User ID/ ship ID scanner

[Dscript]

Could you add a user ID scanner input device

Basically a "thumbprint scanner" that returns a unique ID based on user (or the ship/station ID)

That and some yolol chip locking/protection

I want to sell/license yolol systems.. a locked chip feature would help prevent copying

A unique accessible ID value for user or ship/station and or universal time variable would further allow licences and subscriptions

See my post here about how I am forced to refuse to sell my creations because pulling yolol code out is too easy

https://forum.starbasegame.com/threads/yolol-code-protection.2739/

 

[NIKNIK]

I don't really like that. It will damage salvaging a little bit, ship discovering, if it can be called like that. If you don't want your yolol be stolen - don't sell it

 

[conquestor]

locked yolol is planned but also effectively impossible. The game is p2p, so any client that has the ship needs to know how to run yolol, and also pass it to other people in his session.

On some level, people can just read the game's memory and pull your yolol if they really want.

 

[pavvvel]

It is necessary to get rid of p2p altogether and transfer the load to the game server. This will eliminate the possibility of cheating. An example of bad p2p is Elite Dangerous where people play in private mode with cheats and no one can catch them. They play with cheats and in open mode, it's difficult to prove something, and trainers are on a lot of sites, they are even traded.
Regarding the yolol chips - if another player has taken possession of your ship, he should have every opportunity to pick up the code from the chip. This is logical. If you want the chip to be protected, then there must be decryption devices that can be crafted and used. Any detail that the player has taken possession of should be fully accessible to him and chips are no exception. Stop trying to reduce the risks from pvp when you lose not only the ship, but also the chips that are part of the ship.
In addition, chips with encryption must be very expensive.
If you make the chip code inaccessible to other players (for example, if your ship is captured), then it will kill a whole layer of gameplay - inspection of the Blown Up or Captured ship. Capturing a chip is something worth risking for. For example, a valiant gunker blew up a miner's ship. The gunker will need to risk leaving his ship to look for chips on the miner's blown-up ship. Another layer of gameplay that you want to kill is sabotage. For example, I was chasing a miner and saw that he stopped and went to drink beer. I can install a torpedo next to its generators and write code into the chip so that the torpedo explodes under certain conditions.

UPD
Your idea would kill the gameplay of protecting the wreckage of ships after combat. opposing factions would be very happy to get the chips from their opponent's ships. imagine that there was a mass fight where someone lost. but it is possible to send in people on cheap ships to blow up the wreckage of expensive warships so that the enemy doesn't get the chips.

 

[conquestor]

The game will not be possible without P2P. The physics simulation would have to be simplified to DU levels, destroying what they do well (great combat)

In the end yolol chips aren't a big deal, no one really cares about them because they aren't really effective for combat. It's all just management scripts etc.

Even now, years into the game, no one really cares about private yolol, because the limitations are very strict.

 

[Sylwester]

It is necessary to get rid of p2p altogether and transfer the load to the game server

No. Worlds Adrift had physics running on servers. It was laggy, server costs were high and they shut it down and now you can never play it again.

 

[pavvvel]

Then what about cheaters? When I was playing, I had a bug: the ship was restoring all the ammunition, all the battery energy and fuel reserves in the rods. This happened at intervals of about 10 seconds. I tried adding/changing parts of the ship, repairing it in the garage, uh, nothing helped. I made an F1 report, but there was no response. This means that the cheater can change the parameters of the ship's parts at will - this allows P2P. We don't have game logs so that after the fight there is a chance to check the opponent for cheating. The ships are very complicated - this gives cheaters even more opportunities. On the other hand, if someone accused you of foul play, there's no way you can prove otherwise. I understand that the one who accuses has to prove. But I've seen too many honest players banned in online games just because other players who couldn't beat him made a massive report....
Another problem with p2p is lags. If the miner wants to escape from the pursuer, he can simply run a torrent or a special program that will cause lags

 

[Sylwester]

This can be resolved by devs. Hosted ships could be checked by other p2p clients to see if they operate correctly. Laggers could be detected and put at a disadvantage (keep them frozen in space / delay ship response to controls and make their movement look smooth to other players while the lagger gets to see slideshow).

 

[pavvvel]

how do you think the p2p client will check someone else's ship? this is very expensive for both the PC and the network component. how often will the check be carried out? every 10 seconds to load and check someone else's ship? and if there are 10 such ships nearby...? or 20?

 

[Sylwester]

You can already host multiple ships at the same time. It could work by loading the ship of another player as if you are hosting it, but it won't actually spawn and the input gets mirrored from the other player. Then your machine will continuously check if both ships act the same. If there is discrepancy it could get automatically reported and have dev server take over the hosting to validate the report. You would only need to check 1 such ship. The checks could be distributed between players and rotated, giving more such tasks to clients with better hardware / internet.

 

[pavvvel]

your version is like a fairy tale... do you want player's PC to be engaged in anti-cheat..? why not then add Bitcoin production through the game? you understand that even 1 time to load 1 of your ship is already a load on the PC, and to load 10, 20 ships of other players, while checking cheats and doing it every second.... do you understand exactly what you are writing about?
we have all seen what kind of lags occur when there are several ships of different players around. imagine what kind of lags there will be if you force PC players to engage in anti-cheat...
the best option is to deprive players of the opportunity to interfere with the parameters of the game and the parameters of the ships.
let's say a player uses a cheat to make a ship with 20 laser guns and only 1 generator. this will allow his ship to have superiority over opponents, provided that with the help of a cheat he will periodically restore the energy reserve in the batteries. how do you hope to calculate this cheat using other players' PCs..???

 

[Sylwester]

If cheating in this game was a problem and it could be solved by doing some calculations on remote server, but there was no such server, then yes I would like if the calculations were done on other players PC. Like I said before, not 10 or 20 ships, just 1. It probably could be programmed to consume less resources / cpu power than actual ship. If mmo game fails to function with several ships in close proximity then it's a failure that should be fixed anyway. As to how it would be programmed, it would be up to devs to figure it out.

 

[pavvvel]

now there are huge problems with the fast loading of other players' ships. this can take a huge amount of time, LODs are not loaded. it is necessary to maximize the performance of the game, and not to strangle it with strange ideas about useless anti-cheat, which is carried out at the expense of the players' PCs in relation to the ships of other players. your idea is not viable. p2p has huge holes for manipulation that you can't track in any way. a striking example is elite dangerous, where having been in the same instance with a player, you can find out his external and IP, place of residence, player ID and much more. there 99% of players "exist" in private mode and use bots, trainers and other cheats.

 

[Sylwester]

If anti-cheat is useless then why are you complaining about cheaters? But to be honest my anti-cheat idea right now is really not viable. Just as much as maximizing performance is also not viable because there are no developers working on the game. If the devs ever return back to developing this game I do hope that they will focus on performance and content first, before wasting time on complex features (like easy build mode) that won't help much with dwindling playerbase...

 

[pavvvel]

Anti-cheat is necessary. But not in the form you suggest (so that the player's PC checks all other people's ships).