How to identify cheater?

[Ryo]

Every few games the host kicks some Player because "he's a cheater". Everytime i ask how you can see a cheater is cheating, i dont get specific answers.

There are some players beeing REALY strong, eveytime i battle them, i loose. Even in 2v3 games with at least 2 good player on 3-Team. Some of there player are called cheater but, to me, their way to play isnt impossible without cheating, they are just realy (REALY) fast, super coordinated and ultra trained.

But i might be wrong!

Are there known cheats in WZ-MP?
What is possible to be cheated, what is not?

And, the realy interesting question:
How to recognise a REALY cheating player?

Someone told me "you see if someone is power-cheating if he gives you insane amount of power". But i think the most cheater wont be so silly ^^

[JDW]

Cheating? Nah! Must be just some sync problem from a bad connection.

Anyway, a suggestion, Join the #warzone2100-games channel on freenode to play against honest players.

If you don't have an IRC client (I suggest that you install one and learn to use it, very useful), you could point the browser to
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=warzone2100-games

Have fun!

[NoQ]

There are tonns of topics with the same question on this forum already. They boil down to:

1. Cheating is inevitable.
2. Cheating is pretty rare; there are much more rumors about cheating than cheating itself.
3. Cheaters are noobs. They produce crappy units and don't try to acquire resources.
4. Power cheating is usually very obvious; if someone rushes you with a ton of tanks on a low-oil map, you can always try to reproduce it and find out how much power it costs, and decide if it was possible to do that honestly. On the other hand, it's not unbeatable (see #3)
5. When you see a massive assault of scourge cyborgs approaching you when you've just invented a cannon, this is usually cheating.

[Verin]

Speed hacking is a common cheat, this speeds up the progression bar on research building and production.

Speed hackers usually get a TON of units faster than possible. im talking 50-150 in mere minutes.

[m1ndgames]

today i faced a cheater:

we played a ffa on 8c-fightclub, everyone was on t1 and bases where almost build up, when suddenly a player came and rolled thru walls and turrets with his leet dual mg tank... it blew everything to pieces, insane power for a t1 tank...

i dont think it was lag related or something, i guess this guy changed the code by far more then just fiddling around with cheats.c

[Zarel]

2. Cheating is pretty rare; there are much more rumors about cheating than cheating itself.

Actually, from what I hear, cheating is pretty common in the game lobby.

[KenAlcock]

I also see another alarming trend where newbies accuse regulars and pros of being cheaters, simply because they are vastly outplayed and they do not understand how they were.

There is another pro/regular player who likes to team up with me (and I with him), where we will face as many as 4 newbies against only us two. Now if our four opponents are all truly newbies, they won't stand much of a chance against us. My teammate and I know exactly what tech each other likes to use, therefore we focus research only on those things that are required to acquire that tech. One of us usually attacks while the other supports the attack and defends our bases. When I'm the "attack man", my partner usually produces units complementary to those I produce myself and he transfers them to me as my attacking force takes causalities. Therefore, the appearance to my opponents is that my army never dies. This is not true, my units do die, but my army is constantly being replenished by 20 factories, not just 10. So my attacking army doesn't really lose it's numerical advantage. New players often don't understand this and other team play strategies and they label players who employ them as cheaters.

Folks, if you are playing people with lots of stars and medals by their user name. They are either a cheater or a regular/pro. In either case, they most likely know a lot more about Warzone than you do. Be prepared to be challenged either way.


Now with the above being stated...

The other day, I joined a lobby-hosted, 3-player, Comp Stomp, T1 game that took place on stock map 8c-ThePit. My base was nearest to those of the AI players, two of whom rushed me very early on in the game. Since the AIs were maxed out in difficulty and also enjoyed a 5:3 research advantage over our team, I was easily overpowered when two of them attacked me. Still, some of my units (including a couple trucks) managed to escape and I started building an alternative base elsewhere near my allies. I asked my teammates to transfer just a little power. Within seconds, 100,000 power was transferred to me. Then I noticed that two of these players had already produced 150 units each on a map where each player gets 4 oil inside and 2 more oil outside their base area. And we were only at the T1 tech research level.

So I simply stopped playing and watched them rush the enemy. Then they must've felt sorry for me and transferred me units so I could enjoy the thrill of victory or something. I simply recycled them and continued to watch. This was an obvious case of cheating.

My advice is if you end up playing with cheaters to just stop playing, roll over and play dead. You see without the prospect of defeat victory is shallow and meaningless, so don't play the role. And if someone on your team cheats and you know it, do the same--don't enable them to have fun by cheating. Send messages to the opponents team to advise them of what's going on. Once their reputation gets out there, real players won't want to play with them.

[NoQ]

Actually, from what I hear, cheating is pretty common in the game lobby.

I also see another alarming trend where newbies accuse regulars and pros of being cheaters, simply because they are vastly outplayed and they do not understand how they were.

That's exactly what i was meaning (: I've seen around 3 or 4 cheaters in my life, and i'm being told i'm a cheater much more often.

[Safety0ff]

I also see another alarming trend where newbies accuse regulars and pros of being cheaters, simply because they are vastly outplayed and they do not understand how they were.

That's exactly what i was meaning (: I've seen around 3 or 4 cheaters in my life, and i'm being told i'm a cheater much more often.

Framerate dependence (of certain things) and sync issues must worsen this by a few orders of magnitude (on a positive note, newnet should fix that).

[NoQ]

Oops ... i think i've just seen another one
Even though i could've believed it's a bug.

[JDW]

@KenAlcock: So that's how you do it, eh? Heh heh. But all kidding aside, that sounds like a well executed team strategy. And as for the advice, sounds like it would work very well. Thanks for the tips.

[Safety0ff]

Oops ... I think I've just seen another one
Even though I could've believed it was a bug.

It's most definitely a cheat (unless it was a joke.)

[NoQ]

By the way, this guy (his name was MickMack or something like that) joined another game of mine and managed to talk as if he was me in the lobby (he had another name, but when he spoke, my name was prepended) (i think something like that has already been reported in this forum) (and looks like he knew he did it). Well, i just kicked him and it ended.

[3drts]

There was a 4v4 where I suspect an ally of mine was cheating.

The entire enemy alliance called all of us cheaters, I know it wasnt me, and I know a 8 player game will have a lot of lag....

But it did seem an aweful lot like his units just blew up in advance of my units, or my allies units.

I think we played better, concentrated forces better, etc, with 2 or three of us attacking one of them at a time, one after the other. I don't recall any of them getting much support from their allies, but each attack did seem to take very very light losses.
They weren't complete noobs, and had significant defenses and defensive units

It made me wonder if someone on our team was cheating, with maybe a 3x firepower, 1/3 damage to all allied units, or some sort of blow up all units within sight of a friendly unit every few seconds cheat.

The number of enemy units dieing when I spearheaded the attack, was ridiculous, I'd only have a couple units that actually fired (others were still out of range), and the carnage of the enemy army was ridiculous.

The enemy described it as "bam, alles kaput", and then a poor english translation of "bam, all my units explode"

I wasn't cheating, and similar things happen often with lag, and I think we played better, but I was suspicious that somehow one of my allies was cheating and blowing up enemy units with a cheat.

[JDW]

And, the realy interesting question:
How to recognise a REALY cheating player?

I have no idea, but there is a way to avoid cheaters, see

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