its almost depressing.
There are videos of griefers and cheaters around, ramming other commanders with Orcas, having !Billions! of Credits, in their accounts.
There are videos of people streaming the game with Cheat Console Windows open
there have been and still there are ways of exploiting things that can make you millions easily
If you search for it, you can Google it in no time....
And some still are concerned about, a basic SC-Autopilot would make Trading Bots possible, that, if they even work, would farm you far less in weeks of leaving your Computer on...
Sorry.....
Still does not indicate that everyone else playing the game would immediatly and inevitably abuse the auto-pilot for trade-botting. And while some very visible people might suggest that there is a rampant amount of cheating/exploiting going on and continuing to increase, it's just a suggestion. Just as it might seem that the (complete) community is represented by the few registered on these forums. Many many more might just be browsing these forums while never registering. There might also be many more players playing the game in completely intended ways than there are exploiters. In fact, all you've encountered is very few individuals being very visible.
I don't have data or statistics (but I wish I had, would be very interesting) to back this, but I'm guessing the majority of the ED players, play it very much as intended and will continue to do so. I'm also guessing that most of them aren't ever going to bother looking up cheats and exploits, because they don't see a need.
In the end, no one here can really tell us what's going on and how this is going to play out. We can make guesses, but have very little facts. But what I can know, and what I'm going for here, is this: I'd don't see a problem with an auto-pilot, in fact I can imagine it's going to add something to the game. This exites me, and makes me want to play it more.
Community Goal influence is heavily weighted in favour of players. I would guess that Powers gameplay will be similarly weighted. There's two places that player cheating will have an effect.
As for my bitter rage at cheaters, there is none. Me typing some words you don't agree with doesn't make your personality profile accurate. RIGHT NOW I'M JUST TYPING IN CAPS, NOT ACTUALLY SHOUTING for example. It's just some letters arranged in a particular order. I could probably argue in favour of autopilots just as well if I wanted to, but I don't, because the slippery slope is out there, and it is very slippery, and it is sloped quite sharply down to the depths of a cheater's free-for-all if the devs want it to be.
Look, I get it, ethics are not for everyone - especially when it comes to inconsequential stuff like gaming. The game and the devs don't have to make it convenient for cheaters to cheat, however. The fact is that they have up until this point, with their whole policy of "report cheaters to us and we will take action - unless they get lots of Youtube hits doing so of course." I just don't see the benefit to the game as a whole if they implement additional mechanisms that assist cheaters.
You might feel that the convenience argument outweighs the slippery slope one. I disagree with that, which doesn't mean I'm boiling in impotent rage because some guy is making money selling credits online. Anyway, FDEV have stated that they were considering selling credits for real cash, so they can always just undercut such people once there is a real market for it. It's more the principle of the thing, which is an archaic concept apparently.
I didn't attempt to profile your personality or didn't want to imply there's bitter rage on your end. I just wanted to try to take your perspective and maybe make you see mine. My perspective is this: every game has cheaters. Some see it as a completely legitimate way of playing, kind of like bluffing in Poker. While this can be incredibly annoying and even ripple through game communities, I'd still rather see the developers invest their time and energy into their vision for the game. Thanks to the internet, maybe I've got a chance to communicate a great idea I had to them.
I guess it's because I don't play online PVP anymore. And when I did, controlled and moderated dedicated servers hosted by community members where still a thing. So was knowing the regulars on that server. And welcoming newbies. Exactly because of discussions and issues like cheaters surrounding every online multiplayer game in recent times I've stopped playing PVP games and stick to those that let me opt-out, or are cooperative. I don't think cheating against other players is ok, but I also believe I don't have any right to tell other people what the right way to play a game is. Have fun and let others have fun, that's it. And if it's fun to them to watch their trade-bot do it's thing or even let it run over night and return in the morning to millions of credits, and doesn't really affect me in the way I play, I think it's ok for them to do it.
Now what to do about these community events? I believe they're inevitably going to attract cheaters/botters/exploiters, those events are high visibility feasting grounds for attention-seekers. For me they exist on the fringes of my playing experience. Kinda like the big stories from EVE, I find them very interesting and entertaining, but I'm not going to play that game, just not my thing. So my solution for the cheating in the community events would simply be to stop community events completely. No point to it, if they're really a performance test for efficient cheating. Or leave them the way they are, inconsequential to the game universe.
Then again, if I was a developer I'd just let it happen and be amused. But like I said, if I were a developer I'd rather invest my time and energy into realizing my vision. If something turns out to be exploitable, wow, emergent behaviour in complex systems, nice. So in my book, an auto-pilot isn't really a broken mechanism, but it might be usable in an unintended way. And I think that's fine.
I have thought about this as well. Firstly, I enjoy SC and will probably never automate it, but it is possible to do so with Voice Attack with the "Recorder" feature. You will need to have aligned with you destination on the orbital line and have a set speed before initiating (to compensate for gravitational pull from a start point and also begin the macro sequence that can be duplicated on engaging). You could just start mapping it out from system by system and actually have the station name in each command. Find your starting point, time the run, record your macros and bada bing... auto pilot from supercruise to disengage.
See, this is somebody having fun with the game. What mechanism exist, how does stuff interact, what I can I make it do? This lego piece and that gear, this motor, the pawn from chess and that bit of string make a nice helicopter with a pilot. To me, this reads like a CMDR, sitting in supercruise out to a 10,000ls station, thinking "There's gotta be a way to make this less of a chore." To me, that's engaging the game, playing with it. Hard to believe, with all the computers onboard these ships, and those long boring cruises no CMDR ever taught him/her-self some coding and programmed something like that and then shared it with fellow CMDRs.
Finally, I'd like to say, cheaters/hackers/griefers thrive on attention. Any kind of attention, positive and negative, immediate and remote. More often than not, they are also actively engaged in the community. And once they realize how much influence on the development process and evolution of the game they've got, it's just going to get worse. So while there's going to be a unquantified possibility of exploiting should there be an auto-pilot, I still rather see it happen for all the good fun it could be and in spite of cheaters/hackers and griefers.
