Thanks the radar limits, it is no longer possible to park an observation bot unreachably far away from the sector center. They can however be far enough to not be targetable, while still seeing who comes and goes. This can make locating them seem difficult. It is not.

What you do is fly in a random direction until the bot totally drops off the sector list. Then stop, turn around, and slowly return until they appear again. Now back up even more slowly until you find the border and are just far enough for the bot to drop off. (Plugins that announce who enters/leaves the sector can help with this.)

Now you are at the edge of detection range, which is shaped like a massive sphere. All you need to do is find out what direction the center of the sphere is. Make short movements to either side, and if they bring you into detection range, move back out, then rotate slightly in that direction. Keep this up until you are orientated so that the shortest distance into detection range is directly in front of you, and moving significantly to the sides doesn't put you into the detection range, only forward/back. Don't forget to test in the up/down directions, not only the left/right ones.

At this point, you only have to fly directly forward. You will hopefully be aimed well enough to enter targetable range and locate the bot. Keep an eye out for sparkles in the distance - lock or hold turbo, switch to mouse-look, and use the zoom feature (the i key) to check them out.

Happy hunting!

Nicely done.

Turning off the background helps too.

Yep. I made a plugin last year to toggle the background by running /gfx

http://www.voupr.com/plugin.php?name=gfx

Yarr. +1

i did that months ago

People still run spy bots?

Hah, BLAK did this years ago with some guy who was spacing himself with CTC cargoes. Although it did take 6 players to find him...