v1.189: Spawn Near Players System "Sticks" to One Person and Can be Exploited to Find Enemies

Cyber Cheese shared this bug 5 years ago
Solved

Summary: The new system for spawning allows players to find one another far too easily. A bug in the system makes it worse, as one player will almost always become tied to another for respawning, effectively "stalking" one person--rather than spawning on a random player each time. Even if this bug is fixed, the new spawn system should instead be optional or at least mod-able for survival servers that are designed for open PvP, because it can be exploited to find people in space.


The Relevant Feature: As it stands (v1.189), server admins must either completely disable the ability to spawn at medical rooms of choice, or allow players to choose to spawn in a space suit. The space suit option is hard-coded to be available as long as players can choose their own medical room/respawn ship/etc. For players who choose a suit or a space respawn, the game will attempt to spawn them 1k to 25k (depending on server settings) from another player, while also putting the player at an un-altered asteroid.


The Bug: The system usually picks out one person, almost every time, and attempts to spawn on that one person even when many others are on the server. This both defeats the intended purpose of the feature and makes the inherent problem with the feature far worse. (Notably, the system will deviate if a friendly faction-mate is also in space--in which case, the player may spawn near them sometimes.)


The Exploit: This option is very problematic on a PvP survival server because the server admin can only slightly increase the distance of spawn from players. The spawn from space suit option costs nothing and will always spawn at an asteroid nearby another player. As a result, a player simply needs to respawn over and over, marking their coordinates each time, until they see a sphere of GPS coordinates, and then fly to the middle. Many times, this will reveal where a player is hiding to try to build their ship or collect resources.


(There is also a problem with the respawn ships, because those should be customizable as they used to be as discussed in this thread. But this thread is not about that, it's about how the ability to spawn in a space suit near other players is killing open PvP survival servers.)


The solution: This problem requires the ability for server admins to toggle off the spawn near players option, to start with, or at least be able to mod the spawn system.

Replies (42)

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5

what the actual fuck you guys. why. all pvp servers broken now. couldnt even give an option? ffs

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5

Fix this now!

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4

This is a serious issue! It must be addressed soon or it will negitively effect player count across every PvP server.

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THANK YOU!!!! I have been wondering why I have been found EVERY DAY, by the SAME PEOPLE! I was considering using a timing block to jump my ship every hour and then turning the gyros slightly to jump in a circle. This is how annoying this has been.

May you find a briefcase full of money for this find.

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You can't jump the jumpdrive on a timerblock, unless you have a mod that lets you do that.

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3

Please Fix, game broken, PVP server dying

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Yeetus beetus thanks.

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4

This is making PvP servers unplayable and needs to be reverted. The entire point of hiding ones station becomes moot and there is no counter to this tactic.

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Fix this man. I'd like to be able to have a permanent spot on pvp and not worry to much about offline raiding if i'm careful enough to hide my stuff

but this spawn near players crap makes it too easy.

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3

If you add a new feature to a game, it should not make the current play-style impossible, and it should be optional. It seems this new feature is neither, and it is driving newer players away. Please fix this soon.

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maybe it only concentrates on the ones who have no faction so you can recruit them

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3

It doesn't lol

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maybe this is actually an intended feature so everyone doesn't just sit hiding in a safe spot indefinitely

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it changes the rules, you can still survive, you just have to find a way around the exploit, if you never spawn on your base you'll never be vulnerable to this exploit, and when you do spawn on it, you need to have it be in motion, just drifting in space should be sufficient, maybe a jump every now and then, and when you're done you jump it away and hop out of cockpit before it finishes it's jump initiation phase so that your space suit is never located in the landing zone

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are you defending keen here?

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I've seen a dramatic reductions in players due to this "feature". Keen, this was brought to your attention, via these forums, prior to the release and you either a. chose to ignore or b. didn't see it. Either case is a failure.

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Thoroughly tested and 100 percent repeatable. Many confused players have been destroyed without mercy. Hours of their work lost in seconds. Great troll feeder you managed to pull out of your hat Keen! Please fix this game breaking mechanic asap. Thank you.

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khan-1_758_426_81_s_c1

KEEEEN

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It's broken, please fix asap, our server now has offline protection bubbles and is ruing the game for me. This needs to be able to be turned off.

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We fixed this on Upside Down by increasing the distance from a player you spawn to 500km. This way you can only know that a player is in an area of 500km of you, but that is fine. This is still very much an issue though, and I sincerely hope it'll be fixed as it is a very good tool for trolls...

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Im betting we could still find people, spawn 10-20 times and head to the point where all of the gps points are ~500 km from

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Gps satellites are 20 200km from you and you only need know 5+ to get 3D lock with few m accuracy. So yeah 5x spawn + bit of math and no distance will save you.

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3

A note from Keen would be nice. It feels like you don't give a shi*.

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I assume this for everything now, no one gives a shit until they show/say it. We live in the age of apathy.

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Thank you for all of the support. I do hope Keen takes notice of this issue. In the mean time, the very talented player MysterD has devised a work around mod that puts all suit and space ship spawns randomly at about 150km from zero (instead of the default, buggy spawn described here).


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1684792507

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I hear that guy's a real wanker

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I actually got this problem too. Some players "always" spawn in my range and attack every 2 minutes. Thanks to many Gattlings they didt reached my base core yet. But they, somehow, have the ability to crash respawn ships into my base and crashed many things every few minutes. One day everybody who joined new the server spawend in my range. I got visitors every 5 Minutes (Medical Romm/ Survival Kit not shared) That sucks so much to get robbed each day, no matter how good i hide my stuff.

btw, its a official keen server

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Did you just try turn off optimal spawn distance?

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This is not an option, or at least not an easily decipherable option, for dedicated servers. Some servers have been able to increase the range past 25k, but when the server I play tried this it would spawn people 5,000 km from center, which effectively killed space spawns due to a world size of 400k.

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What I don't understand is why the old spawn system had to be permanently disabled for pre-existing worlds. Please make this configurable again. I liked the old system and I don't think I've been "playing it wrong" for the last 1200 hours. Alternatively, consider adding a teleporter.

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Hello, Engineer!


Thank you for your feedback! Your topic has been added between considered issues.

Please keep voting for the issue as it will help us to identify the most serious bugs.


We really appreciate your patience.


Kind Regards


Keen Software House: QA Department

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My server is having a lot of issues, but what makes them all incredibly worse, is that when people die when logged out, they're respawning at places that aren't their homes. This is absolutely ridiculous and needs to stop.

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I can confirm that it only takes five respawns to zero in on a persons position.

About two minutes or so, even with variable "distance".

One you have that, you just use those unlimited respawn resources to bomb them with the space pod "bomber" over and over again.

There does not appear to be any way to avoid without a server change.

Once you log in "near someone", you will always spawn near them whether they are powered or not, whether they jump away, even as enemies...why is this even a thing.

Makes jump drives, long distance travel, or carefull concealment totally useless.

Non-building griefers can just dive bomb you with their unlimited server-spawned ships.

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How long does it take to make players respawn at one point? At least for a while until you come up with something else? How many bases should be destroyed?

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I find the new spawn system less than ideal. The shift from spawning in a region to player focused spawning is a horrible idea for PvP.


Your are pretty much forced to increase the respawn time to 5 or 10 minutes minimum.

Have the autorespawn enabled.

Increase the optimal spawn to 100km.

Add the following to the RespawnShips.sbc after <Prefab>RespawnSpacePod</Prefab>


<GetSpawnPositionNearPlanet>

<Position x="0" y="0" z="0" />

<Forward x="0" y="0" z="-1" />

<Up x="0" y="1" z="0" />

</GetSpawnPositionNearPlanet>

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Fixed in version 1.190.1.

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Hello,


This is fixed in version 1.190.1.


For more detailed info look at https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/update-1-190-1-minor-improvements.7403109/ .

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After 3 last week playing on 2 different keen public server, I can confirm this is not really solve.

Even moving in space place to place to keep ahead of new spawn, I come back to find my ship/base hacked by other players at some points.


Last time I was stationary on a spot (gold rich) for around 72h before being found in deep in space far from the initial spawning point I got myself when I started this server.


I wish this "near player spawn" would be remove completly.

My solution for now will be to find non-keen server that disabled this option.. Oh I can'T it's not even listed in server details .... :|

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Fountain Core has a mod that corrects this for space spawning. The mod was created by one of the players.

It is a PVP focused server though. Just FYI.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1684792507

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4

This isn't solved Keen, this is still a thing.

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i agree. the "requirement: for space spawn and space pod may now be an "option", but both are still the default of any vanilla server. Near player spawning is slightly harder to exploit, but is still totally broken. it only takes about 15-20 minutes to find what ever player grid you were forced to spawn next to, and you will continue to spawn in the near area even if they destroy you and all of your grids. Server-spawned space pod "bombers" persist, so I would avoid any server that does not specifically correct the issue until this retarded "feature" is actually "fixed" or removed.

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Until they give us proper radar then I don't see this as a bad thing. How else are you meant to find other players in worlds for instance with infinite size?

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you arent supposed to, if you want offline raiding confine the world size to be smaller, but who wants to get raided while offline every week? Its a great way to kill server population.

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Offline raid? Just about everytime I have used it there has been people there at their base doing stuff. It's a great to create PVP with people that go out of their way to avoid it.

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People who go out of there way to avoid pvp usually play SP anyway. And while you may raid online most people wait for the base owner to log before doing anything either because they themselves are afraid of a fight or to prevent the base owner from having a chance to jump the base away. The point stands that if you are continuously blowing up peoples bases its very hard to get any actual pvp.

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I agree. even if the victim jumps away, you will still spawn next to them with space pod or spacesuit respawn. It takes only slightly longer to find them at their new location.

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i have stopped playing space engineers because of this, takes all the fun out of it. im really surprised to see this is still an issue.

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I've been offline raided trwice on the official keen server ... It suck I just started the game. If it even easier to find me I quit.

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Hey devs I left a pretty harsh review of this game specific to this exploit because it's been the most frustrating waste of time and has stopped me from continuing to play this game. I hope this has been COMPLETELY removed and you have moved to a more simple spawn system like spawning within so many KMS of planets NOT PLAYERS! Cheers guys thanks for listening your player base.

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I know that such game breaking fixes ought to be addressed quickly by dev, for some reason keen seems to disregard PVP related issues entirely. Given this apparent fact, I suggest this wonderful community made mod curtousy of MysterD at Fountain core.


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1684792507&searchtext=PvP+spawning


After some abuse by a couple of the locals, this was brought in and has been successful for the last 6 months. Aside from this, all we can do is scream bloody murder and hope that keen starts focussing on important stuff instead of rushing to fix dumb shit like skins...I mean really, keen? Are you not making money with this game already? Hard to recommend a game to people when we know you guys are delivering a broken product.

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And while I'm at it I may as well direct you and anyone else who cares about SE PVP to this one as well. Even if they continue to do NOTHING with these issues I think it's important that we at least voice our concerns. So please upvote this post as well, as it's also a keen thing, not a result of mods.


https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/general/topic/191-023-missiles-teleport-through-ship-armor-not-stations

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This can be exploited in so many other ways as well, you can make your spawn pod not a spawn pod, then spawn a ton of them and have a ridiculousely strong start, all while triangulating your next target :/... New players obviously get eaten alive instantly.

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So, the thread tag now says SOLVED … but how was it solved?

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Tested it, spacesuit does not spawn you on other players.


The spawn distance option only counts for spawn pods, which have a timer of usually 10 minutes.

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so not solved , just takes longer to exploit?

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07 JULY 2020. The issue is not resolved. I tested it with a Space Pod. Spawned about 8 times, marked each spot, and went to the middle. There was the newest asteroid base and player on our server.

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If the starting spawn pod now is targeted instead of a player, is it then possible to:

  • leaving the pod behind to a new location
  • changing the pod grid by adding more than double its blocks and then detaching the pod as a new grid and then removing the original grid
  • if it's only the pods Beacon getting targeted, then grinding it down
  • if it's only the pods GPS getting targeted, then deleting it
  • simply just moving all components to a new static grid and then grinding down the pod


Would any of these alternative options protect a player against this exploit?

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no.

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Okay, but isn't the updated spawn system targeting spawn pods instead of players?

Have you tested all above ideas, since latest relevant update?

And are you sure that not even leaving the pod behind as a "honeypot" has any effect on the spawn targeting?

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To my knowledge it has never targeted spawn pods, only players. "I tested it with a Space Pod. Spawned about 8 times, marked each spot, and went to the middle. There was the newest asteroid base and player on our server." He is not targeting a spawn pod, just using the spawn pod spawn option instead of the space suit spawn option.

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Okay, but is it certain that this new player was using one of the above ideas? What if the new player you found didn't delete the pod GPS or still has a spawn pod standing somewhere in the base?


Wouldn't you agree that to be truly sure in this test, it is necessary to be tested the other way around - that is, does other players find you if using one of the ideas above?

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It is the player that the spawn exploit targets, it has nothing to do with a spawn pod. And yes, it has been used to find people that were developed far beyond the spawn pod phase.

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Okay that's unfortunate. Thanks for the clarification!


Then I hope the player-targeting at least will be updated to target random players at each spawn, making it impossible to triangulate anyone.

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Supposedly there is a torch plugin that solves the problem.

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I have 3k hours of pvp server experience (4k hours in total) and moderate two servers.


The spawn mechanic spawns on players, this includes players in cryo pods and beds as their character stays loaded in. The spawn mechanic only spawns on players when spawning with the space pod. When spawning with the space suit the game spawns you in a random place dependent on the world size of that server.


Space suits have no timer, space pods have a timer that can be set to a longer respawn limit timer. Players often think that the space suit spawn mechanic spawns near players, either because they are mis-informed or intentionally as that would be a way more serious problem, with the objective to abolish spawn distance. Honestly it just causes the problem not to be taken seriously. Spawn distance should be optional, and the spawn location sticking to players should be looked at.


The first problem is that the spawn pod spawn mechanic tends to stick about 50% of the time on the same player, even with 10 other players on the server. This allows for triangulation of a player's location. Setting the spawn pod respawn limit timer to half an hour or longer and setting spawn distance to the max does make it much much harder to find a player. It would take hours if the player is in mid space away from any asteroid. Part of this problem is not being able to turn off player to player spawn distance.


But the way larger but largely unknown problem is that spawning in a spawnpod does not load in asteroids until you get out of the seat except for those already loaded in by other players. This can be used to find people. If the player you're spawning on is playing on an asteroid, or he has mined asteroids around him, then the game saves the voxel deformation on those asteroids. When staying in the spacepod seat, those asteroids will be the only ones loading in. Instantly giving you the player his location, or mining locations. Even at 25km spawn distance you can see the asteroids. This can be for example be mitigated by resetting voxels every hour on the server, but that prevents underground bases from being built.


This is a bit of a segue but it's how I deal with it in regards to a survival pvp server, and it may be interesting.


As a start, on the server spawnpod pvp is considered griefing and bannable to dissuade spawnpod raiding, and only keep it for scouting. The attack needs to be done with or from a grid built by the player.


I advise new players on the survival pvp server is to never make an asteroid base, as it wont be able to move away when found by someone, and is easily found. To make a mobile base ship, keep it in mid-space away from asteroids (hunting players check asteroids that are on the spawn distance). And when they have a jump drive, to jump their ship when logging off, and then suicide their character (rather than use a cryo bay). This ensures the base to be jumped away from any players that would have spawned nearby, and make it near-impossible for anyone to spawn onto it until the player is back online, preventing offline raiding. And it's good practice to jump the base once every one or two hours of gameplay 50 to 100 km. It also helps to store unused ships like combat ships jumped away from the play area.

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I see this hasnt been fixed yet... anyway back to my own solo game...

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@Logan Zentz, you misunderstood. I said you need to spawn using the spawnpod in order to spawn on another player. Spawning without a spawnpod, thus floating in your spacesuit and nothing else, does not spawn you on players.


"The spawn mechanic spawns on players, this includes players in cryo pods and beds as their character stays loaded in. The spawn mechanic only spawns on players when spawning with the space pod."

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While some may argue that this feature is needed for PVP, some will argue that this game doesn't need players' locations being given away like so, and I'd argue that offline raids are not necessarily PVP.

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One way this could have been solved would be to give each player the ability to disable spawning near them. So players could choose whether or not people could spawn near them or not. But ah well, its already marked as solved.

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Make spawn on shopping stations and the ability to call a taxi that will take you by coordinates. Time, the best penalty for death.

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Why does pvp get priority for play? Why are we trying to force this by spawning players so close to other players? Some of keen's customers are rabid and no one wants to play with them. With this new spawn rule Keen if preventing me from finding a safe spot to avoid them. Why are the rabid players being prioritized over players who value the physics and engineering simulation over pvp?

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Have you watched the original trailer? Do you realise what the game has always been about?

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and they wonder why Official servers are empty

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I think they just need to rethink how players are spawned..


I'm assuming the logic is they don't want a player spawning directly next to another's immediate area, so they must spawn within X distance of a player, making it triangulable. Instead just:


- generate random coordinate within X of server center

- is there something occupying this space (asteroid, middle of planet, a grid, whatever) here, Y/N

- is there a player within X of this coordinate Y/N

or first pull all player coordinates plus and minus X for excluded ranges.


that's literally it

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