Forums » Suggestions
Why would it matter? If a guild or individual wants to have a bot strategically located while the game mechanics permit it, why not?
The fact that CHRN has chosen to utilize this in I8 is irrelevant. The reality is that they are the only group that places a value on having one there. Any other established guild has the among their members the skills, intellect and means of creating and staging their own bot for whatever purpose they choose.
I personally neither favor nor oppose the use of bots. I think, having one demonstrates a vested interest in the game which imo can only be a good thing.
Certainly IRC in Odia M14 hasn't caused major disaster by keeping the sector active, so I don't see a lot of merit in your case. Also, assuming that I8 is solo-able because of the bot, so what? All it means is that anyone can solo it, CHRN, PA, ONE, TGFT, VPR, TICKLEMEELMO, etc.
Besides, when the dev's finally get around to limiting the sector list to only those ships in range and not occluded, the bot in I8 loses its value in being there because it will neither see nor be seen.
The fact that CHRN has chosen to utilize this in I8 is irrelevant. The reality is that they are the only group that places a value on having one there. Any other established guild has the among their members the skills, intellect and means of creating and staging their own bot for whatever purpose they choose.
I personally neither favor nor oppose the use of bots. I think, having one demonstrates a vested interest in the game which imo can only be a good thing.
Certainly IRC in Odia M14 hasn't caused major disaster by keeping the sector active, so I don't see a lot of merit in your case. Also, assuming that I8 is solo-able because of the bot, so what? All it means is that anyone can solo it, CHRN, PA, ONE, TGFT, VPR, TICKLEMEELMO, etc.
Besides, when the dev's finally get around to limiting the sector list to only those ships in range and not occluded, the bot in I8 loses its value in being there because it will neither see nor be seen.
The bot in that particular case does not lose its value. It still keeps the sector from resetting.
As to anyone can do it: Yes, thats absolutely true, if one has enough guild members and can afford a separate account, program the bot, or acquire the software necessary to give it function (which is not.... actually everyone) I've in no way shape or form said that CHRN HAS abused anything themselves. However, the fact that the bot being their has opened up a glaringly obvious mechanic flaw that is exploitable if/when Station conquering ever becomes actually worthwhile.
I don't even think the intent of the bot was the keep the sector from resetting, just there to keep tabs on things.
As to anyone can do it: Yes, thats absolutely true, if one has enough guild members and can afford a separate account, program the bot, or acquire the software necessary to give it function (which is not.... actually everyone) I've in no way shape or form said that CHRN HAS abused anything themselves. However, the fact that the bot being their has opened up a glaringly obvious mechanic flaw that is exploitable if/when Station conquering ever becomes actually worthwhile.
I don't even think the intent of the bot was the keep the sector from resetting, just there to keep tabs on things.
Uhhhh, having the bot there doesn't make it especially possible to solo the station... I know it might seem like a long time to reload for you but it doesn't take any more than 1 minute... let alone 5.
ender I understand what you are trying to get it. But I could easily just leave my account on and do the same thing any bot is doing whether it be the IRC or phleg (who is not a bot btw but a player) so we need to decide the ramifications of a player who chooses to stay logged in and in one sector. As you can already see momerath is logged in a lot and it does not disrupt anything.
Mom is not a player pey ....not the same thing
he may be a dev but that does not matter in this conversation being logged in an afk is still the same thing. this would just be more of a burden I can think of numerous other players who go afk for extended periods of time the first one off the top of my head is Mick. I also know O'malley and #PA and #ONE used to be on a lot more
Mom is not deliberately trying to alter gameplay.
#PA no longer exists pey and I dont believe #One exists anymore either...
Mick rarely logs in anymore either...
I think the point is that CHRN has a Player stationed at I8 almost all the time preventing the sector from resetting.
Personally I dont think it really changes anything either way and as far as I am concerned theres a lot more important issues that need work right now.
#PA no longer exists pey and I dont believe #One exists anymore either...
Mick rarely logs in anymore either...
I think the point is that CHRN has a Player stationed at I8 almost all the time preventing the sector from resetting.
Personally I dont think it really changes anything either way and as far as I am concerned theres a lot more important issues that need work right now.
to be quite fair then there is an IRC bot sitting in odia m 14 that keeps the sector from resetting. Also I was not trying to say mom was deliberately altering gameplay it is an obvious side effect of going afk for extended amounts of time. I don't think it is big enough deal to make tests users have to take or forcefully remove players from a sector.
There seems to be two different issues being proposed here:
1) Bots in the conquerable station sector cause some sort of minor advantage/disadvantage to one group or others.
2) Some people don't like bots, and they are sometimes annoying and use resources.
It's easiest to solve 1) by simply changing game mechanics to alter the way turrets are spawned, or healed, or whatever else, so the gameplay is consistent whether the sector has restarted or not. This is better for persistency anyway.
2) is a more fundamental issue. And kinda problematic. Bots and idle players can actually be bad for the game, sometimes. We've had quite a few issues crop up over the years, that only appear in sectors used by bots and the like, because the issues only present if the sector has been running for.. a week, or whatever. However, we just fix these problems and move forward.
It is difficult to detect the difference between a player and a bot; we can simply dump people who have been idle for more than X period, but then bots will simply do something to avoid being idle for that long.
We've always had kind of a non-policy on bots. They're not specifically allowed, but not specifically disallowed either, and we just.. figured we would not worry about it until some future point when they became problematic enough to demand attention. Plus, we figured we would open up a proper API at some point (XMPP/Jabber) to allow guilds to actually write interesting specialized doohickies without having to keep clients sitting in our game all the time. That way we could push reasonable public data over the API, while keeping resource hogs away from our game server. Of course, this doesn't work with certain "store" bots and the like, but that's another discussion.
For now, I'd say the best solution to the topic at hand is just to make the turret behaviour consistent, regardless of whether the sector has been restarted.
1) Bots in the conquerable station sector cause some sort of minor advantage/disadvantage to one group or others.
2) Some people don't like bots, and they are sometimes annoying and use resources.
It's easiest to solve 1) by simply changing game mechanics to alter the way turrets are spawned, or healed, or whatever else, so the gameplay is consistent whether the sector has restarted or not. This is better for persistency anyway.
2) is a more fundamental issue. And kinda problematic. Bots and idle players can actually be bad for the game, sometimes. We've had quite a few issues crop up over the years, that only appear in sectors used by bots and the like, because the issues only present if the sector has been running for.. a week, or whatever. However, we just fix these problems and move forward.
It is difficult to detect the difference between a player and a bot; we can simply dump people who have been idle for more than X period, but then bots will simply do something to avoid being idle for that long.
We've always had kind of a non-policy on bots. They're not specifically allowed, but not specifically disallowed either, and we just.. figured we would not worry about it until some future point when they became problematic enough to demand attention. Plus, we figured we would open up a proper API at some point (XMPP/Jabber) to allow guilds to actually write interesting specialized doohickies without having to keep clients sitting in our game all the time. That way we could push reasonable public data over the API, while keeping resource hogs away from our game server. Of course, this doesn't work with certain "store" bots and the like, but that's another discussion.
For now, I'd say the best solution to the topic at hand is just to make the turret behaviour consistent, regardless of whether the sector has been restarted.