So I have a thought (oh christ, not again).
What if there was a chat channel that opened when you arrive in these sites that asks a simple question a bot can’t answer? This could even be a verbal question maybe. The correct answer would activate the timer, and periodically you would be asked another question with a bit of time to respond in case you were about to get in a fight.
This would turn off if someone was at or warping to the gate but only if they were neutral or on the opposing side from whoever was in the site. This would allow PvP to work normally, with maybe a quick hiccup with obsessive Dscanning.
Another possibility is having multiple gates to go through with random names and the chat channel could tell you something like “go through the light blue gate” I think that would be extremely hard to script for.
Another, semi obnoxious possibility could be something like the hacking mini game, but you would have to essentially vanish from space while you were doing it so you couldn’t be pounced on (otherwise real players would say “screw this, I’m going back to ship spinning”. Maybe the whole time you were hacking you could be in warp and impossible to track or something. Also it doesn’t have to be the hacking thing, just something visual that bots can’t do.
The main thing is that these are bots, they can’t see, they can’t hear and they can’t respond to things like this unless they are so good they can pass a Turing test. In that event we are all kind of screwed.
To make this, however it works, even more fun would be the punishment for failing. Fail three times or simply don’t respond and WOOOOOOSH! Off you go to deepest nullsec, a wormhole, the abyss, or maybe right to the homeworld of your enemy. I for example would end up in Amarr. For me that would be amusing, I would go shopping, but for the person scripting a bot it could be really really aggravating.
The biggest problem is CCP asking questions that make no sense, or making all of the gates the same color. The questions would have to be non-repeating, and quick to answer, maybe instead of a chat channel a small window could pop up and say “click button number eleven” or something…
Anyway the possibilities are endless and could be used elsewhere like astroid belts, PvE sites and so on to screw more than just this specific type of bot.
Maybe something simple like having the site itself being in motion could be done, how would someone script a bot to stay within a certain area only defined by something like a cloud? That could make fighting more interesting as well, not only would you have to kill each other but you would have to also stay in a certain area to keep the timer going.
People complain about bots mining astroid and ice belts and all CCP has to do is make astroids and ice dangerous. They, in what, eighteen years? Haven’t done this, the game Astroids came out in 1979 according to google, I don’t see the problem personally. I do see it as making mining a hell of a lot more fun though.
Ok, I’m done, I keep having ideas and could go on for ages with this.
