So last week I was watching a twitch streamer who was ratting in the Goons area when suddenly a “bling” sound popped (stream viewers could hear the sound too). The streamer responded, its a tool “the Empire” uses and which plays a sound if neutrals are spotted in nearby systems.
Now, today someone explained to me, this system is backed by a bunch of Alpha-status-accounts, which form the base of the security tool, running all over different proxys and so on…
Now, I lived in a big nullsec alliance just until a few months ago and all our local intelligence was done via hand - drag&drop into local intelligence channel, without any automization or 3rd party tools playing sounds, nor did we use Alpha-clones which provided intel automatically…
Sounds not too legit to me, I remember years ago when people in diablo 3 used a cheat-tool which plays a sound everytime when a Unique would drop. Reading ingames local in Eve Online certainly happens via reading the PC’s hardware RAM, I dont think such information can be pulled via API…and a sound then being played sounds like automization=cheating to me. While at the same time having multiple afk-alpha-accounts which automatically provide the tool with information…well.
But is that even true? I mean, if Goons use it, other alliances may use it too… Can anyone confirm the usage of such tools?
I just post two clips here (the streamer should be fine with that, if he is streaming publicly anyway…)
All clips are in german btw.
Because the dialogue of 2nd clip is german, here a quick translation:
Twitch Clip Dialogue:
Chat question: “Morning. Do you hear a beep sound when someone posts something in intel channel, and how do you do that?”
Streamer responds: “We have a special tool for that for the empire. It reads the logs from chat and signals if ‘something’ is within a certain reach.”
As far as I understand, such a tool complete with sounds is perfectly fine as long as players are the ones entering intel into chat. If someone is scraping local (or something else) and automatically populating the intel channels, they are violating rules, but most likely such a large and open group as the Imperium is playing by the rules. The streamer you saw most likely was using one of the legal intel tools and any warnings were the direct result of a player input.
The “player” who told you the system is using botting Alphas is likely just rumourmongering. It’s possible of course, but I can’t imagine your friend has any real evidence that it is anything more than a normal player-run intel channel. If they do, they should forward the evidence to security@ccpgames.com immediately.
External tools can modify a limited amount of things inside the game, as well as query quite a lot about it. It’s possible to send mail and read mail via the ESI API for example. There are then a few intel tools, but you don’t even need to look this far, but you can just look at TeamSpeak or Mumble or Discord or whatever. No false play there.
If all you heard was a “bling”-sound then maybe it was just a microwave. Or … Goons are now in possession of the Omega-13 device!
Seem’s legit but remember once everyone starts using it CCP might change the game in a way that you have to put your self in even more danger to farm so that even with tool’s some sort of risk exists :], as this kinda ruins the whole risk/reward thing.
There are many such tools. For example: https://github.com/Xanthos-Eve/vintel is/was popular in Providence. The tool depends on players providing intel in EVE chat channels.
Alex tells Hilmar what to do so I’m guessing it would be illegal for the rest of us, but not for Goons.
Otherwise Alex would order an unsub CTA on SnatchCat or InstaBlap (Grumble maybe? 'Whisper keys guys… whisper keys…") or something new and trendy for pithy quips and tyrannical demands.
The tool is probably taco. Im not sure about the spelling of the name but if forewarns you that nuets are coming. Im not sure where it gets the information or if it is legal.
Has to be. Grid Foo comes to mind when they certainly were not. Also, something about assigning fighters to shuttle pilots to defeat the tracking of the targeted structure.
I think CCP rules are more about automation of input to the game, than extracting information and using in third party apps that would support gameplay in a form of tools CCP never would put into the game. Dont know if CCP is aware how it influences gameplay and how to deal with that. Fundamental level gameplay changes removing infinite ratting and mining, adding invincible, CONCORD level terminator squads after MINING TOO DEEP?
Tools like this start with intel channels, where players report neutrals that they spot in local. EVE offers the option to write chat logs to a file, so anything that is said in such an intel channel is immediately written to a file. The warning tool continuously monitors this file and reads out what was said. It parses the comments for references to star systems and if it detects a mention of a star system near what you’ve configured as your location, it’ll beep.
It’s a perfectly legal tool, since it doesn’t interact with EVE at all, it only reads a file on your disk. If CCP wanted to stop these tools, they could introduce a delay between something being said in chat and it being written to the log.
Note that the reliability of such tools is completely dependent on the quality of the intel channel. If people don’t report sightings of neutrals or if reports are inaccurate, then the warning tool is useless.
Anyone here that thinks they use only the player input tools is either a troll because they or their corp/allaince are in on it and benefit from it, a complete tool that believes whatever spews from their “leaders”, or utterly stupid.
I just did a simple google search right now, just out of curiosity, filtered by 6 months timespan and came up with quite a few momory scrapers. Current, not outdated and being used.
Due to forum rules I can’t post the links here but its not exactly hard to do as I did for anyone curious enough.
I don’t multibox, don’t use macros, don’t use bots, don’t use hacks or any of that ■■■■. By your tone are you a botter ? Do you expect others en masse to use bots just because you and/or yours do ?
Sure, I’m the king of botters, and not only I’m a botter but all of us are, only not you. You are the one and only … the one who says he knows how and where, who has links he cannot post but it’s so simple, but of course he isn’t a botter. And this “he’s no botter”-guy tells everyone on the forum that Goons are botters.
