Banning PlayersThe easiest way to get rid of problem players is probably to simply be logged in as referee, and go through the options to kick the player (same as voting, referee's vote always carries any vote). This results in a 3 minute ban. some people have too much time on their hands, and not enough servers as good as yours. Some people keep coming back.
The all-round best method for a pernament ban is to use Punkbuster. This bans the player using what is basically an encrypted form of their CDKey. To use this method, if the player is still on the server, simply put pb_plist into the console, and then look at the resulting output table in the console. You should see the player's name you want to ban, along with other information such as a portion of their GUID, and a slot number. Plug the slot number into rcon pb_sv_ban x to ban the player pernamently. Be careful with this, always double check what you put into the console before hitting enter - I have a nasty habit of letting short GUID age numbers stick in my head instead. If the player is not currently on the server, you will have to dig through the PB logs (the ones in PB/logs/ folder) to find his GUID. Then either plug that into rcon pb_sv_banguid xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, or add the GUID into the pb_bans.dat file (open with notepad) with the following syntax: All fields are optional except for the GUID, but there should be something in place. Incidentally, this also means the other fields can be used for some sort of comment - you will find on ban share sites that the date/time field is used to record the admin that provided the ban. If all I had of the newb was the guid -
On a final note, if you add a pipe ( | - on British keyboards press Ctrl+\ ) after the reason, you will give a private reason. This is simply so you can add a private comment that will only show in the server logs, because the "reason" field will be shown to players when they try to connect to a server that has banned them. Or at least it should, unfortunately there is a bug in ET which is stopping Punkbuster showing the reason properly, same as often happens with a lot of automatic PB kicks. Thus the syntax would be:
OK so this isnt nearly as great as it sounds. Since Enemy Territory is a free game, currently it is infact very easy for players to obtain a new CDKey. At least until Evenbalance roll out hardware-based GUIDs, or ETPro's fixed-GUID effort comes to fruition. In the mean time, to get some respite from persistent offenders you can at least try IP banning... Banning by IPFirst ban option is to use PB GUID bans. Most people actually wont acquire themselves a new GUID and will stay banned. Some people however do, so the second option is to ban by IP, and again there's a choice - pb_sv_banmask or g_banips. Use the former, although I'll cover the latter. Setting it up is easy, actually coming out with an effective ban is not. There is a third option - the Last Resort for when somebody is really keen to screw up games on your server. Plug IP into a WhoIs and report their abuse to their ISP. You will be surprised how many take it seriously, all you need is a letter sent to daddy. The first choice is covered perfectly well in the PB documentation for admins so I'll more or less quote it: PB_SV_BanMask "IP.Ad.dr.ess" -> Permanently bans players from joining the server from the specified IP Address / Subnet Mask; for example: issuing PB_SV_BanMask "12.34." will cause PB to deny access to all players trying to join from an IP Address that begins with "12.34."; These bans are written to the pbbans.dat file just like bans issued with the PB_SV_Ban command Second choice is done well at GameAdmins. To sum: g_filterBan 1 -> toggle IP banning on and off, set to 1 for g_banips to be effective? The ET source [g_svcmds.c] says: If 1 (the default), then ip addresses matching the current list will be prohibited from entering the game. This is the default setting. g_banIPs "1.2.3.4 6.4.5.3 " -> variable containing the IP addresses. Note there are two fictional IPs in the example, and there is a space to seperate them and also a trailing space. To have these bans active everytime the server is started, you will have to include this somewhere in the configuration file - AFAIK it wont be written anywhere automatically. Note g_banIPs is limited to around 20 IP's. reset g_banips -> empties the current g_banIPs list of IP's, so there are no IP bans loaded. status -> command to see a list of player's IP's, and other info. Addip & RemoveIP only can be used when server is running, no good for .cfg - when you're adminning just use the PB bans. To obtain IPs, if you and the lamer are on the server you can use "/rcon status" to obtain IP, else IP's are contained in logfiles, including Punkbuster logs and the pbbans.dat. when using "Status", make sure you do not include the "lastMsg", "qport" or "rate" numbers, since the table usually isnt aligned properly. The hard bit is figuring out what IPs to ban. If you check your banfiles or whatever, and notice the same IP comes up more than a couple of times, ban it, the player is resetting his GUID. Players can also reset their IP, but youre starting to cause more effort. After he has changed IP a few times you'll probably be able to ban the submask and kill all his options - any player can be banned at least until he either changes ISP or moves house, the problem is how many other "potential people" you're prepared to be the collateral damage. Every quartile that you remove from the specified IP is x255 more "potential people". Two quartiles is banning 255x255 = 65,025 IP addresses! Of course, many of those IP's will not be used by anyone likely to use your server, but that is a LOT of potential players nonetheless. I wouldnt go blocking IP ranges as soon as you get a single IP you want to ban, use patience with a little investigative work. Keep IP's of lamers in a file somewhere, you'll be rid of the pest before long. I suggest using PB GUID bans and then occasionally going through the pbbans.dat to spot persistent offenders and ban these players' IP - there is a useul tool which helps with this, PB Ban Manager, which allows you to sort by IP. |