toshiro please don't be so dense. While stealth is a two way street me simply flying from point A to point B and passing a bot should not compromise my stealth. If I pass by a real player so be it, we can fight or exchange items or credits to keep our mouths shut.

I do not understand this idea that being able to monitor what happens in game while out of game is some how an inherent right. I do not know any other games that allow this.

Now if the pro-bot crowd could start offering objective arguments instead of the usual "my way is right" subjective nonsense that goes on here we might actually get something done.

He's not talking about getting rid of bots for other purposes, he's talking about getting rid of sector relays with impunity from player interaction.

Nahin +1
Maalik +1

bot-killer, it sounds like you think it's impossible for a real player to relay player positions to his friends. Real player intentions can be just as foggy as the intentions of bots. In my opinion it has never been a good idea to go down the road of "OMG CHANGE THIS FAST" when something you don't like happens. I know both Valve and Blizzard are extremely careful when doing any sort of change that doesn't involve feature additions or bug fixes.

Also, turning things on or off for arbitrary sectors is not the right way to go. If you want a change that needs to be gone in specific circumstances, perhaps you should reevaluate the need for the change.

I propose the solution should be a blue turtle shell.

When in a sector where anyone, bot or player is uber spaced the player entering sector should get a message "you have been awarded the blue turtle shell type /pwn to launch" then the blue turtle shell seeks out the spacer and blows them up with a giant explosion.

-Problems solved by CrazySpence

This thread is so full of herp derp it's unbeleviable. A non afk player relaying info is not the same as an automated bot who has no one controlling it.

Aside from pointing out that obvious error I don't really care about this except getting rid of irc

I used to run a bot.. on my main character. Sometimes I was afk, sometimes I was not. Sometimes I could relay information myself, sometimes my code would. How would someone ingame know the difference? How does anyone even know for certain that the (EWS) guy is actually a bot and not someone with a second account looking at 2 screens at once?

After further thought, I think I have to agree with Whytee's first post.

If they want to pay for an extra account AND use the amount of programming time they use on it, power to them.

More money for the devs.

Slime, it isn't just one bot. I wouldn't care if that were the case. They have a number of them monitoring various wormholes in Grey. I didn't get around to checking every wormhole to find the total number of them, but I know there were at least three of them on Saturday. One was in the Latos wormhole to Sedina, and one was in the Ukari wormhole to Latos. I don't remember where the third was, but I think it might have been the Ukari wormhole to the UIT system "north" of it. I saw another one on Sunday out in Odia or thereabouts, but I don't know if that was a new one or if one of the existing ones was just moved (I know the Latos-Sedina one got moved into Sedina on Sunday).

I haven't been out to the eastern grey stations in the last several days so I don't know if those have been infested yet.

What we're looking at though is the prospect of a bunch of "invincible" bots hanging out around the wormholes, which could do things like automatically report pirates to public chat channels - like the VPR channel. We're not just talking about one loser with too much money on his hands benefiting here.

Yes, similar things could be implemented with humans via plugins that automatically report any pirates that the human player bumps into. With enough people using it, it would in some ways be an even worse situation. But it would still be confined to working in areas where a live killable human is flying around.

Regarding programming time, ha. It takes very little time to write something this simple. Just needs an event handler to watch for people entering and leaving the sector, and some code to report that back to the owners. It's probably on the same order of complexity as my honk plugin. Maybe a little more complex if they have the bots themselves maintain logs, not only report in real time.

I don't have a problem with the bots existing. I just have a problem with there not being a way for me to kill them.

People don't even have to pay. They can just get a bunch of trial accounts and, at most, slap some friend keys on em.

If you're going to pay for a bot, it's probably for much more complex and less intrusive tasks. As I said before, things like sector relays can easily be called the IEDs of the lua world.

Edit: and btw, this isn't a recent thing. This has been needing a change for a long time.

quote from "bot-killer":
toshiro please don't be so dense.While stealth is a two way street me simply flying from point A to point B and passing a bot should not compromise my stealth. If I pass by a real player so be it, we can fight or exchange items or credits to keep our mouths shut.

Nice ad hominem. How do you propose differentiating between a real player that has been afk for a long while and a bot, especially if you get rid of IRC (which allows communication with people in-game without lurking in-game)?

quote from "bot-killer":
I do not understand this idea that being able to monitor what happens in game while out of game is some how an inherent right. I do not know any other games that allow this.

I did not say it was an inherent right. I said that bots can bring good things to the table, as well. You should read more closely. I don't disagree with limiting sensor capabilities to take away the effectiveness of 'sensor buoy' bots.

quote from "bot-killer":
Now if the pro-bot crowd could start offering objective arguments instead of the usual "my way is right" subjective nonsense that goes on here we might actually get something done.

Interesting claim. Pot calling kettle black, in my opinion. And, realistically speaking, bots that track player presence can help offer possibilities for non-consensual PvP as much as the avoidance of such.

The problem is not the tool, it's how you use it.

I don't disagree with limiting sensor capabilities to take away the effectiveness of 'sensor buoy' bots.

Cool. I generally have the same position. Bots should lend only communication advantages, not combat or logistics advantages (which at the time, it seems, belongs to the sector relay bots).

In short, I echo slime73's comment. - toshiro's previous post

Although, you just took a massive flip-flop from your last post to this one just to get something on "bot-killer." Do you just really not like him or... just like him far too much? Never you mind.

And, realistically speaking, bots that track player presence can help offer possibilities for non-consensual PvP as much as the avoidance of such.

Aye, but it's not quite as balanced as you would think. One side is going for avoidance, the other side is tracking targets that are always on the move. Avoidance is approximate, tracking requires an exact location.

To clarify: if a trader receives a warning that a pirate passed through a sector, they simply go around that system... meanwhile, if a pirate receives a warning that a trader passed through a sector, they probably would not be able to respond before the trader escaped.

Pirates also tend to camp wormholes since they are our primary area of activity, of course. A sector relay could transmit constant feeds of our activity as opposed to traders or anyone else who only pass through sectors for brief periods of time.

This is not a lending argument to my position, however, as either way... the game would become pretty dull if everyone knew where everyone else was at a time and every sector became a race of sensor bot development.

There`s also the long term intelligence one can gather, and its usage is more valuable...

From Bot collected info (timeframe {T1}, player {P}, route {R}, ship {S}) you can infere player {p} prefered ships, Traffic patterns, Ship types/WH, Traders/Fighters per timeframe and many combinations, including:
-Sequential Player Alts: {P1,P2,Pn} x {Timeframe}

--/--
My prefered solution, not limited to SpyBot:

*Progressive radar.

Any information that engine provides about ships/players, HUD/Lua/Log/Sector list/... should depend on distance player-object.

Distance: radar reports (inclusive list, from far to closer)

>=5,000km: no info
<5,000km: IRC, Ship jumps (6h@225m/seg)
<800km: basic IFF: ship model and nation (1h@810km/h)
<5km: Full IFF (now existing radar inc. pilot name)
<=2km: Max sensor range: cargo,addons,armour,...
--
Docked: IRC and docked pilots

So, a ship at 6km will see ({nation}{Model}) but not information on pilot name/historic/guild, while beyond 800km only information is "ship jump detected"

Did I read "800km" right? And what do you mean by "IRC"? Magically shut down all IRC clients on that computer at that range, or what?

Hmm, long term , up to Inc.

Short term, bots which might relay information, but which chat in a pleasant way to passing folk might make VO seem more occupied. Bots that give storm warnings. Trade tips .Generally interesting stuff. Really that would add to VO.

There are a lot of VO players who are good at lua stuff, and have alts and second accounts because they are genuine supporters of the game. They make bots out of a genuine interest in coding and that sort of thing.

So , why not turn the whole thing round and have helpful bots? Bots that set new players on their way in vo. Bots that give interesting facts and data. Advertising bots. Join TFGT, the guild for hopeless dyslexics ... that sort of fun ....

quote from toshiro
Nice ad hominem. How do you propose differentiating between a real player that has been afk for a long while and a bot, especially if you get rid of IRC (which allows communication with people in-game without lurking in-game)?

I did not know that saying you were being dense was an ad hominem when I am merely describing the way you are going about the debate. In any case it is quiet easy to tell the difference between a player who is afk and who is a bot. strictly speaking most bots are A) someone we have never seen before and B) sit in the same sector in an ec-89 most of the time.

The problem is not the tool, it's how you use it.
and in a game if that tool is creating an unfair advantage you do something about it.

shanktank
People don't even have to pay. They can just get a bunch of trial accounts and, at most, slap some friend keys on em.
I believe this is probably happening much more often then not.

I think the best solutions to issues like this are technical (e.g. radar range) and not policy-related (banning bots).

Tying the sector list to radar range (which I think should be a bit longer than it is) seems like a good solution to me. This would allow people to kill bots that might report/log their positions and temporarily blind the owner to that sector. I'll probably make myself really unpopular here, but I think it would actually be fair to allow a limited form of autopilot so the bots could reposition themselves after being destroyed. The API for such an autopilot could consist of little more than a call to tell the bot to fly to a specific sector, which it would do at non-turbo speeds.

In principle, I like bots, but invincible position-reporting bots are a bit of an unfair advantage. I'm not especially attached to the specific solution I proposed, but I'd really like to see the game left as open to experimentation as possible.

strictly speaking most bots are A) someone we have never seen before and B) sit in the same sector in an ec-89 most of the time.

What? The only 'bots' who did that were TGR's, and TGR doesn't even EXIST anymore I believe. This is a complete non-issue. Most bots either idle in-station or make real use of the ability to have a different ship.

It really feels like you saw TGR's bots for a day at most and decided to make a different account and post. I doubt their bots are even around anymore, because the guild is not.

Yes, I just hopped around a bit and don't see them anymore. Looks like this particular infestation has left us. Rin will remain on guard lest some other organization attempts to impose their oppressive surveillance upon our universe....

I'll deal with arguments ad causam and ad hominem in separate parts of my post, respectively.

Ad causam:

quote from bot-killer
strictly speaking most bots are A) someone we have never seen before and B) sit in the same sector in an ec-89 most of the time

Right. Those might still be players. How do you propose to eliminate the false positives? Limiting ourselves to these criteria won't help with anything, because it is (relatively) easy to make a bot change sectors, strictly theoretically speaking. Why? Far enough out, they can jump to wherever in the system they want. If they die, no matter - just make them respawn. They're down for that period, but you can hand-pilot them back to their station, making them start their observation run again. Those are inherent problems in robust surveillance systems.

quote from ShankTank:
One side is going for avoidance, the other side is tracking targets that are always on the move. Avoidance is approximate, tracking requires an exact location.

True. The pirates have a harder time. But going about this with a giant banhammer to weed out the bots won't solve the problem - it'll only make the solutions more intricate. It is not a long-term solution to just forbid bots. As Ecka said, it needs to be a long-term goal. For that, support for benign bots (such as those that Ecka listed) should be increased, while malicious bots don't get anything. An arms race in bot sensor development might occur, but if it does, it would be interesting what could be learned from it. If the test server was more densely populated, a categoric removal of bots to it would make sense, however, it is not, and such a removal doesn't make sense, by consequence.

Ad hominem:

@bot-killer:
Insulting me (saying that I am dense) because you don't think my post has merit is an ad hominem. I, for instance, think that you are a whippersnapper who does not know the first thing about surveillance and counter-surveillance, or what other bots there have been before IRC. I do not use that to detract from your arguments, however.

@ShankTank:
Tell me where exactly I 'flip-flopped'? I still think categorically getting rid of bots is a knee-jerk reaction (so far, the OP has provided little to indicate that s/he wants anything else), and that bots do not necessarily have to be of malicious intent. That is the comment I was echoing, as it was directly preceding my post.

Furthermore: Aside from ankle-biting to curry favor from someone who is of a like mind (some would call it ass-kissing), you insult your own intelligence by (apparently) using 'gay humor'. That does not really help your points. But, that does not matter. It matters what you argue, and what you argue is, in my opinion, incorrect.