PBEM PATCH NEEDED ASAP

[berto]

It's an obvious flaw and if something could be done about it, the game would become better...

[Effectively nothing can be done about it.  See here:

https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...#pid433393

If someone were to ask (not saying you are that someone):  "Please go back and fix this."  It would be kind of like (imperfect analogy) saying to Ford Motor Company:  "Please go back and make me an exact replica of a 2008 Mustang.  Except install a more secure IOT door lock that I can control via my cell phone."  Maybe a (not so) simple fix back then.  Simply impossible now.  Why?  The factory has been retooled, as it were.  Ford can't make custom-built 2008 Mustangs now, in 2020!

Similarly, it is practically impossible to fix a (20+ year old) security flaw in a game that was end-of-lifed years ago.  We are no longer set up to do that.  Not for JTCS.

(Not to mention that, like Ford, we would not do this for free.)]

... As for the solution, I don't know. I'm not a programmer. I guess the problem is that anything that messes with the save-file has the risk of corrupting the whole game and as the turns just consist of ordinary files, nothing prevents you from copying them. Any solution would be quite complex?

E.g. there would need to be at least a combination of two things:
1) The game would need to have a way to tell if the player opens the "original" turn-file or a copied version of it (the latter should not be allowed)
2) The player should not be allowed to save the turn. The game automatically saves the turn (updates the "original file") when the player closes the game. Players must not be allowed to cancel/evade that autosave.

But then team games are no longer possible. A solution for team games would probably require some kind of server that provides the "original file" to the players. Everytime a player makes a move, that original file (stored online) would need to be updated.

[We think we have a fairly simple fix for this, for currently supported games (CSME, in future scheduled updates) and all future games going forward.  As you note, the many layers and playing modes for this game are quite complex and intricate.  Gotchas, unintended consequences, Fix One Thing Break Another abound.  Looking ahead, we will see what we can do.]