Urgent. Host Cheating: Problem and Solution.

[PhilD]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

Having a way for a host to be beyond suspicion is, IMO, necessary.

-Cherry

Well, aren't you getting a little overboard here?

Sure, it would be nice. But it's not "necessary" until the Grand Dominions Pro Tour opening, which isn't scheduled until a few months from now.

Seriously - securing PBEM games without severely crippling the option to deal with dropping players, seems a bit hard, and would require the Illwinter crew to probably search deeper in cryptology books than they wish to. There are techniques for "secret sharing", where a secret information (say, a master password) is shared among several participants, and at least X of them (any X) are required to cooperate to obtain such information.

With such a setup, a master password would be generated at game creation, and "shared" among players so that, say, all but 2 would be required to recreate it. The game would, of course, disable forced hosting. Then, when one or two players drop (if 3 drop at the same time, you have to give up), all players are contacted so that they let the dropping players be turned to AI (this could be included in the .2h files, and should be, IMHO).

Still, more trouble than it is worth, IMHO. I'd say this is less important than, say, the inconsistent battle replays.