Yup a simple menu timout would do the job, but the scripters will just make a counter measure for it.

Like you said JP, when were chaseing that lan spam problem...
"Stop it at the source".
To bad they dont know how stop at baydu .

Ok, but the fact that you can gain information about the game without being in the game is an issue. The startup menu needs to be either isolated from the game or included in the time limit. I do think that's a problem worth addressing.

I totally agree here .. as well as the post .. if you are worried about squatters .. increase your node count .. this would be a way for J.P. to continue selling
to those who bought lesser node servers and went public before they were ready .. or ran a bunch of time limit games unprepared for the advanced user.

I find the menu squatter technique a part of the game strategy.
Back in the day , there was only 1 node available so you did your thing
usually with a bbs set time limit and be gone.
Later there was no bbs front end and to keep track of your competitions
arrival into game you may post someone at the Main menu for early warning. This made it a bit faster to fire up that script to track or attack them.

It's all just about strategy , so why cripple those that have it .. learn to adapt.

We have to stop this "cause I can't do it .. we should stop it mentality.
Those players wishing to play like the old days should probably buy a bbs program and run the "old days version" I'm not understanding why J.P. is putting effort to break this product.

Wait and break V4 instead.

Wow ..

Like the strategy .. Sub space crawling to gain info on your opponents activities ?

Sorta saying ok for one technique and not another ?

Speaking of subspace, can we increase it to a 32bit value? Would be nice...

And I'm not sure how we'd isolate the login from the game, or make TWGS somehow figure out when someone is or is not planning to log into a game. If I'm playing as Singularity, there's no reason why I have to connect w/ that name. I can bring in another player, with another name, with another IP address, and sit at the menu prompt and you have no way of knowing it's me unless I don't care enough to hide. It's not duping until you create a character.

You could move the password prompt to the TWGS login instead of having it in each game.

No, sorta trying to fix everything I can.

If a tactic completely undermines a setting, that needs to be fixed. It's not about strategy. Time limits are meaningless if you can gain info about the game from outside of the game and use that in a meaningful way. If you don't want this to matter, don't use time limits. Seriously, if an op sets a time limit, they have an expectation that it will matter.

Subspace scanning is a completely different thing. That doesn't undermine expected behavior. It has always been possible to scan subspace, just not as efficiently. And I'm not opposed to addressing that, but what's been suggested is too big a change. Tell you what, I'll make a change so that you can't change Subspace channel more than once every N seconds or something like that (a setting). That would solve subspace scanning without significantly changing how subspace is used, wouldn't it?

So require a login and password just to connect? Ok, talk about breaking stuff.

But go ahead, I'll just write a script to do what I've been saying for the last 4 posts... I can always use another account to login. It isn't duping until you create a character in-game.

Until you have a way to white list users with a solid form of authentication, this is all just farting in the wind.

And yes, a 30 second delay after changing SS would help... but not all that much. What we need is more than 65k channels.

I could also increase subspace channel count, sure.

That would be awesome. It's hard enough to scan 65k channels, a 24bit or 32bit value would effectively end rapid scanning.

I'd just like subspace to work basically like it always did. There was always a chance you could happen upon someone chatting on Subspace. But that was without doing an automated scan, and the odds were low. Significantly increasing channel count solves the automated scanner problem, but also removes the possibility of happening upon an active channel. Having a delay when changing channels would keep the relatively small number of channels while making automated scanning much less effective. If I go with a very large number, I might as well just make it a secure Corp channel as Vid suggested.

People already wait a few seconds between switching
channels. Most scanners are distributed among corpies
via bot. So a 5 second delay is as good as a 0 second
delay, it doesn't change anything.

10 corpies, 5 running a scanner while the enemy is
cashing or doing something to generate traffic. It
doesn't take much to find an enemy SS. Lets say you
listen for 5 seconds each, that's 5461 minutes, 5
corpies, that's 18 hours. If distributed randomly,
the odds of finding someone is half that, especially
if you approach it from both ends. Cashing on a large
corp takes about 3 hours, so... in 3 days you usually
find their SS w/o doing anything else. And there are
ways of doing it faster.

Is it a problem? Not really. I have scripts that can
now change SS via bot, and I can send that via private
hail, and I send change requests hourly. That means
I can now randomly change the entire corp's SS every
hour if I want. I could even make a bot command to
send the current SS over corp message, so that ppl
offline can always find the current SS w/o having to
ask when they come back on.

But like so many other things, it hurts the casual
user the most. It makes the casual game that much
harder.

But so yes, a larger number of channels is better.
But barring that, a large delay between SS changes
would work too. But it would have to be substantial.

So at what point do "you" call it cheating?

I can create a DOS attack on your IP address so you can't even get on the internet while I'm invading you planets. Would that be cheating?

Not sure I agree that it's more of an issue for manual players. Non-scripting players don't use Subspace nearly as much. This is as big a problem as it is because Subspace has become a means of coordinating bots. If I'm just using a channel for a bit of chatter now and then, the odds of you finding me while scanning are still pretty small.

I'm sure if this is enough of a problem, bots will stop using subspace for communication and start communicating outside the game or some other solution.

Micro, good point All's fair if it's possible, right?

1. Is it in game? If not, it's cheating.

2. It's in game? Is it a known bug? If so, it might be cheating

3. If it's a known bug, and it's not been explicitly labeled cheating, then it's legal. If it's been explicitly labeled cheating, then there's a rule against it.

To that end, a sysop can set whatever rules they want. However not all rules can be enforced by the game, thus the sysop has to police their own server. That is a very difficult prospect. A little practicality is in order.