I created a steam group called Endless Legion. Please join the group if you want to be part of a non-cheating, respectful community. If enough people join and only play with other members, it would solve the cheating problem entirely. Just kick out the players that don't play by the rules.

Met this cheater again today. I almost sure that this is that cheater I played with few days before. He is from Russia just like me and used similar nickname. Also he is untrackable via steam. I had suspicions and joined game looking for cheats I wasn't disappointed Attached savegame(I needed to zip it because it tells me "invalid file") and screenshot from game few days before. Cheater used "dron" nickname in today game.
cheater_save.zip

Steph'nie wrote:
There is a feature on Steam that allows you to find the players you have recently played with: this is how you would find someone.



But indeed, Endless Space does not participate in the Valve Anti Cheat program (I have mentioned this in our daily scrum this morning). A complete ban of trainers or other hacks in the multiplayer would also be applied to the single player (for fun, or learning purposes, I don't know). But then, those experiments could be tested through the modding.



We are following this issue but this needs lots of discussions.

Either way you'll have to implement some anti hacking features - VAC seems very appropriate (if it can indeed detect such hacks, or be made to do so) - edited files would have have to be detected (that is if the players don't share the same "Mod version" they can't play together since this can mean anything from desync issues due to different statistics for elements, or full on hacked files to give a player unfair bonuses locally). As for also locking out the singleplayer when doing things like this - add a console with cheats, or a cheat menu.

Mansen wrote:
Either way you'll have to implement some anti hacking features - VAC seems very appropriate (if it can indeed detect such hacks, or be made to do so) - edited files would have have to be detected (that is if the players don't share the same "Mod version" they can't play together since this can mean anything from desync issues due to different statistics for elements, or full on hacked files to give a player unfair bonuses locally). As for also locking out the singleplayer when doing things like this - add a console with cheats, or a cheat menu.

VAC never looks at SP games, so that is not a concern. Until they release mod support through the actual mod button then vac would detect mods as cheats in MP, even if everyone is using them, so for now it is probably a bad choice. As far as if it would catch the current cheats, that depends. It would catch the extra traits cheats, and *may* catch the 0 fleet ones depending on the method. If a 3rd party program or altering game files is required, then VAC should catch it.

I very highly doubt this game will ever remotely achieve VAC integration. Though it may be seen as ineffective by some, there is nothing wrong with communal forum naming and shaming, leading to possible blacklist creations.

flipstar wrote:
I very highly doubt this game will ever remotely achieve VAC integration. Though it may be seen as ineffective by some, there is nothing wrong with communal forum naming and shaming, leading to possible blacklist creations.

Until it doesn't work.



I have had these 0/* fleets happen on my end twice now from the game bugging out whats worse is I wouldn't let me delete the fleet, I guess it thought it didn't exists even though it showed it. Unfortunately both those games ended to quick for me to find out if others could even see those fleets but if they could they would have thought I was cheating when it was the game being broken.





vigilante justice is not a good option for the innocent, never has been never will be.



If I knew what happened to cause these fleets I would post it it just happened while I was creating them, I think both times it was very early in the turn possibly not everyone has started the turn?

Agr wrote:
Met this cheater again today. I almost sure that this is that cheater I played with few days before. He is from Russia just like me and used similar nickname. Also he is untrackable via steam. I had suspicions and joined game looking for cheats I wasn't disappointed Attached savegame(I needed to zip it because it tells me "invalid file") and screenshot from game few days before. Cheater used "dron" nickname in today game.

Unfortunately I am not able to see anything wrong in this save game. I loaded it and joined two different times, once as "dron" and once as "agr". As "dron", the naval summary screen shows five fleets each 1/7 ships. As "agr", I can see one fleet of "dron" which is a normal fleet, 1/7. If you search "jailbreak" in the forum, you can find the instructions on how to open this save game and join as any player.



Some people have said that the 0/9 fleets happen when the game gets out of sync. Suppose one player destroys a second player's fleet, but the game is out of sync. It is possible that a third player may see the destroyed fleet as a 0/9 type fleet. In case you see this again, can you tell if the game is out of sync? For example, suppose the host declares some local problem, saves, and exits; then loads the game and players rejoin. This should put everybody back in sync. Do the 0/9 fleets appear right away? It is also possible that the cheating player is using a tool which modifies the game memory during play. It is hard to catch that.



If we can track down this problem and reproduce it, I am sure the dev team can fix it.

I didn't seen any 0/9 fleets desync in that game too unfortunately. I doubt it is a cheat in most times, however it may be part of cheating. Cheater was just player with all traits. He left the game just after I told that I'll send save game to ES forum. May be it was better to do this silently. But I warned him before game that I suspect that he is cheater anyway.



Sometimes you can't reload desynced game(dropping to main menu), sometimes desync disappears after reload. I didn't see any desync happened after reloading game. Devs should play a long game with 6+ ppl on fast speed settings. This desync is hard to reproduce is because it disappears after reloading



I think it doesn't matters about battles. It is somewhere else. In first game with cheater I was the first player who met the cheater - I identified his just in few seconds - all traits + 0/9 fleets, no battles with me before. In secong game I was the first player who met the cheater too, but game is not desynced, may be it is because he is getting smarter and not desyncing the game at start.

Wouldn't a personal ignore-list help this somewhat?

So that people who you think are cheaters can not join your

games anymore? Just have it fetch the person's steam-id and

add it to a list which prevents them from joining games you host.

davea wrote:
Can anybody show how to create these 0/9 fleets? It should be impossible. If we can track down a bug/exploit which allows this, and then fix it, at least that will be one solid step to preventing cheaters.

I was able to semi-duplicate this in a SP game using a memory editor. I found 5 variables used for the current fleet size. 4x standard 4bytes that seemed to be used internally, and 1x float that was used for the display to the player. Altering the display variable let me overload fleets, altering internal variables had mixed results. I do not really care enough to recruit a friend to test the results in MP, but I have a feeling that it might be one avenue to do this. Further, messing around with variables like this would cause frequent desyncs and crashes. Considering in my 5ish MP games with friends since release I have not encountered a single desync or crash, I have a feeling people are messing around like this in public games.

Cheater.zip



Sry no internet acess for almost 2 Weeks but here is the save game from my First Encounter with that Cheater it seems that a reload deletes the 0/9 Fleets...but i dont think they ere just Desyncs cause he used them and destroyered several Scouts with them.



Even so...i think he maybe manged to make a better start Position for him too. The Systems and Planets are just too good...i played over 230 Hours in Multiplayer and never saw such a pocket and i heared rumors that it is possible to manipulate your starting position.

Sovereign wrote:
Sry no internet acess for almost 2 Weeks but here is the save game from my First Encounter with that Cheater it seems that a reload deletes the 0/9 Fleets...but i dont think they ere just Desyncs cause he used them and destroyered several Scouts with them.

Sorry, the OP is from user "agr" and this post is from a different user, at least a different account. I loaded this save game and joined as "lost in space" agr. This player has the highest score. The dark green color "Romulans" is the only other player whose systems you have contacted, and no fleets from this player are visible.



Which position appears to be the cheater?

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198022837960

Steam profile of cheater.

I was the Green Player with the Romulan called race the blue one is the cheater and normaly i have fully scouted him(the name seems russian...and he is russian cause the fleets you cannot see anymore were filled with Ships named with Cyrillic letters )!...And yes this is his Steam Profile!



Nice too see the Cheater makes sreenshots of his cheaty victorys...such an *Censored by my self*

This player uses custom russian localization. It may cause different bugs and strange things, when playing with English version player.

WiZz wrote:
This player uses custom russian localization. It may cause different bugs and strange things, when playing with English version player.

I doubt that russian localization can provide cheating advantages for player who using it. Even unofficial

So, I may have missed something in the posts but the synopsis seems to be 3 pages of ....he's cheating here is his name, here is his handle and even though multiple folks have looked at the files and do not see a problem it can not be a sync issue ......I have to get them banned.



I vote...until evidence is produced - it is a sync issue - and since you personally believe otherwise...do not join games or stay in games with this person as a personal choice.

I have experienced it before and it was a sync issue and when the game was save and restarted it was all good again. But alas I did not save it for posterities sake for the devs to look at.

Well, with all starting techs, 30% more Dust and Science, increased Approval everywhere and increased FIDS per population to name just a few, this might well be possible.

I'd take note of his Steam ID and share it here. I don't know if there is much the devs can do yet to stop cheating, but if we had a list of known cheaters here on the forums, people would be able to avoid games with them.



To my knowledge, this is the best we can do for now.

I can confirm this. It is difficult to find his steam ID because he is changing nicknames every 10 sec.