Also he may have moved it e.g. onto a new PC (his laptop, say) - which is a no-no as then the security registry info on disk is not transferred and you will get whatever garbage was in memory on the new PC. Secure PBEM games
must be played on the exact same PC they start on!.
He may also be sharing a particular save game slot for games between more than one player, if he has the free demo version and is restricted to 5 secure slots, perhaps. Once again, a
total no-no as the disk info gets garbled with loads of games A B, and perhaps C into the same slot. Loading another savegame into the slot usually nukes the stats. A secure PBEM slot must be
dedicated to that one game till its over and done with.
(We tell you all that in the game guide, but its worth the re-telling.)
If you see such a message, then the first thing for you to do is communicate with your opponent and see what
his explanation might be. "My hard disk crashed and so I reinstalled everything then put the save into the brand new install of WinSP" may fly, the once (but not each and every turn!
!)
And in any case secure PBEM is
really only for "
competition" type battles for folks who are experienced and know what they are doing and are in some sort of scored club match situation. If this is just a "friendly" then
basic security mode (passworded only) works fine (and the opponent can play on his laptop if away on a business trip, say). Basic security mode is far more able to deal with computer and end user file-handling glitches etc. Basic security mode is also happy to let the end user utilise the same save slot for several ongoing games as its not relying on security info in the registry, thus if your opponent needs to share slots between ongoing games then it may be the correct solution for him.
Andy
Probable trap?
Linear Mode
