Following a serious abuse of a server side exploit to the game, we have developed this ethics guide for players. We ask that all players avoid using exploits and report those exploits you encounter. As admins and developers, we will do what we can to control exploits and to provide fair responses based on the level of abuse.
A few general rules to follow:
- If you encounter an exploit, it is your responsibility to report it.
- It is ethically your responsibility not to abuse the bug.
- It is perfectly allowed to test to see if something is an exploit, so long as you do so in a way that will minimally impact gameplay, you immediately report it, and you do not abuse it.
How to define an exploit?
- An exploit is any code that allows you to do something that the game was not intended to do. Some examples: teleporting ships between systems; getting strategic resources for free; artificially controlling combat order.
- A game mechanics bug is not an exploit in and of itself. A game mechanics bug is something that cannot be avoided, but can be exploited. If a player abuses a game mechanics bug, you can consider it an exploit.
- Anything else that a player does that creates unintended gameplay.
What should you do if see an exploit being used, or if you find an exploit that might be abused?
- If it is a critical exploit (easily exploitable; likely to be exploited; and serious influence on gameplay), then you should email it to Qark. If you do not know his email, ask.
- If it is a non-critical exploit, post it either in game in the Issues forum, or on the Bugs section of SourceForge.
What is banable?
- We do not ban as a rule for anything short of purposeful abuse of critical issues in the game. In the pat, we have banned for two reasons:
- Crashing the server through abuse of the game (non-exploit abuse).
- Purposefully abusing critical exploits with no consideration for the stability of the game.
- If the exploit is reversible, we will attempt to patch the exploit and reverse any damage done by it (if necessary) rather than ban.
