ALE Ownership Logger

Introduction

If you have a server that prohibits PVP or otherwise Griefing you may find yourself in the position where you cannot really track who did or did not do something on a grid.

There may be the possibility to log every interaction with a grid, but that is pretty overkill. In most of the cases people hack blocks, to steal cargo or the whole ship.

For that I created a Logging tool that logs ownership changes to blocks.

How does it work?

Every time a block changes ownership there will be a new log message on the console telling you who owned the block before, who owns it now and what their factions are.

Since its hard to figure out if the old owner was the one doing the change (for example when removing a block) it has an indication of the old owner was online or offline at that time.

When a player complains about griefing, you can then use Notepad++ for example to look for that player. And see what grids got changed while he was offline. Maybe you find more entries on that grid that may indicate who took control of it.

Since v1.0.2.0 Ownership logger has its own Log-File. called ownerships-<Year>-<Month>-<Day>.log and it wont output on the console or torch.log. Both console should not be spammed with unimportant stuff as it makes finding problems harder. At the same time it would be easier for you to look one logfile up instead of scrolling through an infinitely long torch.log

Optional: Configure NLog (No longer needed/working since v1.0.2.0)

You will notice your console being spammed pretty fast. So I recommend to configure NLog to not log the Messages to the console or torch.log, but to a separate file.

You can do so by adding:

<target xsi:type="File" name="ownerships" layout="${var:logStamp} ${var:logContent}" fileName="Logs\ownerships-${shortdate}.log"/>

to the targets section of the NLog-user.config It configures a new output in the logs folder with a output and file format. Every day a new file will be created.

After that add:

<logger name="OwnershipLogger" minlevel="Debug" writeTo="ownerships" final="true" />

to the rules section. This tells NLog to output all Messages by the Ownership Logger to the target you configured before.

Finally hit save and restart your server.

Examples

Changes due to taking damage, or griding/welding look like this:

19:11:53.6299 [INFO] Ownership change for block AirVent from LordTylus [On] to Nobody on grid: Vanilla Scout Ship - Tani

19:11:54.7810 [INFO] Ownership change for block AirVent from Nobody [Off] to LordTylus on grid: Vanilla Scout Ship - Tani

19:11:58.4971 [INFO] Ownership change for block SurvivalKit from LordTylus [On] to Nobody on grid: Vanilla Scout Ship - Tani

19:12:00.1809 [INFO] Ownership change for block SurvivalKit from Nobody [Off] to LordTylus on grid: Vanilla Scout Ship - Tani

19:12:01.4477 [INFO] Ownership change for block SmallCargoContainer from LordTylus [On] to Nobody on grid: Vanilla Scout Ship - Tani

19:12:03.1812 [INFO] Ownership change for block SmallCargoContainer from Nobody [Off] to LordTylus on grid: Vanilla Scout Ship - Tani

19:12:05.1139 [INFO] Ownership change for block SmallCargoContainer from LordTylus [On] to Nobody on grid: Vanilla Scout Ship - Tani

19:12:06.8809 [INFO] Ownership change for block SmallCargoContainer from Nobody [Off] to LordTylus on grid: Vanilla Scout Ship - Tani

Changes due to transferring blocks via Terminal look like this:

19:42:51.0799 [INFO] Player LordTylus [ALE] requested the following ownership changes on grid: 'Vanilla Scout Ship - Tani'

block AirVent from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block BasicAssembler from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block BatteryBlock from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block BatteryBlock from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block Connector from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block ControlPanel from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block ProgrammableBlock from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block InteriorTurret from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block OxygenGenerator from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block ProgrammableBlock from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block MotorStator from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block MotorStator from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block MotorStator from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block MotorStator from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block MotorStator from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block MotorStator from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block MotorStator from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block MotorStator from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block AirtightSlide Door from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block SmallCargoContainer from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block SmallCargoContainer from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block SmallCargoContainer from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block SmallCargoContainer from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block SmallReactor from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block SurvivalKit from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block Antenna from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block RemoteControl from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground
block TimerBlock from LordTylus [On][ALE] to [ATF]-Warground

Github

See Here