ELITE usage

[Sygian]

Just out of curiosity. I may have missed it, but I've looked everywhere. Due to recent events involving Predator, is Halcones' ELITE excel tool still legal to use?

I haven't used it since the Predator issue, and I don't plan on using it. I encourage those who have ELITE to not trust Halcones or his mischievous tools.

Have the mods declared it legal/illegal yet? If so, could you link me to it?

[Zacherie]

In my opinion, given what's been taking place in relation to scripts, any tool produced by a DoS player should be considered illegal.

[Sygian]

In my opinion, given what's been taking place in relation to scripts, any tool produced by a DoS player should be considered illegal.

I agree. I am just questioning its legality and whether or not users in the past, present, or future will get punished.

[NOrTh pAcIfiC spY]

I filed a GHR regarding that (or for the DEN version of it, the Halcones version don't use at all, don't use DOS players scripts...). Just leave it, when they put in Estimated Update Times etc. hopefully it'll become irrelevant.

[Ballotonia]

Just out of curiosity. I may have missed it, but I've looked everywhere. Due to recent events involving Predator, is Halcones' ELITE excel tool still legal to use?

I haven't used it since the Predator issue, and I don't plan on using it. I encourage those who have ELITE to not trust Halcones or his mischievous tools.

Have the mods declared it legal/illegal yet? If so, could you link me to it?

I'm not familiar with that tool. Keep in mind that you as user of any tool are responsible for evaluating its legality.

Since you call it an 'excel tool' however I'll say this: it is legal to use a tool where you input the regional XML data dump(s) and perhaps manually add some other information (like the end time of the last update) and let the excel sheet calculate regional update times. Since that doesn't use the API feed or scrapes HTML pages, there would be no user agent or rate limit to deal with.

Also good to know: coordinating with a DoS (Delete on Sight) user to let them indirectly (through you) play the game (by for instance influencing the game with ANY tool) by providing that user with feedback on the tool so he/she can improve upon it, is illegal. You'd be helping a DoS user to play NationStates, and thus circumventing the NS moderation system. Just like we block IPs of DoS users as needed if they use proxies, you'd also risk DoS for yourself since then you'd be the intermediary.

Ballotonia

[Sygian]

Just out of curiosity. I may have missed it, but I've looked everywhere. Due to recent events involving Predator, is Halcones' ELITE excel tool still legal to use?

I haven't used it since the Predator issue, and I don't plan on using it. I encourage those who have ELITE to not trust Halcones or his mischievous tools.

Have the mods declared it legal/illegal yet? If so, could you link me to it?

I'm not familiar with that tool. Keep in mind that you as user of any tool are responsible for evaluating its legality.

Since you call it an 'excel tool' however I'll say this: it is legal to use a tool where you input the regional XML data dump(s) and perhaps manually add some other information (like the end time of the last update) and let the excel sheet calculate regional update times. Since that doesn't use the API feed or scrapes HTML pages, there would be no user agent or rate limit to deal with.

Also good to know: coordinating with a DoS (Delete on Sight) user to let them indirectly (through you) play the game (by for instance influencing the game with ANY tool) by providing that user with feedback on the tool so he/she can improve upon it, is illegal. You'd be helping a DoS user to play NationStates, and thus circumventing the NS moderation system. Just like we block IPs of DoS users as needed if they use proxies, you'd also risk DoS for yourself since then you'd be the intermediary.

Ballotonia

Like I said, I don't use it. I don't plan on using illegal scripts made by Delete-on-Sight players, especially Halcones. I was just curious about its legality. When word rose about Predator, I immediately filed a GHR saying that I was a user of ELITE. I had not in any way been associated with helping create the tool at all.

Sygian

[Crushing Our Enemies]

I haven't used elite either, but as I understand it, it uses more information than just the daily dump and user-input. It has macros that make calls to the site, I think.

[Sygian]

I haven't used elite either, but as I understand it, it uses more information than just the daily dump and user-input. It has macros that make calls to the site, I think.

Well from what I remember and what I've seen, you do have to enable macros and it is constantly updating the times. At the bottom of the screen you can see how many things it does update.

[Crushing Our Enemies]

So there's a chance that it works very similarly to predator.

[Sygian]

So there's a chance that it works very similarly to predator.

Yes there is. Although, I have never used predator. Just seen screenshots.

Was there a version of ELITE made by someone else other than Halcones?

[Gest II]

This is Elite: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BzNGQ ... jQ5cnl0OTA

One of those versions is the first ever version circa 2013 and the other is a latter version. It was leaked previously by Feuer in the GP forum: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=362881&p=27033927&hilit=feuer+tools&sid=3aadd3810e45d0324b6c47c9a811cfcf#p27033927

It can no longer be used, possibly because of this: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=45424&p=28043532&hilit=excel&sid=3aadd3810e45d0324b6c47c9a811cfcf#p28043532

We would have gotten around to getting an User Agent, however it became a moot point when our region was dissolved.