Cheats find another way...

[embis]

The cheats have found another way to spoil this game for me.

Frankly, I never came across that many but I had my own solution to them anyway. I stopped playing them.

But, they have finally managed to spoil this game for me. They have forced the developers to come up with a security system that is so completely unforgiving that an error such as playing the file in the wrong copy of the game kills it.

It also means of course that I cant play a PBEM game through on my laptop and desktop.

I have had three consecutive email games fail now. In two the security system tripped for no known reason, (Yes, maybe my opponent was cheating and the system "worked" but truthfully I dont think so, much less care, I was enjoying the games anyway.

In the last one its going to trip because I played it through in the wrong copy of the game. doh!

Well I can take one copy off my system now so that reduces the chance of me making any more mistakes.

I really dont need a third party (the game) to decide to kill a cheat. I can do that myself, you can give me that responsibility.

Please please please tone down the security, alert me that there is a cheat about by all means, but let ME be the one that decides if the game should continue or not.

[DRG]

Then don't play secure if you want to play on your desktop AND laptop. If you trully belive...."maybe my opponent was cheating and the system "worked" but truthfully I dont think so, much less care, I was enjoying the games anyway." then why bother with secure email when you can play without it just the way it was done when SP2 was first released. Just press Continue instead of Password and you can play on all the machines you want.

Don

[Mobhack]

As Don says, and as is already pointed out in the manual, there is unsecure PBEM mode.

See the 4th paragraph of the "Playing by Email" section of the manual for the description of that mode.

An unsecure PBEM will be treated just like a normal save game, except that your opponent is a human and not the AI.

Unsecure PBEM is normally for "hot seat" games on the same PC, but is entirely capable of being played remotely on separate machines. It is saved as a normal save game and not in the secure PBEM slots. (So you will need to zip/unzip to/from saved games directory and not the (secure) PBEM games directory when exchanging files with a remote player).

Use unsecure PBEM if you trust your opponent, or simply do not care if he "cheats", just consider it much like a normal tabletop game at the wargames club with 1/300 or 1/200 models where both sides deploy forces on the same 6 foot by 8 foot table top.

There is no password protection on an unsecured game - since as with the original SP email games the players are free to change preferences, copy, reload and even to rename the game as a scenario and load it into the editor, or load it into a hex editor as the game data is unencrypted, then passwords are quite superfluous. One may as well let such a player load such a game and continue, if he is so inclined to cheat.

However - it is the only PBEM mode that will allow you to play on several different computers (e.g. play on your laptop and your home PC), or to play in several different installations on your own PC.

Cheers
Andy

[embis]

Thanks Andy and Don,
You must be getting very fed up with me banging on about this. I promise to shut up and go away very shortly. My intention here is not to anger or upset anyone.

I know about unsecure play. The drawback with that is that there is nothing at all to stop my opponent or me from accidentally, and I do mean accidentally, opening up the others turn and seeing the lay of the land.

My main point is in the last line of my previous post

Please let ME be the one that decides if the game should continue

I just dont understand why it is essential that the game halts if cheating, or behaviour that looks like cheating, is recognised.

Surely its enough to be alerted to the fact and then make your own mind up about continuation?

Its a suggestion, born out of the frustration of having seen three out of three pbem games go west, one just one turn in, not too bad. One about six turns in, mildly annoying and one about two turns from the end...infuriating.

[Pepper]

One workaround to this problem, which is infuriating, is to replay from the turn prior to the error. So long as your email saves outgoing mail, your opponent will have a copy of it to resend and you can try to replay it from there.
Not sure if that will eventually result in problems, but its an option ...
Actually -- if Andy or Don knows whether that approach will eventually fail I'd like to know now to scrap 2 games I have in progress, one where I accidentally tried to open game on wrong install and one where my opponent (I won't mention who embis, so as to preserve your privacy! =) did.

Here is the work-around I've used: Just take the last "good" save that you accidentally tried to play out of wrong installation, and reinstall that same file in the correct slot and go from there. I figure the correct install doesn't know what happened on the incorrect install, and unless the security system uses some kind of quantum-physics-esque "i know whats going on over there" string-theory type of knowledge, the game should be none the wiser.
Regards, Pepper

[Mobhack]

Why run separate installations - unless one is of an older exe say, when upgrading from the download version to CD edition say ?.

If you need one for your custom OOBS - then we provide the OOB file maid utility, so all you need do is put your custom OOBS into a custom sub-folder and then use the file maid to load the appropriate OOB set on starting up via GameOptions Utility tab "Manage OOB Sets" button to get to the file maid utility. See the manual for the details about how to set the folders up. (There is a default OOBS folder for the file maid to restore the standard OOB set from)

Cheers
Andy

[czerpak]

I run separate installs for tourneys e.g.