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.

@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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.