A player in the game asked me to investigate 2 players (one of them is the host) since he couldn't see how they could have the amount of minerals and tech levels they had.

Without going into details, I found that players 2 and 6 in the SUMMER game cheated on the very first turn. They used a modded stars.exe file to create the game. In the modded exe file, they had changed the mineral and tech cost of nubians to zero, then built hundreds of fleets each with a thousand nubians. They then transfered the fleets to each other, and sent me the game files.

When the turn was generated on AutoHost using an unmodified .exe file, they suddenly each had thousands of nubians, on turn 2403! They then scrapped the fleets, giving instant minerals and lots of tech levels.

The two players are Greg Vor (Gregor Vorbarra) of gregorvorbarra@hotmail.com
and Lou Barsony of loubarsony@hotmail.com

I know Greg's is a fake name, and probably Lou's is as well.

Naturally, both have been banned from AutoHost, the their serial numbers will no longer be allowed in uploaded turns. One of the serial numbers has been used by 3 other players, 2 in current games on AutoHost.

Players need to be extremely cautious of any not-well-known game host who generates several turns before sending me the game files to setup on AutoHost.

Either have the game gened by a trusted game host, or trusted 3rd party,
or
create a .def file and send it to me along with the race files so I can gen the game from the command-line using the .def file.

(look in the Stars! help file for info on creating a .def file)

So, spread it far and wide folks, they are CHEATERS.

[Updated on: Sun, 09 November 2003 12:18]

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It would be nice, however, if it was not necessary to do something like that. It would be nice if the players were trustworthy, but apparently that is not always the case.

It's one thing to use a modded exe when playing against the computer or even against humans when everyone knows exactly what the mod is, but when you are playing against people you don't know from across the world and attempt to sneak something like this by you deserve all that you get in the way of punishment.

Okay, maybe the guns are a little extreme, but you get my point.

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I was once in an autohost game, run by a certain Greg Vor. Although I was new to the game (the traditional "I can kick the comps arse, but now I want to play humans") I soon realised that I was lagging behind the other 9 players. I caught up and stuck around 4th place - reasonable I thought. However it was a fake position really as I was ahead of some real noobies and behind some actually good players. Anyway to cut a long story short, I was suffering the traditional Ironium shortage when I noticed that Vor's Empire was launching huge packets of Ir at enemy planets destoying them, whilst maintaining a huge fleet production of missile BB's. Assuming it couldn't be cheating I admired the efforts and race design of Greg Vor. The game soon finished as one of the other players found the game to be hacked, we never discovered the culprit of course.

It seems perhaps (and to be fair I have no evidence, just circumstancial stuff) Mr Greg Vor has done this before then. Nice way to be introduced to Star! eh?

If you read this Greg, thanks a lot - I wish I could impress on you how much I despise cheaters, whether in Stars!, AAOP:SF, C&C, etc.

Oh, I can :

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Hey!

This looks a game called 'Fall', which ended January this year, hosted by, ofcourse, Greg V. There another player in this game was a cheater (the one and only ally of Greg V.).

The game ended, when somebody hacked the hostutility and set the gens to 1 hour. I wonder who did that . Ron then already thought, that the 2 players where indeed one (as Greg put it:"We work at the same firm". Yeah right!), they used same IP's or something. Still have 8 emails in my inbox about this Ron, If you care to read them again, just send me an email or PM.

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Hi guys,

I was one of the players involved in this game and suspected from the very start that there was something fishy going on.
Of course I couldn't prove anything, but discussed the situation numerous times with the other players and even some non-players.

Luckily one of the others knew to ask Ron to check these guys out (I wasn't aware that Autohost kept backups of all the gamefiles).

I kept all my own gamefiles and all of my allies files as well.
They still weren't enough to absolutely prove anything.

Unfortunately we all wasted 92 years of gameplay only to discover in the end that our suspicions were correct.

BTW, just to be clear, it wasn't apparent to any of the other players that the file was modded, it was just the Host and his cohort that were in on the scheme.

Thankyou very much to Ron Miller for checking these guys out, it would have been a rather time consuming process.


P.S. These guys aren't very good players. With what they had, they should have at least wiped out a couple of races (including mine), but they employed poor strategies and IMO a lack of gaming skill. That's one of the (many) things that gave them away.

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You are right, the game was Fall!

I forgot to say the name. I was the Vikings in the South East of the map, and I was allianced to three other on the Eastern side as well as the Ravenoids?.

I was really enjoying that game too, boo hoo.

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Luckily one of the others knew to ask Ron to check these guys out (I wasn't aware that Autohost kept backups of all the gamefiles).

Well, I doubt it was that simple.

I'm betting that if this "Greg" hadn't been under suspicion, that Ron may have let it go. Possibly chalking it up to the accusing player's ability, and the accusers misunderstandings of how well races "can" perform. Taking another persons word for what can/cannot be achieved is probably not a good idea, in Ron position, and would make admin a nightmare. Luckily, this wasn't the case, here, and "Greg" was caught dead to rights.

Kudos to Ron!
Thanks for straightening this out.
-Matt

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very interesting! this is good to know.
summer winter fall spring?
gregvor?
very interesting! will have to jot that down.
I guess cheating is in seasons.
what happened to the Winter game, did it end this Summer?

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I am glad that the cheaters got caught, but still quite sad that people feel they need to cheat to have fun in these games! Between them and players who chronically drop out of games, it makes one want to be a bit more cautious when joining games.

Thankfully I have not been in any games that players cheated in, or cheated poorly enough to cause the other players to be suspicious anyways.

Thanks to RON for all the time he puts into helping Stars! survive!

Shadallark / FurFuznel

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[Updated on: Thu, 15 September 2011 14:44]

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Wow! Great stuff Ron. This had to be seen to be believed! unbe-FLAPPING-lievable
But you have to give this guy some credit. All expensive tech, terrible mines. Races are completely ready for the biggest cheat I ever heard off.

What a big piece o' crap this guy is. And maybe even bigger because he doesn't admit to that IMO.

Was the same in Fall. Called him a cheater in 2410(ain't I cool). He 'explained' to me how he did it... and I bought it. Then...

Sinla

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Enough said I think.
There really is no defence - IS THERE?

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Quote:

What was the tip off? and how did he explain it away? Curious.

We were both WM and I attacked one of his new colonies, which had a few thousand colonists 3 years prior to the attack. When I came there I found a spacedock with 32 betatorpedoes(which alone costed 416I,160B, 96G) and some computers. Who has 500kT of Ironium (on his second world!) to burn when you are building privateers for your pop, I thought by myself. I had excellent mines and already some Ironium-shortage. But in theory it can be done ofcourse, even legitimate.

His words:"
From: The Mecklars
To: The Lalas
Hey,
Don't be a sore loser implying that I cheated to beat you. I didn't. i have >100 K col on Wobbly and have been re-inforcing every turn with pop + minerals since it is only a w9 jump from my hw. As to the resources it's simple: I put up a dock in 2408 at a cost of 80 resources. then put up missles on the dock a year later cost was ~140 resources. Well within what is available with the planets resources at a pop of 130K or so.
So I guess the moral is don't be so smug or condescending until after you've beat me. BTW you may now consider us a war.
Mecklars"

Little did I know... I even apologized to him ( ) openly , but the whole game I had this strange feeling something fishy was going on. Was a bit of a newbie then (well, still am ), so didn't pursue it further.
How the game came to it's end is found somewhere else in this thread.

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