ok fyi "bots" are afk player accounts. People using the game as a free chat room is more of an issue than "bots" in my opinion.

That's an entirely different discussion, this is about nerfing bot intel.

as bot accounts are player accounts it is about nerfing intel for player accounts. If there are going to be sanctions against player accounts then they should run the whole gambit of sanctions.

I disagree with limited access to chat. If you don't want people seeing your chats. don't chat. If you don't want to see other people's chats, ignore them or leave the channel.

I've sat in a station chatting while doing other things Wash. Whats the issue?

From INC post

"Umm.. no. Spotter bots are not intended gameplay."

I some how doubt sitting in a station for hours and just chatting is intended game play either. To that end and to maintain fairness and equality across the board chat function should also be affected.

The problems Inc is concerned about do not happen over a few hours of somebody chatting from a station, nor does chatting from a station confer any sort of benefits. It's not a remotely valid comparison.

If the person is chatting locations it is the problem he is trying to address. how do you distinguish between an actual person and a plugin running?

Can't chat locations if you can't see people.

The solution could ignore the issue of bot/player.

Even if it was a human sitting in a station reporting every movement, it should still be fixed.

In another thread, I suggested that players in a station not be able to see whom is outside the station.

Consider the following examples:

Players in a free ship gain no information from station.
Players that purchase a non free ship gain information for a limited period of time, depending on the cost of the ship. Changing ships saves the timer for that ship. Selling the ship (at a loss) and buying a new ship resets the timer.

This way, you can gain intel, but at a constant draw on credits. Not ready to launch yet? delay your ship purchase, suffer a loss of credits, or launch blind.

There will always be loopholes, people can use a plug in to auto launch a free bus and bind a simple infiniroll and keep that bit active.

Not really, it's not very complicated for us to make heuristics that get pretty damned hard to automatically work around. We just had other development that's been a bigger priority.

how about making it nerf chat as well. sit in a station to long, no more chat.

This, and all other traditional MMORPGs, are basically big graphical chat rooms. No, I am not preventing people from sitting in a station and chatting. Contrary to your theory that that is not intended gameplay.. actually.. it is expected. Of course, bad chat behaviour and the like is undesirable, but that's a totally different discussion.

Even if it was a human sitting in a station reporting every movement, it should still be fixed.

I consider "player" vs "bot" a crucial distinction. Why does "in a station" even matter? There's nothing to prevent spy bots from sitting outside stations and gathering information there. If someone comes along and kills it, it simply re-launches with a new free ship.

On the other hand, I'm certainly not going to say it's bad for an actively flying and playing user to verbally notify other people of ships in their surroundings, that would be stupid. "Help, I'm being pursued by pirates!" is basically an underpinning of the game.

My problem is automated networks of bots that are established for the purpose of informing an elite group about the movements of players in the game. Whether these bots are docked, or no-docked, is irrelevant.

So.. in answer to your assertion: no, I disagree. Humans reporting movements is okay. Bots reporting movements it not okay. It's a big difference of intent and scale.

If, at some future point, we have issues with zillions of paid "intel-farmers" from China, hired to sit around in ships and tell people who flies past.. then I'll deal with that issue as it comes.

But, at present, that is not my target issue.

Roda, you seem to be behind on the game updates.

VO 1.8.464 - Players who spend a great deal of time docked in a station may find their sector visibility decreases while docked. This can then be reversed through regular gameplay.

I was actually going to hire Korean gamers to do it as they are a bit more stable and have better internet :D

You're ok with TGFT's station conq bots though? its ten-ply.

This thread is only about spy bots, I'm not commenting on anything else at this time.

I think the code for the bots that log off and back on is still floating around somewhere.

sorry to throw in another pickle

Heheh. We are familiar with the ability to log off and log on :). We did.. write this game. We're pretty familiar with the suite of options available to people trying to run bots.

People sometimes seem to misunderstand that.. there's been a lack of enforcement due to other priorities, not because this stuff is particularly hard for us to enforce or prevent.

Personally, i think the usage of bots for locational data is bad. I could make a bot to keep data in a system - all its sectors - no more than 30mins old.

But, i will not.

One aspect to this situation i am unsure if the players are aware of, altho i would guess inc may have already encountered this - is sectors being kept alive.

So, let us consider a situation -

When a player flies through a system, lets say they are just passing through, they waken the wh sectors both sides, and the storms they encounter, or the empty sectors. On average a player would find it difficult in normal gameplay to waken more than five sectors before the first is put back to sleep.

The architecture of the server no doubt relies on the sleeping of sectors to reduce the overall load of the game. 30 or so systems which each have 256 sectors reduced to only those sectors where players exist. A useful ploy... But if the situation is such that there are bots running who sequentially move through every sector, and i have seen many doing this for locational data, then they would be able to wake 30 empty sectors before they began to sleep again.

I am unsure if the server load is noticeable however, but the thought is relevant none the less. Machine code can perform dainty little tasks that while simple do result in behaviours that repeat faster and with more determination and persistence than any player would ever exhibit, and for this reason i consider their use is a blight on the game - it could be the cause of lag inside the game in other places.

On top of this, stationary bots cause sectors to stay alive for an inordinate amount of time, causing some very laggy sectors at times. Particularly annoying in stations such as m14 odia, and latos m7.

I have used bots myself, but more for things like guild admin, allowing additional communication and functionality within the guild chat. It was in brac d9 - it frequently saw enemies entering and leaving but not a single one of them was reported to anywhere other than its own sector leave chat response.