The Cabal's Secret Hideout

Our TradeWars 2002 Homepage

Web Master: traitor@tw-cabal.com

CONTENTS

"Badges? We don't need no stinkin' BADGES!" -Treasure of the Sierra Madre

HOME

LOTTO-GATE

April 19, 2002 - By Traitor

Well, first off, I'd like to say to Jackal, Wing, and all the WolfPack members: This is not supposed to be a witch-hunt. Cool your jets for a moment and listen before you scream bloody murder. Also, to River Rat, I don't think you had a clue what was going on on your server. That makes you innocent, but careless. I've put a lot of thought into this, and I'm trying to be objective. There is a lot of allegations against you guys, and what I'm going to do is try to separate out the hearsay and rumors and figure out what's really going on. I will examine each allegation in turn, and examine both sides of it, and attempt to show whether it has any truth to it, or whether it's just circumstantial. If you've made it this far without sending me a flame, then I applaud you. Please try to make it all the way to the end, and then decide if you want to toast me or not.

Why am I doing this? Because there are a lot of rumors running around, and while I admit I've done my part in spreading them, I haven't seen ANYONE directly confront them. If I were in Jackal's shoes, or any of the WolfPack members shoes, this would bug the crap out of me, and leave me quite bitter. I have talked to the League (Space Ghost, who we all know LOVES Jackal), I've talked to River Rat, I've talked to several of the WolfPack members, including Jackal, and I've talked to some of the other players. At first, it really looked like A LOT of suspicious activity was going on in the game. This got me pissed off to no end. I don't play in tournaments, and I sure as hell didn't want to loose my first one to a bunch of cheaters. But, as I calmed down, and really thought about it, a little voice of reason started saying to me: "Traitor, you idiot, look at the EVIDENCE. Don't fall into the same emotional traps that get alot of these Players riled up. You are above all that flaming nonsense. Disprove whatever you can, and whatever's left, make them answer for."

Allegation #1: "Wing found SD 10 minutes into the game. He must have been told it's location by Jackal. In fact the first 3 corps to find SD all had Wolfpack members in it."
Heh. Well, there is such a thing as luck. Scripts? Maybe. I know of one that has high odds of finding SD. It was actually mentioned in the forums about six months to a year ago. I'm not going to bore anyone with the math, but based on some conversations with some people I know, and my own experience, I bet I could replicate that script. It does involve voiding lotsa sectors and then trying to go places, without actually moving. Then making a lot of assumptions. And then a bit of luck. Of course, Wing could just e-mail his script to me, and controversy solved. :-) Anyway, if it was a script, then EVERY member of Wolfpack would likely have access to it. At least the senior guys anyway. Wing has stated that it took him 350 turns of running around with his script on. Which makes me think all he really ran was a world PPT script and got lucky. Since all of WP was probably using the same script, they all found it rather quickly. And that would neatly explain how it was found so quickly. I don't like it, but...I can believe it. For the record, our corp. used the old "6 ways out, 7 ways in ZTM method". My ZTM finished first (just under 2 hours. :-) and I ran a cool basic program that spat out the possible locations. I took the top 1/2, and Turk took the bottom 1/2. I found it first and told the rest, making us the 4th corp. to find it.

Allegation #2: "Wing found one of the Stealth Bombers one hour before it was even announced that they existed. And to top it off, everybody that found one was Wolfpack, or Ex-Wolfpack. Jackal must have told them where to look."
Hmmm...That first sentence looks bad. Could Wing have lucked out AGAIN?!? Well, I blame Jackal for this one. NEVER DEPLOY THE SHIPS BEFORE THEY ARE ANNOUNCED! ANNOUNCE IT FIRST, THEN scatter them. All you did for yourself on that one, Jackal, is make Wing look bad. It's possible that Wing found it on his own. At the time, Wing's corp. was already in a dominate role, and it's possible that while hunting down dead ends from his e-probe list, he might have found one early. Certainly, once he found the first one, it would have been easier to find the second...1 TPW according to him. Makes exploring cake. I don't make it a habit of keeping track of WolfPack members, so I'm taking that second part with a grain of salt. I know of several WP members who NEVER got one; one of my corpies included. I know I went looking for one myself, but thanks to Prestone, I didn't have much in the way of resources left to waste too much time on it. :P Once again, I could go either way on this one, but I'm gonna say that while it looks fishy, it's mostly Jackal's doing. He should have announced it them first, and then scattered them around. Or given them to aliens or something...the way you did it sucked bro. Whoever was ahead was going to be the most likely to find one. In the future, make them available to everyone, or give them to aliens, or don't put them in the game at all.

Allegation #3: "But what about the phone calls and the ICQ's that ex-WP members keep talking about? The ones where they claim that Jackal offered them the locations of the Stealth Bombers"
Heh. Well, the second one or more of these guys gets the balls to say it in public, I'll address it. For the moment, all I have is the word of some disgruntled WP members. Why would they say it in the first place? To fuck with you! And until one or more of them steps up, it's hearsay.

Allegation #4: "Lil Rogue was booted out because he refused to suck up to Jackal. He never said anything about the location of SD"
I have no idea on this one. Don't know Lil Rogue. Wasn't logged in at the time this supposedly happened. And I had coms off for most of the first few days anyway. I've heard both sides of the story, and I've seen one log that DOESN'T contain Lil Rogue saying anything. I haven't seen any logs that DO have Lil Rogue saying it. I'd ask Jackal to show me the evidence, but he's already refused that request, so I don't expect it. I'm going to chalk this one up to miscommunication on someone's part, and drop it until I hear something that will change my mind. However, this ruling of his DOES set an important president: if you share info, you will get booted. This may become important later.

Allegation #5: Well, not really an allegation...just some weird rumors around why Prestone, who was kicking ass, quit, and some stuff about Wing and Jackal sharing the same PC.
I have no idea. I can't even figure out WHY this is a rumor in the first place. There could have been 1000 reasons why he quit. If he said something to you, it's just as likely he was pulling your chain as anything. I'm not asking Prestone to explain it either. People quit. People have their reasons. Get over it. It's like the rumors that Wing uses Jackal's PC and that others shared PC's or looked over each other's shoulders, etc... Drop it. You're never gonna prove it one way or the other. And I damn sure don't want people prying into my private life over this game, or my living arrangements, or who comes over to my house. It's too close to 1984 already without TW monitors in every house!

Now it gets interesting tho. Now we get to the stuff that I can't easily explain away.

I collect data. If you know anything about me at all, it's that I'm a data whore. I have all the daily logs since the beginning of the game, and all of our corps messages since the beginning of the game. (With the exception of the 4/4 and 4/8 corp. messages...Heroes 4 has a memory leak, and my PC decided to crash on me...what I get for alt-tabbing between games...lol..after the 8th, I figured it out and rebooted before playing TW...)

Anyway, I have sent these logs to Jackal and River Rat. I'm waiting to hear back from them as to their opinions on them. Once I get word back from them, and I know whether I'm still gonna be playing in the Lotto, I'll post them for all to see. The Links will be here for the Logs, and here for the Messages. I also have daily CLV's. (and fig deployments, and port loss tracking, etc...) These files are kinda big, so be patient. Anyway, for those of you who have them, if you look closely at the logs you will see two patterns emerge.

Pattern #1: Corp 3 and Corp 15 don't seem to attack each other. They sure as hell hit everyone else, and everyone hits them, but THEY don't seem to make a concerted effort to beat on each other. Both corps HAVE to know where each other lives...heck, even WE know where they live, and we haven't been exploring that much. Now I realize with every freaking planet named "." it's kind of hard to tell sometimes, but still... you'd think at this point, there would be something in the logs. I'm not saying that they aren't trying to kill each other, but it is a pattern I have observed. It's truly remarkable tho, considering that they are online at the same times, and they are invading stuff at the same time. Surely at some point, they would go after the same target, and take pot shots at each other. But if they have, then there is no obvious record of that. Even their align and exp haven't changed significantly, so no apparent running gun duels. I can account for most of their experience and alignment from the logs and their planet kills. It appears that they have never taken shots at each other. Is there some sort of tacit agreement that they will wipe everyone else out before they attack each other? Well if so, that violates the spirit of the no megga-corping rule. Even Jackal agreed with that point (that it would be a violation, NOT that they were doing anything wrong.)

(Blatant out of context quote from ICQ. Cobra is my ICQ nick...It's short for Rattail Cobra, which is an anagram of Traitor Cabal...long story :-)
Cobra 4/18/02 8:43 PM well, you won't find them advertizing anything
directly in the logs. ya just have to look at
the patterns. it's TOO convienient. It
happens TOO often. even if they never said
anything directly, they are in EFFECT acting
as a megga corp. that's my bitch. ya can't
say, lets kill everyone else and THEN fight.
that's against the rules too...or at least the
spirit of the rules as I interperet them

Jackal 4/18/02 8:43 PM I agree.. but I have to see the whole picture
before I can do anything

Pattern #2: Corp 3 and Corp 15 appear to be coordinating invasions. Specifically their invasion of our corp. on the 9th at 1:05am to 1:30am or so. It's in the logs, but it's our corp. messages that are telling. If you examine them carefully, one discovers that Wing fires a probe at a sector 2 hops away from one of our sectors. He then kills the fig there a minute later. Then he fires a probe DIRECTLY into our sector. Wing's pattern is to probe, then move and kill the offending fig. He does it over and over in our messages. THEN, less than 5, count them...FIVE minutes later, guess who is invading our sector? Taku and Jack Box, from corp. 15! AND AT THE SAME TIME, WING IS INVADING another one of our sectors several hops away. Seriously. WTF is that?!? And you want to know what? They did the same thing on the 8th (between 00:43 and 01:05), the 9th (ours), the 11th (between 01:15 and 01:50 or so), and the 13th (between 01:34 and 02:03) Now, I can't tell if they are invading the same corps, or different corps, but the pattern is still the same. How do they pull this off without collusion? I have no idea how it's possible.

In conclusion, I'm willing to disregard the allegations. Whether it was Lady Luck, or coincidence or whatever, I can accept that they could have happened legitimately. I have a problem with the Patterns tho. I just can't 'Prove' it. If I had access to some of the other players messages, or even better, if JACKAL and RIVER RAT had access to those messages, then they might be able to figure out what's going on. So, if you have logs that might be helpful, send them to Jackal and River Rat. Since the League abandoned this game, leave them out of it. They have made it clear that they are not interested in perusing it. I don't want to believe that these guys were cheating. I know some of them, and just don't see it in their character. However, the logs look really funny, and I want answers. I'll even listen to reasonably thought out arguements from either side.

-Traitor, CEO of The Cabal, and Member of Corp 5, Lethal Injection in the Lethal Lotto.