Sorry, I couldn't resist.
The dark side is strong in this one...
Automation and Scripting - An investigation into further abuses of BGS and Powerplay
- Thread starter CMDR Tom D
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The dark side is strong in this one...
The only real solution is to change the game loop so that humans can deal with it but bots find it complex to deal with, so there isn't a silver bullet. For example, one thing that would put a real speedbump to these PP bots but humans won't care would be to have a special mission that's like a donation mission but you get PP vouchers instead of rep; you can get these missions from any power-aligned faction on the station, they produce random amounts of PP vouchers (but there are enough missions so you can top up without relogging) and they're set up like buying rares so once you've got enough vouchers they don't appear any more. A human can just scan the mission list, take the missions, complete them and they have their vouchers. A bot writer now needs to implement something that can interpret the missions tab, read the contents of every mission and choose the right ones, and stop when they've taken enough missions to top up on vouchers. That's a lot harder than sending a bunch of blind keystrokes, which from the videos seems to be what the botters are doing.
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Mental note to self - program entropy and human-like behaviors into my bot algorithms.
That's not going to work. Eventually someone, somewhere will find a way to automate that too. To confront the bot authors you have to think like them.
And// Lets get real here; We're talking about manipulation (asserted but not proven) of the BGS/PP mechanics. In a small way. To properly overcome such thing would require a team of coders modifying a whole swathe of code. And to do what exactly? There will always be bots, there will always be someone smart ready to take up the challenge, and you're right back at square one.
But! You might be onto something... Maybe, instead of being accepted in game, there could be an online submission of dividends... Where the CMDRs involved would have to be listed, and then checked via the logs? It would require less coding, but an extra job for the anti-cheat team.
Random.. wins everytime
That's not going to work. Eventually someone, somewhere will find a way to automate that too. To confront the bot authors you have to think like them.
And// Lets get real here; We're talking about manipulation (asserted but not proven) of the BGS/PP mechanics. In a small way. To properly overcome such thing would require a team of coders modifying a whole swathe of code. And to do what exactly? There will always be bots, there will always be someone smart ready to take up the challenge, and you're right back at square one.
But! You might be onto something... Maybe, instead of being accepted in game, there could be an online submission of dividends... Where the CMDRs involved would have to be listed, and then checked via the logs? It would require less coding, but an extra job for the anti-cheat team.
Random.. wins everytime
Well, this sort of thing is going to be a perpetual cat and mouse game, and victory doesn't mean that it's impossible to bot; victory is reached when botting is technically possible, but so inconvenient that people just don't do it. I could in theory write a bot that takes screenshots a few times a second and uses image recognition to fly the ship and play the game for me. There are self-driving cars that do this very thing using cameras, so it's technically very possible to do the same thing in ED. Am I going to do it? No, because I'd much rather play the game myself. Mind you, it would make for a very cool postgrad AI project...
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Slopey
Volunteer Moderator
I did something very similar back in the late 90s as part of Pattern Processing and Image Recognition in 4 year at Uni - it's undergrad stuff tbh.
Y'know, I started off expecting to dismiss the OP as yet another PP fruitcake but, I gotta say, I'm 90% convinced.
Seems a bit strange that people would go to all the effort of creating bots just to screw with PP.
That's already been said.
Don't think anybody's ever taken the next step along that line of thinking though.
I'd be willing to bet those bot's weren't created to screw with PP.
I'd bet that they were created for some other, more immediately beneficial, purpose and screwing with PP was just something the operators thought would be fun to do afterwards.
If I was FDev I'd probably start off by looking at, say, the 500 accounts with the largest total assets, look at the play-styles of the account-holders and see if that might reveal anything interesting.
I wouldn't be surprised if these bots started life doing stuff like the RtR 24/7, or repeating well-paid missions 24/7.
As for how to hinder them, a "captcha" thing would work but it's pretty damned annoying.
It'd be better if any anti-bot measure was something that was instinctive to a human but hard for a bot to define.
Perhaps the UI could have the text-menus replaced with icons (which'd also cut down on the effort required to create foreign-language versions in future) and then randomise the order which icons appear in lists and randomise the positioning of dialogue and confirmation boxes?
Trouble is, I suppose, that any security measure that's defeatable will be defeated in due course so it's not worth bothering implementing.
Lastly, anybody who doesn't think this is a bad thing for the game, overall, is obviously a windowlicker of the highest order.
Absolutely absurd to take any position other than condemnation for bots in-game.
Seems a bit strange that people would go to all the effort of creating bots just to screw with PP.
That's already been said.
Don't think anybody's ever taken the next step along that line of thinking though.
I'd be willing to bet those bot's weren't created to screw with PP.
I'd bet that they were created for some other, more immediately beneficial, purpose and screwing with PP was just something the operators thought would be fun to do afterwards.
If I was FDev I'd probably start off by looking at, say, the 500 accounts with the largest total assets, look at the play-styles of the account-holders and see if that might reveal anything interesting.
I wouldn't be surprised if these bots started life doing stuff like the RtR 24/7, or repeating well-paid missions 24/7.
As for how to hinder them, a "captcha" thing would work but it's pretty damned annoying.
It'd be better if any anti-bot measure was something that was instinctive to a human but hard for a bot to define.
Perhaps the UI could have the text-menus replaced with icons (which'd also cut down on the effort required to create foreign-language versions in future) and then randomise the order which icons appear in lists and randomise the positioning of dialogue and confirmation boxes?
Trouble is, I suppose, that any security measure that's defeatable will be defeated in due course so it's not worth bothering implementing.
Lastly, anybody who doesn't think this is a bad thing for the game, overall, is obviously a windowlicker of the highest order.
Absolutely absurd to take any position other than condemnation for bots in-game.
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raeat
Banned
Night Parrot suggested Captcha a few pages back, and may have been too quickly dismissed.
We have a pretty good idea that Captcha works to prevent bots from working (companies, including Frontier, use it to protect accounts and transactions), so maybe something Captcha-like may be order, something like randomized multiple choice answers to a ship outline or silhouette, or some such?
ETA: Dang it. Stealthie got there first.
We have a pretty good idea that Captcha works to prevent bots from working (companies, including Frontier, use it to protect accounts and transactions), so maybe something Captcha-like may be order, something like randomized multiple choice answers to a ship outline or silhouette, or some such?
ETA: Dang it. Stealthie got there first.
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Damn, who did you guys off?
You know, if you followed me around, you might think I was a bot.
Not even joking.
Riôt
You know, if you followed me around, you might think I was a bot.
Not even joking.
Riôt
NPCs do indeed affect the economy. And they have ever since they were 'switched on' to affect the BGS back in late beta / gamma.
Likewise, no one has to respect your opinion either lol! But anyway, back to the question of why does one even bother to use more than one account? You know the answer but don't want to admit it: it's to provide some sort of gain, benefit or increase - even a small increase - over using the one account. If there was nothing to gain no one would do it; it would simply be a waste of money.
Its not that hard.. create a fair and balanced game, remove the 'modes', make security rating mean something and give us, the players, more a command of what happens. Sure FD could pump out their own content re storyline.. but I think things would be inifintely more enjoyable if they stuck to their original vision.
My question to Braben, is this, given all yer babble is this a game you still want to play?
If I had manged to pull out 30 million pounds my own interests would be elsewhere.. Its not a leap of the imagination to understand that, for him, its most likely the case.
But all the white knights, not the person I respond to, can rejoice.. You keep defending the actions of a multi millionaire who has put as little resources into this game, which was a platform for his own success.
I know, I know.. its all about the team royt? Then how come its only Braben who is getting loaded and 'reluctantly' accepting the accolades?
Do keep buying those paint jobs though.. 'There are more people working on the game than ever before'...
Yeah royt"
I'm calling this what it is.. utter . Braben cares about his ever increasing bank balance. And anyone who buys into this 'we are making a game we want to play' mantra needs to wake up.
I wish things were different but lets face reality.
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"It's simple - just destroy the modes that thousands of other people enjoy, implement security that's as unrealistic as it is incapable of stopping griefers and make the game *I* want to play"
Wow! Hold up on the public accusations there pal !!
Here's the reason! I'm not a fan of exploration and get 'combat sick' after about 1k LY, so.. I bought a 2nd account so I;d always have one available.
Not that Im all that interested in what some randomer on a forums thinks, but there you have it. You caught me out! Now isn't it time you packed your crayons away and went bed ?
Lol drama and cute comments usually mean a poster doesn't have much to offer. Regarding the use of multiple accounts you know the context here: it's about using multiple accounts at the same time, silly. Using multiple accounts at different times isn't the issue nor what was being discussed.
But back OT, is this issue game breaking? Rather FDev focused on making new content the chase red herrings or obscure issues that may only affect a few.
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OT: FDev can't just ignore it. For sure, we all want new things. But player time and investment has to be respected? If they let the botters continue to do their thing, they'd be basically saying 'do whatever' and the BGS would die. I don't know what effect that'd have on the overall experience.
It's not that surprising, actually. Playing the BGS is like playing cards, but you never get to find out what the other guys are holding, just whether you won the hand or not. Also, some random person will sometimes just put down one card and leave. So you need to be super aware of what's going on at any given time, and you also get paranoid - no-one's supposed to be propping up this faction, so why did their influence go up this last tick? were our opposition messing with us, or did some rando make this part of their trade loop?
A few 'game improvements' that would make bots struggle:
- docking and leaving queues, same as when you doc, create a light cube, place the ship there and wait for your turn to either doc (autodock will kick-in) or leave the station. Programming the detection is still easy, but the logic for it makes autopilot a complex task.
- in the case of PP don't allow buying/selling papers to the same station or set a cap/quota. Players can still go to another station, or even another system to buy/sell, that would make any manually scripted 'jump sequence' hard, specially if the destination of the papers is also set by the game when you buy them (and not a player option). PP bots would then be forced to plot different routes and that can become a problem to automate.
- make the market really dynamic and the BGS would hardly be automated that easily because of the route plotting and pricing.
since these are very long term, immediately could be done:
- any player that mysteriously loses connection at the same moment they are being scanned should just be solo-ed the second time, for being a coward.
- any player that mysteriously loses connection at the same moment they are being interdicted should be solo-ed the second time, for being a coward.
- any player that mysteriously loses connection at the same moment they are being scanned and interdicted should be promoted to king and be given free cutters.
One more thing..
- players playing24h long periods, don't get me wrong, but that should not be punished, it can be mistaken by a couple of brothers sharing an account or some other oddities. I myself sometimes spend hours sitting in the landing pad planning and checking stuff.
- docking and leaving queues, same as when you doc, create a light cube, place the ship there and wait for your turn to either doc (autodock will kick-in) or leave the station. Programming the detection is still easy, but the logic for it makes autopilot a complex task.
- in the case of PP don't allow buying/selling papers to the same station or set a cap/quota. Players can still go to another station, or even another system to buy/sell, that would make any manually scripted 'jump sequence' hard, specially if the destination of the papers is also set by the game when you buy them (and not a player option). PP bots would then be forced to plot different routes and that can become a problem to automate.
- make the market really dynamic and the BGS would hardly be automated that easily because of the route plotting and pricing.
since these are very long term, immediately could be done:
- any player that mysteriously loses connection at the same moment they are being scanned should just be solo-ed the second time, for being a coward.
- any player that mysteriously loses connection at the same moment they are being interdicted should be solo-ed the second time, for being a coward.
- any player that mysteriously loses connection at the same moment they are being scanned and interdicted should be promoted to king and be given free cutters.
One more thing..
- players playing
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concur
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