Statistics / Rankings Terms

There are several settings in silEnT that attempt to determine how "good" a player is in terms (hopefully) more meaningful than just XP or XP per unit of time. Here are the terms used and their definitions:

Kill Rating

How good of a killer the player is, based on how many other players the player kills, and their kill rating. In other words, killing players with a high kill rating increases the shooter's kill rating more than killing players with a low kill rating.

Player Rating

This is a measure of how much the player contributes to winning a map. This measure is calculated by seeing how many times this player is on the winning team after every map, and how good the opposing team was. Like kill rating, winning against teams with a high average player rating results in player rating increasing faster.

Win Probability

The probability that a team will win a map (based on the players' player rating, team size, and the map).

These statistics are gathered by silEnT and the data is saved to local files on disk. This feature is originally from ETPub and no alterations have been made to it by silEnT team.

The ETPub development team member responsible for implementing these player rankings and ratings is Josh Menke. He has been kind enough to begin working on an academic write-up to explain the mathematics and statistics methods behind these rankings. Due to time constraints the document is being gradually updated and expanded. The latest version can be seen here.

Hardware Based Identification

Starting from version 0.3.0, the silEnT mod can be configured to enforce bans using hardware based identification. This is not any fool proof system but it is made to be an addition to the already existing ban methods. The hardware identification cannot be seen in human readable form while on the server. The data that is sent to the server can be seen in the client by making /cg_ident in the console. That is a hexadecimal string which changes its value between maps.

The format and data used to create the client Identification may change between the versions of the silEnT mod. The server can be configured with the g_identOptions server cvar. The cvar is bit flagged which means, you can combine the values by adding them together.

g_identOptions:

1 ; Kick clients that are spoofing the client identification to enter the server.

2 ; Kick clients that are not sending the identification to the server.

4 ; Enforce bans using the identification.

Server admins can use the !finger command to see the status of any players identification.

If the server is configured to kick for spoofed client identification, it can happen legitimately if the client connects directly from one silEnT server to another. Or if the server they are playing shuts down and they instantly reconnect. Instantly reconnecting again after the Spoofed Client Identification kick will work and the spoofed kick is a single event. If you find out more of these cases, please share the information with the silEnT community on forums.

PunkBuster

Starting from the version 0.3.0, the silEnT mod admins can use g_punkBuster server cvar. With this cvar, admins can either force clients to enable PunkBuster or deny players without GUIDs to enter the server. The values cannot be used in combination and they have no effect if the server is running PunkBuster.

The possibility to deny players without GUID to enter is important because the silEnT mod no longer enforces bans without GUIDs. Also, an informative message is displayed to the player as what was the real reason he couldn't connect.

The possibility to enable the client PunkBuster is important for the servers without running the PunkBuster themselves. This allows the players to be stored in the database and save XP if they have PunkBuster GUID from playing some server with PunkBuster enabled. If the client doesn't have punkbuster installed, this flag has no effect and it doesn't deny the player from connecting to the server. Also, silEnT mod doesn't do anything else but enables the client PunkBuster. The GUID must be acquired in the normal way.

The values cannot be used in combination because the player will get denied access to the server before his PunkBuster starts if the value 2 is set. g_punkBuster

1 ; Enable client PunkBuster.

2 ; Do not allow players without GUIDs to enter the server.

Important: Neither of the values should be used if the server is running the PunkBuster in the server side.