Possible Solutions To The Botting Spoils Of The BGame

Maybe the alliances should declare a universe wide ‘Bot Hunting Event’ where Capsuleers pay 100 mil ISK to freely hunt bots in the belts and at combat sites. The Bot Hunting Permit would be either NRDS or BDSI (Blue Don’t Shoot It) for the number of days that the permit is valid, meaning that if any member of the issuing alliance shoots the Bot Hunter down, the alliance must fully repay the Capsuleer for the ship, module, ammo and implant, along with any other losses involved in the kill.

The Capsuleer will also not engage in any PvP fights for or against the alliance issuing the permit. If the Bot Hunter does engage in PvP for or against the alliance issuing the permit, then punishment is up too the alliance that issued the permit.

Maybe the alliances could even set up certain times during the year where hostilities between all sides ceases to allow for Bot Hunting as coordinated effort.

Another idea would be too combat Bots with Bots. If CCP allows it, corporations dedicated to developing advanced machine learning Bots could be the method of ridding the game of bots altogether.

How the Anti-Bot would work is that it would use trigonometry to calculate the location of a bot when the bot warps out of a belt or combat site to a safe and then back to the combat site or belt that it was working out of.

Or the Anti-Bot could simply warp to a belt or combat site randomly and then cloak up gathering data on how the suspected bot is functioning. Once the data has been confirmed as being a bot either Capsuleer or Anti-bot could then intercept the Bot ending its dreadful reign of existence.

The Anti-Bot ships would have their own designations such as “INN Anti-Bot + unique ID number” distributed only by INN as too keep bots from being destroyed by PvPers. The unique ID number could then be referenced with the issuing alliance as being an actual Anti-Bot and not a counter Anti-anti-Bot. The Anti-Bots could then be set to roam regions of space and specifically engage any Bot that fits into their machine learning parameters.

With Bot’s being a nuisance as they consume resources for the alliance, I’m surprised that alliances haven’t started using the Bots against other alliances to drain the enemy alliance of much needed ISK from mining and ratting the belts.

Giving 100M to the people who are running the majority of the bots and probably getting yourself blown up for it. The good thing is CODE would be raging that nullbears are stealing their ganks since they are afraid to follow the marks out of high sec.

I guess you could argue it’s content creation. But not in the way you are thinking.

bots… the cancer of any mmo :frowning:

“Would you care to assist me in performing surgery on a torpedo?”

The first is too establish an interface with the arrogance of the human bot master, this would involve looking for key word clues on the forums.

The cherry on top of this is that bots are always paying perfect attention to local, unlike players who can focus in on watching Netflix in their other screen for half a minute too long and end up getting caught, they’re able to warp off the tick you enter local every time.

bots are always paying perfect attention to local, warp,off,x location,tick,enter local

In this case the word tick is being focused on, or the machine learning program using an algorithm of rate my ticks. My ticks being the interactions between the Bot and Object ID’s in the same system of the Bot.

The definition of rate is; the degree of something measured per unit of something else that creates a change over time that can be analyzed . In this case the rate of ticks of Capsuleer ships entering into a system occupied by Bots is measured by the ratting and mining bots as not being NPC ship ID’s.

Each Capsuleer ship has a unique ID assigned to it that is assigned to the pilot flying it. NPC’s ships only have unique ID’s assigned to them as being NPC’s ships and not Capsuleer ships. So in this sentence alone we have four different ticks that are rated by the Bot machine learning program to determine if the unique ID is an actual Capsuleer ship or NPC ship.

If the Bot reads the ID as being two ticks or the ships own unique ID + the Capsuleers unique ID then the bots warp off too a safe location. If the scan returns only an NPC ID then the Bot remains active. But since NPC’s do not use Warp Gates jumping between systems, then another tick is the gate activation itself which also has its own ID. An activation ID that can be read using a program that reads how many ships have used a Warp Gate in each system that is taken from relative data from the Map. Since the Capsuleer’s ship activates the gate before entering the system with the Bot in it, the Bot has at least six seconds to warp off to a safe spot. When you come across a ship that is at a safe spot and not a station, then most likely that ship is a bot, especially when you encounter them in Low and Null.

The machine learning program also recognizes other Bots in the system and would not warp off right away when the bot ship enters the system thus creating at least six ticks that the bot is using to identify NPC from Capsuleer, Bot from Bot and Gate activation.

…but

The main aspect that cannot be avoided by the Bot program is the physical interaction that a Capsuleer uses to interface with the game. Such interactions typing on the keyboard, using the keyboard for purposes such as locking a target or the mouse itself that is an extension of the keyboard to perform keyboard based functions normally assigned to the keyboard, all create electronic foot prints on the server to complete the action. Very fast interactions to keep the process as close to real time as possible.

Such electronic impulses, although very fast, still take a small amount of time to complete.

The bot program, unless very well built, does not use keyboards or a mouse like the Capsuleer does that would completely erase the interaction footprint between the Bot and Server but would still exist as a point to point interaction that would take place instantly and would not see any time lapse between the Bot, the command function, or a key being pressed or mouse click and the Server itself.

If the machine learning program is able to mimic the keyboard function that is translated as an actual physical interaction taking place between a keyboard or mouse function such as selecting a point to warp too and then clicking or pressing the warp function, then Eve Online might be the least of our problems.

Dryson, that is already in progress and fully player organized. It is called the New Order of Highsec. Since you can’t distinguish between a bot and the bot-aspirants who acts like a bot and helps to hide them you simply shoot both until everyone acts in a non-bot fashion (aka. they follow the Code) and the game is fixed.

James 315 was a true visionary

Are you sure? https://zkillboard.com/alliance/99002775/nullsec/

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The ‘botting problem’ can be dealt with in a number of ways. Most of those ways have been outlined in the past, although I’ve got a few ideas that I think are fairly new/original.

The problem has always been that CCP does not want to solve the botting problem.

The only problem CCP is interested in is leaving ‘good’ bots (players who pay for multiple Omega accounts and run bots for personal profit) alone, and only trying to tackle ‘bad’ bots (accounts that are not paying, and/or look like they might be engaged in RMT, and/or look like they might be a visible target to ‘announce a bot strike’ against without endangering that precious set of subbed botters).

If you could cure CCP of their addiction to multi-account-subbed players (perhaps by making the game interesting enough to attract more income and more different types of income), then you could actually consider asking them to attack the real problem - botting/farming in general.

The problem has always been that CCP does not want to solve the botting problem .

…and I quote,

“I truly believe that by challenging our Capsuleers to defend the universe they have shaped, their destiny - as ever - remains in their own hands, ensuring @ EveOnline 's appeal now and into the future.” @ HilmarVeigar , CCP Games CEO

What I took from CCP Veigar’s statement is that CCP wants us to get involved and hunt the Bots. Hunting that will create content first and foremost and possibly even a dedicated and game wide supported corporation of Bot Hunters that would get paid ISK to travel to a region, investigate Bot Sightings and then destroy the bot ships and then report back to CCP.

Unless the Bot program has established a different station to appear in after its Pod has been destroyed then the bot will mostly appear in the home station where the Bot was first created in.

Another way to help determine if bots are in fact bots is try and start a conversation with them. If they don’t allow conversations then the first red flag would go up.

The second red flag would be to check their zkillboard character name to see if the player is engaged in other activities such as ratting where the losses due to mining and ratting should also create an alert to the player being a bot.

One of the interesting aspects about the bot is that it is set on a timer of sorts regarding it’s programming functions.

When a player enters into a system it triggers a tick in the bot’s programming to warp out and get to a safe or a station. Once the tick is triggered, a timer is almost likely triggered either upon warp out or when the ship enters the station. Once the timer elapses the program tells the bot to undock and return to mining or ratting again.

High Sec bots would probably not have any timers due to security status of the system constantly seeing players moving in an out of the system all of the time. But systems with very low traffic is most likely where the bots will be found. In Low and Null the bot’s programmer would first determine an algorithm based on the number of pilots coming and going through the system and the time that each pilot spends in the system. An average is then determined that is applied to the Bot’s programming to set the timer to according.

If a bot knows that it is being hunted in Low and Null based on the amount of time that real players are in the system it might also have a function to simply log off if x number of pilots pass through the system x number of times in x amount of time.

Bot hunting really isn’t that difficult. If you enter a system that has a barge or other mining ship on scan and then it disappears and the ship is not on the NRDS, NBSI or KOS list and then reappears, probe the ship down and warp to it cloaked. From a safe distance that you would still show up on the real players Overview, decloak and wait to see how long it takes the player to respond.

Most of the time players running ninja missions in the combat sites and belts will warp out as soon you appear on their Overview. But if the player is a Bot and has already been triggered by your initial presence, warped to a safe and then returned to the same site and does not appear to be threatened by your presence, then you have probably gotten under the bot’s timer program.

A bot program might also be set to react to players ships that are at various distances from your ship. For example if a bot senses the players ship at 50km away it will most definitely begin to align and try and warp out as soon as you de-cloak. But if you are farther away, lets say 400 km, then the bots program might not be set to initiate align and warp out until it reads your ships distance at 100 km from its own.

All of this reads like someone who has never actually hunted bots before. It’s cute theorycrafting, but not at all how it works.

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Haha, you should read Drysons posts in Warfare and Tactics, it is all incoherent drivel and misunderstanding of EVE dynamics. On the other hand, he now agrees with James 315 on botting. If he manages to improve his learning curve he may actually shoot some bots before EVE shuts down / star citizen is released.

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