Pancaking, The Definitive Guide

[TheAdj]

Lightning_Blue told me to start a discussion here after I was banned tonight, and to explain what I told him to the community.

Pancaking is exploiting the lack of a vertical speed cap in such a way as to make the lerk unhittable by conventional means, which means the lerk moves so fast as to be untrackable by anyone or practically unhittable.  In order to exploit this, a lerk must fly vertically only (This is important later) and move as far up and down as possible as fast as possible.  In larger rooms, this results in a speed that can top over 2000, and renders the lerk difficult to hit.  However, moving up and down doesn't mean a lerk is pancaking.  Any horizontal movement adds a cap which prevents the lerk from continually gaining speed, thus it's no longer pancaking.  Avoiding marine fire by moving in a fashion that renders the lerk difficult to track is not pancaking, it's smart flying.  In small hallways, pancaking is impossible by definition because the lerk can't break the speed cap due to the lack of vertical room to move.  Pancaking is not moving up and down from ceiling to floor, it's moving vertically from celing to floor in an effort to lag the hitboxes enough to make the lerk impossible to track by regular means.  A small room doesn't allow for massive speed (in fact you rarely break default cap speed in hallways), thus making it impossible to lag the hitboxes.  Please understand this difference, and amend the rules to reflect this ackowledgement.  "OMG PANCAKER" doesn't apply to lerks that kill you with bite and were difficult to hit, it applies to lerks that fly up and down and do nothing else in order to lag their hitboxes intentionally.  Diving at you isn't pancaking, as the lerk will eventually have an uncapped DESCENDING speed, but not climbing speed, which is the actual exploitive part of the physics.

[Malevolent]

While that may be true, I remember trying to hit a lerk who was pancaking (could hear him hitting the floor really hard), but at the same time he was moving horizontally. Let's say he killed basically everyone and was impossible to hit. It was in the corridor (back side) outside of the Cooling hive on ns_metal. Now that may not be using pancaking to the fullest, but I still don't think that should be allowed since basically you are saying it should be.

[TheAdj]

Impossible to hit because you can't aim.  Do you ban blinking celerity fades that never die and kill your entire team?  Lerks are simple to kill, just because one flies in and doesn't do so in a straight line doesn't mean it's an exploit, it means they're smart.  Hitting the ground in a small corridor isn't anything new, you try avoiding multiple HMGs as a lerk in a hallway, you're going to hit the wall, the ceiling, the floor, everything.  If you examine the speed you'll see that you never get over the cap, which is a requirement for pancaking.  Stop trying to punish players that have skill.

[BobTheJanitor]

Bear in mind that avoiding shots is the main way for aliens to survive. No one complains when skulks leap around or fades blink around in order to make themselves hard to hit. We have cut off the lerk's main mode of attack by classing everything under the heading of 'pancaking' which is rather unfair to the poor lerk.

Did you know that a basic lerk can be taken out by 10 pistol shots, or 20 lmg shots? A single shotgun blast will down a lerk as well. The lerk is barely better armored than a base skulk. So avoiding shots is about all he has going for him. I think it's better to err in the lerk's favor in this case. It's hard to do any avoidance on the server without getting some accusations of pancaking. And like Adj pointed out, actual pancaking is a lot more than just angling your flight up and down to avoid dying.

[Doobie Dan]

Aye, it's true.  In most cases, it's fairly tough to break that speed cap without actively trying.  It's hard as hell to hit a lerk that really knows how to dodge.  We should do some study where we have lerks fly around randomly, in dodging style, with the speed meter on.  TheAdj, maybe you could record a demo of you lerking with speeds on to show everybody.

Stop trying to punish players better than you.

That was a rude and uncalled for post, but he has a point.

[TheAdj]

Arg, that was harsh and wasn't what I was trying to say, edited.

I'll record some demos during play on LM, I used to do it all the time because of constant "OGM PANCAKER" cries, but I stopped recently because no one harassed me.  I'll make a few today.

[Malevolent]

Believe me, I know how to aim. I can aim quite well for lagging also. So I don't appreciate that remark at all. You could not hit him. And I believe that person was banned or given a warning to stop right then and there.

[Vinegar Ninja]

funny how he WAS warned before, and MULTIPLE admins said its pancaking.
I saw it, and I say its pancaking. and you also ADMITTED to pancaking. so dont come in here and say you wernt when you SAID YOURSELF YOU DO IT!

[Isamil]

I wasn't really watching when LB banned him since I was on aliens, but I've seen him on deathcam, I never saw pancaking.
The main problem with pancaking is sort of what Bob said.  If you fly up at a lerk you will usually go somewhat above the speed cap.  Theres nothing you can do about it, its a bug in the game.  If you try and say, fly up in Triad to get to the vent up there, you'll go faster then you should be able to, but there isn't anything the lerk can do about it.

[Necrosis]

Stop trying to punish players better than you.

Thats not a pleasant attitude to have.

[Doobie Dan]

I wasn't really watching when LB banned him since I was on aliens, but I've seen him on deathcam, I never saw pancaking.
The main problem with pancaking is sort of what Bob said.  If you fly up at a lerk you will usually go somewhat above the speed cap.  Theres nothing you can do about it, its a bug in the game.  If you try and say, fly up in Triad to get to the vent up there, you'll go faster then you should be able to, but there isn't anything the lerk can do about it.

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That's the basic gist of it.  Does this mean a lerk can't try and dodge as much as he can until the cap is fixed?

[TheAdj]

funny how he WAS warned before, and MULTIPLE admins said its pancaking.
I saw it, and I say its pancaking. and you also ADMITTED to pancaking. so dont come in here and say you wernt when you SAID YOURSELF YOU DO IT!

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This is a discussion on pancaking itself, not on whether I do or not (Nor would I admit to doing so, because pancaking is a blatant exploit of which I have no need to do).  I'd love to see a quote in which I said I did such, because it doesn't exist.  I'm attempting to define pancaking here so I stop hearing "OGM PANCAKER" every time I nail a HMGer that managed to land 2 out of 45 bullets on me.  Flying up and down != pancaking, despite what you may think.  I recorded a couple of demos while redford and grayduck were speccing me that I'll link to later.

[Vinegar Ninja]

"So lately I've regulared on the Lunixmonster due to one fact: I haven't been kicked for pancaking. Every other server that has the admin presence that lunixmonster does that isn't a clan server has either permanently banned or continually kicks me until I stop going lerk. Not cool when I'm trying to get my practice in for the next CAL match or random tournament."-TheAdj
lets look mainly at those first few sentances.....
"So lately I've regulared on the Lunixmonster due to one fact: I haven't been kicked for pancaking. Every other server that has the admin presence that lunixmonster does that isn't a clan server has either permanently banned or continually kicks me until I stop going lerk."

so here we have a man whos clearly been to MANY other servers, and gotten kicked/banned/forced to not lerk why? pancaking. Clearly its not just us, and you should know that if what you are doing on OTHER servers, not just ours, and clearly more than one, is something thats BAD.

[TheAdj]

I didn't know being banned from servers meant that you did something.  Many players get banned from servers for "aimbotting" after they kill about 30 skulks that run in a straight line, doesn't mean they aimbot.  Saying I've been banned from other servers for doing something isn't an admission of guilt.  In fact when they find a server that doesn't automatically ban them for having a good score, they most likely will play there a lot.  People don't like to be outskilled, and where it's "hacks" "cheats" "exploits" or what-have-you, people make up reasons to get rid of anyone better than them.  That clearly isn't the case here.  Seriously, I'm not doing anything wrong, I just want to play and have a good time.  I'm sorry if you get frustrated that I can't easily be killed, make a challenge out of it.  A lot of players I know from outside LM that also play here gang up and try to kill me, and we have loads of fun.  

Note most servers don't even know what pancaking is, much less ban for it.  I usually get banned for "scripts" or "lerk cheats" or some other random crap.  That was simply my way of saying I like playing here because I've been treated fairly in the past by several admins, namely DHP, Wither, Bob, HD, and Redford.

[holy_devil]

I didn't know being banned from servers meant that you did something.  Many players get banned from servers for "aimbotting" after they kill about 30 skulks that run in a straight line, doesn't mean they aimbot.  Saying I've been banned from other servers for doing something isn't an admission of guilt.  In fact when they find a server that doesn't automatically ban them for having a good score, they most likely will play there a lot.  People don't like to be outskilled, and where it's "hacks" "cheats" "exploits" or what-have-you, people make up reasons to get rid of anyone better than them.  That clearly isn't the case here.  Seriously, I'm not doing anything wrong, I just want to play and have a good time.  I'm sorry if you get frustrated that I can't easily be killed, make a challenge out of it.  A lot of players I know from outside LM that also play here gang up and try to kill me, and we have loads of fun. 

Note most servers don't even know what pancaking is, much less ban for it.  I usually get banned for "scripts" or "lerk cheats" or some other random crap.  That was simply my way of saying I like playing here because I've been treated fairly in the past by several admins, namely DHP, Wither, Bob, HD, and Redford.

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you know i've always been kinda iffy about your playstyle. its surely all knowledge of lerk, but the question is are you abusing the lack of a vert cap at some points, especially since you are getting celerity? i mean, i perfectly understand celerity is required for getting around, but the way you fly vertically with it made you literally invulnerable because the hitbox did not follow the model AT ALL, nor is it realistic to ask people to follow a speed-bursting model(you can change speeds very fast as lerk going up and down, which is the problem)

but as i saw yesterday, you seem to have cooled the vertical abuse, which if you do keep up, i have no problem with your lerk since its truely not exploiting then.

also, the question is not how you view your playing, but how we view it. hate to say that, but it seems you don't know that yet. don't mean to be hostile with it, just making that clear. as well, we are allowed to change opinions as we go :p just because i was kind of iffy earlier, its built up over time, but continue as you have yesterday and im fine with it

[TheAdj]

The point is I'm not intentionally exploiting the lack of a speed cap, I'm exploiting the fact that most people can't track a small object moving at 750+ units flying in crazy patterns around a small room.  It's a fact that people can track horizontally moving targets easy, they can't track horizontal+vertically moving targets.  It has nothing to do with laggy hitboxes or insanely fast speed.  Probably the only time I ever seriously break the speed cap is diving at people in larger rooms, which when the vertical speed is fixed will still exist so it makes more sense (It makes logical sense to gain speed when going down, but not when going up).  Pancaking is far more abusable with adrenaline than it is with celerity, because you have a serious lack of adrenaline with celerity, adrenaline is pretty much unlimited.

[Necrosis]

I didn't know being banned from servers meant that you did something.

If I was the type of person who had a sig...

[Isamil]

HD, as I was saying there isn't to much he can do...
Hopefully in B6 pancaking will be fixed and we can just forget about this.

[TheAdj]

I didn't know being banned from servers meant that you did something.

If I was the type of person who had a sig...

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Do you pub anywhere else?  If you have any skill whatsoever it's entirely possible to be banned simply for being better than the admins on a server.  I've been banned from voogru, g4b2s, and numerous pub clan's servers for things such as "aimbotting" or "scripting" merely because I pretty much destroyed the other team by myself because they were pretty much totally incapable of playing the game at anything but their own level.  Do you think I aimbot?  Because using your logic being banned from another server means that I must aimbot.  Remember Necrosis, I'm one of the few clan players that would actually have a logical argument with you, drop the attitude with me please.

[Grimm]

I advice you heed your own advice and drop your own attitude. Necrosis made a simple comment, but you're blowing it out of proportion and making implications that aren't there. There is no 'logic' about anything you've done in his statement; he didn't mention anything at all about aimbotting or hacking of any kind, yet you seem to have the ability to pull a deeper meaning of the statement from thin air.

We already know there are admins who will ban someone for being a good player, but you have to understand that whoever runs the server has the perogative to do as they wish. They're providing you with free service by allowing you to play there, and what they do is up to them. If you don't like a particular server, or you aren't able to play on a specific server for whatever reasons, just let it go; there are always other servers to play on. Whining to us that you've been banned from other servers is pointless because nobody here has any control over what the other server operators do or how they act. The rules and guidelines set here are set for a reason, but that doesn't mean you can't play here and enjoy yourself.