Hi all Racers ,

Sadly we Decided to stop running the FBM ProRace and the XFG Pro Race on DEMO.

The reasan is we stopped servers is because i have 100's of mails of poeple asking to unban them on the demoservers .

Thy get banned by a guy (Goatsby) Hes using multiple demoAccounts , and after all he got a friend with him now .The thing he do is joining in with his accounts on the server , he races a bit with 1 account and he creates crashsituations and swearingsituations , ones his done that he start to ban with his 6 accounts , stupid anof he needs other guys (who vote without knowing why thy voting) to vote a long with him and ones hes got the upperhand , he bannes all rest of server , even the stupid guys who voted without knowing why thy voted .

Sadly enof we cant man the servers enof with (trustable) admins because FPRS isnt much actief on DEMO and putting vote off isnt an option . .

We gave LFS and DEMO a very good System , we worked months on it , we know a lot of guys gonna miss our servers , but still , if there's nothing to do about it , why go on with it .

I myself contacted LFS developpers , thy cant do anything to it , even DEMO is just a demonstration of the real game and the meaning to get poeple buy S2 liscense (told LFS developper ) .

Out of frustration i started up the Belgium CrashSystem , were Goatsby and friends cant harm no one anymore .

So guys , thx for all the nice racing moments we had on Demo , we are again started with the S2 servers (where hacking isnt possible)

We gonna miss the servers and all ur trustable racers 2 , but like this it wasnt funny no more for no one .

Friendly Regards FPRS DCke (Sponsor) & FPRS Silox (Programmer )

Hello dear racers,

I also want to say thank you to all the demo racers who raced on our servers.

We have fought against this 'banclan' for several months, we kept on banning them, but 1 hour later, they returned with new, freshly made accounts. We tried everything what we could do to stop them, but all our actions didn't make any sense.

We are very sorry to stop our servers because of a few people who don't respect us.

Regards, DCke (Sponsor) and Silox (FPRS InSim Programmer).

they need to implement IP bans

Quote from major_syphillis :

they need to implement IP bans

This is posible. You can see the IP when a player connect in the DEDI ( or in the log file /log=deb.log ) and block this IP in the firewall of your server .
Only when people have no fixed IP you can block theme.

Quote from major_syphillis :

they need to implement IP bans

It was done by IP before registration for demo accounts were required and it wasn't any better since most people have dynamic IPs. It's actually a bit more of a hassle for the wrecker now since he has to register new accounts everytime instead of just resetting the router.

Is it possible to register more than one account per email-address? Or does he delete his "old" account and immediately creates a new one with that same address?

I believe you may create only one account per one e-mail address, but today you may get as many different e-mails for free as you wish...

yes guys , most likly its verry simple to make 100's of e-mailadresses , also make 100's of different demoaccounts , also to log in with multiple accounts from 1 IP adress ,1 pc , even ban on IP is no use , how many IP's u want ...its a never ending story , and its paradise for kids who enjoy themself in messing around on servers .

We can tell you that our system is still running on the B2R DEMO SERVER

B2R is a well known befriended team of us , thy will cary onn with the system and there server , also there server will be more manned by admins causse B2R is more actief on DEMO .

regards FPRS DCke

i just wondering if we are the only ones with that problem or are other demoteams having also that problem when there is no admin on server and vote is onn ?

Greetz FPRS DCke

Quote from DCke :

i just wondering if we are the only ones with that problem or are other demoteams having also that problem when there is no admin on server and vote is onn ?

Well, I'm one of the admins on AirAttack servers. It is clear fighting with crashers is a never ending process. Allowing racers to vote is only a partial solution, because the voting may be misused, as in your case. But experience shows that running a demo server without voting and without admins present leads quickly to anarchy.

Our solution is a combined one. The system we use allows to define any number of people with limited admin rights. They cannot change servers settings, but they have commands like !ban and !kick available. Also no one can vote against them. We also use a ranking system and starting a vote against someone with high rank means instant kick.

All this helps to keep voting at bay, people think twice before hitting 1. Still, our aim is to have enough limited admins (level-headed people that will not misuse even their limited rights) to be able to turn off voting completely. We also provide an option to call admin by talking to host; such messages are redirected to an IRC channel where admins sit and the chance one of them spots it soon enough are high.

Quote from EQ Worry :

Well, I'm one of the admins on AirAttack servers. It is clear fighting with crashers is a never ending process. Allowing racers to vote is only a partial solution, because the voting may be misused, as in your case. But experience shows that running a demo server without voting and without admins present leads quickly to anarchy.

Our solution is a combined one. The system we use allows to define any number of people with limited admin rights. They cannot change servers settings, but they have commands like !ban and !kick available. Also no one can vote against them. We also use a ranking system and starting a vote against someone with high rank means instant kick.

All this helps to keep voting at bay, people think twice before hitting 1. Still, our aim is to have enough limited admins (level-headed people that will not misuse even their limited rights) to be able to turn off voting completely. We also provide an option to call admin by talking to host; such messages are redirected to an IRC channel where admins sit and the chance one of them spots it soon enough are high.

thx for responding , but like i said before we are a s2 team and we presented our system to demo with a great succes , our team managed to race a few months on the demo without problems , the problems began when the servers were not manned with admins , still we tryed with a few racers to give admin , that didnt work at all , then poeple get banned that are racing for weeks on servers en so on ... because the new admins dont know the daily racers , still running a system with your own team on top of the ranking isnt a great idea especially when there are prices to win .

i know if you want the server runnung you need a 24/7 present of admin on the server but that wasnt our idea , we made the system for the LFS racers , we opened it on demo in the idea to have a good trustable server , we saw i didnt work out , and i guess we are the only ones , so its a other team or a stupid kid that is banning for months , every day , we are very actief on s2 with our events and so on , we did the best for demo , sad some stupid guys dont respect it , or its just jalosie i dont know , however im not gonna make myself cray no more en stressed up by the 100's of maisl i had , we made a hard disision , we stopped , and still a lot of servers run a system but its not a rankingssystem , its a pointssystem , no ranks , we are buisy to update our system in the next weeks so maybe we have a come back , anyway thx for the info , you gave me a few good tips to work on .

Rgeards DCke FPRS official Sponsor .

Quote from SilverArrows77 :

Ultimately i think there is little solution other than hosting a licensed server rather than demo, as the only way to deter people from this kind of pathetic behaviour is to have consequence for their actions. Currently a registered demo user has little consquence due to being banned, other than that of having to take 30secs to create a new email address and user account. These idiots tend to stop in a hurry though when each username has a financial cost to them.

Whilst its great that the LFS development team see the benefit of an unlimited demo systems (to put it simply, if there wasnt unlimited demo use there would be very few demo hosts, as their userbase would run out rather quickly - therefore leading to a probable lower uptake of users to LFS), it does leave itself open to this form of abuse and i dont see a solution on the horizion.

As many said, ip banning doesnt work greatly due to the number of dynamic ip users, and while the new registered user system does make it more of a pain for these idiots, its still not impossible for them to abuse the system. Im yet to think of, or see suggestion for, another way this could be prevented other than simply using your server as a licensed s1 or s2 server. Its a shame, but really its unpreventable while idiots exist.

agree , very sad after all... ''demo is just a demonstration of the game and the meaning to get poeple buy a s1 or s2 liscensie'' that was the answer i get from LFS Devellopers .

Regards Jeffry FPRS DCke (Sponsor)

There is one nice solution.
Range IP-ban in firewall.

Something like 13.37.*.* will block ~half of city, but that retarded kid won't join again.

Quote from DCke :

thx for responding , but like i said before we are a s2 team and we presented our system to demo with a great succes , our team managed to race a few months on the demo without problems , the problems began when the servers were not manned with admins , still we tryed with a few racers to give admin , that didnt work at all , then poeple get banned that are racing for weeks on servers en so on ... because the new admins dont know the daily racers , still running a system with your own team on top of the ranking isnt a great idea especially when there are prices to win .

i know if you want the server runnung you need a 24/7 present of admin on the server but that wasnt our idea , we made the system for the LFS racers , we opened it on demo in the idea to have a good trustable server , we saw i didnt work out , and i guess we are the only ones , so its a other team or a stupid kid that is banning for months , every day , we are very actief on s2 with our events and so on , we did the best for demo , sad some stupid guys dont respect it , or its just jalosie i dont know , however im not gonna make myself cray no more en stressed up by the 100's of maisl i had , we made a hard disision , we stopped , and still a lot of servers run a system but its not a rankingssystem , its a pointssystem , no ranks , we are buisy to update our system in the next weeks so maybe we have a come back , anyway thx for the info , you gave me a few good tips to work on .

Rgeards DCke FPRS official Sponsor .

-

Quote from EQ Worry :

Well, I'm one of the admins on AirAttack servers. It is clear fighting with crashers is a never ending process. Allowing racers to vote is only a partial solution, because the voting may be misused, as in your case. But experience shows that running a demo server without voting and without admins present leads quickly to anarchy.

Our solution is a combined one. The system we use allows to define any number of people with limited admin rights. They cannot change servers settings, but they have commands like !ban and !kick available. Also no one can vote against them. We also use a ranking system and starting a vote against someone with high rank means instant kick.

All this helps to keep voting at bay, people think twice before hitting 1. Still, our aim is to have enough limited admins (level-headed people that will not misuse even their limited rights) to be able to turn off voting completely. We also provide an option to call admin by talking to host; such messages are redirected to an IRC channel where admins sit and the chance one of them spots it soon enough are high.

Just noticed AirAttack servers arent Goatsby Protected , ive seen him today 28 Feb 0.20 GMT Banning the hole server Rallyx , i see sometimes thy get kicked for bad vote , but its not 100% , he 'ssmart , so hes attaking your airattackservers 2 , and ive been watching on remote , he gots friends so , hes getting bigger and bigger , ive seen him actief on Drag Server#1 also so hes messing on a lot of servers !!

Quote from DCke :

Just noticed AirAttack servers arent Goatsby Protected , ive seen him today 28 Feb 0.20 GMT Banning the hole server Rallyx , i see sometimes thy get kicked for bad vote , but its not 100% , he 'ssmart , so hes attaking your airattackservers 2 , and ive been watching on remote , he gots friends so , hes getting bigger and bigger , ive seen him actief on Drag Server#1 also so hes messing on a lot of servers !!

Thanks for info! As I already mentioned, absolute protection is not possible. If voting is turned on , he may misuse it. If it is turned off and (at least limited) admin is not around, he may do anything. It would be a great help to publish usernames he and his friends are using.

We've been expecting his attack and I guess we may expect more. But I believe we have now enough people with extended rights that turning the voting off is possible. Maybe I'll also set some time limit for joining the races on our two main demo servers, which will make things more problematic to him.

Quote from Shadowww :

There is one nice solution.
Range IP-ban in firewall.

Something like 13.37.*.* will block ~half of city, but that retarded kid won't join again.

++

i never block a single ip. it's always the entire network segment. if they want to waste their time regging a new account and cycling their modem for a new ip, they can go right ahead.

edit: what would be nice though, is some sort of per-ip/per-cidr limiting on the creation of demo accounts. i don't know if scavier employs one or not.

Quote from EQ Worry :

Thanks for info! As I already mentioned, absolute protection is not possible. If voting is turned on , he may misuse it. If it is turned off and (at least limited) admin is not around, he may do anything. It would be a great help to publish usernames he and his friends are using.

We've been expecting his attack and I guess we may expect more. But I believe we have now enough people with extended rights that turning the voting off is possible. Maybe I'll also set some time limit for joining the races on our two main demo servers, which will make things more problematic to him.

the accounts hes using at the moment are : belgian_racer / captainpicard / nico bellic / Panicz[PL] / peter_griffin / polak- / _barney_ / serious-sam / suedenim / polish racer /

Keep in mind that he uses sometimes multiple accounts like : suedenim1 suedenim2 suedenim3 suedenim4 .... mostly till suedenim 6 (6 accounts)

the last weeks hes only actief with different accounts , not numbered btw . and he got 2 friends with him sometimes 3 .

Iwill keep looking out for him , even i have no demoservers no more exept the crashsystem (no vote - all allowed - anti Goatsby ) i will still help u guys to make it hard for him .

If there are other teams (like Drag Server#1 ) with the same problem let me know i help u guys out with publishing his usernames , it can only be harder from him after a while , keep on blocking him xD .

Friendly Regards Jeffry DCke FPRS Sponsor

Quote from DCke :

the accounts hes using at the moment are : belgian_racer / captainpicard / nico bellic / Panicz[PL] / peter_griffin / polak- / _barney_ / serious-sam / suedenim / polish racer /

Thanks for info! Yes, most of these usernames were on one of our servers yesterday. I was going through Airio logs, he made there 2 successful ban votes, was himself banned by a limad once, kicked for bad voting twice.

Now I'm thinking of a possible (partial, as always) solution. Airio can capture IP addresses of people, if it is connected locally. It may very well kick new connections when they are using the same IP address. Idiots then will not be able to run multiple LFS instances on one PC connected to one server, and switch between them voting. Hm, it seems to me this might be additional level of protection... Surely going to implement it...

Yet easier, this should be a LFS server option, to disallow multiple connections fro one IP...

IP Banning in not secure. You just have to type 2 lines in your command prompt, and you have a new IP...

Your partial solution sounds good; but when you have a clan banning people, it wouldn't work either. But it will work good to block standalone people trying to ban your server

Banning an IP range is not a good solution either. You'll ban more people than needed.

I agree, completely. Disallowing the same IPs on one server is not perfect solution, it may even occassionally prevent decent people connecting, if they happen to connect through the same provider or something. But I guess it would be worth a test because for a banning spree you'll need at least 4 or 5 different people coming to have their twisted kind of fun and not just this number of running LFS instances at one or two PCs.

Quote :

Banning an IP range is not a good solution either. You'll ban more people than needed.

Quote :

Disallowing the same IPs on one server is not perfect solution, it may even occassionally prevent decent people connecting, if they happen to connect through the same provider or something.

those are the risks you run i guess.

i wonder if they can just disable the ability to vote in the demo......... hmm.

A random thought, but if this is just one guy with multiple accounts, couldn't Scawen implement only one ban vote allowed per IP address? Just check that each ban-vote comes from a seperate IP. Or maybe have a maximum limit votes per IP, in case you have flatmates on the same network or something. Well, it sounds like a decent solution to me, provided I don't know what's capable within the LFS code base.

Quote from wuffa :

i wonder if they can just disable the ability to vote in the demo......... hmm.

Ehm? Any admin can disable voting, demo or licensed server, doesn't matter. The problem is servers without voting attract crashers and if an admin is not around, the crashers cannot be kicked/banned by others. Problem is voting can also be abused, and here we are at the core of the matter.