I often will sit in an ice belt quietly mining away when suddenly a fleet of Hulks will warp in along with an Orca and a huge Transport ship. In less than 20 minutes the entire System is stripped of anything worth mining. Sometimes these “fleets” will all have differently named ships, but very often they will be named Hulk01, Hulk02, Hulk03, etc, and that leads me to believe that one person is controlling the entire fleet that can sometimes comprise of up to 12 ships.
I have reported some of these one-man mining fleets as bots as they are so annoying but as one of them said to me “I’ve been reported about 142 times. CCP don’t care”.
But how is it done? Does this person actually have 12 Omega accounts? And how can they all run at the same time? The mining ships do seem to be slaved to the Orca in some way as they will all group around it in a tight swarm and will move with it. Often I see them just hanging in space when the ice is gone, the operator obviously afk.
And how come CCP apparently won’t touch them?.. Even if reported 142 times?
Just because there is a one-man fleet, doesn’t mean they are bots. Players are legally allowed to run multiple instances of the Eve client so long as each of those instances are Omega accounts which isn’t cheap unless you earn enough ISK to cover the cost of PLEXing the accounts to keep them in Omega state every single month. I can PLEX my two Omega accounts if I have the time (but I don’t because I have a real-life job) using only my Orca and one Hulk in my dual-box mini fleet.
Managing a fleet of 12 ships with each as an Omega account is not an impossible task. Just rather difficult to get to for newer players as it takes time and ISK to setup. The downside is managing it all and assuming your computer can handle so many instances of the game at once which is not hard to accomplish to be honest. It’s often joked that Eve Online can run on a potato using a commercial plane’s in-flight Wi-Fi to fly a Drake. Managing it with the person at the computer requires keeping a constant eye on the ore holds of each Hulk especially the Orca with its hold quickly filling up.
Up until a year or two ago, players use to be able to use multi-broadcasting software so that they can send repeated commands from a single click of a mouse on one instance of the client to the rest of the clients all at once. But then CCP banned such features. I don’t think they have outright banned the software specifically (not sure really) but rather at least the specific feature of multi-broadcasting as it gave players who can afford it a game-breaking advantage that no one else can achieve without using of the same software themselves.
So now you can still run a 12-Hulk-1-Orca mining fleet. Just don’t expect managing such a fleet to be easy.
Now, only clue you can find that’s probably a dead giveaway to CCP if someone is using multi-broadcasting is when you see the one-mane fleet performing a very specific task precisely in sync with each other that can’t be performed using in-game features only. Fleet functions like warp-to and stuff like that don’t count as those features are built into the game for the entire fleet. What you need to look for are perfectly-synced mining lasers. That’s all I can think of at the moment.
Beyond that, I can’t assume that the player is a bot without more evidence to report to CCP that’s worth their time.
As for just hanging around in space when the ice is gone, again, I can’t assume that unless you have been tracking their operations down to the hour and minute of the day and the only people who can verify if they are bots is CCP. Now, if you somehow gank their fleet and their pods warp off and then still come back as pods, then that’s a sure sign that you’re dealing with a bot. People have reported seeing this pattern most notably in null-sec space with ratting carriers that act so extremely predictable that the player doing the botting is clearly shameless. Of course, this just made the killboards that much more juicy to see grow as the ratting carriers were killed off using the intel they gathered.
Botting is still a problem, although to what extent I’m not sure.
If you feel that you are seeing a bot, then go ahead and report it. Just don’t expect an instant response if my assumptions on CCP’s backlog and size of their security team is correct.
Hmmm. I never actually thought of it that way. I figured a bot was when a person was somehow running more than just the one ship. But as you have pointed out, it is quite legal to run more than one instance of Eve. Just doesn’t “feel” right though. One man mining fleets eating up all the resources. One man ganking fleets ruining everyone’s day. One man war fleets roaming null sec and Roqu hunting. Just feels like a kind of “cheat” is being used. But if it’s legal, it’s legal and a part of the game that is Eve.
1 Man Mining is relatively easy, its not like its a fast paced part of the game.
You try running more than a couple of toons in PVP and its a different story altogether.
I run my own mining fleet, and every now and then someone comes along and calls me a bot. It’s always the same story, some guy mining with his one character sees my fleet and gets jealous. Even if you explain to these people that multiboxing is not botting they usually don’t care. Seems it is all the rage to accuse those who you are competing with of being bots.
Just sad jealous people. Jealous that you are doing it better than them. Can’t be assed to put in the effort to do more themselves. If they want more, all they have to do is make an alt or a few alts and they too can mine more efficiently.
The root of the problem is the price of ice and how ice belts respawn.
Ever since Citadels were introduced did the demand for ice go up and with it the price. A maxed out Hulk with Orca boost can mine 2 ice every 30 seconds, making it 72m ISKs per hour at a price of 300k per ice.
This means that in less than 20 hours can a Hulk mine enough ice to pay for a month of game time at a price of 2.8m per PLEX.
So while ice currently pays nicely and allows to PLEX a single account with only a weekend of ice mining, does it get a bit more complicated with the alt fleets of ice miners. When they mine down an entire belt in 30 minutes do they need to repeat this 40 times before it pays off. Ice belts then only respawn every 4 hours. If these fleets manage to mine 4 belts a day do they still need to repeat it for 10 days to turn the cost around.
As a result are alt fleets currently hugging every ice belt and they even go as far as bumping other miners and ganking them (yes, they’ve adopted ganking as a counter against other miners …) just to keep hugging the same ice belts.
There is little one can do at this point. Either the price of ice comes down and discourages these fleets, or the respawn rate gets a serious increase, meaning more ice, which would also reduce the price of ice as more becomes available.
The alt fleets are a nuisance, but they are also the ones who can come close to satisfying the high demand for ice.
I stay in just the one system as I like it here. It has one ice belt that spawns, but even so there are three distinct one-man ice mining fleets operating here. The ice is very quickly gone, and if there is no ice, they move onto the Large Kernite anomaly. There is just very little left for anyone else. Nothing against anyone putting in an effort (as mentioned above) but I see it as a kind of “cheat” to get such an in-game advantage. But… (shrugs) This is Eve. You say something is unfair and suddenly everyone is calling you a whiner. Strangely it’s usually those taking advantage of some loop-hole that often say that. Seems few like a level playing field.
It’s not just EVE. In all mmorpgs you will get an advantage by using multiple accounts. Multiboxing has been around for as long as mmorpgs have existed. I remember being envious of people in Dark Ageo of Camelot, who used what people called ‘Buffbots’ which was really just a second character who specialises in buffing and other healing characters. The same existed in EverQuest. Offered tremendous advantage in farming, in pvp, and so on. In WoW, using second or more accounts to wait for mining node respawns etc.
Hi!!
What system would that be, what time ~ and what are the names of the Hulk pilots? Is this taking place in one system only or going on over a whole constelation?
Asking for science
^
This post. Thank you
Lol. It happens in all HS systems where there is an ice belt. There is always at least one of these so called fleets in operation. I think they would not survive in LS or null as they would be easily picked off.
One more reason to move all ice to low sec.
And that would be a good idea actually. The selling price for ice is high, so why not increase the risk for the reward? Yes (smiles) I like your idea.
Maybe a visit to places like Osmon is due 
Also, bear in mind that ice prices were higher in the past, as well as lower. The curve is cyclic, and these days very much controlled by a small group of players.
The root of the problem is not spawn mechanisms of the price curves. You’d be surprised how much competition there is on the ice markets, as well as in the channels leading to them. Sometimes it is close to hilarious, seeing how little profit is made by the nitwits who think they can scale that activity by means of volume. Not only are they dwarfed in output by all the various small or solo parties, they also become amazingly dependant on single source income. Suiciding a single orca or a few exhumers can quickly lead to them disappearing, and not in the sense of relocating 
The internal strife, correctly observed, adds to those troubles.
But the price curves, that’s a different case. There’s actually not that many ice buyers, and for the commodity Jita is the core of it all. Remote ice locations, particulaly racial ones, tend to simply be unused more often than not, or simply get pushed by single buyer alts to copy Jita price curves. Ironically, there are interesting mismatches in volumes coming to market between ice and ice component and ice derivative products. There’s a cycle there where buyers - the few that there are - push input to static reserves. Not unlike the mineral markets prior to the big item reprocessing changes once upon a time.
Overall, Jita being the standard is a big factor. And Jita being Jita.
Going by the economic reports, there is shockingly little regional sourcing without it also going through Jita (which boggles the mind when you think of it), almost functioning like additional margin costing effects of point-to-order systems in rl. Odd titbit is that in what remains of the non-Jita regional hubs quite a bit of ice input comes from null, which is really nuts when you think of it. Still, consider a high sec ice market without concentration + external input effects for price curves.
That said, look on the bright side. Every now and then there’s proper corporations and groups of players who also go for ice, when that happens the alt armies crumble. They simply cannot compete, no matter what method or tactic is attempted to apply.
Aside of all this, it is not much different in nullsec, in some places even in lowsec. Predominantly mining is not a group activity as it once was, but an activity harmed by perception problems on EVE’s implementation of economies of scale.
But be it in null, low or high sec, where it comes to multiboxers, they all suffer from something in economics known as Dutch Disease.
If people consider multiboxing miners a problem, hit the sweetspot, suicide the orca’s. It’s the crux of it all, the biggest focal and cost point, and the easiest way to determine if you are dealing with an actual corporation of humans, or a single(ton) human being.
There are quite a lot of ice belts all over Highsec and I can assure you there are a lot where this isn’t the case.
Now if you could just share where this Hulk fleet is I would gladly evaluate it there is something we can do to assist with the situation
And that is pretty much what I am thinking. I simply cannot fathom how I could make any real ISK by having 12 Omega accounts, a transport, an Orca, and 10 Hulks. Lol. It would actually cost me real money to keep it all running no matter how many hours i spent online. And seriously… I do have better things to do than spending all my waking hours raping ice belts.
Nice try (smiles)
I actually trade in ice and ice products. So I do know what I’m talking about and I see it unfolding, as well as doing some occasional ice mining where I get to see these fleets myself.
The reason why there are not many ice buyers is because one block of ice has a size of 1000m3 and moving it with a freighter isn’t all that fun. Especially when one of these mining fleets fills your buy order in one transaction and you end up flying back and forth 30 times with a freighter just to get it out of a system and to a compression and/or refining service. More is being moved in compressed form, but it then also quickly ends up being turned into fuel before it even gets onto any market.
Still, in Jita are roughly 50b-60b ISKs of each of the four isotopes being moved each day.
The value of the ice, the speed at which the miners can clear it, the predictability of the respawn, and the lack of a need to be attentive to the operation makes it very possible. I, too, have to deal with fleets of this sort. It’s not a thing I’d wanna do myself, but the math checks out. They make enough isk to pay for what they do.
If you have a fixed already trained skill set you can drain the SP that accumulate over the month and sell them. This gets you basically a free omega account.
So you are not interested in an actual solution? Did you create this thread only in the hopes that CCP will change the game for you?