I run 4 Games on TWGS @ http://WWW.SNYDERELECTRIC.COM I was recently asked by a few players to enforce dupe accounts. Unless the sysop is playing the game it is very hard to enforce dupes. The sysop rely's on the players to make judgement calls on other players and sometimes that cannot be fair. The only thing I can think of to do is Limit the # of members on the corps, and not enforce anyone's claim of someone duping. Right now I say Dupe away. If the bad guys can dupe so can you. The rules are the same for everyone. There are 4 games and I will probably be adding a fifth as a courtesy "no dupe" Game and see how it goes. That will give the people that want to go all out 4 other games to go wild on. But we'll see.

Tony

I wish TWGS did a better job of logging at the orignial login point. So we can see who the connections the timestamps and IP's of those connecting to the service, that way we can compare the timestamps and ips, to that of the game log

The best way to stop dupe accounts is to have all closed games and a web site based login system similar to Lost Traders Tavern. You have to join games from the web site and a script adds you to the closed game of your choice. Cherokee would prolly tell you that its not perfect or foolproof but it works very nicely and it makes it a real hassle to try and dupe on his server.

This won't stop people from duping in the first place, but the easiest way to catch most dupes is to just check the IP address in the game log when someone has doubts. Every time a player starts a session, it give a time stamp, the player name, and their IP address, such as:
07:22:24 PM 11/25/2001 127.0.0.1 Kemper2(2): Ran Tradewars 2002.
07:29:47 PM 11/25/2001 127.0.0.1 Kemper3(1): Ran Tradewars 2002.

Personally, I like the idea of limiting the members on the corp and enforcing that, then letting people dupe all they want within those limits. There are advantages and disadvantages to having a corp full of your dupes vs a corp full of real players. So long as each corp has the same number of turns, I don't see that it really is that big of a deal. I realize this goes against most people's accepted way to play, but I've yet to have someone actually tell me why it's unfair.

Is it possible to access the game log from outside of TWGS so an external program can match IP addresses and see if there is possible duping? I also heard that there are some scripts that check for dupes as well, but I never found them.

quote:Originally posted by Harley Nuss (teamEIS)

This won't stop people from duping in the first place, but the easiest way to catch most dupes is to just check the IP address in the game log when someone has doubts. Every time a player starts a session, it give a time stamp, the player name, and their IP address, such as:
07:22:24 PM 11/25/2001 127.0.0.1 Kemper2(2): Ran Tradewars 2002.
07:29:47 PM 11/25/2001 127.0.0.1 Kemper3(1): Ran Tradewars 2002.

Personally, I like the idea of limiting the members on the corp and enforcing that, then letting people dupe all they want within those limits. There are advantages and disadvantages to having a corp full of your dupes vs a corp full of real players. So long as each corp has the same number of turns, I don't see that it really is that big of a deal. I realize this goes against most people's accepted way to play, but I've yet to have someone actually tell me why it's unfair.


A couple thoughts on your Idea of if its fair to dupe:

1. Dupe has been considered wrong in game play, it has a stygma attached to it.
2. What you propose i say is different than duping. I would call it multi-accounts.
My personal definitions of the two:

Dupe: a person who uses more than one player in a game to gain an advantage, considered cheating.

Multiple Account: A person that uses more than 1 player in a game and has no advantage because all players can also, not cheating.

Now I agree with you i see nothing wrong with alowing more than one account, this will not stop duping. Duping is not used just to play more than one player, but to cheat.

Ck i beleive had the game Dupe Challange. it was a good game in my opinion, but true dupers had not much interest in it, no perceived advantage. Like truces, multi- accounts are sysop solutions to fix a problem that doesnt work. Cheaters want to cheat and trucebreakers want to break truces.

BTW I like multi player accounts, I would enjoy playing a game at a twgs that uses your guidelines.

Franknputer let you set up 2 accounts, it did not stop duping.

quote:Originally posted by Orion_Blastar

Is it possible to access the game log from outside of TWGS so an external program can match IP addresses and see if there is possible duping? I also heard that there are some scripts that check for dupes as well, but I never found them.


It's just a simple text file. You can use whatever you want to crunch them and pull out the relavent information.

quote:Originally posted by Tradewarrior55

A couple thoughts on your Idea of if its fair to dupe:

1. Dupe has been considered wrong in game play, it has a stygma attached to it.

2. What you propose i say is different than duping. I would call it multi-accounts.
My personal definitions of the two:

Dupe: a person who uses more than one player in a game to gain an advantage, considered cheating.

Multiple Account: A person that uses more than 1 player in a game and has no advantage because all players can also, not cheating.

Now I agree with you i see nothing wrong with alowing more than one account, this will not stop duping. Duping is not used just to play more than one player, but to cheat.

Ck i beleive had the game Dupe Challange. it was a good game in my opinion, but true dupers had not much interest in it, no perceived advantage. Like truces, multi- accounts are sysop solutions to fix a problem that doesnt work. Cheaters want to cheat and trucebreakers want to break truces.

BTW I like multi player accounts, I would enjoy playing a game at a twgs that uses your guidelines.

Franknputer let you set up 2 accounts, it did not stop duping.

It would not eliminate it, but it would reduce it. At least half of duping is someone gets killed, so they want to be back in the game. I just think it's more fair in general. It would allow a solo person to be able to compete against a full corp on an even resource basis.

Allowing multiple accounts could work, but you'd have to put some rules about it in place to keep things from getting out of hand.

- Disallow using another account solo. ie., if your corp is already maxed with players, people can't keep creating non-corp accounts to use. If your 4-man corp is out of turns, don't make a 5th account to PPT, moth or whatever.

Also, there's a tactical advantage to using a dupe rather than a corpie. There are several good 2-man scripts out there to accomplish things such as SDT, etc. 2 scripts working in tandem are MUCH more efficient than 2 real players trying to coordinate their efforts. There's also no more trying to be online when your corpmate can be.

A disadvantage of using multiple accounts is that you'll be slower to accomplish independant tasks. Much easier to give your other 2 or 3 corp mates tasks to run with, than trying to manage each of your telnet sessions.

Must my 2 cents. Maybe in the next version of TWGS, you can put more options in for duping. Duping = no, duping = unlim, duping = max corp size (meaning you can only have as many of the same IPs logged in as your corp size limitation)

quote:Originally posted by Wotok

Allowing multiple accounts could work, but you'd have to put some rules about it in place to keep things from getting out of hand.

- Disallow using another account solo. ie., if your corp is already maxed with players, people can't keep creating non-corp accounts to use. If your 4-man corp is out of turns, don't make a 5th account to PPT, moth or whatever.

Also, there's a tactical advantage to using a dupe rather than a corpie. There are several good 2-man scripts out there to accomplish things such as SDT, etc. 2 scripts working in tandem are MUCH more efficient than 2 real players trying to coordinate their efforts. There's also no more trying to be online when your corpmate can be.

A disadvantage of using multiple accounts is that you'll be slower to accomplish independant tasks. Much easier to give your other 2 or 3 corp mates tasks to run with, than trying to manage each of your telnet sessions.

Must my 2 cents. Maybe in the next version of TWGS, you can put more options in for duping. Duping = no, duping = unlim, duping = max corp size (meaning you can only have as many of the same IPs logged in as your corp size limitation)

Here are a couple more downsides to multiple accounts as opposed to multiple players.

1) You have less game time coverage. With multiple players, there are more times when someone can be there to stop your enemy. With multiple accounts, the only game presence is when you're around.

2) With multiple players, you get strategy/gameplay ideas from different sources. With multiple accounts, you don't even get the reality check of your corpie saying "wtf?"

There are a couple more that I can't remember right now, but basically, multiple accounts isn't that much of an overwhelming advantage, so long as there's a limit put on the total number of accounts playing together.

The problem with multiple accounts is that some will like it but the true dupers will do things like rotating new accounts in and out of their corp as they die or run out of turns essentially giving them unlimited lives and unlimited turns. It would take the current duping problem to new highs of cheating.

As I Said the Cheaters are going to cheat. K3's solution just makes multi accounts not cheating, or as in his example:
"It would not eliminate it, but it would reduce it. At least half of duping is someone gets killed, so they want to be back in the game. I just think it's more fair in general. It would allow a solo person to be able to compete against a full corp on an even resource basis."

BTW I am not sure how he comes to his statistic Half of duping is someone gets killed and wants back in the game. But the game rules are you get #SD# you do not get back in the game untill the proper time.



AS I stated before I would like to see some games/servers with multi accounts. Cheaters will steal cheat, sames as the low lifes who want to steal my stuff, rape my woman, kill my dog, all still run free, even when there are laws against it and free help to reform them. Till they are caught we are all at risk.

Ok off my soap box, may the Games begin.