Bots are a problem because they confer an in-game advantage but they don't have an in-game cost. So if we create an in-game cost that applies to them, as long as people are willing to pay for it, then theres no problem.

If you attach an ingame cost then the out of game cost needs to be abolished.

Like I said almost a year ago when this problem was last discussed, implement them into the game. Make them ridiculously expensive mines that have a stealth and you need to get within X meters of them to detect them (but they appear on sensor menu). If someone wants to take it out, they can, the mine can't just sit in the station 24/7. After it's been destroyed, someone has to deploy a new one to take it's place, which can't be done as immediately as a bot can fly back to the sector.

As is, these bots should be banned. I strongly agree with exposing a basic chat API for IRC relays.

[mod edit]

Aww, I knew you missed me. Now if only you were important enough for me to remember... :3

I've unlocked this after cleaning it up a bit. To quote Inc: "be civil, or be elsewhere".

Let's keep this discussion productive.

Anyway, my point is still valid. Using bots to keep turrets active and the likes is stupid. Sure, maybe the devs should fix that particular bug instead, but we all know it's not going to happen.

"If you attach an ingame cost then the out of game cost needs to be abolished."

Why? Usually I'd agree, but these are just characters you have to pay access for characters, it's $1 per month but it'll be free to play soon enough; the devs recently added support. But i'm still curious as to why you think the out of game needs to be abolished if there's an ingame cost in this case.

I think no-one should be enticed to fool around with alts or accounts to achieve something in-game. It steps out of the 'universe' and breaks immersion. In the game, you are your character (alt), and everything else is a hack.

I think bots/alts can easily be replaced by in game measures, e.g.

- IRC bot -> chat API (this is a no-brainer if you ask me)
- spotter bots -> craftable and targetable radar-extender stealth mines, normally only visible in very short distance, but radar extenders spot them more easily
- cargo carrying alts -> hired convoy NPC's that take basic commands (load X from my storage, undock, follow me, etc)
- grey/deneb alts -> shorten travel time, see my earlier shortcut WH suggestion, or add a direct deneb -> odia WH
- (... other fun options like hiring/crafting a "drone" on which you upload a lua script)

Although fighting bots with technical measures is a cat and mouse game that you can't win, the devs can speak out against them (after making sure that the hacks are no longer needed), and discourage bots and alts by e.g. idle timeouts

"Bots are a problem because they confer an in-game advantage but they don't have an in-game cost."

That the most stupid [mod edit] thing that has been said so far in this thread.

LUA plugins confer serious in-game advantages with zero in-game cost. So is LUA a problem? Moreover, there IS an ingame cost, that being the knowledge that someone is looking at you. These aren't invisible bots, they are familiar names always sitting in the same sectors.

"I think no-one should be enticed to fool around with alts or accounts to achieve something in-game. It steps out of the 'universe' and breaks immersion. In the game, you are your character (alt), and everything else is a hack."

There are puritans in all walks of life, aren't there?

Combined with what Inc has already said on this topic, I highly doubt they'd make any effort to take action to supress this kind of bot network since they would directly lose subscriptions by doing so.

I personally have no problem with bots in stations. My problem was bots that auto-piloted themselves into wormhole sectors (like McLayzor). Specifically my problem was the autopiloting, and not the bot itself.

Station sectors have other protections in place (NFZ, faction protection, you can home there usually, etc) that are sufficient to belay any disadvantage of someone seeing you and coming to get ya. I can't imagine a bots primary purpose would be to keep turrets active. If you are talking about Verasi O-7 yoda -- I'm guessing that's there most likely to spot through-traffic than anything else.

"LUA plugins confer serious in-game advantages with zero in-game cost. So is LUA a problem"

Well if it wasn't, we would still have showshippos() or the lua functions that control movement, but we don't.

The game already does disconnect idle free/trial accounts. They implemented that when they added the capability of instanced training sectors and changed it so that trial countdown only starts after you leave the training sector.

If you want to run a "bot" you're going to incur a real-world cost, and I don't think that's unfair.

Can we get counter measures for this like sector jamming against bots only ?

How bout a mission to build a probe with sector sensor jamming that could be dropped in the sector. It ould be destroyable if indeed the bot user logs in or something.
And would be active in your cargo bay as well.

Could block individuals from bot sensors only or perhaps could have larger probe mission building for one that could block a guild, or super probe for nation blocking or something.

Could be interesting anyhow.

Alt idea - What about ability to destroy idle bots in station when idle for 1hr or so of login. Allow the bot to be destroyed in the station by a blast from an avalon without any faction reduction or something like that ?

"Can we get counter measures for this like sector jamming against bots only ? "

No. Bots cannot be distinguished from non-bots, so any idea intended to only effect bots is irrelevant. Any attempt to distinguish bots from non-bots will result in false positives more annoying than the bots themselves.

Not that there's anything wrong with proposing stealth or cloaking in general. But if you want it to only impact bots, it will never happen.

Alt idea - What about ability to destroy idle bots in station when idle for 1hr or so of login. Allow the bot to be destroyed in the station by a blast from an avalon without any faction reduction or something like that ? "

It will just respawn immediately, so this would be useless unless you also forced it to change its home. And remember, like I said above, you cannot distinguish bots from humans. If you do this idle connection detection, it will also affect a human who docks, then alt-tabs out to read a forum post and gets sucked into typing a long reply. Or who steps away to use the bathroom and ends up taking a long dump. Meanwhile, as I said earlier, the bot can simply undock and float in the NFZ. Then it's not idling in a station anymore, and as soon as it dies (which will impart a tmp-kos violation as well as a possible faction penalty on the guy who kills it) it will respawn in the station, grab a new bus, and undock again. So basically, you'd be giving me a way to kill AFK traders, and you wouldn't even be hampering the bots.

Just my 2 cents as a newbie and thus also a new sub since a week or 3 ago.

Its cool to see some people are this "serious" about a game like this to spend an extra $9,99 for a character that does basically nothing all day/night. I mean i could think of a couple of other things i would spend that money on before even considering making a alt bot for this game

Personally i dint have any issues with this so far, but i fully agree with the initial point "yodaofborg" is making. Although im not sure about this whole IRC bot thing, im sure you can make a bot for IRC/Jabber without having to use an online game character.

How you think it looks to new players that like the game, all they can find is idle players/bots hanging around in stations doing nothing (well to them it seems like nothing). If those bots were actual players helping each other out on the other hand ......

I think its in the games best interest if the focus was more on people recruiting people to do the things the bots are doing now, then people spending there money on alts to make bots. Not only is it bad to see so many characters doing station camps in game, its also a potential loss of mouth to mouth commercials about the game.

There is a reason why certain games have a zero-tolerance policy with bots and similar techniques, maybe its time VO changed there slightly as well.

PS: "you cannot distinguish bots from humans.": I am not an expert on the matter, but inst the whole idea behind a bot that it runs code to do what ever he it is doing. Aka its easy to detect that, since the actions it is doing are not only client side but most likely also get checked/passed true the server. And making a check for code being rerun 24/7 doesn't sound to hard to me, many games do this on a daily basis to catch and ban bots that ruin there game economics/balance.

I think bots enhance the game more than they take away from it.

What I've never been a fan of is the way the game automatically broadcasts all relavent character information to the entire sector including name, nationality, guild and local standing. I'd like to see some form of stealth implemented or enable the use of forged or stolen identities. Or at least the ability to turn off that communication so that ones ship appears annonomous.

"PS: "you cannot distinguish bots from humans.": I am not an expert on the matter"

Clearly not. I assure you that I am not talking out of my ass here. The simple fact of the matter is that any attempt to identify bots will either be easily worked around, or will be more annoying than the bots themselves, end of story.

Note that the bots you mention being successfully blocked in other games are not the bots being discussed here. All that these bots are doing is reporting what they observe to a chat channel, which is a perfectly legitimate function for a plugin to perform. For example, some people use plugins exactly like that to keep their guildmates informed of anybody they encounter as they fly around, without having to manually type it each time.

"I assure you that I am not talking out of my ass here"

This was my favourite bit.

Really the worst thing these characters do is keep wormhole sectors alive so that there's no delay when the NPC turrets fire their game-breakingly powerful weapons during your jump animation. Maybe also the CtC bots crowding around stations.

Neither of those is actually a problem with idle characters as much as they're problems with the NPCs that should be addressed on their own.

"Instead, we could just charge board to players that remain in a station for long periods of time. That'll sort those stingy TGFT tossers right out."

Suits us, so long as TRS gets charged the same amount for sitting in IRC ...

Nope, if anything it would charge Draugath. Though if he wanted to, he could always change the relay to be a subscription-based service requiring in-game credits to maintain the name linkage, and thereby pass the burden on to we who lurk.

I'm a little on the fence on this one. I can see where bots could be potentially abused, but I do also think there are mitigating exercises one can take to avoid any perception of abuse. Some of the bots are useful. e.g. PhoenixVoice is being built as a services bot to provide in game content. I didn't even install a player spotter on it, even though that'd be easy. (and indeed PA like all other guilds has one for voluntary installation by their players) Implementing this could make things a lot more difficult to implement those very same ambiance providing services I'm building.

Frankly, I don't see them as that much a problem. Any bot which is resident in game will be well known, and its location known by all. They don't represent an abuse in that case, as you always know where it is. It's not like it's going to pop up randomly in a random system, report on everybody it can see at the moment of login, then pop back out, avoiding being shot. (e.g. the SCIN bots) To be honest, I'd enjoy working with all those who run bots and see if we can't possibly add in game content through them. They'd make a wonderful medium for it.