Hehe! Yes, I've had quite a few of these type players over the last year. Most of them are quite circumspect, using a clan tag I've never seen on the server and then saying they'll promise you everything if you go to their server and play. At one point I nearly convinced one guy to come to my server! At least he never came back. What I haven't seen is someone intentially modding and then claiming the lag is the reason to go to their server. That's not to say we don't have modders, we do but none that have used modding to get players to go to another server.

FL is so easy to cheat. I wish we could get enough sysadmins who trust each other and get together with common rules such that when one character is banned, that character is banned from all other servers. May make some players think twice before cheating. Better yet is ban by flserver acct# but it seems most people are too squeemish about this number getting out. It's not the same as the FL MP ID# required in the FL client but it is related to it. Banning by IP address is too hit and miss even if it is the most effective.

Wishful thinking no doubt.

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Earendil
SysAdmin of Boston Freelancer server
See server rules and server news for more info.

I basically agree with you Earendill about zero tolerance to cheaters. But for IP bans I do not. On owr server for example we had two guys (brothers I believe)connecting from the very same IP (using IP NAT, IP Maqarading, or ICS, God knows) one was a notorious cheater (baned his a** off permanently) but the other one never cheated and has been a quality member of our comunity. Therefore using IP Bans could strike on inocent other players and it wouldn't be fair. I think acct ban is the best thing we can do, AND try to replicate acct bans between servers so when one has cheated on a server he simply won't be able to cheat on any other server in the future

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3NET Freelancer Server Admin

See server forum here.
See server stats here.

I'm for a "grouping" of the powers to eliminate cheaters across the gloabal completely from the no modding servers.

I wouldn't have had such an issue with it if they flat out hadn't told one of my more respected server players that they were deliberately doing it to prove that IFSO sucked. And went on to advertise the FLAntiCheat program. There is no anticheat program. Once something going into play to stop cheating of one type, and new type of cheating is created through the butterfly effect. Programs that stop most modding and cloaking from happening, there is always someone out there with way too much time on their hands that will find a way to break through these programs that help the server admins to do their jobs betters and make their servers cleaner.

So if more would be interested in it, yes I'm all for forming some sort of server admin community where we all share information about known cheaters and problematic people that we know change names often. I'm sure with each and every individual server admin sharing their experiences of cheaters that they've run across that newer generations of FL server admins would have much cleaner servers and just maybe we can send the modders back to their 999million clan servers with every mod available to them.

Skyevalen - Admin/Server Op
Hunters Association
http://www.sccommand.com/hunters/

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...and just maybe we can send the modders back to their 999million clan servers with every mod available to them.

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Hehe! Thanks for the chuckle, that really made my day!

It would be nice if we could use something like http://www.lanceradmins.com/bb/index.php but potentially anyone can register. Maybe TLR could start a forum for registered sysadmins but would have to have active enough checking to ensure only registered members are indeed sysadmins. If not I can make a forum on my server's forums for just sysadmins. It would have to wait a bit though as I am in the process of changing hosts and the website may loose continuity (and possibly posts) along the way. I'll get back to y'all.

EDIT: click this...
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Earendil
SysAdmin of Boston Freelancer server
See server rules and server news for more info.

Edited by - Earendil on 6/8/2004 7:03:35 AM

I have a very large domain space of use available to me, somewhere around 1 gig plus and the ability to create as many as I see fit PHP style forums. So if we need a place for hosting such a forum or whatnot I'm sure I could create one easily and get with the server admins from here and something.......

Your Welcome for the laugh, I figured most would find that somewhat amusing, and since its truth as well, that is what makes it even more humorous.

Skyevalen - Admin/Server Op
Hunters Association
http://www.sccommand.com/hunters/

Registered domain and large storage space is always something handy. But, as far as I can see fit, what we mostly need is a way to unify our cheaters.log files. It could be an idea for us to use CVS - Concurrent Versions System. Only problem is that for those who use IFSO it parses the cheaters.log file, bans any account it might find in this file, and then deletes all entries and updates another file, which is FLServer_cheaters.log. So if flserver_cheaters.log is updated using CVS, IFSO won't process new entries as it knows all entries in this file were processed. If cheaters.log is updated using CVS, it will be downloaded each time entirely (as this file no longer exist on the server) and the IFSO will process all entries in this file. Doing so will encrease CPU and HDD usage very much whenever IFSO, tryes to parse this file, and bans same players over and over again.

[EDIT: If other admins in the comunity might think this could be a good ideea, I can come up with a CVS server with a very good bandwidth and very fast disk drives.

--
3NET Freelancer Server Admin

See server forum here.
See server stats here.

Edited by - shaitanro on 6/8/2004 9:51:05 PM

Edited by - shaitanro on 6/8/2004 9:51:27 PM

I only have one problem with the CVS Cheaters file. I don't like banning people without allowing them to try out, and even then I prefer to warn them. I run an unmodded server (believe it or not, I dont really know how to mod them), but I had people coming in lagging the thing up. In the end I was forced to get a friend to build me a custom ship so that I could go in and stop them from wasting all the noobs on my server.
Another problem with banning the modders is that they tend to get angry if you ban them, and as your IP is being broadcasted to the world you become a pin cushion for trojan attacks.
I agree wholeheartedly that something has to be done about it, just it's going to be hard to work out what.

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Australia FLRPG Server
Great fun, in a friendly environment

I'm beginning to wonder if some low life is picking on me or I have bad luck or have bad hardware (I'm currently in the process of replacing every bit of it). I get kicks & bans about once every day. Almost half are newbies logging on with a mod for the first time. I leave them banned because I do not know for sure and my email address is everywhere so they can contact me if they wish. While a small percentage of the bans are real, the other half are due to lag bans. Am I the only one who gets so many lag bans? I can only believe it's the gateway (the rest of the world calls them routers but the rest of the world is WRONG, they do much more than simply route) as that's the one difference I've had since the lag bans have increased.

I also give EVERYONE a second chance. But they must "ask" for it by apologizing.

Having a synchronous ban file would be nice for real time banning and sounds quite ingenious and possible. Yet can all servers claim that every ban counts unequivicably? Certainly my bans relating to having a lvl 10 gravitron or molecular shield will not apply on a server with Lello's mod where they are dropped by wrecks and/or NPCs.

Maybe if each server admin had a file containing the cheaters they feel should be banned and make that one the file of cheaters to be automatically picked up on and spread througout the servers. Certainly I expect only basic rules for FLIRT (our sysadmin group, FL Intervention Response Team, yes? no? ) mostly dealing with modders (proved by evidence), incredibly rude players, admitted & real hackers, etc.

Skyevalen, certainly a forum from you would be appreciated. All registered and READING members of that forum would have to be sysadmins ONLY. That puts a burden on you to verify and monitor continued sysadmin status of all registered members. Can that be done?

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Earendil
SysAdmin of Boston Freelancer server
See server rules and server news for more info.

It isn't too hard to figure out who is a server admin and who isn't by their demeanor. Course checking here helps too or checking the server home pages which usually list who the server operator actually is. So a little extra work and that part can be solved.

The lovely thing about PHP boards is you can grant access by username and they keep track of all user names being posted from a particular IP number. So if we know who our sysadmin's are and someone else tries coming in saying they are whomever, we can check the IP out and find out if it truly is them or not. The other thing which I sure someone would say, well what bout dynamic IP's, PHP forums keep track of the username more specifically and every IP that user posts from. So it is kind of a double back tracking system, a way to make sure who is posting is really that person and not someone else.

More ideas are definitely warranted on this so that I can get a better idea of how to setup the pending forums to be made. I have no problem doing it, just have to take a day away from some other stuff to get it done. It may have to wait until I come back from a business trip out of state, which would put me back on the 3rd of July.....but if I can get something up for now, until after which I'll be back, then I'll try to get at least something going for everyone to get involved with and will setup appropriate admins to monitor the new forum.

Skyevalen - Admin/Server Op
Hunters Association
http://www.sccommand.com/hunters/