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Just to clarify the topic of automatic transmissions in case I'm misunderstanding due to a language barrier: In most races, the transmission is semi-automatic/sequential. This means that the driver does actively shift gears, even though the system is electronically assisted. In most of the cases, no driver would choose a fully automatic gearbox, because deciding when to shift and when to downshift is key to optimizing the car’s performance (for overtaking, entering/exiting corners, etc.). And this is why going to non-gaming-related analogies can be so confusing and creates dead-end discussions. BUT if wanna keep playing with the analogy... I would compare the semi-automatic transmission to my customTrainer mod. In this case, the system automatically finds an idle barracks and assigns the units there, instead of stacking them in a barracks that’s already busy—something that forces you to constantly search for the darn idle one. We could even consider this a bug in the game, and this system comes to fix it while still respecting the “non-automation principle” (okay, I’m getting philosophical here). Now, fully automating production can result in a competitive advantage between two players of similar skill, if one of them has to spend less attention maintaining their population high while the other has to carry out repetitive production tasks. It’s also something hard to quantify—it’s more of a qualitative difference, since you can’t measure, for instance, how distracted someone might get in the heat of the moment, forgeting to check it's military production. And this is fairly obvious. The trade-off is that you lose control over batch sizes at any given time, and that can affect your economy at certain points. But you can toggle autotrain on and off. So a player could activate it during moments when they’re focused on battle and know they have enough resources for autotrain not to hurt their economy. Meanwhile, the player without autotrain is forced to constantly pay attention to their production. Atrik usually argues from the perspective of gameplay preference, which I think is totally valid. Others (like me) argue from a fair play and competitive balance standpoint (please, serious arguments—none of that “I have better hardware” or “I woke up more noob than yesterday” stuff), and I think that’s also valid. In fact, this is a discussion present in many RTS games. But the problem is that if we don’t start establishing some shared criteria for this discussion, and everyone argues from completely subjective positions, there’s no way to reach any kind of conclusion. About quickstart, a simple example: in AoE2 it’s banned. In StarCraft 2 it’s standard—your 4 Drones/Probes/SCVs automatically go straight to the minerals as soon as the game starts. And we can apply this same example to vanilla AoE2 and 0 A.D. The built-in auto-queue feature in vanilla 0 A.D. is actually banned in AoE2 and StarCraft 2—it’s only allowed in non-competitive matches. Conclusion: the scope and limitations of what’s allowed in the different ways the game can be played ultimately depend on community consensus and by having ways to enforce that consensus. Right now we keep at zone 0 here

Great effort @guerringuerrin, I look forward to your implementation on gitea!  Your hashing is useful for debugging mod issues and OOS aside from its intended anti-cheat effect The only bottom line is don't create an anti-cheat that autobans Linux or windows users. PUBG and Apex legends are the bad role models here

Quit rated match with spec Name : Tom_0AD

Car analogies for a competitive RTS game? That's bold.

The debate around the use of mods is a broad and somewhat controversial topic that I’ve observed since I first became part of this community. I’ve noticed that, whether in favor of or against the use of mods, many argue that it’s impossible to prevent them. Even if all players in a match (not just the host) could see which mods are active, they claim there’s no point in adding such a feature because it’s very easy to rename a mod to disguise it as something else and hide what’s actually being used. One could even inject a mod inside another mod and achieve the same result. Below, I’m sharing a sort of "white paper" outlining what I believe is a possible alternative to this issue. While it may not be free of weaknesses, it could make it significantly harder for players to deceive others. Mod Integrity Verification in 0 A.D. Objective Prevent the use of hidden or modified mods that provide unfair advantages in multiplayer games, through automatic integrity checks without compromising player privacy. Context Currently, players can install mods in two ways: As folders, which are easily editable. As .zip or .pyromod files, which are harder to modify without leaving traces. There is currently no native mechanism that allows the host to verify whether a player is using a modified mod. Proposal Implement local mod integrity verification using cryptographic checksums (e.g., SHA256), and report this data to the host. How it works On the client (player) side: When launching the game or connecting to a match: The client calculates a hash (e.g., SHA256) for each enabled mod. It generates a list with: mod name, hash, and enabled status. This list is automatically sent to the host. On the host side: The host receives the list of enabled mods and their hashes. It compares them against a predefined whitelist (for a tournament, server, or community). If mismatches are found, the host may block the connection or issue a warning. Security and privacy No file content is transmitted. There is no remote access to the player's file system. Only mod names and hashes are shared. Forging these values would require tampering with the engine or core scripts. Advantages Makes it harder to use undetectable modified mods. Promotes transparency and fair play in multiplayer sessions. Scalable for tournaments, ranked matches. Suggested implementation Add SHA256 hash computation during mod loading. Extend the multiplayer connection protocol to include mod hash information. Allow hosts or servers to define and enforce a list of accepted mod hashes. Technical considerations This system is not intended as a foolproof solution against all forms of malicious modification. While verifying and reporting mod hashes locally significantly raises the difficulty of using altered mods without detection, a technically skilled user could still modify the game engine to falsify the reported hash values. It’s also worth noting that 0 A.D. is widely used on Linux, where many users compile the game from source due to delayed updates in official repositories. In such cases, the compiled binaries may vary between users even if the source code is the same. However, this does not affect the validity of mod verification, as hash comparisons are made on the downloaded .zip or .pyromod files—whose hashes remain stable as long as their content is unmodified. Despite these limitations, the proposed system represents a meaningful step toward improving transparency and reducing the prevalence of undetected mod-based advantages, without requiring invasive anti-cheat mechanisms.

I didn't make this thread. My point stands though. Yeah that is extremely unconvincing.

As depressing as to make weekly threads about quickstart and trainer without bringing anything new to the debate. Using the description "unfair advantage" and "cheat" based on false facts that "it's undisclosed" and "make players much stronger". I don't need to go over the list of players that switched it on and off and for whom it didn't make any difference at all, the first post of this thread already start by lying about this, and lies about it are vital to give reasons to even talk about this; just as much as the "undisclosed" lie. At lot of feature makes it impossible to argue that it's attempting to be stealthy but here we are.   Concerning using analogy with cars, automatic transmission cars are just mechanically superior, so yes, they ultimately are slightly faster. On a very simple circuit race, the gain of a tenths of seconds every turns still won't make worse drivers beat better ones but equally skilled drivers might increase their relative win chances. On complex races, like Dakar rally, the advantage is simply not worth even thinking about, because the car and driver performance have much more factors to consider. I'm no expert in car racing but afaik most race embrace automatic transmission. Automatic transmission only get such name because of it's ancestor where the mechanical solution wasn't figure out yet, and required for driver to have a stick to shift between gears. Now unlike the automatic transmission system, autotrain isn't ultimately faster then vanilla autoqueue or clicking a batch every time. Sometimes smaller batch are better. Maximizing batch does actually sometimes lead to more building idle times.   Still those features have tremendous upsides :  For quickstart, it's much better to get you into a state of flow/ get adrenaline buildup. This, because now the game get it's intensity increase over time rather then having a apm/adrenaline spike in the 5sec then a plateau til min 3.  I don't feel that there are any "skill" in making repetitive meaningless actions like re-batching all the time. It takes away brain time to come up with original strategies, and overall put you in a stance of repeating some procedures.