Official post by FD regarding recent database errors

[Commiekaze]

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=92233&p=1437939&viewfull=1#post1437939

Hello,

I had previously posted a message similar to the following in the forums already (https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showth...=1#post1425751), but felt the players (you guys!) deserved a little more explanation and a plan of things to come!

Firstly, I'd like to apologies to all commanders affected by the recent server issue we suffered over New Year. On January 1st 2015 around 11:00pm we had a network issue with one of our databases. Our online engineering team spotted the issue and reacted to it immediately. During this period, a relatively small number of commanders were affected in various ways. Some having cargo stuck in their ship, others with missions that couldn't be completed/aborted and vanishing ships. Our customer services team have been working through tickets to resolve these issues on an individual basis since the event. We have also updated and improved the architecture and solidified our server side technology to avoid this happening again.

After shoring up the database, in the early hours of the 2nd of January, we automatically refunded all the affected players for their lost transactions and also granted them a 20% bonus for their troubles. However, during this refund process, a very few (lucky) commanders received more credits than perhaps they were entitled to (5 billion credits in some cases)!

To be clear - these players will not be banned. Over the next 24 hours we will be investigating every affected player and performing individual commander rollbacks where we feel it's fair to - which may include credits, assets and rank where appropriate. We may reach out to individual commanders where this situation may not be straight forward. None of these players will be eligible for the "Race to Elite" competition if we feel they have gained an unfair advantage over the competition.

On the morning of the 3rd of January, after reports that some players were still having issues, we ran a second pass over the database to remove any excess cargo commanders may have still been carrying, which should have unblocked the commodities markets for those remaining affected players. In the next 24 hours we shall also be issuing a server side fix to automatically issue a credit or asset refund on login after cases similar to these. Of course, if you are still having problems, please submit a support ticket at https://support.elitedangerous.com - our customer services team can help.

We are also aware of an exploit (I wont detail it here) which occurred due to this database error, where players have been abusing the broken state of their ship to "create credits". These players know they are exploiting the system and will also be investigated. Actions may be taken against players who are known to be exploiting the system and do stand out from the commanders who were simply given the credits during our credit refund process. These players will also not be eligible for the "Race to Elite" competition if we feel they have gained an unfair advantage over the competition.

Again, I (and the whole of the online team) apologise for the disruption you may have suffered over the last few days. As you can see, we reacted promptly to the situation but simply failed to communicate this in good time with the players.

To avoid this happening in the future, in the next week, we shall be publishing a "Server Status" dashboard which you can use to see the state of the online galaxy. From here we shall let you know immediately of any problems we are currently facing, any known issues and any scheduled down-time for maintenance. This should give us a single place for us to be able to communicate directly with you guys about any problems the servers are currently facing - or hopefully - simply that all is well in the galaxy.

Finally - if you are still affected by this issue in anyway, please do submit a support ticket: https://support.elitedangerous.com. Our apologies for the disruption and we shall endeavour to communicate with commanders more promptly and directly going forward.

As always, fly safe commanders!

Andrew Barlow

[Raz0rking]

hmm..interesting.

[Bent Onside]

TBH it scares me for the future if you do something that is not clearly an exploit and they later decide it is you can get set back a lot, or even banned. Playing scared is not really fun.


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[Combiseries]

FD nor the players need this right now. It might lead the way for more refund woes.

[Walter]

TBH it scares me for the future if you do something that is not clearly an exploit and they later decide it is you can get set back a lot, or even banned.

We all know how much work has to be done to make a living in the ED galaxy. If you find a way to make lots of dosh very quickly by actions that are slightly unusual you'll know you're exploiting a loophole. If something's too good to be true, it usually is.
So my tax advisor tells me.

[Bent Onside]

No arguing with that or your tax guy


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[CMDR_COENEN]

If something's too good to be true, it usually is.

I fear I have done 1 trade that could be treated as such. It was when I was near Azrael around the time the trading was really off because of the NPC's trading more stuff as the stations needed. You know, that what FD fixed at a certain time.

It happened I had a load of Imperial Slaves inside my Hauler or Adder. Right after they fixed the trading I sold these slaves and got 331.000 credits for this load. Pretty WOW and it's still my PR. I tried it again, got a load of new slaves from the same source, sold them at the "big money station". This time, prices were changed and I got a little less of 5k for the complete load. Later shipments were even less.

I never intended to exploit, I only realized what happened after reading about it on the official forum a few days later.

So, an exploit, bug or just extremely lucky?

So my tax advisor tells me.

What does your advisor tell you about trading in the Federation since the new taxes were implemented on January 1st?

[Flip]

I really doubt they'd consider a single occurrence as exploit. It's the repetition that makes it an exploit.

[Walter]

It happened I had a load of Imperial Slaves inside my Hauler or Adder. Right after they fixed the trading I sold these slaves and got 331.000 credits for this load. Pretty WOW and it's still my PR. I tried it again, got a load of new slaves from the same source, sold them at the "big money station". This time, prices were changed and I got a little less of 5k for the complete load. Later shipments were even less.

Trafficker! Serves you right!

What does your advisor tell you about trading in the Federation since the new taxes were implemented on January 1st?

He still works on the basis that the new year starts on 6 April.

[Commiekaze]

TBH it scares me for the future if you do something that is not clearly an exploit and they later decide it is you can get set back a lot, or even banned. Playing scared is not really fun.

Constantly logging in and out and reselling the same cargo for an hour is definitely an exploit. Doing it by accident is not. It is one thing to make a mistake. It is another to abuse it. You KNOW when its a mistake and when its intentional.

Luckily, it seems as though they will approach each player one by one regarding this, to the point of even contacting individual commanders to get their side of it. Though I got the vibe that they will only remove credits and warn players who are in the Elite race. But we will see.