PBEM

[BloodyBucket]

Pbem will be the way to go on SC for some time, since TCP/IP is off in a patch down the road.

How many exchanges will it take to play out a turn?

[SuperTed]

BB,

Axis plays a complete, then Allies play a complete turn.

Repeat until Washington falls.

[Lah]

Does that mean a player can repeat his turn till he gets a favourable outcome, then mail it to the opponent? Hope not!

[Mr. Clark]

Also, will there be some sort of report at the beginning of your turn, so you know what happened during the other players turn? Or will you just have to look for the missing units? :confused:

[SuperTed]

Originally posted by Mr. Clark:

Also, will there be some sort of report at the beginning of your turn, so you know what happened during the other players turn? Or will you just have to look for the missing units? :confused:

Mr. C,

At the beginning of each turn, there is a report of the enemy's transgressions.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Lah:

Does that mean a player can repeat his turn till he gets a favourable outcome, then mail it to the opponent? Hope not!

I'm curious about this as well.

[Mr. Clark]

Originally posted by SuperTed:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Mr. Clark:

Also, will there be some sort of report at the beginning of your turn, so you know what happened during the other players turn? Or will you just have to look for the missing units? :confused:

Mr. C,

At the beginning of each turn, there is a report of the enemy's transgressions.</font>

[Hubert Cater]

One thing you won't be able to do is save your turn during a PBEM game. Your turn is automatically saved only when you finish. I guess at that point you could always reload your turn and play again so this does open the option of cheating somewhat... while early on this may seem attractive, but later in the war as you've got everybody involved that would be a lot of replaying to do.

I know that it is not a perfect system, and it seemed reasonable considering the style of play, but as always I am open to suggestions if I've overlooked something.

Hubert

[Mr. Clark]

Some people will have a problem with the cheating potential. I usually play against people I feel I can trust (and of course, just for fun) so it won't bother me too much.

On one side, it may be easy to tell if someone is cheating early, if everything goes unbelieveably well for them.

On the other hand, we may get alot of people yelling CHEATING simply because they suck.

[ May 02, 2002, 02:04 PM: Message edited by: Mr. Clark ]

[Vanir Ausf B]

Disappointing, but for 25 bucks I'll still get it as long as the AI is good

[BloodyBucket]

Originally posted by Hubert Cater:

One thing you won't be able to do is save your turn during a PBEM game. Your turn is automatically saved only when you finish. I guess at that point you could always reload your turn and play again so this does open the option of cheating somewhat... while early on this may seem attractive, but later in the war as you've got everybody involved that would be a lot of replaying to do.

I know that it is not a perfect system, and it seemed reasonable considering the style of play, but as always I am open to suggestions if I've overlooked something.

Hubert

Too bad that you can't tag the file that gets sent for pbem with something is altered once it is "used" that would prevent it from being used again. Anyone asking for a file to be sent again would raise suspicions. Of course, a real cheat would just copy the file in the first place. Perhaps a little code that would count the number of times turns have been loaded in a particular game?

Alas, the best ways to prevent this sort of thing require exchanges with passwords, and more than one transmission per turn.

[Dangerdav]

While I am more interested in the tcp/ip play then pbem, it should have some "anti-cheating" enabled. Since I do not know how combat/movement is resolved in the game I will take some liberties.It's done by not showing the player's whose current turn it is the outcome of combats and movements. This would probably not be feasible with tactical level games because of all the minutae involved during a player's turn, but it could work with strategic or maybe operational level games. I'm thinking of Gary Grigsby's War in Russia, for example. In this game, all movements and combats are plotted and then executed. The player watches the execution as his movements and attacks unfold, but it really would not be necessary for him to see this, since he can't change anything at that point. Instead, the game would show a replay during the player's next turn. I'm aware that in War in Russia, players also plot and execute air attacks prior to land combat, but the results of those too could be hidden until the following turn.Also consider if combat was resolved on your opponents turn. Thus, you never even saw the enemy forces till your next turn.

All this depends of course on how the game executes its phases etc.. I myself like simultanous turns that allow both players to watch the execution phase at the same time with bonuses for faster players but thats just me.

Dave

[Epée]

One of the great things about CM - PBEM is that there is no way to cheat. It makes all the ladders, tournaments, etc that more attractive and legitimate. Even if you are not a cheater, when something goes to well, the shadows of suspicion might always fall upon you.

It might be a lot of work to redo your turn all over again, but I suppose someone could just play out the most important combat of the turn first, say like the attack on Stalingrad. If that does not work, he could just redo it. It's sad when people cheat, but it is so much more confortable when you don't even have to worry about the possibility of someone doing it, and above all, somebody thinking you might have cheated.

Unfortunately at this time I do not know how the PBEM and game works well enough to present suggestions to prevent cheating. But if there is a more cumbersome time-taking manner to do it, this could always be optional.

Christian

[BloodyBucket]

Encrypted passwords, and not being able to see the results of your moves before sending, are the basics of the CM PBEM system (I think). Perhaps this is an instance where previous Battlefront expertise might pay off for SC.

Simply relying on the complexity of replaying turns won't do, I'm afraid, because there are going to be obvious key turns, like invasions of Gibraltar or Malta, that would be worth doing over and over for the desired result. The option of having a "secure mode" for ladder play, or use by agreement of both sides, would be good to have.

Since I'm not savvy enough to know how difficult that is to program, I can only guess that it is fairly difficult, or it would be seen in almost all games.

[Hubert Cater]

Too bad that you can't tag the file that gets sent for pbem with something is altered once it is "used" that would prevent it from being used again. Anyone asking for a file to be sent again would raise suspicions. Of course, a real cheat would just copy the file in the first place. Perhaps a little code that would count the number of times turns have been loaded in a particular game?

Alas, the best ways to prevent this sort of thing require exchanges with passwords, and more than one transmission per turn.

I think everyone realizes the problem with this because of the fluid turn based system of this game, but let me clarify a bit more...

PBEM games are password protected, so if and when you finish your turn it will be saved, so then if the player decides to load that same game they can't because it will be asking for your opponents password. The only way around this is as you've said is to copy the file and reload the copy (which was what I originally meant), and there is really nothing that can be done to prevent this.

Multiple stages of save and send for a single turn doesn't really work for this game and even if feasible could be way too much since you are looking at possibly 100 turns for a game that starts in 1939.

I am thinking that there could be an extra one of two options. Once playing your PBEM turn there are 3 options now that would be of concern:

- Done

- Save

- Quit

Done is used to finish your turn, Save is disabled, and Quit is used to kill the turn and return you to the main menu.

Option 1) I am thinking that Quit could be disabled as well for a PBEM game

or

Option 2) Keep track of how many times a game is Quit and reloaded during PBEM

Either option is circumventable by just having a copy of the original file and reloading that whenever things go bad, but it might be one extra layer of annoyance to lessen the impact or possibility of cheating.

What do you guys think?

Hubert

[Hubert Cater]

...not being able to see the results of your moves before sending, are the basics of the CM PBEM system (I think). Perhaps this is an instance where previous Battlefront expertise might pay off for SC.

Can't be done with this game, all moves are fluid and not done in stages, i.e. plan first and then the actual execution of the plans. ]

It's a different style but works very well (I think) for this game, and the only place it could be a problem is with PBEM

[BloodyBucket]

Hubert,

I wish I had the knowledge to be more helpful, hearing suggestions from someone as ignorant as myself in these matters might be annoying!

The only thing I can think of is copy-protecting the file, in conjunction with what you suggest above. Perhaps an encrypted log that shows if the file is opened more than once? Or sending the "seed" that generates the random numbers for battles in the file, encrypted?

The problem is that if you make it harder to cheat, a real cheater will just try harder.

[Straha]

Guys, are you at all playing with people you can´t trust? :eek:

But I found the argument quite convincing that an anti-cheating device also takes the "suspicion" from yourself if you are doing well.

Straha

[Elmo]

I play wih one long time gaming buddy so cheating is not an issue. An encrypted password option will stop people from seeing the other side. Trying to build in more than that is just wasting time that could be spent more productively IMO.

[snotmonster]

Originally posted by Hubert Cater:

It's a different style but works very well (I think) for this game, and the only place it could be a problem is with PBEM

Unfortunately, I would think PBEM is the mode of play that the great majority of players would be most interested in.

I agree that CM's WEGO system, while ideally suited for PBEM gaming, is not as appropriate for a game like SC.

[vonManstein39]

Originally posted by Hubert Cater:

PBEM games are password protected, so if and when you finish your turn it will be saved, so then if the player decides to load that same game they can't because it will be asking for your opponents password. The only way around this is as you've said is to copy the file and reload the copy (which was what I originally meant), and there is really nothing that can be done to prevent this.

Multiple stages of save and send for a single turn doesn't really work for this game and even if feasible could be way too much since you are looking at possibly 100 turns for a game that starts in 1939.

I am thinking that there could be an extra one of two options. Once playing your PBEM turn there are 3 options now that would be of concern:

- Done

- Save

- Quit

Done is used to finish your turn, Save is disabled, and Quit is used to kill the turn and return you to the main menu.

Option 1) I am thinking that Quit could be disabled as well for a PBEM game

or

Option 2) Keep track of how many times a game is Quit and reloaded during PBEM

Either option is circumventable by just having a copy of the original file and reloading that whenever things go bad, but it might be one extra layer of annoyance to lessen the impact or possibility of cheating.

What do you guys think?

Hubert[/QB]

Hubert:

Suggestions:

Option 1: Quit could quit right out to Windows instead of the main menu.

Option 2: If SC can detect the user (successfully!) loading the same PBEM game file more than twice, either by filename or (preferably) by the inclusion of a large random number in the game file which SC will check (this could be generated by formula using a conversion of the date and time to ensure a truly random and unique number), then SC will refuse to load that game file for say, 30 days thereafter. Make sure there's an error message saying why this is happening.

(You've got to give the user one chance to reload to cover honest reloads resulting from power cuts and other real-life problems.)

The only way round this cheat protection would be to uninstall and reinstall SC onto your PC - few cheaters will want to do that more than once!

Option 3 - Quick and dirty method?: For PBEM, the game could load the requested game file, and then immediately delete it automatically from the save directory, so that if he quits and goes to reload it, it isn't there, forcing him to copy it again from his email program. This would really annoy cheaters after a while!

Hope you find this useful!

[ May 03, 2002, 10:56 AM: Message edited by: vonManstein39 ]

[Mr. Clark]

I totally understand how the WEGO system would not be at all suitable for this type of game.

As has been said before, if someone REALLY needs to cheat, they will find a way. I would put a little effort into making it a little harder to do, but don't waste a ton of time with it!

Also, if someone is that insecure, they will accuse you of cheating just for doing well, no matter how hard it is to actually cheat.

Years ago, I was accused of cheating at StarCraft, because I had left little marine "spies" around the map so I knew what the enemy was up to. I was often accused of having some type of map cheat that removed FOW.

[Hubert Cater]

I agree that I'd like to think that most people are trustworthy so I'll leave the current implementation as is and see what everyone thinks before considering any more draconian measures

Hubert

[Lah]

I won't be hard to find trustworthy opponents, look how many of us already play CM scenarios 'blind'.

The only drawback is it may limit ladder play or tournies, but I'm sure it will still be a cracking game without all that

[BloodyBucket]

Interesting subject, from a technical standpoint. It is a wonder that there is no service out there for acting as a broker for PBEM games. Disabling the save feature is probably all that can be done, without inventing some new system. I searched some newsgroups that focus on PBEM and no magic bullet was mentioned.

If there was a service offering a secure transfer of PBEM files that was banner ad supported, would people here use it?