I don't see anything wrong with people taking advantage of weaknesses in other people's scripts.
Scripting has become an integral part of the game, so being able to defeat them is fair game.
If it's the only way to compete with the script kiddies, so be it.

so if hack your ISP and remove your internet connection.. it's all about winning, at any costs, it's not my fault your ISP didn't have better security measures.
right?

quote:Originally posted by Slim Shady

so if hack your ISP and remove your internet connection.. it's all about winning, at any costs, it's not my fault your ISP didn't have better security measures.
right?


Except 1)You prolly cant do that and 2)Even if you could why would you risk the punishment of being caught over a game? Im in Info Security and I highly doubt you have the capabilities outside of a BotNet to take out a major ISP.

This "arguement" is kind of redundant Sing made the script regardless if he made a oversight on the original or it was intentional It is HIS script. By useing HIS script people are taking the chance that there may be bugs and should be aware that people including the script maker may or may not take advantage of said bugs. Bottom line why get upset about it, go make your own. How often when useing Turbosst do people "leave on IDC's" just to cause your Tsst to hang.

Again its just a game and it takes all of 2minutes to make a non flexable "tmilker" its not hard to cn7 and have a bunch of waitfor's and send's.

ROFL
Puhleeze!
Taking advantage of a script vs bringing the internet to its knees.
I can't see the correlation.
Only a very lame post.

So what is the difference between what Singualrity did and say...people "pinging" my planet around the universe when i am using a pdrop script?..Or when they retreat from a fig and i have to totally reset my 1 particular ptorp script or my script will cause me to go offline...There was even a time when a person could cby me with a macro SS script.....But all of these issues in time were solved...But i didnt know about them until someone exploited my script....one time hekate and jackbox totally drained one of my H's and invaded and killed me by taking advantge of me while i was on extended AFK periods....Taking advantage of bugs in people's scripts and helpers has been going on since "Report Sector 5001" over fed com used to boot out anyone using TWAR for DOS.....If you lost respect for someone because of it...So be it..I have lost respect for more then a few in ths game and have later decided not to corp with them or play on thier servers etc etc etc...But to Whine in forums over it seems to invite more critism over your complaint then that of the action...

Also Sing..this is Forum is a part of the General Discussions Forum..While i would hope that there isnt Smack going on in this forum it is appropiate (in my view) to discuss the morals and consequences of using bugs in scripts and helpers to a game advantage.


All that being said i am NOT a moderator of this particualr forum..And my opinions and views are just that..my opinions
and views.

Script use is voluntary- you don't have to use them.
If someone figures out how to abuse your script, then you will have to adapt.
I was there when SDR came out- Stonewall swore me to secrecy and then showed me how it worked.
The secret was good for 1 game if I recall right. Then everyone had to adapt to it.
People have to adapt to script use and abuse. It's not "part of the game" so it isn't cheating or bug use.
Come on SG- running a script while AFK, didn't you chew me out for that?

My oppion is, you use someone else's stuff you may get burned. Its a fact, I have seen and heard of people puting things in their compiled scripts so they can't be used against the creater. Its what you get for running scripts afk. If you run a script, then you take the chance, scripts are never going to work 100% all the time, theirs almost always away around one. Its part of the game, It always does suck when it happenes to me but its a game and thus part of the risk.

quote:All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances

geez, who said that? what an idiot, the stage would have to be HUGE, it's just not possible.

since methaphors obviosly are not the forte here, lets try a simple ethics question.

Person A finds out that Person B has won a radio contest, and has to answer his phone between 7:00 and 7:05 to win.
Person A then calls Person B repeatedly from 5:00 to 6:30 until Person B gets sick of it and unplugs his phone.
Person B now can not win the radio contest.
Or person A cuts Person B's phone line, or calls him and talks to him about baseball for 10 minutes, or any other thing you would like.
The moral of the story is, most people I know would consider what Person A did to be unethical, immoral, and wrong.
Some people (some maybe in this forum) would argue for Person A saying he didn't break any laws, blah blah blah. But think, if everyone acted this way, what kind of a world would we live in?
And if you are part of a small community, and a small number of people act in ways that are not condusive to fun and fair play.. why would people want to stay and be part of that community?
I could care less if there are or are not "rules" about it, it's about common decency to the players around you.
It's about respect or lack thereof.

Here is the main question:
If person X accidentally and unknowingly posted his corp password in fedspace, would you wait till his corp was offline to log into his corp, take all their assets, kill them all, and rejoin your old corp? Or would you not?

If you even hesitate for a second to answer that question, then you are part of the reason that tradewars is continually dwindling in numbers and popularity.

If you want to drag the poor beast of ethics into the mix, you'll find that it still doesn't mix well.
Is it ethical to use scripts that were meant for personal or corp use?
And is it ethical to whine about it when someone hacks those scripts?
Is it considered "fair play" to use scripts at all?
Fair play doesn't work as an analogy. The object is to win the game, not to have "warm fuzzies" because you had a group hug with the other corp. In this game, someone is going to win, someone is going to lose. The loser will most likely whine about it and say it wasn't "fair" or some other nonsense. So what? The winner is going to display uncommon comptenece (Jester in the USO) while the loser is going to just up and quit (Parrot, anyone?). That's life. Scripts aren't going to change that.
Scripting is part of the game. So is futzing up scripts.
As for the PW analogy- they screwed up. So what?
Akor announced the backdoor to SD in one draft game because he hadn't set up his subspace channel.
I went there and laid mines, and Stocky ended up #SD# because of it.
Should I have done the chivalrous thing and given it a miss?
Of course not. People make mistakes and those mistakes should be taken advantage of.

i once built a backdoor into all my scripts because one of my 'friends' was giving, hell selling, them to other players. if zoc scripts were encryptable, i might have left the backdoor in there, but alas zoc encryption is pitiful.

Need to put something into the script that will shout over fed "Script stolen from Sing" or something to that effect.
Or after a certain date, it will cause you to CBY.

I like Slim’s explanation the best. Only to add that purposefully placing a backdoor or hidden trigger which upon some type of secretly known activation sends the script into an endless loop, connection drop, prevents the user from countering the creator, or halts the script is wrong; in any way, shape, or form, by any means, this is a fact cut and dry, no exceptions whatsoever.

As for spoofing, I myself don’t find it acceptable though feel that would be more dependent upon each servers actual rules and stipulations, as far as how other players possibly justifying a reason for doing it, or should rather say abusing it; really though I think that this is something that is somewhat childish and petty, this being to take advantage of that sort of tactic, i.e. sending a message similar to: “Report Sector 5001” …I mean what are you really thinking to yourself when you do use it anyways, I would imagine your inner dialog would go something like: “Oh yea you are such a total stud muffin! Man you are the most skilled player ever! I mean for having the knowledge and foresight to send another player that message, you like just sooo totally rock man! You are uber, baby, uber and that is for real!”

As for creating a script for any type of distribution that was designed to permit spoofing, see the first paragraph for why this is also not acceptable. Though this sort of action could be defined under gorilla tactics and these types of scripts could become known as sabotage or tainted scripts, and could become a new aspect of TW, though really this is not actually new per say, but is has yet to be given an official name or status and is not all that public as far as awareness goes. Though was would this ultimately lead, to? Possibility a complete lack of public trust and disinterest of players no longer wishing to use publicly distributed scripts. Thus, public scripts would become a thing of the past, and players would only use scripts that both they and their highly trusted friends and co-players have created themselves. With of course some small exception lend to .TS formatted scripts.

quote:Originally posted by RexxCrow

I like Slim’s explanation the best. Only to add that purposefully placing a backdoor or hidden trigger which upon some type of secretly known activation sends the script into an endless loop, connection drop, prevents the user from countering the creator, or halts the script is wrong; in any way, shape, or form, by any means, this is a fact cut and dry, no exceptions whatsoever.

As for spoofing, I myself don’t find it acceptable though feel that would be more dependent upon each servers actual rules and stipulations, as far as how other players possibly justifying a reason for doing it, or should rather say abusing it; really though I think that this is something that is somewhat childish and petty, this being to take advantage of that sort of tactic, i.e. sending a message similar to: “Report Sector 5001” …I mean what are you really thinking to yourself when you do use it anyways, I would imagine your inner dialog would go something like: “Oh yea you are such a total stud muffin! Man you are the most skilled player ever! I mean for having the knowledge and foresight to send another player that message, you like just sooo totally rock man! You are uber, baby, uber and that is for real!”

As for creating a script for any type of distribution that was designed to permit spoofing, see the first paragraph for why this is also not acceptable. Though this sort of action could be defined under gorilla tactics and these types of scripts could become known as sabotage or tainted scripts, and could become a new aspect of TW, though really this is not actually new per say, but is has yet to be given an official name or status and is not all that public as far as awareness goes. Though was would this ultimately lead, to? Possibility a complete lack of public trust and disinterest of players no longer wishing to use publicly distributed scripts. Thus, public scripts would become a thing of the past, and players would only use scripts that both they and their highly trusted friends and co-players have created themselves. With of course some small exception lend to .TS formatted scripts.


I think the tone of this post is wrong..and yet i agree with several aspects of it....Spoofing scripts isnt something i would do..except to maybe pull a joke off..BUT attack scripts get spoofed all the time infact sometimes Spoofing an attack/ptorp script maybe be the only way to get past it...IE if you know his ship has X many ptorps u retreat from his figs x many times to wipe out his supply...Would that tactic be immoral ??? Would it go againt the Ethics of the Game ?? You cant discount all spoofing of scripts because in some instances it is the acceptable way of accomplishing that particualr goal.I am shocked to see that people feel "spoofing" a script is wrong...When i was awarded the tw Scripting TW award i complained about people spoofing attack scripts and ptorp scripts..or just offensive scripts in general..and the concensus seemed to be "stop whinning you made the script u used the script..Your script got beat..Deal with it." And so it seems now this is no longer how the "majority" feels??? I guess if i wait long enuff Stalemates will be the Goal of this game....And BadGirl will be handing out awards for the most evenly tied game..(3 or more teams category)

Sorry rexx, your first paragraph didn't make sense.
And to comment on your third paragraph- are you saying that someone who writes poor code is responsible if someone finds exploits in his script? Who is to judge between malicious and ignorance when it comes to coding? And if there is a bug in the code, who says that the person who wrote the code has to fix it? Bollocks.

The first paragraph makes sense, it has to do with the scripter writing in “secret code functions” that they can use to their sole benefit at any time.

As for judging which is which, there is a distinction between a bug within a script and spoofing the script that should be realized, i.e. if a corpie warps out one of the two planets being used to swap resources via a script and the script rather then performing a check to ensure all the conditions have remained the same since the last run before attempting to land your ship it ends up blind warping you to a sector that has a portion of that planet number and fuses you; or express warps you a dozen sectors away leaving you in enemy territory at an attack fighter prompt, or the script miscalculates the amount of FO it is using while colonizing thus leaving you stranded at Terra, these would be two forms of a bug do to either a minor oversight or poor programming.

Though say you are at Terra and some joker names their ship as one of your triggers such as that of a limpet activation or sends you messages of such that each contain a random sector and their own script keeps changing the sector number until it “guesses” the correct sector number, thus engaging your ship into that sector for defensive/offensive standby or say you are monitoring the activity at SD and just before extern occurs the send a message to you stating you hear a faint metal click against your hull causing you to log off, BAM by the time you log back in you have only to find that you have just been send out into open space and SD’ed by the perpetrators. Now these last few examples were not do to bugs, they were do to the cheap spoofing antics of other players, now sure there are workarounds that can be used to prevent or limit the use of spoofing, but those are generally reserved for those that know how to script or take it upon themselves to implement.

Now that being said it takes no real effort in figuring out what triggers a given script activates off of, everything is based off the same game information after all, so spoofing is only taking advantage of lesser developed scripts, such as the majority public scripts, which are oblivious to these types of attacks. Hence, the most notable difference between a public script and a private uber script. Thus, spoofiing takes no real effort nor skill, thus winning a game with these tactics proves only that the abuse of the spoofing tactics is a weak minded fend whom will stop at nothing and sink to any level to claim their victory... as Stan would appropriately say... That is totally ****ing weak, dude!


“IE if you know his ship has X many ptorps u retreat from his figs x many times to wipe out his supply...Would that tactic be immoral ???”

Also, for me this is perfectly acceptable, this is completely valid tactic it is not spoofing, it is not a hidden function placed within the script, it is just taking advantage of a lack of errorchecking developed within the script itself, the scripter would simply need to revise this issue by issuing a fix for it in a newer version.


Laff, SG leave BG alone you are just mad cause even if your corp. did score as one of the three in the tie you would still not be the first corp. listed in that tie! [:p]