Transport Tycoon Forums

How to ban a player using his unique id?

Why is this a useful feature? How do you guarantee that a player doesn't change its UID?

95% of players don't know how to change UID .

And the people who should get banned usually fall in the other 5% (the 5% that does know it, or just simply removes his(/her?) openttd.cfg)

well done, why not just tell them other ways of doing it, while your at it

Because the griefers already know how, and even if they didn't, security by obscurity is no security at all. You could also just remove the part of the code that saves and loads the UID, causing a new random one to be automatically generated on every restart.

I still think the best and most efficient way to reduce the number of griefers is to REQUIRE someone that makes a new company to enter a password before continuing. I would say that 90% of the troublemakers join a company of which the owner forgot to set a password. The other 10% start new companies and then block players or something, as they don't have the funds to do much else

As for banning a unique ID or IP address: Since both are fairly easily changed, it is going to be hard to properly setup a banning system using those pieces of information. I had to block a whole range of IP addresses in my firewall just because some ass kept on joining with a different IP address.

Well, how about a reputation system (optionally) combined with user accounts (for both clients and servers)?
Maybe a server could give a reason for bans and kicks. Likewise, players should be able to attach comments to servers. However, those comments should be publically visible, and include the source of the comment and how much points the commenter has.

If a player or server changes his clientID, his reputation will begin at zero again. I think this would make it less attractive to change your clientID - unless you're out to abuse, in which case your reputation will remain low.

The master server could be used to track reputation of both clients and servers.
If registration is implemented, a clientID could be generated by the master server and attached to the account.

I'm aware this creates distrust about newbies, but I don't see any other reasonable way other then having an admin present at each server 24/7. Most newbies will probably prove themselves as honest players or griefers soon enough, I think.

maartena wrote:I still think the best and most efficient way to reduce the number of griefers is to REQUIRE someone that makes a new company to enter a password before continuing. I would say that 90% of the troublemakers join a company of which the owner forgot to set a password. The other 10% start new companies and then block players or something, as they don't have the funds to do much else

As for banning a unique ID or IP address: Since both are fairly easily changed, it is going to be hard to properly setup a banning system using those pieces of information. I had to block a whole range of IP addresses in my firewall just because some ass kept on joining with a different IP address.

i second that - and would like to add that some 'griefers' though also appear as genuine players but as soon as they have too much money will flood the map - and that really pisses me of!

Expresso wrote:Well, how about a reputation system (optionally) combined with user accounts (for both clients and servers)?
Maybe a server could give a reason for bans and kicks. Likewise, players should be able to attach comments to servers. However, those comments should be publically visible, and include the source of the comment and how much points the commenter has.

If a player or server changes his clientID, his reputation will begin at zero again. I think this would make it less attractive to change your clientID - unless you're out to abuse, in which case your reputation will remain low.

and what hinders me to have 10 other 'griefers' in #ottd.griefers and we all give ourselves a good 'reputation'??

why do people assume that 'griefers' are lonely people?

dihedral wrote:

maartena wrote:I still think the best and most efficient way to reduce the number of griefers is to REQUIRE someone that makes a new company to enter a password before continuing. I would say that 90% of the troublemakers join a company of which the owner forgot to set a password. The other 10% start new companies and then block players or something, as they don't have the funds to do much else

As for banning a unique ID or IP address: Since both are fairly easily changed, it is going to be hard to properly setup a banning system using those pieces of information. I had to block a whole range of IP addresses in my firewall just because some ass kept on joining with a different IP address.

i second that - and would like to add that some 'griefers' though also appear as genuine players but as soon as they have too much money will flood the map - and that really pisses me of!

It would reduce the problem, not removing it.

dihedral wrote:

Expresso wrote:Well, how about a reputation system (optionally) combined with user accounts (for both clients and servers)?
Maybe a server could give a reason for bans and kicks. Likewise, players should be able to attach comments to servers. However, those comments should be publically visible, and include the source of the comment and how much points the commenter has.

If a player or server changes his clientID, his reputation will begin at zero again. I think this would make it less attractive to change your clientID - unless you're out to abuse, in which case your reputation will remain low.

and what hinders me to have 10 other 'griefers' in #ottd.griefers and we all give ourselves a good 'reputation'??

why do people assume that 'griefers' are lonely people?

You will have to say that an account can't raise more than say a single point every day or something then 10 people can't boost your reputation every time you get banned so you can go back into the game to spoil it once more.


But whatever happens we can't prevent this from happening. Every single attempt to prevent it will be public available due to open source and then somebody can figure out the weakness and it's not like we have hired 50 people to work around the clock to close all the holes.

[quote="Bjarni"]It would reduce the problem, not removing it.

I don't think ANY game has a foolproof system of keeping 100% of the lamers out. Even paid MMORPGs have people that will just sign up using a different creditcard and address and appear to be someone else entirely.

I do believe however, from experience I have seen on my server, that the password requirement would GREATLY reduce the number of lamers/griefers trying to cause trouble.

From a programming point of view, I would believe that this solution would be by far the easiest solution to implement, given some of the other, more complicated solutions that have been suggested.

You create a company, you download the map, server says you need a password (could be an openttd.cfg setting "require_password = on") and presents you with a box to put in a password.

Additionally, it would be nice for an admin to RESET (not read) a password.