Ok fair enough. Is there any way to affectively apply the suggestions I made to change the meta/thus requiring some level of human maintenance by introducing a random mean-time-to-failure… or course correction issue -or something that like that that cannot be scripted around, to your knowledge?
I would be glad to help, but if it’s in hisec… the security loss is no where near 30M to me. I know someone who has ways to track and find bots, and is very good at it though, I will have a talk with him to see how he deals with it…
Look, a bot is simply a program that repeats a given set of inputs. Think of it this way… S bot instructions could be:
Move mouse to position X/Y.
Right click.
Move mouse to position X1/Y1.
Right click.
Etc.
They don’t need an autopilot if done correctly. So adding a random break mechanic to auto pilot won’t change anything. They will just setup the bot not to use auto pilot.
Not to the autopilot itself but to the ships in general. If RL, particularly in my sector (air traffic services, but aviation in general) there is a mean-time-to-failure factored into aircraft operations. Having a similar component failure in-game with a random failure with a probability congruent to last maintenance performed… You could add a safe mode or limp home mode where the ship can still cloak, and perform limited tasks but certain things like traffic control will be offline to you except for routes to the nearest fully serviced NPC station, where you can repair and go back on your way. I’m just throwing ideas out there.
The bot does not give a damn about any of that because he follow pre-written instruction like a player would. If you try to fight bots by messing up stuff with MTBF on ships, you will just end up pissing off every player because their ships fails at stupid times while the bots will have a routine pre-written to run if the ship enter “fail” mode.
Now we have exploration bots running rampant; watch them scan a site down in around 30 second, hack cans, almost insta warp away if intercepted unless bubbled/pointed asap. You can even trace the materials flowing into Jita according to some Reddit posters for probable RMT. Paging Team Security: Where’s that update?
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As long as they’re not used for rmt which some probably aren’t it seems ccp looks the other way because bots drive the price of plex up faster than players and ccp likes plex to go up.
Hard to say, I have a couple trade bots on my list that are pushing close a year since being reported with evidence (see earlier posts in this and other threads). They both have RMT style contract history.
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A group of 9-10 botting Nyx’s earning 3 bill per hour for the past year. If they bot 18 hours a day that’s 54 billion isk per day, 1.6 trillion per month.
Nobody could ever need 1.6 trillion isk per month. There’s no way that’s not an RMT operation. Now you know where all the RMT isk is coming from. At least this is one good example of it.
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Marked.
Please do not make prior announcements, because they do no good ever.
Just do it.
o7
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You can always assume that botters do it for RMT and you will be correct in absolutely most cases:
- botting software isn’t free.
- botters usually run their bots 24/7 and power isn’t free.
- bots make more isk than anyone would have use for.
- someone who bots doesn’t care about the EULA anyway.
- why should he not RMT?
It is absolutely safe to assume that every bot you encounter is linked to someone who RMTs. Even if you’re wrong in one or two cases, that’d be completely irrelevant. There is zero reason for someone who bots not to sell it for real money. it’s an almost effortless stream of income.
Addendum: You know what’s also relatively safe to assume? That people who rent safe space in null, who also complain about afk cloakers also bot and RMT. They dock up like bots as soon as someone enters and they do not undock as long as he stays. They come to the forum and demand the only threat to be removed. Does that sound like a botter to you? I bet it does!
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Still killing bots, as my time allows. There have been some groups that have shifted to other hubs, and one group has split up to many hubs. But I still intend to keep hitting them all.
It is 20 days since I reported them to security@ccpgames.com
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As apparently nobody has been asking…
What do you need?
And that’s why we can’t have nice things here.
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More targets.
I need people to learn to identify suspected bots and report them. There are others who are going after them too and if we had more published bots we can all do something to impede them.
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Hm.
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Post ads in local after the act, sprinkled with rage about CCP and a hint of flavour of chat bubbles being ths trigger, because they exposed some bots. “Everyone” hates botn bots and the bubbles.
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Make a thread about it in the PvP section of the forums.
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Someone with experience shohld makd a thread about hos to spot them.
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Reddit. Though they’ll mostly do null, i’d assume.
This is a great cause. if i don’t have to work all day, i’ll log in and do my part… if you order me to, ma’am.
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remember this by CCP Peligro - Dated Oct 2017
No blog as yet - do you think they may have been referring to 2019 instead of 2017?
Remember this Dated also Oct 2017
Received a response finally last week, 10 weeks after I submitted the ticket, stating thankyou, they have been flagged, ticket closed. - everyone of them, including those with substantial RMT contract histories are still to this day logging in 24/7 - not even attempting to be subtle about what they are doing
And remember when I opened this post in frustration it was after 6 months of multiple tickets and zero activity by CCP dealing with numerous other bots and toons with RMT contract histories that I reported - some with contract histories totalling trillions a month
And lets not forget
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the 90 odd highsec hauler bots that Wanda Fayne is doing his best to disrupt by ganking them. All of them reported months back by multiple different players and all are blatantly active still 24/7.
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The Reddit posts about faction warfare bots and more recently explorer bots
and that’s before we even move onto bots which are all across null sec and probably wormhole space as well
I cancelled all my accounts weeks back and won’t be resubbing till this is sorted.
I genuine now believe CCP is either in meltdown or they are deliberately letting the bots run rampant so as to inflate their daily login figures, either for monetary reasons or to try and stave off the ‘Eve is dying brigade’. I seriously wonder, if you actually took out all the bots that are now in Eve, what the actual daily login figures would be compared say to 3 years back.
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And an after thought, the only real thing which will push CCP to do something on this is if the top 20 posts in general Discussions related to bots, nothing else
So if you feel strongly about this, then open your own I’ve spotted a bot thread or similar, and update others of a similar nature with your comments, bumping them back up there for all to see. fill the forum with bot threads and keep them at the top until CCP actually does something
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This will achieve nothing but get them closed by moderation. Let’s keep it focused on the existing threads.
I’m not sure why CCP is quiet on this problem. They did in the past and I’m sure they still ban thousands of accounts regularly. Maybe we are looking here at the tip of the iceberg, and the problem in fact is so much bigger that the few hundred bots reported by players are not worth investigating. RMT does undermine CCPs revenue, so there is no reason to tolerate this.
There is only one futile approach to this. Make gameplay require an active human brain, though I’m impressed about the explorer bots … how do they manage to scan the sigs with the noisy interface we have …
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