Duplicate Team Checksum for Tournament Verification

[Lumaris]

I would like to see a command that can be used by players and bots where they can get a checksum of the opponent's team. This would be used to see if the opponent has made any alterations between matches. In theory, species, form, level, moveset, gender, IVs, EVs, nature, and ability would all factor into this checksum. I think this would help add some oversight to the community and streamline tournaments. Please let me know what your thoughts are on this!

If you don't know what a checksum is

For people who are unfamiliar with what a checksum is, it is an algorithm that takes in an input (in this case a showdown team) and outputs a typically large number to represent this team permutation. A similar team (but not exact) would output a drastically different number.

Example

Mew 
Ability: Synchronize 
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Spe 
- Psychic

would output say 6853732310.

While

Mew 
Ability: Synchronize 
EVs: 252 HP / 4 Atk / 252 Def 
- Psychic

would output 8410132895.

 

[Zarel]

While this is a really cool idea, I don't think it should be free for anyone to see the checksum. Knowing whether or not two teams are identical is a huge advantage and a huge leak.

You'd have to do it in a way such that it's only visible to the tournament organizer.

 

[Tomahawk]

Just want to say that I think this is a great idea. This would also be useful for stuff like playing Farceus DPP in Gen 4 Anything Goes, etc. Unless I'm missing something (am I?), it seems to be straightforward to implement as well: just use a hash on the importable as a string.

While this is a really cool idea, I don't think it should be free for anyone to see the checksum. Knowing whether or not two teams are identical is a huge advantage and a huge leak.

You'd have to do it in a way such that it's only visible to the tournament organizer.

Quick note that it would then also be useful if you simply could broadcast the checksum of your own team.

 

[Lumaris]

While this is a really cool idea, I don't think it should be free for anyone to see the checksum. Knowing whether or not two teams are identical is a huge advantage and a huge leak.

You'd have to do it in a way such that it's only visible to the tournament organizer.

Very fair point. Sharing teams is one of the best part of showdown and we don't want to diminish that. What if the users username was also factored in. During a tournament they wouldn't swap anyway. You could find a way to salt the team too but I don't see that being practical. And, overall, I agree that when it comes down to it, only the organizers really need that information.

 

[Kennedy]

For PS tournaments, this has been proposed in a simpler way. And for challenge-based tours this has been suggested before in the format of a team-lock.