Is Slopey's Calculator BPC Cheating [and other like programs]

[Koen]

Slopey's tool is a bandaid for a missing in-game tool that should already be there...

You should have to buy it with in-game credits, and it should occupy an internal or utility bay on your ship.

I agree with the idea, but in stead of competing for hull space it should compete for computer memory or processor time with docking computer, HUD add-ons, multi-targetting, , etc...

 

[zcarlos]

Wouldn't say it is cheating but, for me at least, crowd sourced trade information detracts from the trading game. I feel part of trading in a hostile galaxy is searching for those lucrative trades and with that search comes the satisfaction of benefiting from my own exploration, my own knowledge.

I use Cmders Log which, while being a 3rd party app, does not utilise the information of others but instead records the information I discover when I enter it, a replacement for pen & paper. It gives me the tools to record and analyse without stepping outside my preferred game style.

Each to his own within the bounds of what FD and indeed you the player find acceptable

Thanks for that, was going to say pretty much the same. I also use cmders log as a replacement for my trusty notepad and pan. Main reason being, pen is now somewhere in my four year old daughters pencil case and said pen was used to draw mermaids, fairies and singing frogs in my notebook. I prefer the piccies to be honest so spending a lot of time logging my journey in the awesome cmders log

 

[DaveB]

Using any such tool is not cheating. Any of you are welcome to do so.

When it drew data direct from the game via marketdump I used Slopey's BPC in local mode as a faster way to take notes on markets I'd visited. Neither uploading nor downloading any market data. Any data in the tool I could see, I had personally collected. Now I still collect the same data but do it differently. That's just the way I prefer to do it, Anyone who wants to use the crowdsourced data is welcome to, but I just prefer the feeling of satisfaction I get when finding a decent route on my own, exercising what's between my ears rather than just going and looking it up.

I would suspect that any really good route found in the crowdsourced data tends to get swarmed anyway and ceases to be "good" rather quickly.

 

[Aussiedroid]

In my book, it is a type of cheating. It gives an advantage to those using over those that do not. I used some of these 'tools' for an evening and felt very unsatisified. Takes all the challenge out of trading. Sure I earned a heap of credits (probably close to 10x usual earnings), much more than I could do purely ingame figuring it out myself, but I would rather say I earned that Conda or whatever on my own thanks. I don't really care if that takes me longer.

Mind you I could just use the tool for a week or so and grind the credits and be done with it .. yawn! Too easy.. too greedy.

I'm fine with others using if they wish, same as using a guide or walkthrough, but really ED should have some function for this in-game. It is clear that if they had this from the start then the community might not have needed to put all this effort into creating these tools.

 

[Quineloe]

Wouldn't say it is cheating but, for me at least, crowd sourced trade information detracts from the trading game. I feel part of trading in a hostile galaxy is searching for those lucrative trades and with that search comes the satisfaction of benefiting from my own exploration, my own knowledge.

And the moment you can tell which trade routes are profitable with the ingame tools instead without flying from base to base to write down the prices is the moment those tools will have much lower participation and die out.

As long as the ingame tools tell you that station A is supplying station B with animal meat, but when you go there you find a low supply of meat going to a low demand of meat and the trade is 100cr/t loss people will not trust these tools.

 

[DiAL033]

Hmm, I do not think it is cheating. Some of the tools functionalities should have been in the ED UI in the first place. While some of the other functionalites do give players, who use these tools, a significant advantage over those who don`t. Just think how many rares you would have found just all by yourself: one, maybe two or three. The game itself doesn`t give much away on those locations. On the other hand, those tools just say "there is something, it costs roundabout that much", they are just using information which is there anyway. It is in no way comparable to an aimbot for instance.

But I wonder whether it might have a negative impact on balancing the incomes of kill, steal, trade and mining. When people say that earnings by trade are vastly higher than with any other element, then this is only half the truth. If you would just trade with the built-in means, then you credit per hour rating would be much more comparable to the other elements. And by built-in means I also mean no forum peeking for rare spots. So while it is not cheating those tools prevent a proper scaling of all income elements, IMHO. Since, at the moment, they are quite balanced - at least until mid-game - as long as you do not use trade tools or not-in-game info.

However, since it is impossible to whithhold this information/those tools, there would always be this balancing problem. A simple solution would be: Implement all the main features of these tools into the game. The "OCR", the rare trade thingie, all that. Now every player has the same tools at hand and FD can start balancing the other elements incomes. You can still optimise you rare routes, but everybody else can, too. To earn more than others you would have to trade more than others, just like a miner has to mine more and a pirate has to err... pirate more.

 

[Yokai]

If you're concerned about cheating or the spirit of the game, just use Trade Computer Extension (TCE) or Cmdrs Log. Problem solved.

I use TCE. It's fantastic and immersion.

 

[Quineloe]

.
Doesn't part of trading run the risk of profit and loss? If you want a game that only guarantees profit and no risk of loss, then what's the point? The whole point about being a trader is seeking ways to make profit and not necessarily having every tool under the sun to guarantee only profits. Loss, or risk of loss, is part of a trader's life.

Seeing how you get penalized on your trade rank progression for selling at a loss, I'd say no, trading is not supposed to come at a risk of loss due to a terrible sale price

It already comes with the risk of dieing without insurance coverage on your cargo, which is usually more expensive than your ship rebuy anyways.

The point about being a good trader should be to find the best routes, not just avoiding the routes that actually generate losses for you.

If you think it's cool that a station pays so little for food it should starve to death because no one would supply it with food, then go ahead. No one else is enjoying that as far as I know.

 

[DaveB]

...It gives an advantage to those using over those that do not...

Not really. It just gives more credits and funnels you into well-travelled routes. To me that's not an advantage. Ok, so Joe Q Cmdr has more money than I do and can buy a bigger ship faster than I can. Big whoop. I'm having as much fun running goods and boiling rats in the ship I've got as I would in a bigger one. I'm probably having a LOT more fun than the cmdr who runs a trade tool and dedicates themselves to the grind. I'd bet I won't burn out on the game before he does

 

[kirkkh]

There's a plethora of threads on this already, no offense but, forum rules state you must use the search feature before posting a new thread to avoid duplicating them. There's a ton of opinions and discussion on this in various places and a good read if you're interested in this topic.

Always one of these replies.

 

[Gilmour]

I'm very against cheating, more so i would rather stop playing a game than submit to cheating if it's dominating the game, even if it's my favorite game.

i read on a youtube comment that it is cheating and i want to make sure i follow the rules. if so what is the best way to find good prices? is the info tab that displace imports exports very handy? or is it kindof a general tip?

From what FD said before I even purchased the game, the highlight of it is that you can play it the way you want to. Hope this clears it up for you.

 

[HarlequiNQB]

1) In order to be 'cheating' it has to be pulling information it shouldn't be from the game, or putting information it shouldn't be into the game. Something that sets your ammo to infinite is cheating for example. Originally Slopey's and Thrud's both pulled information directly from the game - FD asked them to stop because that was essentially cheating and in violation of the EULA. They stopped, and are considered legit if unsanctioned.
2) FD are working with these coders to come up with an API so they will be able to pull certain types of information directly from the game without breaking the EULA. This does not seem to be the action of a company who considered them to be cheating (that's been going on for a while - no idea what the status of the API stuff is).

So no, it's not cheating. If you personally feel it's an unfair advantage, or it makes trading less interesting then don't use them, otherwise go ahead. How you play your game is up to you.

 

[mojoflow]

Cheating? Absolutely not.
Unfair Advantage? Absolutely.

Please consider this;

You are the pilot of a space ship you OWN travelling the entire galaxy.

In this time, the capability of Slopey's, and BETTER (sorry Slope) would be on the current iteration of the iWatch on your wrist.

Now, quick question. For those wanting to run BPC in a standalone mode, how do you set that up exactly, I can't really find any instructions on it.

Cheers!

 

[SMcA]

(as opposed to US and GB's use of case law)

Nit picking here.
In GB there are two different legal systems. Scots law is a mixture Civil law and Case law.
If you had said UK instead of GB then I would have included Northern Irish law as well.

 

[ocflyer]

Slopey's tool is role playing in the absence of pilots being able to go the station pub and sell market data to other traders. The in-game resources allow you to buy market data but the data is near useless because it doesn't show you the prices, only the pseudo trade routes. And the in-game design doesn't even have the decency to allow you to save and view the trade data that you've collected yourself. Someday, FD will get off their butt and allow pilots to save and view market data from stations they've visited.

 

[SteveLaw]

Slopey's tool is role playing in the absence of pilots being able to go the station pub and sell market data to other traders.

I can't remember what I paid for a pint of milk in Tesco 10 minutes ago, I'd be useless trying to recall the prices of all the commodities from a space port dozens of light years away after a glass of Lavian Brandy. Although you are welcome to buy me a glass and I'll give you some numbers.

 

[kirkkh]

I'm very against cheating, more so i would rather stop playing a game than submit to cheating if it's dominating the game, even if it's my favorite game.

i read on a youtube comment that it is cheating and i want to make sure i follow the rules. if so what is the best way to find good prices? is the info tab that displace imports exports very handy? or is it kindof a general tip?

Yup. But no one cares. FD ftw.

 

[wolverine2710]

It is worth remembering that any tools that FD could (should?) have added would never have been what everyone (anyone? ) wanted.

We have a far greater choice with 3rd party tools. Perhaps that ultimately makes for a better gaming experience?

There are indeed LOTS of tools out there. The BPC is just one of those, though its very popular. Just like Thruds, Trade Dangerous (extremely powerful, versatile due to being a command line tool) and cmdr's log. Though these are only the tip of the iceberg. The thread "Complete list of all third party tools, spreadsheets, manuals and other data sources". The thread is being converted by biobob to a website codenamed ED3PTT. It currently contains 73 tools (some are spreadsheets), 54 threads (with lots of guides). The OP has only a portion of it. All new stuff added to ED3PTT has been posted in the last weeks also. If you combine the OP with all those posts you get the complete overview as well. A complete list of EDDN related tools (less reading) can be found here. There are some REAL GEMS out there. Basically there is something for every ones taste ;-)

That said, even that is ONLY the tip of the iceberg (and they center around the same kind of apps) because crowd sourcing, OCR-ing and the EDDN only deals with a limited set of data. When the ED-API (and lots more different data with it) will be released I'm sure the tools market will absolutely totally going to EXPLODE. I've already seen an example of what is possible and its MIND BLOWING.

TLDR; YES there is a huge set of tools out there and YES they (for me) offer a better gaming experience for ED. But as always commanders have the choice to use them or not.

 

[SAB380]

It is definitely not in the spirit of the game.....but the spirit of the game seems to be some antiquated notion of 1983.
Many of the 3rd party tools are simply features that should obviously be in the game.


"Won't everyone just connect up the dots on rares, make dedicated runs and essentially break the game economy?"
"Nonsense, no one communicates on the internet, people just use it to post selfies!"
"You're probably right. Route planners? Trade data? Real men use pen and paper dammit!"

 

[wolverine2710]

It is definitely not in the spirit of the game.....but the spirit of the game seems to be some antiquated notion of 1983.
Many of the 3rd party tools are simply features that should obviously be in the game.


"Won't everyone just connect up the dots on rares, make dedicated runs and essentially break the game economy?"
"Nonsense, no one communicates on the internet, people just use it to post selfies!"
"You're probably right. Route planners? Trade data? Real men use pen and paper dammit!"

Two PAPA tools: PAPA stands for "Pen And Paper Application"
Thread/tool: Introducing Commander Mafi's PAPA
Thread/tool: [APP] Elite Notes, a very simple price recorder for your android device

Also there are multiple spreadsheets out there. Another example of a PAPA. See post #103.