Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: wulfie on June 17, 2002, 03:19:09 AM
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So alot of times, when you are dealing with very sensitive information, and the people you are working against are good at analyzing information, you try to deny them any information about how you beat them, their friends, etc. in any given instance.
A terrorist is caught enroute to do something bad.
No one tells the media.
Why?
Because that bad guy's bosses aren't going to know something has gone wrong with their plan until the bad guy has failed to check in for 72 hours, etc. That's 72 hours of interrogation and possible time for direct action for the good guys right off the bat.
Then, they don't know what happened to him.
Is he caught? Being chased and has been forced to go to ground at a safe house and is effectively denied all usage of comms to check in with his bosses? Has he gone to ground under a truck in a vacant lot because he couldn't get to a safe house? Did he get hit by a car? Is he out cold in some nameless hospital in Greece?
Where did he get caught? What country? If he got caught in country X then it was probably British SIGINT that provided the vital clues. In country Y it was probably the 'now friendly to the West' secret police.
Is he dead, or being interrogated in Turkey where the odds are certain he will talk when he's down to 4 fingers? Do you warn the rest of his cell to bug out? Is it worth the risk of your comms being isolated and you yourself having to shift position and maybe getting killed or captured while shifting position?
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A long time ago my Brother helped to catch a guy who was cheating in WB. Remember how very early in WB you didn't have ordnance package #s? How you typed ".bomb 500 2" to put 2 500 lb. bombs on your aircraft, assuming it could carry this?
Well, very early in the WB code this guy was flying the F6F all the time and typing ".bomb 500 -2" and taking 1000 lbs. off the weight of his F6F.
He was only using 1000 lbs. to 'cheat' with, so it wasn't really easy to pin him down. I know PYRO and HT and QUIZ were getting lots of complaints about "This F6F is retaining E way too well" or "This F6F was way too fast". They probably get alot of calls like this at HTC to this day. Very tough to verify. 'How did you know the E state of that F6F when it entered the fight?'...
So my Bro knew something was up. And what he did was dive on this F6F from 10,000' in a Fw 190A-4. And he took many screenshots and used his ammunition counters as a crude timer.
To make a long story short, he was able to help catch this cheater because he could prove to someone that this F6F was maintaining a speed of over 415 MPH on the deck for something like 10 minutes. He suicided on airfield AAA to kill the F6F as it was landing so he could get the ID of the player.
The player was banned, for something like over a year from WB.
But my Bro was also told to tell no one the ID of the player, tell no one he was banned, tell no one how he helped to catch the guy, etc.
Why?
Well say you spot a cheater, who is using a technique that 10 cheaters are using. If the manner in which you spotted said cheater was made public, it's going to let the other 9 guys 'improve their technique', right? They now know one thing they have to defeat to avoid being detected by another player.
Say a cheater is caught and banned. He's probably told 'keep your mouth shut and you can come back in a year and we'll be watching your bellybutton really close'. You have to give him a carrot in a way, for good behaviour, or in spite he could just tell 200 people how to cheat and ruin the AH MA for 2 weeks until HTC can put off all development improvements to fix that one fatal 'bug' or 'loophole'.
So, a couple of really important things to remember:
1. If you do spot a cheater, and he really is a cheater, don't expect to find out about it from HTC after you send your proof to them. For all they know you could be a cheater with 2 accounts, testing to see if they can detect what you are exploiting.
2. Don't expect to hear from HTC that someone has been banned, or if they were caught cheating, or what they were caught doing. Public verification would lead to 500 2 week free accounts starting with people having a fun time screwing up AH for 2 weeks.
3. From semi-personal experience (talking to my Brother about it, seeing the screenshots, etc.) HTC has a history of taking cheating seriously, and of actively pursuing leads about cheating, and of 'taking care of business' when a person is caught.
Just like good guys vs. bad guys in the world of intelligence - you usually only hear about it when the bad guys get away with something.
Mike/wulfie
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I see your point, and it makes alot of sence. But I would like to see something like "Last year we caught 47 ppl cheating" or something like that.
Especially now with this invisible plane-issue.
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Originally posted by Hortlund
I see your point, and it makes alot of sence. But I would like to see something like "Last year we caught 47 ppl cheating" or something like that.
Why does it matter to you how many people were caught cheating... or attempting to cheat? If they ain't here, they ain't here. If they are, the won't be for long.
Originally posted by Hortlund
Especially now with this invisible plane-issue.
Do you even know the cause of this issue? No? Does anyone else? No? What makes you think it's easily reproduceable for someone who "wants to cheat"? If it ain't reproduceable easily, other than at random times, then it's hardly a cheat or anything other than a problem with an unknown cause.
-SW
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Originally posted by Hortlund
I see your point, and it makes alot of sence. But I would like to see something like "Last year we caught 47 ppl cheating" or something like that.
Especially now with this invisible plane-issue.
I was in the CT flying around for a while... I got in a fight with 3 higher cons and drug them into the town's ack and ended up flying away with 3 kills. The last guy I killed was polite enough to inform me that I was warping at very opportune times and he didn't apreciate it. He went so far as to say it was "warp on demand". The irony is... I went to watch the film of the fight and saw that this player had said the same thing to two other people in the course of 40 minutes.
The "47 people were caught cheating..." tag provides fodder for the people screaming "CHEAT!" everytime they launch. Now give them a "Yep.. this many cheated last month so I'm justified in calling you a cheater" card to go with.
My favorite: "I just call them like I see them"
AKDejaVu
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I know how it is done on my system, it is very easy to do and in my opinion would be very easy to block. I have already been in contact with Pyro on this issue.
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Does it involve a Linksys router VWE?
-SW
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No, I use a Cisco 2600... this is done with your key board, and I'll leave it at that.
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It ain't alt-tab, data is still being transmitted for your location.
-SW
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Nope, keep trying...
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Is it an alt combo? Not involved F4, cuase that completely closes your program and doesn't really work as much of a cheat. :)
alt-esc basically does the same thing as alt-tab, just minimizes the program while still transmitting data.
I dunno what else it could be. Don't really care though, just curious as to how it works as a cheat... if you could explain that(not how you do it, just it's effects), I'd just be satisfied with that.
It isn't taking screenshots, is it? I know that use to work way back in the day... but then they added how many screenshots you could take in a time period.
-SW
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I don't want to drive you nuttz but it isn't alt-anything, this does not involve the alt key.
After doing this the only thing visible is are the instruments and a faint outline of your cockpit.
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Hmmm, never heard of that one before. Only reason I was asking about it.
Oh well, as long as Pyro knows about it.. it will probably get fixed (if it poses to be a big problem).
-SW
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Originally posted by VWE001
I don't want to drive you nuttz but it isn't alt-anything, this does not involve the alt key.
After doing this the only thing visible is are the instruments and a faint outline of your cockpit.
LOL! The funny one is the assumption that this translates to an invisible plane on someone else's FE.
AKDejaVu
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It is not an assumtion, I tested it on one of our squad nights... I don't nor would I use it, I did it by accident and notified HTC so hopefully they can do something about it.
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LOL!
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Originally posted by AKSWulfe
Oh well, as long as Pyro knows about it.. it will probably get fixed (if it poses to be a big problem).
-SW
Oh, you dont think it already is? IMO this issue is more important than 1.10.
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The thing VWE is talking about is different than what you are talking about Hortlund. This "issue" has been resolved by quite a few people, and they have been using Linksys routers. If you are using a Linksys router... then chances are, you can fix it on your end.
What VWE is talking about sounds more like a graphics card corruption, not an actual invisible plane cheat.
-SW
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Uh?
Right now we have lots of people claiming to have been shot down by invisible planes in the MA.
VWE says he has been able to reproduce this (i e make himself invisible) and when he did, he was invisible to his squaddies. Now, if VWE knows how to reproduce this, what makes you think that others arent able to do the same thing?
To me that sounds like a pretty important issue to fix. Perhaps not to you, but if you look around on this bbs, you will note that there are others that feel otherwise.
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Only those players residing across the pond are being affected by the invisible plane phenom....the software is working as designed...case closed.
:)
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VWE is able to make his cockpit invisible to himself... is his plane really invisible to everyone else when he does this?
He's the first one to come forth and announce it... everyone else has just said that an invisible plane shot them down.. no icon, nothing. To VWE, his plane is semi-transparent... is there still an icon above him to everyone else? Why would there be a loss of packet location simply because his cockpit became translucent?
I've seen this bug posted before- a long while back... before the connection problems..., where the cockpit was invisible.. but this has been around for a while.. why the recent upstart of invisible planes?
What I'm saying is that these "invisible planes" are not the same thing as what VWE is saying happening.. and as I said, a lot of the people with these problems have posted they have Linksys routers... and the people who have tried to fix it by opening up more UDP and TCP ports, haven't had problems with invisible planes anymore.
Maybe the rest of the people have firewalls, and these UDP and TCP ports are also being restricted by those. So the problem may very well simply be not enough ports freed up on people's machines.
I have never had this problem, I run a 56K modem, I don't run a firewall when I'm playing AH, so all UDP and TCP ports are basically free.
So again, I say, simply because the cockpit is invisble on his FE and the other planes may or may not be invisible on his FE does not mean he's invisible on other people's FE.
-SW
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people are and misunderstanding the invisible plane thing
Everytime its happened to me or a squadmate "No one gets the kill" we all report (some have films) a 3-5 rapid pings then boom we are in the tower.
The rest I believe are jumping on the bandwagon to explain their piss poor SA.
It almost as if its a "mid-air" collision. And again it has never resulted in "you've been killed by xxx".
vwe why even post your "cryptic" message if not for attention.
go read nopoops post again. If you do know something then keep it between you and ht. Dont come to the board with "ha ha look what I found,,, oop its for me to know and you to find out"
The fact is with 400+ online and massive furballs and the apparrent impact of the current connections (atleast for some) their will be anomalies. Dont be so vain as to think some "cheater" is out there stalking you.
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Calm down, I didn't chime in to be all ha ha I'm special and your not. I just pointed out that it can be done and I tested it to see if it could be repeated. The message was cryptic because there is no need to let the whole world know. Also I think it would be an easy fix if you made this key combo just close the program. I'm not standing on my soap box calling out cheaters, I'm just saying this is what happend to me. Also this may be specific to my OS which is 2000 professional.
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alt F4 always makes my cockpit disappear :)
if a loser has to resort to such tactics to get a kill, so be it
I'm sure HTC will address it before it gets out of hand
My SA is so poor, I usually couldn't tell you if the plane that just shot me down was visible or not :)
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Originally posted by VWE001
After doing this the only thing visible is are the instruments and a faint outline of your cockpit.
.... hmmmm, I used to get this with my old ATI 8500 at certain resolutions. Didn't involve the keyboard... actually, I think it would kick in when I hit zoom then backed out again. Can't remember, but I'm positive it can happen.
...and no, I never took advantage of it.
I have no idea whether or not it made me invisible to other's, I kinda doubt it. It appeared to be a graphix glitch on my end. I did make the appropriate notifications.
I still think there are invisible planes... I don't think it's intentional and I do believe it's entirely a lag or server issue of some kind.
I've been flying along and taken damage from what seemed like nothing... no planes around. I checked my connx and it was terrible, easily enough to explain.
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I witnessed the rockets coming out of nowhere. I filmed it, and sent the film to HTC. I'm confident that HTC will fix the problem, but the film probably does not help in that regard (it shows nothing but buildings exploding for no reason).
The posts I've been reading recently, concerning frequent invisible planes, is probably nonsense for the most part. I can tell you that I have killed planes from as far as 3.5k with field ack, and from more than 6k with fleet guns (I tagged Nimitz' Arado from 10k once). I have even knocked the wings off of aircraft with the Shore Battery, and I'm not a great shot. In all of those cases a newbie might well have thought he was killed by an invisible plane. In fact, I can see how hysteria over this issue might make an experienced flier think the same thing.
Probably, ninety-nine percent of the 'invisible plane' claims are mistaken.
But, just to be on the safe side my film is rolling.
:cool:
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hitting enter 3x makes my plane invisible.
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Originally posted by Voss
I witnessed the rockets coming out of nowhere. I filmed it, and sent the film to HTC. I'm confident that HTC will fix the problem, but the film probably does not help in that regard (it shows nothing but buildings exploding for no reason).
The posts I've been reading recently, concerning frequent invisible planes, is probably nonsense for the most part. I can tell you that I have killed planes from as far as 3.5k with field ack, and from more than 6k with fleet guns (I tagged Nimitz' Arado from 10k once). I have even knocked the wings off of aircraft with the Shore Battery, and I'm not a great shot. In all of those cases a newbie might well have thought he was killed by an invisible plane. In fact, I can see how hysteria over this issue might make an experienced flier think the same thing.
Probably, ninety-nine percent of the 'invisible plane' claims are mistaken.
But, just to be on the safe side my film is rolling.
:cool:
Hahah... forgot about that. I've plugged a few plans with CV guns from WAY WAY out. Just by using a little educated guess about thier altitude and dumb luck. Hit a plane with the Big guns on accident once too lol.. now that was funny and I'll bet someone thought it was an inviso-plane hehe. Poor fella was just flying along... I had a pretty good arc going and suddenly I saw a hit sprite ... :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by wulfie
A long time ago my Brother helped to catch a guy who was cheating in WB. Remember how very early in WB you didn't have ordnance package #s? How you typed ".bomb 500 2" to put 2 500 lb. bombs on your aircraft, assuming it could carry this?
Well, very early in the WB code this guy was flying the F6F all the time and typing ".bomb 500 -2" and taking 1000 lbs. off the weight of his F6F.
IMNSHO, this is not cheating. This is gaming the game.
And the player was banned for this? :rolleyes:
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When I first started playing AH I was using a TNT2 Ultra.One version of it's drivers gave me a transparent cockpit.(I could see cons through the instrument panel and plane structure)..It also allowed me to see cons through mountains and when I would chase a plane on the deck,the nme would go invisable when it was less than 100ft off the ground.
I made several posts on this and was advised to change drivers and disable something on my card which fixed it.I don't know if this has anything to do with it,but that was the only time I ever saw in invisable plane...