CCP have big issues with Bots but seem to be at a loss as to how to deal with them, so lets punish all with blackout. How about hiring players like ISD to hunt bots hell I recon ccp would be overwhelmed with volunteers
Could make a special ship for bot cops to use stealth and can fire in stealth mode don’t show in local chat. as with ISD restrict for bot hunting only needs some work to refine the details but totally worth investigating.
I’m not stating this is the exact way this should work but merely a first thought ccp might like to consider and refine.
This is terribly risky. They already have issues with ISD or CSM corruption, or suspicion of corruption.
This would make it even more risky. You give “helpful volunteers” the ability to run around completely unseen, shooting anyone they want suspect of being a bot. That’s a terrible idea.
What would be better, is having more active ISD patrolling around, in (unarmed) Stealth ships as you mentioned. And having more active GMs around who can act on those reports. ISD sees someone they suspect is a Bot. They report it to the GM on duty, who immediately pops over in their own Stealth ship to observe. And if it turns out to be a Bot, then the GM can warp them to Jita for a free Killmail.
My very strong suspicion is that CCP simply does not want to attack bots in any sort of broad-spectrum, automated fashion.
The issue is that a great many ‘legitimate’ players are running bots on ‘paid-for’ accounts to grind out the ISK and resources they need. Trading bots, mining bots, ratting bots, mission bots.
CCP does not want these people targeted, because they are paying for subbed accounts.
CCP only wants to target RMT-feeding bots, or Alpha bots, or some other group that isn’t contributing much to the bottom line but where they can make a PR move and say “See, we nuked 6,500 bots this month!”.
I can think of at least 3 approaches that CCP could use to target bots in total. Presumably so can CCP. That they have never done this, in 15 years of botting issues… means they do not want to.
Just letting you know, the best way to report on potential bots, is to report it the way you’ve been doing. I don’t think an ISD Anti-bot team would go over all that well; we’re here for player support/interaction, and just that.
