pnev

Thanks for the replies everyone, appreciate it, especially the one about the Galaxy S3. TheDesigner, I didn't assume they were hackers, but I know hacking is prolific in the game so I wanted to ask people with more experience.

I'll prefix my story/question with this: We're both relatively new players, and we don't really know what the protocol, rules, or game etiquette is. So my friend and I were running up the West side of the map, planning to approach the airfield from the SW. We found a cow, a few sheep, cooked some meet up, got back to full blood. My friend is leading about 15 yards to my NE, we're both crouch running, me with my sniper (the crappy farm one) and him with his AK. We keep ourselves as covered as possible, but the server only has 20 people, so we're not overly worried about running into hostiles, especially this far out of the way. As we come through a particular set of trees, my friend sees some weird shape. We both hit the ground and I roll over to a better position and scope in. It's a tent. We've never seen a tent before and we freak out. After some quick planning we decide that my friend will move in first, and I'll come in behind him. He starts to move. When he's about 20m away from the tent, I hear an audible intake of breath. "It's a tent city!" he half-whispers. There is not only one tent, there are ten scattered around the area. Ecstatic, I start to crouch run after my friend. Then, I hear an odd rumble. Is it even in game? It gets louder. "Hide!" is all I manage to say before diving in to a pine. Seconds later an ATV races out of the trees and directly for my friend. We're dead. He's seen us. I level my sniper, but just as I do, he makes a U-turn and heads back into the trees. After about 3 minutes of complete silence, my friend says "I'm going for the tent." Still trembling a little from the adrenaline the ATV injected into my body, I move to a crouch and cover him while he moves prone to the first tent. Nothing. There's a Pepsi can and some pasta. Ever so slowly he progresses to the second tent, then the third, fourth and so on. Not until he reaches the eighth and final tent do we find them. An M107 and a M4A1 SD, with 5 clips each. My friend drops a lot of gear, swaps his gun out for the M4A1 and bags the M107. Our first successful raid. We're discussing our plan of retreat when my friend hears the ATV for the second time. Further away however, and not approaching as fast. We judge that we can probably get over the crest of the hill before he gets there and both bolt. We get over the hill and no longer hear the ATV. We start the trek south, freaking out about our loot, when we see another tent. About 300m from the tent city, and carefully nestled over the hill in a group of pines. We check the tent. 3 range finders, two SVD camo's, NV goggles and countless other tools. We freak, grab what we can, and get the hell out of dodge. My question: Was this a hacker camp? Is it too unlikely that they had all that set up? Is it so likely that we should drop the gear? Can we be banned/punished if we don't?