Forums » General

Serco Command Intel network Bots

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Mar 26, 2013 CrazySpence link
yea it's probably true, only you and spuck seem to have this much time on your hands
Mar 26, 2013 TheRedSpy link
Okay if you're sure man ;)
Mar 26, 2013 abortretryfail link
fact: None of the bots is hidden in a roid. The ones that are not docked are just hiding out in space.
They can be found and destroyed, Greenwall has done that several times. Learn from him.


I'm calling BS on this. ITAN has hunted down and killed at least 3 of these that were hiding inside an asteroid.
Mar 26, 2013 TheRedSpy link
Who cares if they're hidden in roids or not. I tried to bump into a station last night at high speed to damage myself to test my damage hud colour plugin and I ended up flying all the way through. There was no such thing as players getting inside roids when I started playing, why have they changed the collision to the point of absurdity?

I killed that spybot05 at one point in ukari o13, they were able to position it next to the asteroid in a way that the occlusion came into effect and the bot vanished from radar but was still in plain sight. It's ridiculous, why was the mesh strength changed when it was never a problem in the first place?

Mar 26, 2013 abortretryfail link
Yeah there was ways to do it before they nerfed the collision damage. I saw Niki do it years ago as a joke. Stations too.
Mar 26, 2013 TheRedSpy link
Well then fix those ways. It's one thing for it to be really hard to but possible to get inside an asteroid, it's another thing for it to be so easy that it happens accidentally.
Mar 26, 2013 Pizzasgood link
Yeah, it's something people have been able to do since well before I started playing. Has to do with high-speed collision detection being tricky to accomplish efficiently.

As for the bots...

Kierky, you are an idiot as usual. That clause of the ROC doesn't actually mean anything except "we the devs can manufacture any excuse to ban you, lol". Whiny noobs like you have been trying to shoehorn anything they find undesirable into that rule for years. Piracy inconveniences many groups. Pirate hunters and bounty hunters inconvenience many groups. Miners inconvenience many groups. Coalitions inconvenience many groups. Periodic messages on 100 inconvenience many groups. Stupid newbies who don't read their missions inconvenience many groups.

But at the end of the day, it's just BS that means whatever the devs want it to mean. It is not a valid tool for player debate.

Personal stance:

As a player, I am against people being able to hide bots inside objects. If the collision detection system can't be corrected to prevent this, add an "is the player currently inside something that should be solid" detection function, and add flags to things like asteroids and station objects marking them solid. When people are in violation, blow them up.

Otherwise, I have no player-level objections to bots.

As a character, however, my policy is to declare war on any character and guild who does this kind of thing. Just as I have done previously, so shall it be now. I care not what goes on in Bureaucrat-Space, but I will not tolerate pervy surveillance bots in Greyspace.

By the way, a resource for anybody wanting to hunt distant bots: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/26467
Mar 26, 2013 scin02 link
abortretryfail: "ITAN has hunted down and killed at least 3 of these that were hiding inside an asteroid."

Yes, that was true in the very first days, but not any longer. The bots are just sitting in space.
Mar 26, 2013 TheRedSpy link
"Whiny noobs like [Kierky]"

Hilariously true.
Mar 26, 2013 Fested link
why care?
at least they dont chat or advertise or ask stupid questions.
Mar 26, 2013 tarenty link
why care?

Maybe you should, you know, read the thread. Like the parts about them revealing the location of anyone they see, the server resource usage, exploiting trials, etc.

Now that we all have our personal jabs in, perhaps we should lock this and let the devs do what they will do when they can.
Mar 26, 2013 Pizzasgood link
"why care?"

Because most people dislike being obviously spied upon and monitored. They mostly seem to prefer the spying to be subtler so that they can conveniently forget about it and pretend they have privacy. Also, some of the complainers in this instance are doing so because the perpetrators are one of the more generally disliked groups in the game.

More philosophically, Rin enjoys the freedom from governmental oversight and regulation that he has in Greyspace. Wide-scale surveillance is a hallmark of totalitarian governments who do idiotic things like ban guns or censure the nunchaku and "Ninja" right out of the Ninja Turtles. Or force you to indoctrinate your children into the ruler's cult of choice.

That sort of stuff is double-plus ungood.

EDIT: I'd be willing to bet that the server resources are negligible. This is supposed to be an MMO. If it can't handle a couple dozen extra accounts, the devs should just throw in the towel and find new lines of work.
Mar 26, 2013 Dr. Lecter link
There was no such thing as players getting inside roids when I started playing

Patently false.

The servers aren't being harmed, nobody's getting free accounts more so than they're entitled to, and nobody's harming anyone's play experience in so far as that phrase has any legitimate meaning (e.g., spamming, etc.).

Someone has simply found a way to build a better mousetrap while staying within the rules set by GS. If that means you're easier to track, tough. You can do the same thing about it that you could do if a group of live players were acting in concert.
Mar 26, 2013 Savet link
As others have said, the real reason to oppose this is because it breaks the immersion of the game. Grey space is suppose to be dangerous. The logical outcome of this is no bots in grey space wormhole or station sectors, or at most one per guild.

The SCIN bots are a logical extension of the TGFT conquerable station bots. The logical extension of the SCIN bots is for every guild to do the same. Having 5-10 bots in every station and wormhole sector is logically retarded.
Mar 26, 2013 TheRedSpy link
It goes without saying that when I started I wasn't aware of how messed up some things were, lecter

I don't really get where Savet is going with this anyway, how do you ban players from being in greyspace sectors or stations? Bot's aren't going anywhere, and why should they? They add interesting parts to the game. What needs to happen is they need to be hireable in-game with credits so that at least people without programming knowledge and virtual private servers can have fun with it too.
Mar 26, 2013 Touriaus link
The server usage complaints and other speculated detriments to the GS' hardware should be answered by GS and not players.

There was a point being made that because it is coming from an opposing faction that naturally people will be displeased and that is true. If serco start acting like serco, which is defined by the backstory and the serco themselves (not itani and carebears) then typically people get miffed. The Serco are an antagonistic war prone race. Think of us like the Aurorans from EVN. These types of players are always frowned upon across many different games.

As far as immersion goes, I don't follow. The serco historically used guises before, why not now?

The trial usage isn't abuse if we're using what has been allotted to any created account. I won't speak for GS but if they don't want people to use friend keys then remove them. And as others have stated before, if we would like to continue using them then we'll pay for the subs. In fact, we are working that out now as opposed to later. It would only be considered abuse if we were somehow gathering more time than what was expected or had found a way to give us more time without GS' knowledge. None of which is happening.

And as others have stated before, you're free to kill them. It is possible to kill them, and disrupt the network. Just like any other ship in the game.
Mar 26, 2013 greenwall link
i am both for and against the scin bots. i am greenwall.
Mar 26, 2013 Dr. Lecter link
I start worrying when Mecha and I agree on the analysis of an issue.
Mar 26, 2013 Savet link
My point is a philosophical one.

While the implementation of the bots is unique and may be within scope of the Serco back-story, such an implementation will promote other groups to do the same to remain competitive. To use technical terms, such a situation would be retarded. Imagine jumping into any sector and having 10 bots in your sector list.

What I am suggesting is that this might be a player-driven solution in the form of a mutual agreement not to get bot-retarded. If anything, the SCIN bots are a good thing because it has taken things to a level where such an agreement would be necessary.
Mar 26, 2013 Kierky link
@ Pizzas

You're referring to an article which recommends finding a bot using spheres of vision. When these bots disappear every 2 minutes, this becomes arduous, and... well completely boring and inaccurate.

These bots took the monitoring situation to the next level and too far. The ROC is just a coincidence.