Infrastructure sharing 2.1.1

[Hirundo]

To prevent cheating, ...

How does such a system prevent cheating? (Setting a ridiculously high price to make yourself rich at the expense of a second 'mule' company.)

Also, the idea seems rather complex to implement and test, and *someone* would have to do that.

[John]

Main problems with this patch are social.

* It's very easy to cheat the system to gain lots of money at the start.

The only current way around this I can currently think of is to make money charged proportional to train profit.
Now, a "simple" change of replacing the rent paid by trains to "infrastructure owner takes XX% of annual profit of train"

Obviously this won't be fair - as it doesn't take into account how much a train actually uses your tracks.

So how about a (perhaps) minor change in the way track rents are gathered:
Currently, when a train drives on a piece of track a set amount of money goes into the infrastructure owners bank.
Instead, could this be added to a meter (and called 'tokens' instead of money) - which also collects 'tokens' when a train drives over its owners own track?

An example:
Train A goes along 44 track tiles of its owner, then 12 tiles of player b, then 50 of player c, then 34 of its owner again in one year.

These all get added up, and at the end of the year the calculation takes place:
Train A travelled over a total of 140 tiles.
Of these, 78 were on its own track (56%)
12 on player b's track (8%)
50 on player c's track (36%)

The train's annual profit is then divided up amongst the infrastructure owner with the above percentages.

Players can then set how much of the profit they wish to collect (0%-100%) - much like setting the rent.
e.g. player c is greedy and collects 100% (so he gets 36% of the train's profit)
player b is nice, and only wants 10% (so he gets 0.8% of the annual profit).

Obviously I have no idea how hard this would be to code, or how much the computer will slow down at the turn of the year as all the calculations are carried out. However, this is the only way I can see which prevents abuse - but it does stop people charging premiums for using their track (you can only get what is fair)

And if the train is sold? Well, just perform the calculation then...

* It's very easy to wipe out other companies who are using your infrastructure.

Are you talking about setting ridiculous rents? If so the above solution stops the problem.
Deliberately crashing? - well, the patch makes it easier then the old methods of butting up to someones track and stopping a train so if over hangs - can't really see a way round this, other then a fine.

* Is it okay to expand a competitors network without asking?

Yes, given the only places they can join will be terminal stations it should be sufficiently hard to do so with the competitor allowing it...

[edit]apologies if this has been discussed before, I tend not to keep 'that' uptodate with things...

[Brianetta]

* Is it okay to expand a competitors network without asking?

Yes, given the only places they can join will be terminal stations it should be sufficiently hard to do so with the competitor allowing it...

Or dropping track on the sly, during construction. Believe me, it's less obvious than you think in desert and snow.

[Jans]

An example:
Train A goes along 44 track tiles of its owner, then 12 tiles of player b, then 50 of player c, then 34 of its owner again in one year.

These all get added up, and at the end of the year the calculation takes place:
Train A travelled over a total of 140 tiles.
Of these, 78 were on its own track (56%)
12 on player b's track (8%)
50 on player c's track (36%)

The train's annual profit is then divided up amongst the infrastructure owner with the above percentages.

Players can then set how much of the profit they wish to collect (0%-100%) - much like setting the rent.
e.g. player c is greedy and collects 100% (so he gets 36% of the train's profit)
player b is nice, and only wants 10% (so he gets 0.8% of the annual profit).

What will happen if the train lost money? Did you think about the Data wich have to be stored one game year? I think one player maybe have only 100 trains. The timtable would change during the year or the owner use conditional orders. I think this isn´t possible. I think the owner of the track have to say XX pound for every tile and XX pound for every ton of cargo in the station. Allow entering trains to different tracks only if the owner of the train could pay.

[John]

What will happen if the train lost money?

Simple - then the track owner gets no money. If the train owner tries to abuse this by flooding the network with bogus trains, then the track owner simply stops sharing - and within the year the problem will have gone.
If people are paying for access for trains which are not making money, then large scale abuse will occur - someone sets up a second company which runs trains in circles until it goes bankrupt....

The timtable would change during the year or the owner use conditional orders.

Timetable changes don't matter. Yes, you can "abuse" the system by making your trains run extra loops on your tracks so the total percentage you are on your opponents tracks decreases, but if they notice they simply stop sharing with you, and the problem stops within the year again.

I think the owner of the track have to say XX pound for every tile and XX pound for every ton of cargo in the station.

Oh I agree, this is a much much neater solution, but until someone comes up with a way of preventing large scale abuse...

Did you think about the Data wich have to be stored one game year? I think one player maybe have only 100 trains.

No - I'm not a programmer, I was just suggesting an alternative. I wouldn't however bother working out the effect if 1 player has a 100 trains. The final solution has to cope with 8 players with 800 trains each...

As for data storage - well, it can be decreased. Either the monthly profit is used, or alternatively the next time the train cashes in money. I just used annual as the game collects the annual profits of trains, and this then bypasses the problem of trains running empty (and also reduces the effect of other types of abuse). However, the calculation can be done the next time the train cashes in money - thus preventing large end of year calculations or data build ups. This does however open up other avenues of abuse (people getting around not paying), but that is easily stopped by disabling access.

Allow entering trains to different tracks only if the owner of the train could pay.

Again, this will lead to abuse - yeah the train will enter the track when it can pay, but with clever orders it need never leave! And as such all the problems of abuse continue....

[2007Alain2007]

We all seem to talk about the abuse and cheating on this patch

why not the good ponit off it like working togiver to build a line from one side of the map to the other to make lots of moeny biger net works were players can up date and make there track parts better

player 1 has a better route for your train to go will you go this way or on your own track this is what i think is great about it

all the good parts of the patch out way the bad

and to stop players cheating every one has to grow up and play fair

[John]

We all seem to talk about the abuse and cheating on this patch

Because that is probably the biggest fact that is stopping this patch from entering trunk.

Yes, the patch is great when you are in a server with friends or ones with strict house rules - but for the majority of multiplier games it will get abused...

and to stop players cheating every one has to grow up and play fair

True, but that will never happen- welcome to real world.

[2007Alain2007]

But it has been said many times befor you can just stop others useing your tracks build buffers at the ends of your lines

But what other things are stoping this going on to trunk becuse i rember the frist ISshare patchs and that never ever made it in but that was a great patch

[Roujin]

You have to read more thoroughly. It has been stated very clearly some posts ago what the main problem currently is.

Imagine a server with IS enabled.
A new player creates two companies, of which company A is the one he intends to play with. He builds some circular track with company A, enables sharing his tracks to company B, sets a ridiculously high price for it. Then he switches to company B, builds some trains to run on company A's track.
After that he can change back to company A and start playing normally. Soon, company B will have negative money, but it takes some time until it will be declared bankrupt. Until this moment, company A will have a nice steady income generated out of nowhere and thus an unfair advantage against any other player starting at the same time and not abusing this problem.


Clear now? Note that others already posted that, I just summarized it.

[ever]

Let criteria X be the maximum speed on the road with playing children or so. That speed limit is 30 km/h. Going through there at 35 km/h is wrong, but is it as wrong as going through there with 130 km/h?

Let criteria X be not being allowed to kill someone. Is deliberately running over that person equally wrong than when that person jumps in front of your car trying to commit suicide. Should the driver be punished in the same way for both cases?

Alternatively, we can not talk about traffic accidents, and realize that the problem is that people aren't penalized enough for going bankrupt, and that one client can create as many companies as he wants thereby being able to give himself an infinite pool of money to work with. In the case without infrastructure sharing this manifests itself only in terraforming, with infrastructure sharing into money laundering.

The solution to this problem would of course be to only limit each client to one company untill that company is closed down. Once this company is bankrupt the failed player would have to wait a period of time before he'd be allowed to start over. As additional punishment to poor performance the period of time would increase for each successive bankruptcy.

To add variation and allow the players themselves to figure out what system would work best, the host server would also be able to select between the new feature described above or, if it is not to the liking of the users, revert back to the current implementation. The length of the intervals between new companies and the size of the increments would also be under his control.

Thus the players would be able to find a configuration which works best for the kind of game they play. For certain types of games certain configurations would become dominant.

I consider this to be an adequate solution.

[Alberth]

The solution to this problem would of course be to only limit each client to one company untill that company is closed down.

I consider this to be an adequate solution.

And how are you going to enforce this?
A unique IP address is not going to work. Multiple players may use the same proxy (eg of their ISP, or some router), or I may use a remote proxy to appear coming from another address.

[Roujin]

The solution to this problem would of course be to only limit each client to one company untill that company is closed down.

I consider this to be an adequate solution.

And how are you going to enforce this?
A unique IP address is not going to work. Multiple players may use the same proxy (eg of their ISP, or some router), or I may use a remote proxy to appear coming from another address.

exactly. To my knowledge, this has already been discussed and rejected as a solution for social issues (cheating) in multiplayer.

Furthermore, sometimes I want to connect multiple times to one server for testing something, and then it would be a hassle if that were prohibited by the server code. Other patch writers will probably agree with me.

[ever]

And how are you going to enforce this?
A unique IP address is not going to work. Multiple players may use the same proxy (eg of their ISP, or some router), or I may use a remote proxy to appear coming from another address.

Does it have to be IP based? I'm thinking more like once the client has already joined that all these things apply to him as a player profile, his IP is completely irrelevant.

In fact, player profiles is the way to go. Its how almost all modern games operate.

To my knowledge, this has already been discussed and rejected as a solution for social issues (cheating) in multiplayer.

Possibly you guys didn't think about it enough.

Furthermore, sometimes I want to connect multiple times to one server for testing something, and then it would be a hassle if that were prohibited by the server code. Other patch writers will probably agree with me.

And if you read carefully you'll see that I said it should be able to be turned off.

[planetmaker]

I'm thinking more like once the client has already joined that all these things apply to him as a player profile, his IP is completely irrelevant.

In fact, player profiles is the way to go. Its how almost all modern games operate.

So, how exactly will you stop a person to generate a new profile over and over? Or changing his identity? It's not like we want or even can ensure that OpenTTD to comes with a unique CD or registration key - that can only work, if people have to pay for it, or people can request unlimited new registrations and identities without penalty.

To my knowledge, this has already been discussed and rejected as a solution for social issues (cheating) in multiplayer.

Possibly you guys didn't think about it enough.

Good that we have at least one person who thinks for us and who knows the truth.

[ever]

So, how exactly will you stop a person to generate a new profile over and over? Or changing his identity? It's not like we want or even can ensure that OpenTTD to comes with a unique CD or registration key - that can only work, if people have to pay for it, or people can request unlimited new registrations and identities without penalty.

Well actually you can have a key that's based on the OS. Its what people do with 30 day trial software and the like.

But I wouldn't go that far, I'd let people create as many profiles as they want. As long as there exists some sort of hassle for them to get in and out of games we're achieving the goal, providing the feature can be turned off and customized. The best way to achieve this is through player profiles. The truly malicious will always be malicious and there's no way of stopping that other than IP bans which I think servers can already do that.

I'm yet to hear an argument on how the current implementation can possibly be better than the profiles idea. I'm hearing a lot of this wont' work cause of A, B and C where A, B and C aren't even valid arguments (see your own "omg its not possible to have people have a unique id" or alberth's "omg ip adresses") but what I'm not hearing is what will work. What ideas do you guys have to stop cheating in multiplayer

Its currently broken, lets think about fixing it instead of this whole:

Good that we have at least one person who thinks for us and who knows the truth.

anti-discussion, anti-feedback attitude. I'm bringing it up again. I'm doing so because I feel there is a strong case for it and that it was clumsily neglected.

I mean the devs are rejecting a great patch and a good improvement to the game cause of something that's broken not at all directly related to the patch. You have a multiplayer system that allows cheating infrastructure patch or not. The patch really can't be "improved" fix problems with the game beyond its scope.

Right now its the equivalent of saying this patch is no good cause bridges can't have signals on them.

[planetmaker]

Well actually you can have a key that's based on the OS. Its what people do with 30 day trial software and the like.

Then I propose to make an actual proposal on how to implement your idea instead of airy "one can have a key" which isn't void, if I delete my cfg file.

Good that we have at least one person who thinks for us and who knows the truth.

anti-discussion, anti-feedback attitude. I'm bringing it up again. I'm doing so because I feel there is a strong case for it and that it was clumsily neglected.

Sorry, I didn't know that going around and telling people that they don't think enough about something is a valid argument in favour of a unique ID.

I mean the devs are rejecting a great patch (...)Right now its the equivalent of saying this patch is no good cause bridges can't have signals on them.

I think that's neither just, true nor constructive discussion. They don't do that, but they're rightfully concerned about easy ways to cheat. At the same time easy and slim solutions are, of course preferred. A solution along the lines of unique player IDs is neither slim nor easy and totally out of the scope of this patch.

E.g. petern's money creation strategy is a good one - but shouldn't be supported, if this patch is going to be in the wild. It's like giving away money which you got from a loan; that isn't supported either.

As a starter, the next version will contain a setting which by default will make sure that a company which is in debt does not pay infrastructure sharing fees; that then plays along the lines of the give money action.

17:27 Revision 12008: [IS] Add a setting to allow / disallow payment of sharing fees by companies in debt
Swallow

[ever]

Then I propose to make an actual proposal on how to implement your idea instead of airy "one can have a key" which isn't void, if I delete my cfg file.

I don't know how it works, I think its in your registry.

You did understand what I meant though didn't you?

Let me explain it a bit better. Download your free trial version of adobe photoshop, wait for the free trial to expire. Try uninstalling and installing it again to see if you get another free trial.

You don't

The same technology could be used here. Although I DID say it SHOULDN'T even though you just seemed to ignore that...

. A solution along the lines of unique player IDs is neither slim nor easy and totally out of the scope of this patch.

Firstly, I said it shouldn't even be a solution. Quite specifically I said

But I wouldn't go that far, I'd let people create as many profiles as they want.

I said player profiles and how many companies you can have per profile should be.

Secondly I also said that it is out of the scope of the patch. Verbartim I said

You have a multiplayer system that allows cheating infrastructure patch or not. The patch really can't be "improved" fix problems with the game beyond its scope.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough.

My argument here is that rejecting the patch on the grounds that people can cheat in multiplayer is ludicrous. I think asking the patch to fix the multiplayer system so that people don't cheat is even more ludicrous.

In no way is whether people can cheat or not related to this patch. In no way.

Instead I proposed that the way the game currently handles multiplayer can be fixed by adding player profiles if you want people to stop cheating.

I will yet again repeat that I'm yet to hear a reason why the current implementation is better and that I'm yet to hear talk of a better solution.

[Alberth]

Let me explain it a bit better. Download your free trial version of adobe photoshop, wait for the free trial to expire. Try uninstalling and installing it again to see if you get another free trial.

You don't

The same technology could be used here. Although I DID say it SHOULDN'T even though you just seemed to ignore that...

Maybe this works at Win* systems. It won't work at Unix/Linux systems, as they don't have a central registry.

Firstly, I said it shouldn't even be a solution.

We all seem to agree that unique identifications is not a solution.
I don't know whether profiles have other uses, at the moment I think not and consider them equally unique as a username/password combination. Please explain the additional benefits if my assumption is wrong.

My argument here is that rejecting the patch on the grounds that people can cheat in multiplayer is ludicrous. I think asking the patch to fix the multiplayer system so that people don't cheat is even more ludicrous.

True. At the same time, the game also should not make it so ridicously easy that it is no fun to play MP any more.
In my view, that is the purpose of the discussion.

In no way is whether people can cheat or not related to this patch. In no way.

Not true, you are giving them new ways to cheat. Note that we have only seen the tip of the iceberg regarding cheats here (namely those that one can think of in about 5 minutes). If you put this patch in trunk and let everybody play with it, you will get an avalanche of possibilities to behave badly in the game and no way to stop them at all.

Note that I am not talking about people intentionally wanting to create havoc. You will never stop those. I am talking about users that know the game and use all possibilities.

If you'd add a button 'make me rich now' or 'give me permission to build in this city'. The latter users would find it fair to use such a feature. On the other hand, it would definitely destroy all game play, since there is no challenge at all any more.
The patch seems to have some of these buttons hidden in the game, by making clever use of the rules. The question is how to get rid of the buttons (by changing the rules of the game possibly).

Instead I proposed that the way the game currently handles multiplayer can be fixed by adding player profiles if you want people to stop cheating.

Now you contradict yourself. Above you said unique identification is not the way to go, here you propose to use that as a fix.

No, profiles will not solve anything. You can have several profiles, so you cannot stop people from cheating by using a profile.
(The trial version registry of photo-shop only works because it is a Win*-only program, and most office users find registry editing too complicated.)

Profiles as you currently propose it, won't work at non-Win* systems, and do not work to create unique identification of a player. They only add to the maintenance effort of the program and our server infra structure and are a source of bug reports by MP server admins "profiles do not work, please fix it".



Instead of relying on unique identifications, the game rules themselves need to be such that owning several companies in the game does not give you an advantage. That is imho the only way to stop cheating.

I will yet again repeat that I'm yet to hear a reason why the current implementation is better and that I'm yet to hear talk of a better solution.

It is better in the sense that there are less ways to cheat.
However, the current MP system is broken already. We'd love to fix that too, but we have no clue how to do that, as everything always ends up on needing a unique ID in some way, and that is not feasible.

The IS patch severely makes matters worse by creating many new ways to cheat (either by intent or by accident) possibly to the point that playing MP is no fun any more. That needs to be fixed if you want to keep an enjoyable MP game.

Personally, I feel this problem is part of the nature of IS, so fixing is probably less than trivial.

Albert

[Brianetta]

Let me explain it a bit better. Download your free trial version of adobe photoshop, wait for the free trial to expire. Try uninstalling and installing it again to see if you get another free trial.

You don't

The same technology could be used here. Although I DID say it SHOULDN'T even though you just seemed to ignore that...

No, the same technology cannot be used. It isn't possible. Restricting the use of software requires that the user does not have the ability to modify the software. Free software is licensed in such a way that the user has the right to modify the software. I run OpenTTD on a free operating system; there's no way the devs could implement such a measure without me un-implementing it pretty damned quick, other than radically changing the licensing of OpenTTD, which requires the consent of everybody who has a stake in its ownership.

Now, assume that you can't enforce by technological means a player appearing as two or more players.

[ever]

@alberth

Good response.

The difference between you and I and the developers for that matter seems to be that you guys think the way the patch works should be changed, whereas I see that as just painting over the cracks in the wall rather than fixing the foundation.

Now you mentioned that my call for player profiles is contradictory as it would require them to be unique to work. I don't think this is true.

My solution is based on the premise of deterrents. People are always going to cheat, they are going to find ways to hack, crack, and get around anything you can throw it them and that's a fact. The thing is can you make cheating annoying enough to deter most normal people away from the temptation?

What I'm saying is that by adding a player profile you're forcing people to leave the game and join again to start up a new company. That is one deterrent, the other is they can't have any control of their first company until they come back with the old profile. So they couldn't possibly enter an infrastructure sharing deal with two companies under their control unless they ran multiple installations of the game.

Once again it is possible but annoying enough to stop people from doing it.

You don't even have to limit one executable to one profile. Just as long as company control is profile based you're set.

To make it clear this means that no longer will you be able to just say start a new company and decide whether it is password protected or not and do this as many times as you want. It means you can only start one, and if you do no good you'd have to wait for it to go bankrupt (and then some, see original post) or join the game with a different profile. If player profile A wants to join company B or go into some sort of deal where mutual agreement is required then player A will send a request to company B if company B is currently unattended then player A will be notified "request could not be sent"

In other words there would be no way for the same person to sign a deal with himself using different profiles without running them simultaneously.

I see this is as deterrent enough. Sure its possible to cheat, but it always will be. Just depends how annoying its made for the would be cheater.

Other than deterrents there could also be rewards for keeping the same profile. I'm less keen on this idea but its one of the perks if ottd ever decides to switch to a profile system.

@Brianetta

You're basically saying that making a crack for the game would be legal under GPL.

Yes it would but it would require effort. Also its pretty funny how you ignored the fact that I said unique profiles for each system is superflous by quoting a post where I remind planetmaker of the exact same thing.