Mitigations and Detections

Polar aims to detect every slight player behaviour abnormality that may be advantageous to a suspect. Below is a list of checks Polar contains.

Auto Clicker

Polar is able to determine unrealistic click patterns

Heuristics

Polar analyses player behaviour in combat to detect anomalies

Invalid Protocol

Polar analyses packets to detect anomalies and irregularities

Movement

Polar is able to detect any movement abnormality and apply mitigationsMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections. as needed

Tick Speed

Polar is able to accurately detect and mitigateMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections. time-based cheats

Inventory

Polar is able to detect any behaviour that interacts with inventories in a suspicious way

World Interaction

Polar is able to accurately detect and mitigateMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections. any world-based cheats, such as Scaffold

Latency Abuse

These are not displayed as alerts or mitigations; Polar instead artificially compensates silently.

Polar is able to prevent cheaters from gaining an unfair advantage through network pauses and other methods of connection tampering

What are mitigations?#

Mitigations are limitations that are applied to a player instead of a kick or ban. This will make it harder for the cheater to move, fight or interact. Cloud checks might issue a delayed kick or ban after a random amount of time.

Types of mitigations#

Movement mitigationsCombat mitigations

Movement mitigations

Movement mitigations are applied when a player is failing a movement check. Polar mitigation strategies include velocity adjustment, hit cancellation, setbacks and others.

Combat mitigations

To check if a player is currently being combat mitigated, use the command /polar info {player}.

Combat mitigations are applied when a player is using a combat-related cheat or if they've failed a HeuristicHeuristicHeuristic checks involve detecting cheats based on behavioral patterns rather than specific known signatures. check. There are different types of combat mitigations, but the most common are damage reduction and range reduction. If a player is detected by Polar Cloud, mitigations will be applied to the player until the player is kicked or banned.

Frequently asked questions#

A player's movement was mitigated, yet they are not cheating

MitigationMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections. notifications have to be taken with a grain of salt. Polar may adjust a player's position whenever they have glitched in a block or if a movement event was cancelled by a 3rd party plugin (such as WorldGuard). This does not indicate that a player is cheating. It is also possible for false positivesFalse positiveA false positive occurs when a player is mistakenly flagged as cheating despite not cheating. to occur due to bugs, even though these are rare.

Does Polar issue punishments (bans/kicks)?

Movement and reach abnormalities do not account to punishable VL and are mitigatedMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections. instead. The suspected cheater is simply prevented from executing their movement/hit. Other checks such as HeuristicsHeuristicHeuristic checks involve detecting cheats based on behavioral patterns rather than specific known signatures., however, do not mitigateMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections. a suspect's actions, but account for violation level. Upon reaching a certain violation level, the anticheat automatically punishes the suspect. Violation levels cannot be adjusted in config and are optimized out of the box.

Can I adjust the leniency of the movement check?

Yes, this is possible and can be adjusted in the configuration. Polar has 5 leniency levels:

• SEVERE - zero tolerance for movement abnormalities, may cause undesired mitigationsMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections.
• MODERATE - similar to SEVERE, but provides a tiny margin of error
• BALANCED - rare undesired mitigationsMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections., but may create small movement bypasses
• PERMISSIVE - significantly reduces undesired mitigationsMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections., but may create movement bypasses
• LENIENT - the risk of undesired mitigationsMitigationMitigations are temporary restrictions applied by the anticheat to prevent a suspect from gaining an unfair advantage. These may include damage reductions and movement corrections. is greatly reduced, but it may result in significant bypasses

For minigame servers, we recommend to have a moderate tolerance for abnormalities. For Survival or Factions servers we recommend to have a balanced leniency.

'Fighting suspiciously' alerts

These alerts indicate that the suspect has failed a combat or HeuristicHeuristicHeuristic checks involve detecting cheats based on behavioral patterns rather than specific known signatures. check. The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.

'Clicking suspiciously' alerts

If the server allows auto-clicking, this check can be disabled through the configuration.

These alerts indicate that the suspect has unrealistic clicking patterns and may be using an auto clicker. The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.

'Looting items suspiciously' alerts

These alerts indicate that the suspect is looting inventories (such as chests) in an unnatural or impossible way. The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.

'Suspicious game protocol' alerts

These alerts indicate that the suspect is sending illegitimate packets or that their client isn't following the vanilla protocol correctly. The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.

'Bridging suspiciously' alerts

These alerts indicate that the suspect is bridging in an unnatural or impossible way. The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.