The Cheaters v1.3 released

[Nodachi]

I can confirm what Geo says, you can not use a negative number for a characteristic. That was the first thing i tried!

In the file I uploaded a 5000 point start would give the cheaters a defensiveness of 45, I felt that a high defensive value would be important to a race that likes to ram.

[douglas]

Hmm, seems I was wrong. I was going by the fact that another way I found to ignore characteristic limits that I'm not too sure I want to post, as it is possible for human players and would allow blatant but not easily detectable cheating on PBW, allowed negative characteristics. For example, I set up one race with a negative political savvy and started a test game with it and another race in the same system. When I had them establish a trade treaty, this race received negative income from the treaty. I just assumed that if it allowed negative values one way, there wouldn't be an explicit check for negatives separate from the supposed limits from settings.txt for any way of circumventing those limits.

[Urendi Maleldil]

I tried negative values for a few of the traits, but they didn't work. I assumed it didn't work for any of them. As for the v1.2 general file, I must have miscalculated the number of racial points required (since you can't set them manually)

v1.3 fixes some of the maintenance and construction problems. And I think they use all available points. Ships with all the tiny components on them cost a lot and were draining the empire's minerals supply. Except for the kamikazes, they're actually inferior to most other middle-to-late-game warships one-on-one. They are tough in fleets though.

[Urendi Maleldil]

douglas said:
...this race received negative income from the treaty. I just assumed that if it allowed negative values one way, there wouldn't be an explicit check for negatives separate from the supposed limits from settings.txt for any way of circumventing those limits.

You mean the race that made the treaty with the modified empire got negative resources? You may have created the first resource vampire race.

[Urendi Maleldil]

Cheaters v1.3 released

fixed resource problems
fixed racial traits file
added anti-cheat disclaimer

A few ways to check for AI_General file cheats:
A suspicious number of "non-existant" traits.
Maintenance Aptitude of "God-like" (can't happen in a normal AI_General)

[douglas]

Urendi Maleldil said:

You mean the race that made the treaty with the modified empire got negative resources? You may have created the first resource vampire race.

No, the modified empire itself was the one getting negative income from it. I also tried it with negative physical strength and repair aptitude, which are possible but not through AI_General files. The first made capturing planets literally impossible, and the second just made repairs never progress. If a player knew how to achieve these things and was willing to accept either of these handicaps, he would have effectively unlimited racial points and would be able to ignore maximum characteristic values as well. If I really wanted to, I could set up an empire with 2000% intelligence and use it in stock PBW games. As long as I made sure that the rest of my setup left enough points, assuming minimum values within the label's range for everything, to raise intelligence to "God-like" at 130%, and never established treaties higher than plain trade alliances, no one would be able to tell that I was cheating unless they bothered to calculate how much research it would take to get the techs they had observed me using and figured out that the result was literally impossibly high for that far into the game.

[geoschmo]

douglas said:

No, the modified empire itself was the one getting negative income from it. I also tried it with negative physical strength and repair aptitude, which are possible but not through AI_General files.

I'm still not clear how you are doing this? How do you get negative values to work at all? I have not been able to. Every time I set a value to negative it breaks and that value gets set back to 100%

Edit: Sigh, never mind. I figured it out. Yes unfortunatly this could be used on PBW to cheat. It would be hard to detect under normal circumstances during the game by the other players. However, if anyone had suspicions the game owner or the PBW admins could fairly easily verify it. It would be impossible for the cheater to cover their tracks after the fact. Someone despicable enough to pull something like this runs the risk of seriously damaging their reputation.

[douglas]

geoschmo said:

I'm still not clear how you are doing this? How do you get negative values to work at all? I have not been able to. Every time I set a value to negative it breaks and that value gets set back to 100%

I've been avoiding posting how I did it for fear of some unscrupulous forumgoer using it to cheat on PBW. I'll send you a PM explaining it.

[geoschmo]

That's allright. I figured it out and updated my post.

[Nodachi]

douglas said:
I've been avoiding posting how I did it for fear of some unscrupulous forumgoer using it to cheat on PBW.

I don't think we really have to worry too much about it but I agree with you about not posting the how to.

However, I can think of a good use for this trick, it would make setting up god-like races for theme games much easier.