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There is a HUGE difference between using bots to do this and manually doing it. You of course already know this, because it is not possible you are that daft. And as I have already deemed you a troll based on our previous /100 encounter, you are merely reinforcing that image.
name the differences. specifically.
what can a bot do, that i can not do without the bot?
what can a bot do, that i can not do without the bot?
Spend an entire week, 24/7, managing the bots. Switch between 6 characters on 5 different accounts all day and all night for one whole week, and I will applaud your dedication and cheer for your ability to run this type of network manually.
Until then, you must concede that they are entirely different. One requires an insane amount of dedication and investment which warrants the gained information. The other one is pure automation/botting, requires no investment, no dedication, yet gives you far better results than if you did it manually.
Until then, you must concede that they are entirely different. One requires an insane amount of dedication and investment which warrants the gained information. The other one is pure automation/botting, requires no investment, no dedication, yet gives you far better results than if you did it manually.
ok. a bot recon network could beat me at gathering statistical information. x number of players crossed wormhole y. I can see why this would horrify you. wait. I can't see it.
What good is statistical information? player run bots don't pvp, trade, or go on hive hunts. only the likes of tgft would maintain such statistics. alt finders, and pirate dodgers, etc.
I don't really care if you are at wormhole x when I am not logged in. I don't care if you spy on wormhole x to tell you that I am not there. run all the bots you want.
if you are monitoring a wormhole sector, all i care about is destroying you. I don't care if you are a bot, a live player, or a figment of my imagination. just die.
no special treatment for bots! players deserve to die too!
What good is statistical information? player run bots don't pvp, trade, or go on hive hunts. only the likes of tgft would maintain such statistics. alt finders, and pirate dodgers, etc.
I don't really care if you are at wormhole x when I am not logged in. I don't care if you spy on wormhole x to tell you that I am not there. run all the bots you want.
if you are monitoring a wormhole sector, all i care about is destroying you. I don't care if you are a bot, a live player, or a figment of my imagination. just die.
no special treatment for bots! players deserve to die too!
Nice, I completely countered your argument so you spew off in a totally tangent direction irrelevant to the problem at hand and make no sense. Alexis 2, troll 0.
your best argument that bots are different from players, is that bots can do more of the wrong thing.
make the "thing", not wrong, or not doable, and bots become a non issue.
If you are in an unmonitored wormhole sector, you should be subject to combat, or your recon should be worthless.
Fix that.
bots are not the problem. at worst, bots only exaggerate the problem.
make the "thing", not wrong, or not doable, and bots become a non issue.
If you are in an unmonitored wormhole sector, you should be subject to combat, or your recon should be worthless.
Fix that.
bots are not the problem. at worst, bots only exaggerate the problem.
"Spend an entire week, 24/7, managing the bots. Switch between 6 characters on 5 different accounts all day and all night for one whole week, and I will applaud your dedication and cheer for your ability to run this type of network manually."
The problem is it's very hard to distinguish between whether or not someone is doing this manually, or automatically. Even if you manage to distinguish between the two different approaches, how do you stop one but not the other.
GS has not the resources to do either of these things. And they've always sided with giving the user more freedoms even if the result is that there are bots. It's an inevitably losing battle when you start telling players they can't have features just because people can make bots to do them as well. And if you take away the lua API functions, that's a big part of why many people do continue to play, so they can program plugins and test ideas.
Which is why GS will probably do nothing, and rightly so.
The problem is it's very hard to distinguish between whether or not someone is doing this manually, or automatically. Even if you manage to distinguish between the two different approaches, how do you stop one but not the other.
GS has not the resources to do either of these things. And they've always sided with giving the user more freedoms even if the result is that there are bots. It's an inevitably losing battle when you start telling players they can't have features just because people can make bots to do them as well. And if you take away the lua API functions, that's a big part of why many people do continue to play, so they can program plugins and test ideas.
Which is why GS will probably do nothing, and rightly so.
Players characters, automated or live, should not be able to gain reconnaissance information, without proportionate risk.
In this case, the information gained is disproportional to the risks of obtaining it. Any noob in an EC-89 can hide in a sector and log in and out fast enough to avoid the risk, while gaining information about the sector.
This is not a fault of bots. This is a fault of the game. The worst a bot can do, is maximize the worst case. If you did manage to fix bots, the root problem would still exist. Fix the root problem, and the bots become a non issue.
In this case, the information gained is disproportional to the risks of obtaining it. Any noob in an EC-89 can hide in a sector and log in and out fast enough to avoid the risk, while gaining information about the sector.
This is not a fault of bots. This is a fault of the game. The worst a bot can do, is maximize the worst case. If you did manage to fix bots, the root problem would still exist. Fix the root problem, and the bots become a non issue.
Yeah well then great it's an unfixable problem DE, lol. Since the functions that allow bots to collect that information are the same ones that make things like targetless and TCS possible.
Without them it's back to default interface for us!
Without them it's back to default interface for us!
hooray!
you are missing the point again.
nothing wrong with a character doing recon on a sector, as long as it can be shot at.
as long as it can be shot at, who cares if it is a bot? just shoot it!
the problem is that a character can log in, collect the information, and log out, all too fast. make one or more of these things take more time, so that there is more risk of getting shot. shot bots tell no tales.
equal opportunity. the game should not care if a character is a bot. the risks should be the same for all, and the risks should be proportionate to the rewards.
stop crying about bots. crying about bots shows that you do not care to face the true issues.
nothing wrong with a character doing recon on a sector, as long as it can be shot at.
as long as it can be shot at, who cares if it is a bot? just shoot it!
the problem is that a character can log in, collect the information, and log out, all too fast. make one or more of these things take more time, so that there is more risk of getting shot. shot bots tell no tales.
equal opportunity. the game should not care if a character is a bot. the risks should be the same for all, and the risks should be proportionate to the rewards.
stop crying about bots. crying about bots shows that you do not care to face the true issues.
I have said several times that making the bots capable of killing, or making the bots available to everyone without having to purchase multiple subs, I would be much more okay with it. My problem is the unfair advantage it gives players that can afford to run the bots, and that there is no way to counter them.
And I have said several times, that the problem is not bots, nor unique to bots. It is a problem, bots or no bots. stop trying to fix the bots. fix the problem.
"My problem is the unfair advantage it gives players that can afford to run the bots, and that there is no way to counter them."
You can counter them with other bots. So that leaves only the unfair advantage in favor of those who can afford to run the bots. Players have always been able to gain an unfair advantage by running two or more accounts at the same. Not just advantages like with monitoring and intelligence but massive combat advantages.
It makes VO quite different to other games in that the game is not always actually just what you do inside the client, it's what you build around the framework of the whole game. But that adds new depth, even if it is a little unfair for some players who don't have the skills to do it.
I know when I started I didn't have any programming skills, but through the challenge VO presented me with, I was able to get some of those skills. So again, players that find this unfair are probably just a little too familiar with other games that would consider thing kind of thing to be 'cheating'. It's not cheating here and that's the way we like it.
You can counter them with other bots. So that leaves only the unfair advantage in favor of those who can afford to run the bots. Players have always been able to gain an unfair advantage by running two or more accounts at the same. Not just advantages like with monitoring and intelligence but massive combat advantages.
It makes VO quite different to other games in that the game is not always actually just what you do inside the client, it's what you build around the framework of the whole game. But that adds new depth, even if it is a little unfair for some players who don't have the skills to do it.
I know when I started I didn't have any programming skills, but through the challenge VO presented me with, I was able to get some of those skills. So again, players that find this unfair are probably just a little too familiar with other games that would consider thing kind of thing to be 'cheating'. It's not cheating here and that's the way we like it.
DE gets it.
I still don't have a lot to add, other than "I'm even sicker than before, hooray".
I'm probably not going to weigh in on any serious level until I know a lot more about what's going on, and we've had some time to do analysis of logs and behaviours and things. Which may not occur until I get back from CA.
I'm not making any blanket statements one way or the other. Historically I'm not a huge fan of data mining that gives an advantage to a particular group. It doesn't really matter that much if it "could theoretically" be achieved by 100 incredibly bored people with infinite time on their hands (or 1000, or 7680). At the end of the day, I'll be looking mainly at what the impact is, and what's best for the game as a whole.
But I am also inclined, in general, to let the player-base do whatever they want as long as it doesn't show signs of taking things "too far off the rails".. the latter being a vague definition I have to come up with in any individual case. I like player-contributed.. stuff, and players doing interesting new things and being innovative. So I'm curious about what's going on, and I need more developer-side information from the servers.
There is more to the server overhead of "player bots" than is widely understood. Historically it has kept certain sectors online longer than desired, and impacted sector stability in some cases. We haven't spoken about it much, but it has been annoying to us, and if it becomes really widespread, that might become.. much more annoying to us. But again, I don't know enough to say as of yet.
The login hash does not impact server resources, as the server does a hash-to-hash comparison. Only the client has to go through the rigamarole of a zillion cycles of blowfish to generate the hash. Thus, logins are not computationally intensive on the server.. in that respect. However, retrieving data from the database and particularly starting up sectors and things can be non-trivial. If bots are logging in over and over again, I'm not sure how excited I am about that..
Lastly, it is possible for us to make player bots much more difficult to run on an automated basis, without seriously impacting the activity of real people. But again, I'm not at all convinced that I want to do that. Going all the way back to BountyBot, player-created bots have sometimes made for interesting additions to the game universe.
It was always my plan to create some sort of "real" server-side player-bot API and allow people to program that directly, which would then be designed on our end for the minimum impact and for reasonable manageability. But it has not been a strong priority for us, obviously.
Anyway, this is basically a long-winded "I still don't know anything yet, and am really sick and far away."
I'm probably not going to weigh in on any serious level until I know a lot more about what's going on, and we've had some time to do analysis of logs and behaviours and things. Which may not occur until I get back from CA.
I'm not making any blanket statements one way or the other. Historically I'm not a huge fan of data mining that gives an advantage to a particular group. It doesn't really matter that much if it "could theoretically" be achieved by 100 incredibly bored people with infinite time on their hands (or 1000, or 7680). At the end of the day, I'll be looking mainly at what the impact is, and what's best for the game as a whole.
But I am also inclined, in general, to let the player-base do whatever they want as long as it doesn't show signs of taking things "too far off the rails".. the latter being a vague definition I have to come up with in any individual case. I like player-contributed.. stuff, and players doing interesting new things and being innovative. So I'm curious about what's going on, and I need more developer-side information from the servers.
There is more to the server overhead of "player bots" than is widely understood. Historically it has kept certain sectors online longer than desired, and impacted sector stability in some cases. We haven't spoken about it much, but it has been annoying to us, and if it becomes really widespread, that might become.. much more annoying to us. But again, I don't know enough to say as of yet.
The login hash does not impact server resources, as the server does a hash-to-hash comparison. Only the client has to go through the rigamarole of a zillion cycles of blowfish to generate the hash. Thus, logins are not computationally intensive on the server.. in that respect. However, retrieving data from the database and particularly starting up sectors and things can be non-trivial. If bots are logging in over and over again, I'm not sure how excited I am about that..
Lastly, it is possible for us to make player bots much more difficult to run on an automated basis, without seriously impacting the activity of real people. But again, I'm not at all convinced that I want to do that. Going all the way back to BountyBot, player-created bots have sometimes made for interesting additions to the game universe.
It was always my plan to create some sort of "real" server-side player-bot API and allow people to program that directly, which would then be designed on our end for the minimum impact and for reasonable manageability. But it has not been a strong priority for us, obviously.
Anyway, this is basically a long-winded "I still don't know anything yet, and am really sick and far away."
Personally I've always disliked bots, even ones that supposedly add to the game. Even IRC should have been removed, it was always my opinion that if you want to chat, log in. Anywho, spy bots have been used by guilds as long as there has been guilds, even if not as obvious. I agree with Rin about the log out thing though.
Fixing that one thing would fix sooo much. No matter how you log out in space, your ship should stay online for a short time and be vulnerable. Even if it's only 60 seconds. It already happens if your internet drops off, and you don't always have control of when that happens.
Sure, this wouldn't remove all bots, and would only make it slightly harder to manage a botnet, but it would stop annoying folk flicking in and out of space at the first sign of danger, and it would make this type of botnet killable.
Oh, and while you are at it, randomly kick players from stations (in a free ship) if they have been docked over an hour.
Fixing that one thing would fix sooo much. No matter how you log out in space, your ship should stay online for a short time and be vulnerable. Even if it's only 60 seconds. It already happens if your internet drops off, and you don't always have control of when that happens.
Sure, this wouldn't remove all bots, and would only make it slightly harder to manage a botnet, but it would stop annoying folk flicking in and out of space at the first sign of danger, and it would make this type of botnet killable.
Oh, and while you are at it, randomly kick players from stations (in a free ship) if they have been docked over an hour.
@inc, I hope you get well soon!
I have to say that this thread has added a lot to my appreciation of the game, both the dedication of the player base and the 'enlightened' laissez-faire attitude of GS.
On topic, I agree with DE and some of the other people above that bots aren't the problem. I would applaud any move to make a more general bot API and let us program probes and other automated ships to do routine tasks for us, from recon to trading and mining but also hunting other probes. There should be costs involved (non-trivial in-game costs and maybe some real world costs to compensate the server load) and there should be sane restrictions (# of active bots per account, limitations on homing, etc) and it should be almost impossible to kill a PC with a bot or even with a swarm of bots.
I also think that the logging out in space is part of the problem. I appreciate that people sometimes need to go afk without being docked, but I don't see why this would magically teleport their ship to safety. I even think 5 minutes or 60 seconds etc is all just postponing the magic. My proposal would be to only allow logoff when totally stopped, and just let the ship sit there until you log on again. The sector can shutdown as normal if there are no other PCs. Why should sleeping in greyspace be risk-free? (and it's not like ships or warm bodies are expensive in VO...).
I'm not sure of the implication for capships, but if you can't bring your capship to relative safety before ending your session I'm not sure it's soo bad to run the risk of losing the insurance money. I guess it would really make being able to share capship access a higher priority...
I have to say that this thread has added a lot to my appreciation of the game, both the dedication of the player base and the 'enlightened' laissez-faire attitude of GS.
On topic, I agree with DE and some of the other people above that bots aren't the problem. I would applaud any move to make a more general bot API and let us program probes and other automated ships to do routine tasks for us, from recon to trading and mining but also hunting other probes. There should be costs involved (non-trivial in-game costs and maybe some real world costs to compensate the server load) and there should be sane restrictions (# of active bots per account, limitations on homing, etc) and it should be almost impossible to kill a PC with a bot or even with a swarm of bots.
I also think that the logging out in space is part of the problem. I appreciate that people sometimes need to go afk without being docked, but I don't see why this would magically teleport their ship to safety. I even think 5 minutes or 60 seconds etc is all just postponing the magic. My proposal would be to only allow logoff when totally stopped, and just let the ship sit there until you log on again. The sector can shutdown as normal if there are no other PCs. Why should sleeping in greyspace be risk-free? (and it's not like ships or warm bodies are expensive in VO...).
I'm not sure of the implication for capships, but if you can't bring your capship to relative safety before ending your session I'm not sure it's soo bad to run the risk of losing the insurance money. I guess it would really make being able to share capship access a higher priority...
Wouldn't eliminating or restricting the sector list pretty well solve all of the expressed concerns?
No. How would that let me kill irc?