Cheating

Oocheat OXZ

The Caduceus über-ship: 8 energy banks, front & rear lasers, 6 broadside mounted plasma cannons, 8 missile slots ...

Is it possible to cheat at Oolite? Does the term actually mean anything?

Definitions

Cheat: definition (from www.thefreedictionary.com)

1) verb - transitive: ie it is done to somebody else: I cheated you

1. To deceive by trickery; swindle: cheated customers by overcharging them for purchases.

2. To deprive by trickery; defraud: cheated them of their land.

3. To mislead; fool: illusions that cheat the eye.

4. To elude; escape: cheat death.

2) verb - intransitive: ie it is not done to somebody else: I cheated. I can add you, but I don't need to!

1. To act dishonestly; practice fraud.

2. To violate rules deliberately, as in a game: was accused of cheating at cards.

3. Informal To be sexually unfaithful: cheat on a spouse.

4. Sports To position oneself closer to a certain area than is normal or expected: The shortstop cheated toward second base.

3) noun

1. An act of cheating; a fraud or swindle.

2. One who cheats; a swindler.

3. A technique that exploits a flaw or hidden feature in a video game or computer program.

4. Law Fraudulent acquisition of another's property.

5. Botany Any of several species of brome, especially Bromus secalinus, an annual European grass widespread as a weed.

Etymology: Middle English cheten, to confiscate, short for acheten, variant of escheten, from eschete, escheat; see escheat.

1) So!

I'm not playing Oolite with anybody else, so I can't cheat them!

2) But! Can I cheat "Oolite" itself?

Oolite is not "fixed", like the rules of Chess or Cricket (although they are changed every once in a while). And, I can rewrite Oolite (if I have the skills) to do what I like, with the rules that I like - it is "Open Code". Or, I can use OoCheat OXP to give myself oodles of dosh, or even just write the extra dosh into my Oolite save file. But is any of this cheating?

3) And! Can I cheat the NPC's?

There has been much discussion on this subject, needless to say!

Overview

Fairness was important for Aegidian, our first Lead Designer. He wanted a balanced game which would present a fair challenge to the player. So whatever the player could have, the NPCs would get (but with 3 exceptions in his day as laid out below). For example, no Laser Coolers (because NPC should have them too, and then a swarm of ships with them would utterly marmalise the player).

But the ability to massively modify the game led to the rise of ships and weapons which became more and more powerful (Uberships and Uberweapons). Of course, the NPCs got them too. And this also happened hand-in-hand with an attempt to make the game harder for the better players who found the vanilla game too easy.

And there were the debates over the Energy Bomb (see below). And also attempts to create insanely unbalanced ships and weapons to show how ridiculous things were getting (eg. Killit OXP & the WonderWorm).

Player-centric gaming

The one area regarded by many as cheating is to have some advantage which the NPCs cannot get - category (3) above: that the playing field is unfairly tipped towards the player. This is tied in with the doctrine of player-centrism which it is felt that Oolite eschews (see Diziet Sma more recently - and Winston back in 2005 - all linked at the bottom of this page). Compared to Classic Elite, Oolite is indeed far less player-centric: it's not just that your ship moves inside the Ooniverse (rather than the universe moving around your ship - as in the game coding in Elite).

The debates about the Energy Bomb (see link - the player gets it, the NPC's don't) show the importance of this. They also showed how many people felt it was a cheat. While the people who wanted to keep the EB, wanted to keep faith with Classic Elite: it was one of the five weapons in the original game. Oolite being Oolite, it was eventually removed but preserved as an OXP option. Also see the debates over Norby's Telescope OXP in the 2013 thread below, and the discussion half way through the 2012 thread.

But there are still at least four areas where Oolite retains some of Elite's player centrism:

• the Torus Drive (NPCs don't have it),
• player Shields (NPCs just have the Energy banks, which the player also has),
• a 17% speed bonus for the player's Cobra versus the NPC Cobra Mk III's (350LM vs 300LM).
• Yaw. Yaw was added for player ships by Ahruman in 2007 - but not for NPCs until 2013, and even now only a handful of NPCs actually have it. See Roll vs Yaw crusades for more on this.

There was reasoning behind some of this. The lack of shields for NPCs was seen as a compensation for their lack of damageable equipment. The player's speed bonus enabled an easier escape from the dreaded masslock. Adding Torus drives for NPCs is horrendously complex as their behaviour needs to change to acknowledge this - see cim's experiment in SOTL Altmap. Cim never felt that he nailed it.

De-centralisation

And again, Oolite being Oolite, people such as Cim, Ngalo ("equal rights for NPC's"), Rustem & Dybal started writing OXPs to try and even the playing field, fighting against cheating in category (3) above.

Svengali was very much against 'cheating' (whatever he meant by it), and tried to create a set of icons in the 2013 thread to let people know what the effects of an OXP would be on game balance. He had already in 2010 developed the OXP Levelindicators to indicate what sort of Elite Rating one would need to tackle the OXP (if a ship or a mission for example).

Smivs seemed to feel that cheating was adding an OXP which made the modified Oolite easier than the Vanilla game - category (2) above. He devised the Gameplay and Balance Indicator to show this (in July 2014). Switech seems to have had a similar perspective but focused on upsetting the game balance rather than deviations from the vanilla game. Commander McLane (2012) felt that even tampering with the 7ly jump limit breaks the game.

It is probably worth while taking a close look at Okti's collection in the Guide to Unlisted OXPs and their reception by the community on the BB. Some of the relevant threads seem to have been deleted, but he seems to have responded to the criticisms, taking them on board - see his description of SunSkimmerPod.oxp. It may be possible that the friendly nature of the Oolite community has exerted a social constraint on "cheating" activities - at least where it comes to public activities such as publishing .oxp's.

There are other matters which used to be regarded as cheating. For example, turning away from the space lanes to avoid mass-locks and piracy. Might this have been a hangover from classic Elite's playercentrism where other ships were spawned directly in the player's path - thus evading the similarity to classic Elite is a cheat even though that aspect of classic Elite was itself a cheat! Is the logic there convoluted enough for you?

What is a cheat? Well, anything that gives the player an unfair advantage by breaking/ignoring/circumventing the 'rules'. That's the simple answer. Vanilla Oolite is a very well-balanced game on the whole. A novice will find it very tough, a more experienced player will find it challenging and rewarding. An 'expert' player will find it far too easy, hence the OXPs that re-balance the game in favour of the NPCs such as my ToughGuys. The problem usually comes when inappropriate OXPs are used. An 'average' player who finds the vanilla game a bit of a challenge sometimes (Anarchy and Feudal systems can be demanding even in the basic game for example) is well advised not to use OXPs that add more danger and hazards. This, I think, is common sense. And this can lead to a stupid 'arms-race' where the player feels they have to start using 'cheat' OXPs to counter the changes they have made to their Ooniverse. If you install OXPs that add all sorts of fancy missiles, and tougher ships, and more 'baddies' you should be confident that you can live in that Ooniverse. Just adding more OXPs that 'cheat' in your favour is not the solution. The solution is to remove the problem, not add to it. With regard to (Okti's) LongRangeScanner/LRS and JumpPlanner, yes of course these are cheats. They were originally designed as aids to OXP developers, not for the normal game, and using them in the normal game is frankly ridiculous. It devalues the game to the point where you might as well not bother! It's like playing Football (or any ball game) where the ball has a magnet in it which carries it into the goal whatever you do! LRS removes all the 'fun' of never quite knowing what you will meet next and the extra information it gives will affect the decisions the player makes about how they will handle a new System, to the detriment of the game. JP is a mega-cheat! Multiple system jumps without using fuel! Come on, for goodness sake, this completely destroys one of the cornerstones of the game. Great tools for developers, but they really don't have a place in playing the game, and surely that's what it is all about, isn't it? Playing the Game.

(Smivs (2012))

OXPs

"Cheating" OXPs

• OoCheat OXP by Thargoid (2010) - menu
• Killit OXP - uberweapons (missiles & mines)
• OMGLaser - uberweapon (laser)
• Energy Bomb see debate above
• Pirate E Bomb: see Okti's collection in Guide to Unlisted OXPs - blows up every pirate in the system and calls you a cheat!
• Vimana Ship Overrides gives extra cargo capacity, flight speed, number of missile pylons & energy banks.
• Target Tracker - super-Target Lock which obviates the need for any combat skill
• Telescope Extender & Gravity Scanner - Telescope was split after much debate into non-cheating & cheating portions!
• Long Range Scanner - see everything in the entire system - and jump to them!
• SE-X Drive - jump to the station
• Illicit Unlock OXP - still seen as a cheat? (see below)
• Ubership - for a collection of these
• How to tweak OXZ's - tweak stuff to make it uber
• Invulnerability to lasers

Anti-cheating OXPs

Ships: Note that Aegidian originally improved the player's speed to allow escape from Masslocking!

• Fair Cobra III by Cim (2012) upgrades the speed, energy and energy recharge rate of NPC Cobra IIIs to match the player's.
• Jane's Galactic Shipset by Redspear (2021) includes a reduction of the player's speed to that of NPCs
  
  

Shields: Note that Aegidian originally removed NPC shields to compensate for their lack of breakable equipment.

• N-Shields by Ngalo (2016) - see Ngalo. Includes a "fair emulation" of the player's shields
• Military Shields Ships OXP by Rustem (2018). Grants equivalent military style shields to some NPCs.
• NPC Energy Units OXP by Dybal (2020)
  
  

Torus Drive

• TimeSlip by Norby (2013) removes the Torus Drive and replaces it with Time Acceleration thus keeping the "speed" of the game, but not the advantage over NPCs.
  
  
• And while there is an OXP which award Torus drives to NPCs (Synchronised Torus OXP) - it is only for ships are friendly to the player and travelling with him in a convoy.

Yaw

• Yaw Boosters by Phkb prevents Yaw-ing until the Yaw Boosters are bought for 2,500₢ at a system of TL13 or better.

Weapons

• Q-bomb AI modification by Rustem (2017) allows NPCs to use their Q-bombs too!
• Skilled NPCs OXP by Cim (2013) allows NPCs to be much more skilled than in the Vanilla game
  
  

Death

• Penalize Death.oxp: 3 OXPs making death hurt in various ways (2012). By Spara.

Player-centric OXPs

These are not cheating per se - but create stuff depending on the actions of the player.

• Deep Space Pirates creates pirates only along the path the player is travelling in deep space - nowhere else.
• Deep Space Dredger does the same for Dredgers (but BigShips OXP adds yet other dredgers independent of the player)

Links

• BB thread Winston on player-centrism (2005)
• BB thread 2005/6 when flying an NPC ship was felt to be a cheat (even though Illicit Unlock OXP came out in 2005). This taboo did not last. See here (2011 - the feeling was already a minority feeling). And notice the Category at the bottom of this page which excludes Illicit Unlock (created by Jaz in 2013).
• BB thread 2010 altering your save file (see 2021 comments by Tsoj & Stranger).
• BB thread 2012 discussion in middle is based on player-centrist assumptions
• BB thread Confessions of a cheater - WARNING: contains spoilers (2012)
• BB thread 2013 more focused on cheating OXPs (and with links to other relevant threads)
• BB thread 2015 Diziet Sma on using Cheat OXP
• BB thread 2015 Smivs on why Laser Coolers would constitute a "cheat"
• BB thread 2015 Tweaking your ship to make it Über
• BB thread 2015 COMPETITION: unbalanced oxp-uber-mega-weapons!
• BB thread 2017 rather short - but recent

• The subtle art of cheating - soliloquy on altering an .oxp (2011)

Ubership