New Cybran exploit in the wild
Breaking news! While this reporter was playing in the Friday Evening BLITZ tournament, a new exploit seems to be in the wild. Apparantly a Cybran player (who shall remain nameless) managed to upgrade his commander with cloak and stealth in 8 minutes without having the upgrades and without drawing power. How this was done still remains to be seen, but from the chat room comments, the player was kicked from the tourney. We will continue to report as further updates become available.
Update by Cyde Weys: This is a very curious case. The commander actually wasn’t upgraded with cloak and stealth; if you spectate the replay, you can see that it has no upgrades. But it was somehow able to walk into the corner of the map and become invisible and untargetable to the opponent. Download the replay (v3255) and see for yourself. Fast-forward to about fifteen minutes, when it’s clear that Stevemata is mopping the floor with Shenmueguru. Then observe how Shenmueguru walks his commander into the corner and keeps it there for awhile, where it can kill Stevemata’s units that go too close while taking no damage. He is well aware that he is exploiting, and any honorable player would have just walked his player out of the corner and accepted his fate. Extremely lame. But this is more of a Theta Passage exploit than a Cybran exploit.
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:14 am
I don’t get it. He didn’t seem to do anything other than move his commander to the corner. Can units not normally be moved to the very corner? It seemed Stevemata couldn’t get any unit to move any closer to the corner.
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:39 am
for some reason, the weapons were unable to target him, except for the tml (?)
June 23rd, 2007 at 3:07 am
Breezy: The tactical missile launcher wasn’t able to target him either; Stevemata was just being clever in defeating his lame opponent by firing the missile at where he knew the enemy commander must’ve been. What the hell did Shenmueguru think he was going to do anyway, just sit in the corner for hours until his opponent quit in frustration? He clearly wasn’t possibly going to win it. He was just being an exploiting sore loser.
June 23rd, 2007 at 3:46 am
hmm, what is about the “(who shall remain nameless)”? :> i think even if he has done something very bad it is never the right way to expose somebody to the community in this way.
Of course it was very lame, but he probably knows himself…
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:48 am
Well if he was going for a draw he would be much better of not shooting with his comm then he would be practically impossible to find. Anyway really nasty exploit good job with using that tml.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:00 am
Just tested this, apparently it works with any land unit (bar the experimentals) when parked on any edge of the map (i.e. not just the corner). Lamers could use this to park their ACU somewhere on the map and tell it to hold fire, either forcing the opponent to carpet nuke the map or quit in frustration.
June 23rd, 2007 at 9:16 am
…and it’s not limited to Theta Passage, either. Tested on Isis and Roanoke as well, works the same. It’s immune to sonar and omni too.
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:37 am
Looks like we need a new hotfix :p
June 23rd, 2007 at 11:23 am
I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but i suspect someone used this against me on emerald crater the other day. I had the sky FILLED with T3 spy planes and two omni sensor arrays but could not find his comm after all of his base was destroyed. It took nearly ten minutes before I noticed it moving north very close to the left edge of the map. I am fairly certain that he had been hanging out there the whole time, until he eventualy realized that i wasn’t going to quit before he did ( and I wouldn’t have either).
Was this exploit created by recent patch? Seems like it must have been, otherwise it would have been noticed long before now. Perhaps it is due to something that was changed to prevent the ACU off map exploit a while back?
June 23rd, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Dakre: Well, it’s impossible to keep him nameless and show the replay of the exploit, and I think the readers would rather see the exploit so they’re aware of it and know what to look out for.
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I had this used against me once in a ranked game before the latest patch (perhaps even before the previous one as well, I no longer remember exactly when, and since the replay would be obsolete either way I can not check), so it is not really a recent addition.
June 23rd, 2007 at 1:33 pm
That replay was pretty funny, actually. I’m sure the guy knew he was exploiting; maybe he simply wanted to try a last stand with his three PDs and then realized after the fact that his ACU was untargetable.
Besides, this isn’t a new exploit at all. The game has always had troubles with the boundaries of maps. I don’t think this is much different than planes being untargetable when they fly off the map. It’s probably the same (bad) code at work too.
June 25th, 2007 at 6:39 am
PLEASE, for the love of Gawd, rename this post. It’s defamatory for us cybrans, because so many people read the headline.
PLEASE EDIT THE ARTICLE :( :( :(
July 20th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Hello. I have just happened upon this article and I want to clear my name. First off, I AM NOT AN EXPLOITER. I knew I was doomed when he T2 rushed, so I went in the corner for a last stand as you can clearly see. I knew it was done, so I went AFK and got some eats. I come back and notice some scouts, try to build a T1 air, that doesn’t work, so I left again. I come back dead. No idea there was an exploit and I didn’t cloak or hack or whatever the accusations were. I was UNAWARE of what I was doing, and had I stayed I would have died earlier.
I do not wish to become an outcast in the community that has given me so much fun. No, not cheating fun as you may think. I honestly play fair and have never consiously made the decision to exploit or whatever. It just accidentally happened this time, and I think the replay shows it.
Thank you.
Shenmueguru