[Baron]

Originally Posted by HanzBlixz

We’ve come full circle. In 2003 a program was written for CFS2 by HA_13 (aka Ziggy) called Fairskies. Its purpose was to keep mods and cheaters out of servers that wanted a clean, fair (original files only) dogfight.

I collected information from many players and provided feedback to Ziggy on how many of the cheats where done. As the different versions of Fairskies came out I would show Ziggy the remaining holes that needed to be plugged. This was after the first Gulf War and jokingly people were calling me “Hans Blix the weapons inspector for CFS2” (The real Hans Blix was the UN weapons inspector trying to find WMD in Iraq). As a result and joke my callsign was changed to HanzBlixz.

At first Fairskies put a huge dent in the cheating that was going on in servers that required Fairskies. Flyers who were dumb enough to join a server and try their FM mods to see of they could get away with it were caught. Many of the cheaters stopped joining the servers that they played on in fear of being caught. Flyers that were dominating dogfights suddenly went from heros to zeros and started flying bombers in no shooting allowed games. Even more changed their callsigns or haven’t been seen since.

Some eventually found ways to beat Fairskies and started sharing the hacks with friends. Many of us were also flying IL2 at the time. When we showed Ziggy all the ways that Fairskies was being beat and how IL2 was different, a decision was made to stop further work on Fairskies and move on to IL2. Fairskies did stop some cheating in CFS2, but as a side affect also launched a mass exodus of flyers from CFS2 to IL2.

Ziggy didn’t have an easy task at trying to develop Fairskies in a flight sim that was so open. I remember him saying that MS would not help him in anyway, or answer any questions and that was a real hurdle for him.

If 409m server does not end up with a better anti-hack check then looking further into crazyivans suggestion may make sense. This depends on several things, including how far off Bob is from actually being released. Working with 1C or at least getting some answers to questions will be much easier than trying to get info out of MS and IL2 is already far more secure then CFS2 was.

If some of you do decide to write the a 3rd party protection program, have a place were everyone can report specifics and holes on how people can cheat. NOT in an open forum or to be shared with the public. Maybe with a specific contact at 1C, a dedicated 1C email address or something? The person or team that attempts to develop the anti cheat program can then review and compare the reports to see if they covered all the holes.

I have several friends that are members of the mod community that want to improve the sim and not abuse it. Some info and tracks I posted in this forum came from AAA members (and a former member) who don’t like the path that some of the modders are heading down. So, get the modders involved like Josse, MrJolly, Wasy and others to help with at least giving input. They have all declared how they are against using mods to cheat and they are aware that their mods are being abused to do just that. I think if you give them a chance they will help.

Happy New Year to all.

Best thing iv heard so far.