How will you know if I make a UI mod that lets me cheat in ladder and tournaments?

And won't publish it.

By you posting about it in forums. /s

@blackyps I am not planning, I just don't like UI mods in ladder and tournaments.

If it's one that gives commands for you it's easily visible in most cases when you watch the replay. If it gives you vision, while not visible in the replay, it's probably noticeable by good players... But there's no direct data that FAF gets from you apart from the replay, there's no anti-cheat or anything. But in general cheating in RTS is often quite noticeable.

In faf, even if you use all cheats conceivable (auto clickers, map hacks, off mapping, build under drop abuse) you will still as the average player be so much worse than a decent player that you results of the cheating will be barely noticeable. And by the time you are good you don't cheat anymore unless you're pepsi but he shall be forgiven

I thought UI mods weren’t cheating? They dont seem to be on the list of banned exploits thats stickied. A number of people have also posted on the forum recommending ui mods (eg strategic icons, idle engineers, etc) and the ui mods can be obtained via the faf client.

@maudlin27 there are some ui mod concepts that are forbidden. For instance one that does automatic manual reclaim. Smth like hover bomb automation would probably also be forbidden.

He is asking how someone would know without someone raising suspicion of a player using said modification without a big investigation.

The short answer is: you won’t.

If you think someone is using a “cheat mod” you need to go into the game log and check the commands issued per game tick, work with moderation to determine if it’s evident or not.

A player in a major tournament got caught using this in recent years, was banned from events for quite some time.

Are there details anywhere of what is considered a cheat UI mod and what isn't (beyond the obvious of getting information that you shouldn't have)?

For example, I sometimes use a mod where if you select mass extractors and click a button it upgrades them 1 by 1 - is this ok?
What if it was possible to adjust the mod so that if you select mass extractors and an engineer, it upgrades them 1 by 1 (with the engineer assisting), and builds mass storage around them once upgraded - would that be ok?

If it's in the mod vault, it's considered legal.

For custom mods, anything that does inputs for you or gives you information you would not currently have is considered cheating.