To the last, I grapple with thee..." -Melville

Ok, Stinger, you made a comment about mods lagging the server. I have seen this in many other threads as well. What I haven't seen is a good explanation of how this happens. I don't want to use mods, I am considering hosting my own server and therfore am just trying to understand all of the issues around doing so.

I have searched to see if there is another thread on this issue and have not found one, sorry in advance if I missed something, but could you explain how one person running a mod on a server would lag the server for everyone? Also, If a server wanted to host say the Deathmatch mod, I believe there is one doing that now, does having the mod on the server make a difference? What if an unmoded user connects to a moded server? Does this cause server lag?

If this should be in a seperate thread, let me know and I will move it.

I do not know for certain, but in my MSWIn experience I would think that it could be similar to mismatched files, corrupt dll, etc... in an applicatation or OS... It will quite often RUN, but throw out errors and bog down to high heaven when this occurs, eventually ending in, tho not always, a crash. This is just me making suppositions tho.

"To the last, I grapple with thee..." -Melville

Consider this. Server code is always optimized for expected results. Then it adds in special case scenarios to handle stuff it doesn't expect.

So, considering that. The server expect weapons to fire so far and no farther. Someone logs in and is shooting a weapon halfway accross the galaxy.

1) The server is no longer running in an optimized mode
2) That many more players that weren't suppposed to see the blast now do see it thus causing more bandwidth use

Damage increase. The server expects so much max damage able to be caused by a weapon. Now someone cheats and shoots with an dramatically overpowered weapon.

1) Server once again is no longer running in an optimized mode
2) Now it is trying to send data to a client that the client doesn't understand to
3) The server and client are now trying to resolve why and how this happened and can get out of sync, thus they waste time getting back in sync

Cloaking

1) You just flew by someone, the server knows this but for some reason is withholding the fact that you flew by from the client. It is not supposed to do this and thus can cause a crash or instability
2) You shoot someone, now their client is confused by the shots coming litterally out of this air

By now it should be clear. Those 3 scenarios can be applied to cheats like speed, double mounted weapons, ect... Basically it comes down to confusing the heck out of the server app as well as the client app. On top of that, things like the weapon range increase cause unneccessary waste of server output bandwidth (the biggest bottleneck for a server with a fast CPU)



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This would be why mods are fine if the server is modded alike.

Good explanation, btw GD.

"To the last, I grapple with thee..." -Melville

Great explanation. I imagine then that what you are saying is that if the client and the server are not identical, that is when the lag happens.
So the same will be true that if the server is moded and the client is not then there would be a lag.

Just for the sake of confirmation:
Will trading large amounts of credits get you banned on Elite?

I have often traded codename items and ripper mines for large sums of money on browclops. My largest sales were measured in the tens of millions, usually when trading from one weapon collector to another. I once made 8 million from selling a single ripper mine to a desperate player. Many players are willing to pay millions for the right item, and yet the game bases only pay 40k on average. This creates a MASSIVE opening for commerce for the entrepreneurial mind. Characters who don't need the items might sell them for as little as 150k and be happy, while you might make 3 mil selling those same items to another player. It's all about building a rep as a buyer, and as a seller.

I would rather not get banned from Elite for this kind of thing, so I am just curious if building a business rep and trading in items is a ticket to bansville on Elite. I had previously been considering establishing a rep and opening up shop there.

@Gung_Ho

quoting myself in a previous post in this same thread and yes there is a typo. Figured I'd point it out before someone else does...

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No for the money question, it has been proven also that trading money doesn't cause an auto-boot from the server patch. Anyone who says that is dead wrong.

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This would include large amounts.

Thank you.