So, battle-simulating and tracking is perfectly fine?

    • So, battle-simulating and tracking is perfectly fine?

      This issue kinda started last week, where a player all out of random managed to find my colony cluster hidden somewhere in a completely different solar system. This was highly strange to me how someone managed to find all that, especially how it was the very same person that had been spamming me with spy reports over the past 2-3 weeks.

      Now today I got an attack from him that completely wiped out my defenses, and hardly made a dent into his. Upsetting, but that's the name of the game. Best case scenario happened and that is that I got a moon out of it, at least something to be happy about.

      However, soon after, I suddenly got him into my message, bragging about how he 'simulated' the battle, telling me he used a program that allows users to pull out all information of a player (a.k.a, player tracking) and simulates battles for best-case results. Highly peculiar, because that would be outright cheating, pulling out information out of a third-party site that the game itself doesn't provide. Though he said, 'it is perfectly fine to do, a lot of players do it'. This is where I started to look very sceptical on the situation. So I've been taking a look into the rules, and under bug-abusing / hacking / scripting, it says one very easy rule: "2 - Using a program or site as an interface or assistance between the player and the game." This clearly says that players are NOT allowed to use a site or program to help better their performance in the game or create an advantage point for them.

      Which makes me wonder; if the rules say it's not allowed, how come players are under the easy assumption it's fine to do, and that the higher end of the players are using it too regardlessly? Maybe not so much for the battle simulating, but tracking out all the planet information and locations by just writing down a Username and universe number, seems really not okay.
    • Universeview could be the tool he used. Its an allowed script. The information is taken out of the game and is available to all universeview users.

      And there is no hidden system or galaxy. One can just go through all systems in the galaxie view and find your new positions. Universeview just makes this easier.

      And the german rules state in the last sentence of hacking/bugusing that exceptions of this rule are stated on the board.
    • This clearly says that players are NOT allowed to use a site or program to help better their performance in the game or create an advantage point for them.

      I hope that you understand that using a calculator or Excel helps the performance in the game, and that should be perfectly allowed.
      The API of the game gives some info, using a program to process that info is perfectly fine too. Moreover, it's probably a public tool like AntiGame or UniverseView, but even if it's private, what problem do you have with someone having the knowledge to program a tool that simulates many different battles to give the best ships to send? May have been him just bragging, but if it's true, I don't see a problem with that.
    • @Lilith Odd. Though, 'because it's available to all universeview users' doesn't really warrant if a tool is fair towards non-tool users. True, the universes aren't hidden, but hidden =/= invisible. Hidden means it's "out of plain sight". I've been on a lot of strategy games, browser or client, PC or mobile, and they've been taking location-tracking rather serious. I'm not sure what reason there is to be the sudden dent in the curve. He hasn't said to me what he used, regardless.

      @Minion how does either of those samples even closely relate to pulling ingame information towards you on a silver platter? Excel doesn't let you browse 2.500 pages within 1 second and pull out all the planets owned by player X or Y, or alliance X or Y. Sure, as a player yourself you can do it too, if you invest a major amount of time.
    • You have the api, with the player.xml, highscore.xml, and universe.xml, etc., which show quite a bit of information. The planets are updated once a week (wednesdays if I remember correctly), so you have to put your strategy into play taking that into account. If you have a mobile planet and you don't want it to be seen automatically, you have to colonize after that weekly refresh.

      That said, with tools like AntiGame, if you see his planet the info is updated locally. So it's everything kept up to date in case you see the hidden planet.

      Not that I'm advocating for this characteristics of the game, but it is what it is, so if you want to hide a planet from “plain sight” you need to take into account that “plain sight” means something different nowadays that ten years ago. (Ten years go there was GalaxyTool which was a powerful tool, and many many many alliances had a daily refresh of the whole universe by their members, just different strategy.)
    • At least back then (I'm from 2004, and even when I returned somewhere between 2007-2010, it was nowhere near as popular on the dutch servers), it had to be an investment of time, getting a specific coordinator. Back then it was a really good strategy to claim a solar system for yourself somewhere very far away and build your economy there, while using your home planet + one additional colony as a frontline outpost. But now, why bother getting some planets for an economy if people can easily find it and colo-raid it? Just in my opinion, it's weak to hide your strategy behind a third-party tool that the game itself doesn't provide. Why doesn't the game let us see all planets when we click a player's name if it has been okay with third-party planet-tracking all this time then, given it's so influential for the past 7 years?

      I've never been using third-party software to gain advantage into strategy games. Reason being, because that's not the spirit of play. Work with the tools you're given. I'm not exactly at ease with a game then that turns a blind eye to it.
    • Personally i don't like existing of public api files (or simulator, etc I should prefer any user try to do the best with his skill, don't using skill of others), but GameForge decided time ago to publish them, so it is normal that players will use them and search help by them

      example for uni 1 of .org
      s1-en.ogame.gameforge.com/api/universe.xml
      s1-en.ogame.gameforge.com/api/players.xml
      s1-en.ogame.gameforge.com/api/playerData.xml?id=103353

      Here list of tool and also simulators
      Ogame 6.0 Tolerated Addons, Tools, Scripts & Skins

      At the moment your discussion hear as complain or question if there is a break of rules, but don't sound a suggestion, so I move of section.
      If you have idea to propose to remove api files, then open a your suggestion here Suggestions

      The post was edited 1 time, last by TGWo ().

    • @Uri I'm not saying I like the changes, but as TGWo said if you want to suggest to remove the APIs open a suggestion, and yes, I would prefer if they were hidden, but since many many things have changed it's not easy to decide what's the best course of action.

      Anyway, there are things that are nice to have. I have installed topraider and infocompte in one browser to have info about my account and about my farming, there's nothing wrong with that IMO.
      Plus AntiGame makes it quite easy to just live as a miner in ogame, so that is the one that I actually use everyday, and like me, many others.

      And as you say, if you click in the name of a player in galaxyview you get the info given by ogame about that player and get all their planets.
    • TGWo wrote:

      Personally i don't like existing of public api files (or simulator, etc I should prefer any user try to do the best with his skill, don't using skill of others), but GameForge decided time ago to publish them, so it is normal that players will use them and search help by them

      example for uni 1 of .org
      s1-en.ogame.gameforge.com/api/universe.xml
      s1-en.ogame.gameforge.com/api/players.xml
      s1-en.ogame.gameforge.com/api/playerData.xml?id=103353

      Here list of tool and also simulators
      Ogame 6.0 Tolerated Addons, Tools, Scripts & Skins

      At the moment your discussion hear as complain or question if there is a break of rules, but don't sound a suggestion, so I move of section.
      If you have idea to propose to remove api files, then open a your suggestion here Suggestions
      I've just taken a look at s124-nl and I came across something really perculiar; On that API, my colony cluster isn't even there yet! So how did he know they were there? Whatever he used wasn't sourcing its info off the API then.
    • I will be honest I think that the universe.xml api is giving a bit too much information to the players.
      I will be honest I think that it would be much funnier to have chance of having planet that people don't actually know about, rather than, 'ouh i may just look into API and see what planets x person have'. This is making it much more easy to FS catch, and kind of takes away the surprise element as 'oh you have hidden planet at idk galaxy 8' or something like that. I think that it gives a bit too much power to find where specific player is and then for example focus at this player... also this could potentially encourage the players to exchange information in alliances, when focusing on someone or having alliance war
    • That's precisely the playstyle I'm used to and saw nothing wrong with. Of course people's creativity wants to exploit as much as possible and find/create tools to ease their invested time, so this was bound to be created in some time.

      The only thing I don't understand is that I took a look at the API and looked up my own planets. What I found strange is that there is a massive delay in the actuality of the information. (a.k.a, my colonies were unnamed still and I only had two.) While right now, they are long already named and I have four already. And I was spied as my fourth was created, which was over 10 days ago. So my question is; How did this player know my colonies were there, if the API didn't even have them registered yet?
    • in that file are you watching ?
      universe.xml should be updated any 24 hours if i'n not in error
      while playerData.xml should be updated any 7 days

      of course api file it is not the only way to search planet. An old metod is to move in galaxy while a script save any planets in a db............ more slow and boring (so worked galaxytool ). And this db could be shared at level of ally, or sometimes is public

    • TGWo wrote:

      in that file are you watching ?
      universe.xml should be updated any 24 hours if i'n not in error
      while playerData.xml should be updated any 7 days

      of course api file it is not the only way to search planet. An old metod is to move in galaxy while a script save any planets in a db............ more slow and boring (so worked galaxytool ). And this db could be shared at level of ally, or sometimes is public
      Yep! I'm talking at the Universe.xml, it's really outdated. It still says "Kolonie" at all four of them, while I name changed them more than a week ago. Given the spy reports were almost two weeks ago, that means the API didn't even know the existance of my colonies yet.
    • TGWo wrote:

      in that file are you watching ?
      universe.xml should be updated any 24 hours if i'n not in error
      while playerData.xml should be updated any 7 days

      of course api file it is not the only way to search planet. An old metod is to move in galaxy while a script save any planets in a db............ more slow and boring (so worked galaxytool ). And this db could be shared at level of ally, or sometimes is public
      It should be once a week. Otherwise it's just much more info.

      And to Uri, times have changed, I do prefer not to have that info (but that leaves organised people ahead since they will have the tools to classify). And, in any case, I think times have changed in other things, now you can relocate. In the past if you knew where someone had a planet, you knew forever, now it might change due to relocations, etc.
      So things may balance out a bit.

      And no, in both places you have 5 planets, one named Alpha, and four named Kolonie, the files were updated last week on tuesday and wednesday.
    • It's hard to compete against players that possess such tools, and I'm sure that I won't be using it either because I stand firmly against unofficial third-party assistance.

      concerning the API you just submitted; They're not even called "Kolonie" anymore since over a week. A day after I colonized the fifth planet, I named the colonies Beta, Charlie, Delta and Ekko.
    • Trying to hide a planet is not really trying to compete. You still colonize inside the same universe which shows all planets for everyone in the galaxy view. Hiding would be if new planets would only be shown after sending a probe into each starsystem.
      There is still the possibility of creating a colony (or relocating) every week, so attackers "have to" search more often.