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At this point, I no more believe that the cheaters are trying to have a reasonable discussion. It's just like "What could I write that would be reminiscent of an argument to possibly let me keep doing what I'm already doing?". Half of this is just trying to shift or relativize the topic, or telling fair players to either cheat too or go play elsewhere. Then, when a counter-argument is taken apart and proven as flawed, they will just repeat it unchanged in a new thread. Tell a lie often enough, right. Or, maybe even put the lie right in your bio. That way it gets automatically repeated after anything you write. Smart. So I see @Seleucids say "STOCKFISH DOESN'T CHEAT", and that's a really bold statement to put in your bio because of how hard it is to prove. Meanwhile, there are people like me who just do have the proof in the form of replays, eyewitness testimony, screenshots of chats discussing the usage of the mods (what is meant here by cheating anyway). So what is it now? It's just acting dumb and trolling.

Obviously, this makes you a better player because it masks your flaws. Being better or worse than another player requires several evaluation points, and one of them is the ability to manage everything that happens on screen, especially in an RTS game. If you use a script that does these things for you, it's obviously an advantage and shouldn't even be discussed. Your analogy exemplifies exactly what I said. A manual car may not be faster than an automatic, but there's a chance of shifting into the wrong gear and breaking gears in a manual car, which isn't possible in an automatic. That's exactly what you do when you use scripts to mask your mistakes.

This is clearly wrong. @guerringuerrin has already pointed this out as "awareness." I would go further to say this is actually multitasking, which @borg- has already identified as the primary skill in R(eal)T(ime)S(trategy) games. It is also not just "repetitive meaningless actions." First, your mod doesn't repeat the same thing. It optizimies based on how many you can make to reach your ideal population composition. Without the mod, you would have to decide what batch size to make and of what units to make. At all times, do you know how many jav inf you have at all times? Do you know how many sword cav you have at any moment? Do you know how many slingers you need to make to reach your ideal population percentage? I don't know. But I can make guesses informed by experience (i.e., skill). Your mod does this all for you. If you truly want something to eliminate repetitive clicks then that already exists as part of the base game. You have created something that does more and creates a competitive advantage. Most importantly, you've been told other players don't like it and choosing to use it anyways

Indeed Boudica. Not even the market exploit is considered a cheat. Reza knows about quickstart, Seleucids knows reza considers it a cheat. I think its quite distasteful bringing up war or PTSD here. Reza had this stance before the war already. Reza probably doesn't really care but bringing this up does not show a interest in a reasonable discussion. Instead the sanity of the conversational partner is attacked.

you are the one bugging here. All it does is use an existing system to tell units to attack higher preference units if they are attacking a low preference unit without orders. aoe2 does this, not sure about other games. It is perfectly intuitive, and it is exactly what would be expected of a preference system in UnitAI. You just made up "damage spreading" out of thin air. PRs go to the game for everyone, and they effect everyone equally. Making and distributing automation mods to be used against those that don't have them (incompatibility checks off) because you think the game design is bad is very different.

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.

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

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

This is an assumption that one player makes about 7 others. And when they find out they lost because someone was cheating, the answer is "chill out its just a game". Awesome argument guys. Usually all 7 other players are unaware that this advantage exists, and even the minority of players who know that such mods exist do not grasp the magnitude of advantage that automation scripts provide. The discussion about the game being "non-competitive" is very convenient when cheaters use it to downplay the negative gameplay consequences that results from cheating. Funny enough the "competitive" nature of 0ad has been used to justify the same automation scripts by players who claim that their mouse can't click fast enough to compete with players who have "better" hardware. No player can click faster than even the cheapest mice allow, and some players even prefer not to have a mouse. Even more funny is that an auto-clicker which people have claimed to be in-use in 0ad would be considered an automation script and therefore cheating. The hypocrisy is mind boggling. I also totally reject the car analogy because in this case the automatic car is simply faster.

Any comments? If not, I'll go ahead and make the new icons.

Especially when half of the game's loop in the early to mid game is keeping your population up. Like, everyone practices getting to the 100 pop ASAP since it constitutes a major part of both economy and military gameplay. And here you have people who are automating it. It's wrong.

Not at all. Who said that I'm going to remain in SP forever? Also, I care about the game enough to defend the fair-play. And to call out those players who blatantly lie how something obviously unfair like an automation script "isn't cheating". Maybe I also want to win some fair games when I DO decide to play MP?

What then? "Autonomous retargeting and damage spreading"? Are you having a cognitive dissonance about it? Maybe it doesn't really work out well to develop a 0 click auto sniping after taking a strong stand against more manual features in some threads? Still don't think it's bad features beside that it's a bit complexifying unit behavior, just funny to see you bug out about it thoughts.

This seems like a fair solution which will allow some flexibility on the host side.

Yeah that is extremely unconvincing. If you wonder why players use it despite being insignificant that's a explanation. Doesn't aim to convince you to use it. Also we can note that @real_tabasco_sauce made a sort of autosniping that he push for the main game, and @guerringuerrin also want to facilitate training. Both are respectable work and good feature ideas. As-well, the original thread about autoqueue (now in vanilla) also already mentioned finding a way to resize batch based on resources (there were another thread talking about it but can't find it again because of request search limitations). Now, theses threads just aim to fuel a myth around 'progui' that a handful of players want to entertain, that need to use lies about nondisclosure, false claim about it's working etc to make it even stand...

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. 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.

I find this autostart argument pretty sad, and I have heard it from several players. Are you really that hell-bent on making the fastest possible start just for such a small gain? I think players should accept that it is impossible to achieve the "perfect" start, and instead put in effort to learn a fast start that works for them. The point is not that autostart gets you such a massive gain, it doesn't, its that the principle behind it is depressing.

While working on a PR to incorporate hotkeys for building placement, building selection, and unit selection, I created this mod that—on top of building placement and selection—adds hotkeys to select several unit classes not covered by AutoCiv: all infantry, cavalry, champions, mercenaries, healers, heroes, and even dogs! It can be used alongside AutoCiv, although I haven’t tested it with its latest versions. There are still some features left to add, but I’d really appreciate help from anyone willing to test it and help catch any bugs I might have missed. I’d also love to publish it on mod.io, so any help with that would be greatly appreciated! To install it, just unzip BuildingHotkeys.zip and copypaste the BuildingHotkeys folder into your mod's folder Or u can use this =) BuildingHotkeys.pyromod Here's a demonstration video: BuildingsHotkeys mod.mp4

I like the car analogy. The first analogy I came up with was shoes; when you play soccer (or any other sport during which you run around a lot) with your friends, neighbours or acquaintances, there are no rules for which shoes you use. And the shoes are how you interact with the ball and the game, so they're like a GUI. If you want to, you can play in high heels and make it extra hard on yourself. Or you play normally, with general sports shoes. Or you are very competitive and you get yourself special soccer shoes. Only when you start playing your sport professionally, youll begin to encounter rules regarding your footwear. And autostart is like cheating in a race by starting 0.5s too early; in a professional setting, youll get punished for that, but when you're just running around with your friends nobody cares.

https://mod.io/g/0ad/m/select-all This was ported recently, if you want hotkeys, as an alternative to autociv (that is also available from mod downloader).

Replay2025-07-13_0001.zip

Undisclosed. Players who use automation mods, and presumably map hacks (I’ve never observed someone use map hacks) do not disclose this before game start, and avoid/ignore any discussion of this. I think fair gameplay is fun gameplay so I don’t play when there is a cheater. 0ad does not need to be competitive like an esport but the game itself is a competition (we are trying to win right?) so yes it needs to be fair by default. If any player could select a 2.5% handicap without anyone knowing it would probably make the game less fun. We’ve had this discussion so many times, everything has already been said but the problem remains.

So the short answer is: There is nothing to repent. Trying to have fun when playing a video game is not a sin.

If its so obvious who cheats and you have such a big problem with it, why do you play with them? Does anybody force you to play with the "cheaters"? And before you say anything, thats entirely different to as you can still play with like, 80%+ of the players who dont use anything remotely "cheaty". Also, god forbid people play a casual game in a way that brings them joy... Like, I play mainly with the historical patch cause I dont like certain imbalances in vanilla. Likewise, players that use an auto trainer probably do so because they dont like the clickyness of vanilla. I see no problem with that. 0ad has no real cheating, as cheating would be something like a "violation of competitive integrity by usage of undisclosed or unallowed modification", but there is not competitive integrity, since the game is not competitive (unless youre talking about 1v1s, which could be considered competitive, but in that case just dont play against the "cheaters"). If you want a teamgame you participate in to feel "competitive", talk to the people in the lobby, manage the players expectations until everyone agrees what this round means to them and then youll have a good time.

ok this is as good as I can get the fishing ship: 20250710-2056-43.1536048.mp4