cheats

Im not aware of any cheats, but i do know you can very easily hex edit the save files to give yourself much more money

why would you want to? the game wouldnt be fun if you had to cheat to win

to each their own...I love to cheat sometimes, but not all the time

~SDC~

If it's that easy to cheat (i.e. just hex edit a saved game), doesn't that kind of ruin the integrity of the Metaverse? It's probably impossible to keep it out entirely, but hopefully there are a few safeguards to minimize it.

Cheating by itself I have no problem with, but when you're comparing scores with other players, that's a different story.

Agreed. I don't mind at all if they decide to put in a few in-game cheats you can type in the console, as long as they don't count towards the metaverse. I wonder how Stardock is going to be able to tell if someone hacked their game for a higher score.

I'd like to think strategy gamers are a bit brighter than the average Joe Gamer, but sometimes smart doesn't equal honest.

Stardock has stated that they are not including any "designed in" cheats in the game. Also, the AIs don't cheat (personally I don't count giving the more intelegent levels of AI extra bonus points cheating).

Stardock has, from time to time, posted some of the ways they are going to discourage user designed cheats, including exercising approval steps before submitions to the Galciv library appear there, and code within the metaverse submissions to detect the use of unapproved user mods. How extensive these methods of cheat detection are, or will become, I don't know, but Stardock already has some experience with how nasty unapproved user mods can get with their MP game "Stellar Frontier", and have told us to expect direct action to suppress cheating where they can.

~SDC~

Read..."there will be some attempt to control cheating, but don't bet on it". I suspect there will be some level of credibility established within the community itself - over an above whatever methods that may be invoked from SDC itself with the metaverse.

Some folks have simply got to exhibit their "mastery" of the situation and show good. Once that phase is accomplished and hopefully ignored, the rest of us can get on about it. The beta testers and early users will have to establish some level of credibility. They know what is realistic and how to establish a reasonable expectation. But one caveat... don't kill the truly orginal one who succeeded where no one else did.

That said... I can see a point for some cheats in some games. My view is from the perspective of available personal time to develop the necessary skills or, more often, to provide a "cushion" while learning. But at the end of the day, I would get no satisfaction from a "win" due to some scurious means. What's the point?

I have played many many chess games in public - won and lost - but the satisfaction of winning in public is, to say the least, rewarding. Losing can be a learning experience too. But I like winning - fairly.

Just MHO

AA

During the beta stage there were some cheese (cheats) that allowed to prolong the game to exercise the different situations of the game, such as more money, more powerfull attack population.
The delayed release of the game allowed for "play testing", and the game going out on the 26 is clean, meaning as free of bugs, and many, many playability changes (improvements).
Once the game is release, I would support a few documented cheats to help with learning the game. That would reduce the learning curve, and presumably delay the
"give-up" factor at the higher difficulty level.

On the other hand, for competition (metaverse), the playing field HAS to be level.
Same goes for the olympics.
Anyway, one of the stated objectives for the metaverse, is to extract as much information from the best games, to improve the AI's.
So podium game submitted that would turn out to contain cheats would be pretty dishonorable for the submitter.


~SDC~

What do you need cheats for. This has to be one of those rear games that you really don't need to use cheats to win.

I agree with Ancient Warrior some times I just want to play a god like empire and crush enemies. Of course not sure how that would factor into metaverse.

AncientAge - Thats because you are palying to win. What if your just playing to let off steam or to kill some time. If I want a true challenge I will play a game against a human.

To learn the game, or to have a truly satisfying unmercelous "crush them" game, set the AIs all on the lower intellegence levels. The metaverse makes adjustments to your score for what level of AIs you use.

For a very challanging game, crank the intellegence of the AIs to the maximum, but I doubt you will be able to win the first few times you do that.

~SDC~

Well...it IS possible to tweak the ship stats and stuff. But off course these changes would apply to AI players as well

Asmodean

My opinion is that I'd rather see "official" in game cheats (which set the save game to not record to the metaverse for example) than to see five trainers pop up next week which "taint" the metaverse's scoring system.

What's fun to one is not to another. If some want to cheat (for whatever reason), then make it "official". If you don't want to cheat (and there were in game cheats) - then simply don't use the cheats.

Personally I like to play the game thru a couple of times before cheating. But I also don't mind losing from time to time. Not much fun to me if I never lose. Of course, sometimes I feel like "it's a game, and let's see how those sharks stand up to 50 terror stars" (or whatnot).

Just my opinion. Thanks

~SDC~

Asmodean_dk:

Yes, but not if you're the only player who already has those ships. It wouldn't be too hard to get corvettes before anyone else, then give them godly stats *and* boost their resarch cost through the roof, or even just save at the start of your turn, tweak the stats, reload, play your turn, save and untweak...

Presumably Stardock already has measures in place to prevent such evilness... err... I hope.

The input files are only read in once, so the AI will be able to use all your edited files, probably better than you.

ahh cheating the one thing that truly destroyed counter-strike for me, I personally think if you have to cheat to beat a game then you are not a true "Gamer". You may just be a casual user and probably doesn't care about scores just with having fun. For those people I would say just play the game on the most basic settings and you will have a blast. On the other hand you have the not so true "Gamer" the one that cheats online, these are the people you used to make fun of in highschool, the guy who never had any friends, or could also be that pimple faced 13 year old kid that thinks hacking is cool. They are some what good at the game but not good enough to beat an real elite player, so they have to resort to other means.. Cheating.. So to all those wall hackers and aimbot users one day you will not be able to cheat, then what will you do? Ahh I know.. nothing..

~SDC~

CariElf:

You mean the data in the input files are saved as part of the savegame fileset? So one-the-fly mods are impossible?

Good

Do the savegames have checksums or something to stop people tinkering with them?

Umm, no...it doesn't save the current stats in the save game file. So if you shut down gal civ, change the files, then start the game up again, it will use the new files.

The savegames currently don't use checksums, but they're in binary format so it requires some effort to tinker with them. You have to figure out what byte the different variables start, etc.

So is there any way for the Metaverse to tell if someone, say, went through and boosted all their home-system's planets to class 40? Or shifted 3 or 4 yellow stars into their home sector for easy access?

Not, of course, that I would ever do such a thing (even though I now have the technology )

Hmm... I suppose simply saving the seed for the galaxy's generation would suffice to check for that sort of jiggery-pokery.

'So is there any way for the Metaverse to tell if someone, say, went through and boosted all their home-system's planets to class 40?'

It probably doesn't check, but that one's rather easy: The highest base class a planet can have is 35, and that would have an entry in the events data file as well.

Don't worry, I'm going to have to be changing the save game files soon anyway to optimize the loading process. Then you'll have to learn NEW ways to cheat.

Splendid!

Actually, I started out just cobbling together a bare-bones scenario editor and it sort of got out of hand , but ISTR Brad mentioning something about an offical one being on the horizon.

~SDC~