Apologies

[Roanon]

There is also a difference in player's style between Space Empires and realtime multiplayer Online games. I doubt there would be such a widespread abuse of bugs and cheats even if they would exist in Space Empires. While in the TV kind of games there are a lot of kiddies who's main and only fun seems to be to invent and use cheats. Not that the game itself is bad, it just also attracts another kind of player base.
But I am surprised that the programmers obviously have not thought of cheating and cheat-protection. Where have they lived in the past 10 years? This is a well known problem, and the main problem - as you said, games can be totally ruined by cheaters, despite their overall quality otherwise. They surely will patch the biggest holes, it is still beta after all, but it is very difficult to make a game cheatproof that has not been designed against it from the very start.
But - I must admit that I have kind of mixed feelings. Sorry that a game you like has been ruined, but happy to see you back in PBW Cheers!

[Fyron]

Umm..... is not the goal of a beta tester to break the game in every way they can, so that the programmers can fix the problems before the game is released? Shouldn't it be a good thing that people are looking to make cheats now, so that they can be patched out? As long as the game developers are willing to patch out everything that is found...

[Atrocities]

Yes, it is the goal to break the game, but it is also the goal to REPORT when you have done so, so that it can be FIXED, and not continuously EXPLOITED.