The problem with the 50m-100m increments idea is that then plugins will simply operate in 50m-100m increments.

The only sure-fire way to get rid of any combat-assist plugin possibilities, it seems, is to go with removing the distance value for all ships inside 500m. Any increments higher than this, and you might as well implement the 500m rule.

And, as previously mentioned, it is not impossible to retrieve values from the HUD.

A delay of two seconds would be useful to two players that where both attempting to maintain similar combat distance for the sake of weapon effectiveness (two players in similar ships/loadouts).

Some pilots, myself included, actually rely on the distance to target information in the hud. A delay would be as bad as making that information purposely inaccurate, either would be worse than removing it altogether.

This 'cure' is worse than the disease.

Lector, go twaddle off and kill another newb or three. You are personally responsible for driving more people away from this game than any plugin could ever be.

seeing as how it already operates on 20m distances bumping it up to 50 would mean instead of holding at 180 someone would just hold at 200 or 150 which isn't really solving the problem. I agree with the solution of everything under 500m is just considered in the "danger zone" (guitar solo)

Pey, the advantage to making it update in 50m increments or whatever isn't the accuracy of the distance, it's the time delay it would create. It sounds like it would seriously mess some players up though, as would eliminating all distance information within 500m.

...how taking combat assists ability to well assist in combat out of game is going to ruin their plugin or other things...

The point of the current discussion is HOW to remove that ability. Reading comprehension fail...

Edit: and as for some people's more recent point, I once again quote myself:

If some person wants to argue that a plugin that would start backpedaling as soon as I hit 100m would somehow be useful to anyone (as it wouldn't know when to stop unless they got to 150m away, at which point it'd be useless until I hit 100m again)... then do so, but be forewarned that I [...] think that person an idiot.

While this thread is moving at insane speeds... I strongly suggest that people take a moment to think about how plugins would work (or wouldn't work as the case may be) with the proposed nerfs before saying those nerfs wouldn't do the trick.

Edit2: Am I misreading what we're talking about here, or have we actually devolved into considering nerfing the HUD information as well as API info??? The solution to hud scraping is better sandboxing, NOT nerfing HUD info. Let's stay on track with discussing API nerfs, not HUD nerfs.

If some person wants to argue that a plugin that would start backpedaling as soon as I hit 100m would somehow be useful to anyone (as it wouldn't know when to stop unless they got to 150m away, at which point it'd be useless until I hit 100m again)... then do so, but be forewarned that I [...] think that person an idiot.

Lemme get this right... so when someone is in 150-199m the value would be "150m" and if someone is within 100-149m the value would be "100m"... So, just backpedal at 100m and go forward at 150m and the person stays inbetween 150 and 149m. Congratulations, a fix giving a 50m inaccuracy to players only gave a 1m inaccuracy to a plugin.

Atice, I believe they want to nerf the HUD to eliminate all the distance info available by any means within the parameters they are discussing. The logic being that people could still write programs that don't use the API to retrieve the distance info if it's displayed on the HUD.

I thought we were talking about nerfing the default HUD in addition to the lua API.

That's not the way I imagined it working ShankTank. That's the dumb implementation. I was thinking more of a rounding solution (which granted would have similar problems around 125m and 175m). You could implement something of a slider to avoid such "hey look! the increment turned!" hax (which is what I originally had in mind), but that might require more effort than it's worth. Looks like Roda had a better idea with API function calls giving data delayed by 0.5s or some such.

Moreover, I'm talking plugin info ONLY. NOT hud info. Nerfing HUD info is utterly retarded.

With regards to HUD info: SANDBOX. How loudly do I have to say that? The devs can handle security issues (which is what scraping is) without us nerfing our HUD.

I thought we were talking about nerfing the default HUD in addition to the lua API.

I am, Atice isn't, and I think Roda/Strat are still going about how we can still HUD and API *a* number as we do now, just a *wrong* number (which is, if you think about it, even worse than eliminating the data completly). I think the issues are pretty well fleshed out now, and Inc. can decide how the chips fall.

Atice: you can yell it all you want - you're wrong that it's as effective as you claim. End of story.

Another problem with the rounding solutions is that is doesn't necessarily rule out the other assist plugins using distance, like A/A togglers.

Whatever we do will be contingent on discussions with Ray and pros/cons to actual implementation, since it's (practically) all his code. Hopefully we'll have something tonight.

Thanks Inc... this has been a blizzard of a thread. Lock nao?

Fair enough.