I was playing on a server where the game crashes a lot, brand new game. The last thing I did was CLV before it crashed. A player had 8,500 exp and -14,000 alignment. The server crashed and refused any connection. I was able to connect everywhere I tried on the web, so it wasn't my network. My script retried once a minute and connected after about 15 minutes. When I came back, the player had 11,300 experience and -21,800 alignment. The logs didn't show him busting planets or killing any player or alien. It was day one, too. How did he get 2,500 experience and another 7,200 negative alignment?

It's possible that your route to the server was bad somewhere, which would allow others to connect while you couldn't. If you were able to connect to several web sites, however, that reason isn't likely. Another possibility is that you were disconnected and your IP banned, then you were reinstated later. That's also not likely.

If it was a new game and the player went up 7000 in alignment without killing anything (a slew of high-blue fighters might get some alignment but not the 2,500 experience), then the only explanation is that that player wasn't disconnected for the 15 minutes (and had a pretty good rob/steal script). That means that the player either was able to connect when you couldn't (not likely if you could connect to a lot of other sites in the meantime) or was playing locally (e.g. the sysop).

If the SysOp has crashing problems, he/she may have restarted then disabled logins to make changes. Some SysOps will use the 5 minute delay in order to shut back down again. During this 5 minutes that the existing players were on, and no one else could log on, a player 'could','maybe' make that much.


Taz's Underground