Is there a defense against griefer scripts that ignore no-push settings?

Last night my community hangout suffered a greifing incident last night by no less than 5 newbie unverified alts. (Who quite obviously were alts rolled up for griefing by more experienced SL residents--yay LL for letting people create unverified accounts! What the heck where you smoking when you dreamed that crap up?) Today they went further to grief the Burning Life build of one of the members they were harrasing last night at our hangout parcel. (They all belonged to the same group with some stupid leet haxorz type name.)

Thing is, these jerks were able to orbit people from outside the parcel border (they were already banned) even with the parcel set to no-push. When some LL reps showed up because of the multiple abuse reports we were filing, I asked the LL rep if it were possible for the griefers to be doing such a thing even with the parcel set to no-push. The rep said that yes, unfortunately there were scripts that could work around the no-push setting and do this kind of thing.

What kinds of defenses are possible against griefers like this? We had some members trying to chase and orbit them outside of our parcel entirely, just to keep them away from the parcel borders, but these guys were good enough and experienced enough to stay out of the 96m range that our weaps would work, and they frankly had better weaps with longer ranges. None of our folks who tried could get close enough before being orbited themselves.

Is there any product that can deal with jerks like this at a range of greater than 96 meters? Is there any defense device that can *selectively* see a listed "enemy" coming from greater than 96 meters and just orbit them or send then home or whatnot? It would be useful to plunk down a few of these at the parcel borders to blow away the griefers before they can even get close. I've always been against using security scripts because they can be too obnoxious, but really, the griefing instances have gotten much more frequent since LL started allowing unverified alts into the grid.

If any product designers are reading this, consider building a security device for sale with the following specs; I bet you'd sell a lot of them.

1. Able to be rezzed on your own parcel or any adjoining parcel not owned by you (providing the parcel permissions allow object rezzing and script execution).
2. Ideally works at a range greater than 96 meters, although I know that's probably not too feasible if it must be able to scan and react quickly.
3. Can add "enemy" names to its scan list via a channeled chat command that uses a single line of comma-delimited names, so that you can plop it down and quickly add a handful of names if you're dealing with an attack by multiple griefers.
4. When it scans one of the listed enemy names, it somehow removes them entirely from the vicinity even if the parcel the device is on is set to no-push. The trick, though, is to design this aspect so that it cannot be used to grief an owner of a small parcel that is smaller than 96 meters across. (Which would really suck, of course.) Somehow, a legitimate parcel owner should be able to find and return an object like this that some griefer stuck on their parcel.
5. Something that is no-transfer but copyable, so that you can place multiple units at various perimeter points outside your parcel borders to create a "wall" that prevents them from getting close enough to your parcel to lob things into it. Also useful for large parcel owners whose parcel is much larger than a 96-meter diameter.

Seriously, if you can build this, I'll test it for you and be one of your first paying customers. The griefing has just gotten to ridiculous levels recently.

LL if you're reading this, this entire free registration process was a really really really stupid decision on your part. There's just no accountability at all now for residents. Anyone can go create a yahoo mail account or whatever and have an untraceable alt with which to grief people in a matter of minutes. Furthermore, how the heck are you ensuring that under-18 people don't get into the Adult grid? Do you have any idea what kind of liability you're opening yourself to in that regard?

Hello....I for one have nothing agains weapons or new devices for combat as long as they are used in areas where they are suppose to be used. But when someone is on their own land and attack and then threatened and then if there is a report made there seems something can and should be done.
Our family consists of Humans, Furries and Tinies...we try to be peaceful and fun loving and enjoy what all SL has to offer....most all of us design or build or both and have a lot of time ...lindens and care put into our homes and avies. But it seems that those who choose to abuse other people in SL are neither caught nor reprimanded and some others think its very humorous, that is untill it happens to them.
I for one will leave the ban regs up and put on the non push and hope for the best. and that is such a shame when we would love to have anyone visit and enjoy what we are building without some sort of abuse.

Hmmmm...

I should say, to start, that I'm a scripter, and have been scripting since I joined Second Life - but that was only a few months ago. So I don't know what y'all call certain things (example: 'bees' is sure a weird thing to call a replicator), or what features are common in commercial devices (like turrets). I might not know all the scripting tricks yet, but I've figured out quite a few things and found out about some others thanks to the lovely lovely scripting wiki (which really is worlds better than the in-game scripting help).

Are there more advanced turrets for sale in SL than the ones listed on SLBoutique? I did a quick search on SLBoutique and found mostly semi-useless ones. The one which sounds most advanced (the cheapest one, go figure), is the "Sentry Turret 1.0" - and I'll quote from its description to sum up the major limitations: "Present version configureable for push and damage bullets, can be controlled by members of your group, and will fire on anyone (read: you) not wearing the same active group tag."

So basically, if you had bought that, it sounds like all your friends would need to be in the same group, would need to have that group tag active, and even then the turret's bullets wouldn't go through walls, wouldn't ignore shields, and wouldn't even hurt the griefers unless they were foolish enough to be standing in damage-enabled territory. So, yeah, that's not very useful.

I've been thinking myself about how to make an effective turret for a no-push, no-damage area. So far the most effective thing I've thought of is to "escort" the target away from the protected property in a flying invisible cage (which is what I'm guessing their non-pushing orbiters do, except vertically). Alternately, if there's a damage-enabled area anywhere near your homes, the cage could escort the griefers there and then kill them. That said, having the cage figure out where there's a damage-enabled area nearby would be rather difficult. I should also mention that my previous attempts to entrap people in a physical object were somewhat unreliable - Of course, that was a giant cannon which you climbed into, and it was supposed to spawn a hollow cannonball around you. Half the time you got shoved to the side instead of into the center of the cannonball. Very tricky. However perhaps it's easier in open space (no cannon walls to limit how big the cage can be).

Making it not usable to grief a property owner on his own property is quite feasible. Making it not usable to grief his friends, however, is not (to the best of my knowledge).

Technical explanation: Although we can get the group's key from group owned land, there's no way to actually USE the key to see if someone's in the group or not. The group-comparison function will ONLY compare a group to the item's group. (The item could detect whether it's on land owned by the same group as it's set to, but that wouldn't help prevent griefers from using the weapon, as they simply wouldn't set it to recognize the group they want to grief)

In short, making it able to distinguish between griefing and self-defense would be difficult. The best way, I think, would be to restrict it to only working when placed on the owner's own land. Then the griefers would have to buy land next to yours before they could use this (theoretical) turret for griefing you.

Also: If by some odd chance these griefers all show up with a particular group tag, and you are wondering if it's possible to just mark that group kill-on-sight, the only way I've been able to make an item to detect a group, is if the item owner manages to join that group.

But wait! IF the griefers are all on accounts with no payment information on file, and your friends all DO have payment info on file, we can actually check that with llRequestAgentData and refuse to let it target people with payment info. Of course, I've got no payment information on file either, but, hey. Oh well.

(And yes, I am probably going to attempt to make something like this, since I'm already (attempting to*) make a better automatic turret)

* = I really really don't like saying I'm going to do XYZ before I've actually done it, or proven it's doable without a huge amount of hassle. However, useful things: I *have* found a way to test multiple groups with a single object, meaning a single turret can be friendly to more than just one group (But I intend to have more modes than just "shoot everyone but us," of course). I also successfully made bullets which ignore all shields and do just about anything upon reaching their target (damage in damage enabled zone, or a particle shower, or cage them, whatever). I recently enhanced this to the point where the bullets, once they know who their target is, will reach them instantly (provided they're within 96 meters, otherwise the bullets won't see them) - using the warpPos function in the script library, which is really quite lovely.

The funny thing is what I've spent the most time on for my turret: Making the gun part always rotate to face people. Rotating turrets? Check. Asymmetrical turrets which have certain components rotating around a single point? Check. The same which works no matter how you rotate and spin the turret (e.g. mounting it upside-down on a sloped ceiling)? Check. Whee! Sure, it isn't very useful for turrety uses yet, as it doesn't fire at anyone, or distinguish between friendlies and hostiles (it just stares at people), but that's what I'm working on next.

Non-trivial things I need to do: rotation is 100% done, the turret model is 90-100% done, simple command menus (disable, friendly, hostile, etc) are 100% done, bullets are 80% done (caging to drag them away should be fairly easy unless they're sitting on something non-physical - making the bullets fly faster than superman and go through shields, walls, etc, that was the hard part), group-detection is about 50% done, ban-list stuff 0%, communicating targets to bullets 0%, and giving the turrets commands from far away (say, several thousand feet in the air) is 0% and will probably require a very slow llEmail call.

Thoughts?

The non-push "orbiters", as far as I know, are actually more like cagers, surrounding people with an object and then moving the object. You can always stop anything like this working by sitting down on something non-physical; you can't be moved then. This is inconvenient though.

I have a device in the freebie box at my home in Caledon which detects when you've suddenly moved a large distance, and gives you a map destination to your previous position, which makes it very quick to just teleport back. Some really extreme orbiters (the ones which make you have to relog) might interfere with this but I don't think the non-push ones would.

All you need to act on someone at a range of further than 96m is to move an object within 96m of them. If you know approximately where they are you can send something in, and it doesn't take long to scan an entire sim.

Security devices can act on a wider area if they have multiple sensor prims which feed back to a central server; or just use more than one security device. I don't know of any which routinely scan 96m outside of where the sensor is placed though. That would be quite possible, one could have independently moving sensor probes wandering about, but it would basically be a hunter-killer drone since it's automatically attacking people outside of your land. That can get you into real trouble. I've gotten into Linden trouble in Rausch for using less offensive things than those, for heaven's sake.

Rich, that sounds like an good defense system.

I'm new to SL and I've never engaged in SL combat so I don't know if these suggestions are feasible or even useful. But I'll just throw them on the table off the top of my head...

Discreet Defense: The option to change the appearance of the turret in order to make it look like something innocuous (a rock, a tree, a piece of architecture or furniture etc) could be handy. That'd also make it appealing to landowners who want to avoid an overtly militaristic element to their establishment.

Co-ordinated Fire Between Turrets: If the land owner sets up an array of turrets and a griefer comes into range of two or more of them, having the turrets co-ordinate an attack (choose who will fire between them) would make it more difficult for the griefer to determine the placement of the defences and direction of attack.

Decoy Turret: The turret maintains a decoy of itself that mimics the operational animations of a real turret while the actual turret is located in a different location. The land owner would have the benefit of still having a visible deterrent, but the real location of the turret wouldn't be immediately known by the griefer.

Long Range Detection: I've heard of some weapons in SL that can engage targets at very long ranges... I think I saw one product advertise 300+ meters. Enabling the turret to detect and possibly engage griefers at equivalent long ranges for better stand-off protection, with an option to change and maintain different detection and active engagement ranges would be great.

Screenshot Scout: I don't know if this is even possible but it'd be cool if a turret, while being actively controlled by a user, could fire a "screenshot round" that, upon reaching the target, takes a screenshot of the target for the user from its location. Might be useful for safe reconnoiter, making a visual record of intruders (Griefer Hall of Shame photo. LOL!)


-L

If i recall right, it's still possible for a push script to operate if it's executed while on parcel with push enabled, no matter if target of the script is on parcel with push enabled or not. A subject to change in one of forthcoming patches (unless it was patched already, but fairly sure it's not done yet)

You could probably check the parcels around you and talk with your neighbours to set them to no push in case there's still some push-enabled ones...

Old school movelocks which fell out of usage due to the extreme power of most pushers will now be quite effective. Cages are still best beaten by sitting on an object then using the 92M movement trick to lose them.

I find the greatest defence you can use against griefers is..... drum roll! "IGNORANCE".
Plus a few screen snapshot noises and a chair can work wonders in some cases. No weapon is good enough to combat someone who is bent on griefing you. Plus as you say, you can ban one person and thanks to the account creation they just register back in with another name! It's madness and I feel for you. :/

If you ignore these idiots long enough they tend to get bored from the no reaction and move on to another unfortunate victim.

Do not underestimate the power of ignorance. This is a tried and tested method. Either that or you can wait until 9pm when their mums tuck them into bed.

Right now if the owner says /1 cloak, all their turrets in hearing range become invisible and phantom. /1 decloak makes them visible and solid again. ALT should still show them to the owner.

Other possibilities: The turrets could be hidden by the owner inside solid objects like rocks or trees, or could spend most of their time shrunk to a tiny tiny size (but this would make it more difficult for the owner to figure out where they got put).



This would slow things down a bit, probably. As an alternative, the bullets could be invisible. The targets wouldn't be able to detect the bullets coming with a script, or to determine what direction they came from, as the bullets are non-physical and *pop* from position to position (or rather *pop* from in front of the turret to inside the target).



Quite doable, but if a turret operates in a 96m sphere around its position, I'm not sure how useful decoy turrets would be. It's not like the griefer could cage the turret to stop it. (Unless the turrets were no-copy, and decoy turrets weren't - but I think people would much rather pay more for a copyable turret than several no-copy ones.)



Assuming a 96m detection sphere around a sensor drone, you could place sensor drones in a grid pattern 67m away from each other for full coverage (with quite a bit of overlap except in the corners). With that pattern, watching a 600x600x300 cube would require a whopping 405 sensors. That's probably not a good idea.

For an offensive weapon, it's a lot simpler. If the weapon targets by name, there are a few ways to do it:
1. Have a bullet that flies 300m while scanning for the target before suiciding. If the attacker is hundreds of meters away from the target, they would still need to aim in their general direction or the bullet wouldn't be within 96m of the target when it passed by them.
2. Send out sensor drones on the current facing direction to find potential targets, and report them back to the shooter. Then have the bullet query the sensor drones to find the position of the chosen target.

If it's a fire-and-forget bullet with no manual target selection, which just finds the closest target to the angle of fire, it again just needs to wait until it has gone 300m before suiciding.

In short, making a defense against long-range weapons is a lot harder and worse for the sim than actually making a long-range weapon.



Completely impossible - Scripts can't take screenshots. However, there is possibly a way around that by having the user have to take it still. For example: Turret fires bullet, bullet finds target, the turret sets its sit target and camera positions, you sit on turret, and now you're sitting in midair with your camera on the target. However, this WOULD bring you within range of the target's weapons, even if they only worked within 96m. (There are limits to how far away the camera can be positions, and limits to how far a sit target can be)

Alternately, turret spawns a nonphysical object for you to sit on, which then moves close to the target, and lets you take a picture of him before moving you back home.

If your a sim owner you can just disable physics. But if not you just disable object entry and object rez. And push depends on where the target is, not where the pushing script is.

I've been thinking about this, after having been orbited (supposedly accidentally) for the first time last night. It would be useful to have the script for that, so that it can be incorporated in other gadgets. Even nicer if it could be made to work automatically: detect sudden vertical movement , and then apply an equal and opposite push back to ground level. If that could be done, it would greatly reduce orbiters as an annoyance

Unfortunately, Scripts respond too slow for that. You'd get the push but delayed.

Yes, I decided against that sort of thing rather than try to compete with the speed of the orbiter. Instead, what the script I made does is offer you a map destination to the point that you were at before it detected the sudden move. So one can simply click on that and teleport back without issue.

Just sit down. That's the best defense to anything (except damage). Non-push orbiters (really GOOD ones) work by rezzing a physical object with extreme overkill physics, which touches your avatar and basically screws the physics system over. Usually you'll end up aat -214357283748 altitude with one of those.

I keep hearing the "just sit down" solution to orbiters, and it always confuses me.

I have been orbited 3 times. Each time, I was off in a "void" as soon as the orbiting started. There was nothing visible to sit on. How are you supposed to sit on something you can't see to click on it?

The one today was so wild that I didn't even have a mouse pointer visible.

So saying "sit down" doesn't work a lot of the time.

Or am I misunderstanding "orbiters", and I was greifed with something else?

Your supposed to sit down before you are orbited

I'm so glad that push griefing has been ended by those clever folks at LL.

I had a campaign in early 1994 to get them to do something about it because I kept getting shot off Stage 4 while trying to teach classes gratis for LL.

Amazing how far they've come in three years. Kudos, LL!

There are devices that will hunt someone ...

Give them a name and they will attempt to find that person in the sim and do nasty things to them, I'm not able to get in world right now, but if you IM in world I'll look them up when I get on and send you a LM to them

I got sick of being attacked, so I bought a shielding system a while back, being the bargin minded type of person I bought the "kit" which includes the offensive side as well. (Intergrated I might add)

It's really quite good, just yesterday I was attacked out the front of a shop, my shield told me who was doing it, and then popped up a menu with options for attacking back.

That griefer disappeared, I think he might of been trying to fly to the moon....

He came back shortly after that, with a "buddy", who I guess had bigger guns, same story, here's me standing in flames, totally unharmed...the griefers....off to the moon again.

Yes I know, I broke the rules too, but I'm kind of sick of it.

Of course, one should always try to adhere to the Terms of Service as closely as one can, as often as one can.

That having been said, the ones who come around hell-bent to ruin your afternoon are probably not very likely to be filing an abuse report against you. After all, they'd have to explain how the situation started if asked, and that would be the end of it before it was begun.

If you're on your own land, that gives you a tremendous edge when it comes to an abuse report as well. It's your land, so it's your rules. If you want to eject them because they are not wearing the stylish three-foot-long peacock feathers you require all your visitors to insert in their ears before setting foot on your property, that's entirely your business.

Every time I go to a Linden sandbox I'm either orbited or caged. I've got every shield I could find but none of them seem to work and I've now got an inventory the size of Belgium as I can't unpack anything to see what they are, sort them out or see if they are any good.

I would happily pay for a device which is always active which could scan for malicious scripts and zap that person first, or make a cage disappear and automatically retaliate against the griefer. Basically something which would just work!

It's not possible to scan for specific scripts in an object. What you can do is listen for the traffic. You cannot delete another's objects on land that you do not have privileges to. And there is no LL API to return or delete objects. The best you can hope for is eject/ban. Shields are easy to bypass. The best solution is to get some land and then disable object creation/entry and scripting for non group members. problem solved.

The solution is to sit down, and capture the controls.

When you try to move, scripts in your "seat" move the avatar (non-physical) and display the appropriate animation. Also, display the "standing" animation when you're "sitting." I believe there are already scripts that do this.

I've been around on and off for a couple of years, and I too have noticed this problem getting worse recently. I think two factors are involved:

1. Open accounts, obviously.
2. The no-push option.

Yes, that's right, I believe that by LL allowing land owners to ban push (And most have), they have merely made the griefers more aggressive. It used to be, if you were griefed, it was by some guy with push bullets.

The nice thing about push weapons, is that it's easy enough to fight back. It's easy to script a sword or a gun to push. It grounded griefing in RL combat. There were a number of times when someone would harass me, and usually, if I fought back with my katana, gravity gun, or watermelon launcher, they'd back off or leave entirely.

Push weapons encouraged style. Now, griefers figure, "Why bother with all that when it won't work in 90% of the grid? It's easy to write a script that will cage a specified target, then orbit them and die." Far more convenient, unfair, and harder to trace.

But that's my two cents. Your mileage may vary.

I wonder if you could start suing people who grief? Wouldn't they be suprised if they were slapped in the face with a lawsuit :3

No.


What would be most effective is a sort of invisible vehicle, that makes it look as if you are simply standing normally. It goes non-physical when you aren't moving, so it is effectively the same as sitting down. Combined with decent physical movement for when you need to move, it might be effective.

Hmm...