Automation and Scripting - An investigation into further abuses of BGS and Powerplay
- Thread starter CMDR Tom D
- Start date
- Status
WorldsGreatestForumDad
Banned
I wonder if the guys bots ever lose? Man if it was an EGO thing and the bots lost. Id be pretty angry right now.
![[VR] Merkir](https://forums-cdn.zaonce.net/data/avatars/m/141/141091.jpg?1553527154){kind=avatar}
After PMs back and forth, sollisb's "easy peasy" solution turned out to be his misunderstanding of the HUD orientation radar.
I'm becoming more convinced that the docking computer, more than any other part if the automation sequence, is the biggest enabler of script bots.
But I'd be very interested if anyone can think of a practicable and reasonably reliable method of dropping out at a station and lining up with the mail slot, knowing that dropping out could be half way along the station with the mail slot not even visible. Sollisb's "easy peasy" solution was to simply align the orientation radar to make it solid and centred, and that, he said, meant you were lined up with the mail slot. Of course that's not true. All it means is you're generally pointing your ship in the direction of the mail slot, but the angle is completely unknown. It still may not even be visible.
Wouldn't normally be asking, but it seems important to the topic, because if it turns out that getting a bot to do what a docking computer does is not practicable or reliable, it kind of points to a solution - an unpopular solution perhaps, but a solution nonetheless.
OMG, you're being such a jerk!
You were asking for specifics on how it could be done. FDev you have my explicit permission to read my PMs to Merkir. In those messages I explained how easy it was. he kept asking for specifics, and I grew ever concerned that he actually was trying to create a bot himself. He also threatened to post on the forums that I was full of manure if I didn't explain to him. So I ended the conversation.
For clarity. To line up with the grill you use a combination of the orientation globe and one other very important thing, present on all stations, which I will not discuss in public nor in private with some random player.
in fact he is looking for someone who could help him build a bot.
The docking computer doesn't work on the way out. If they are able to script that, they are probably also able to script the approaching/docking procedure without using the docking computer.
It's common knowledge that the slot shows up on the holo station, even in supercruise. Thinking about it, why don't we publish all the knowledge you need to script such a bot? The more people abusing it, the higher the chance of effective countermeasures.
Actually, the authors are screwing the BGS & PP in solo/PG right now. They clearly have an agenda, which is screwing AOS or at least keep 'em busy. I'd suspect a PP background, because afaik the Soholia prep showed up before Gateway was attacked. They know that AOS will have a hard time fighting off Soholia if they are busy defending Gateway.
I just hope that the authors become frustrated because they didn't achieve anything to this point that would last. They failed taking over Gateway. They failed expanding Soholia. They may be smart enough to script those bots, but strategy and effectiveness in terms of BGS and PP cannot be scripted. AOS wins.
Sonny, what your PM "solution" told me was how clueless you are. Like most of your other posts here. For proof, in your very first PM you started with, and I quote, "If the mail slot is not visible, then the circle is hollow."
Sad that I took the time to explain to you how it really works, which took a while given your lack of understanding, but finally the penny dropped for you.
For clarity, good luck wth that.
It is not a BGS/PP/Gold/Farming bot, it is just an autopilot with a few automated clicks on the station menu. It could had been developed by anyone for any purpose and being used just for one thing.
I'm sorry I helped him then.
Yes but anyone familiar with how the scripting software works, and who analyses docking and undocking, will come to the conclusion that docking is far more complex. Undocking is reasonably straight forward... your ship rises and is already almost aligned with the slot, pattern recognition should be reasonably reliable while rolling. Docking, not so, especially when you drop in anywhere around the station.
You always drop out 10 km from the slot. Stop, align with the holo station slot, check the orientation globe and roughly calculate your position. Turn towards the position 10 km in front of the slot and speed up. You can double check your vector by checking the distance to the slot: It shouldn't be >10 km at any point. If it does, stop and repeat the aligning and calculation of your position. Eventually you will be aligned with the real slot. Speed up and slowly approach the station, request docking at 7 km distance. Throttle down if you're about 800 m from the pad (I'd have to check the exact distance above the pad). Roll until the orientation globe indicates your position to be above the pad, then go down. A special case would be if you drop out of supercruise on the opposing side of the slot, but you can calculate it and insert an extra step to approach the position in front of the slot via two combined vectors at right angles.
This algorithm is swiftly wrote down. I'm sure there are more details to think of, but it's feasible. So yeah, a docking computer makes it way easier but it's not essential for such a bot.
As a programmer with creative tendencies, I will admit to having written a bot for a different game purely for the challenge of how to achieve it. (For the record, I didn't publish it nor make any gains from it, and indeed sent my findings to the developer).
Using image processing and deep learning techniques would allow a determined coder to pretty much bot any scenario IMHO.
I don't really know the solution for FD, but think that making it more difficult to bot wouldn't mean an end to the bots and unfortunately, as already noted on this thread, it's more than likely not the original coder using these bots excessively or not in the original intended way. My 2cents.
Using image processing and deep learning techniques would allow a determined coder to pretty much bot any scenario IMHO.
I don't really know the solution for FD, but think that making it more difficult to bot wouldn't mean an end to the bots and unfortunately, as already noted on this thread, it's more than likely not the original coder using these bots excessively or not in the original intended way. My 2cents.
As you say I am not familiar with 'how the scripting software' works, as I've never used it. Want to educate us?
I'm sure now you're going to tell us you only use it for educational purposes?
Docking is easy.. Face it; You're just not good enough.
If the name's are trollish and are there to lower morale as suggested, they would need to fly in open to be seen.
Interesting. Let's explore this. Firstly though, I note the part bolded above is the part I concentrated on when explaining to sollisb. I showed him an image similar to the following, which is a good image to use for the analysis.
http://i.imgur.com/nThgQYD.png.
So if we can explore your solution...
Let's stop there. I'm not sure how reliably a bot could "turn towards the position 10 km in front of the slot". As a human, easy, but how does the bot know the concept of "front of the slot"? So to answer that we can look at the station hologram orientation. The issue I see here is that pattern recognition from an unknown 360 degrees orientation is flaky at best from off-the-shelf script bot software. I certainly don't know them all, but the basic (free, ahem) software we use for use case testing doesn't handle rotation or scaling of the image to be pattern matched. Perhaps lower level use of OpenCV might be able to do this? An alternative might be to rotate your ship through the entire spherical solid angle, and hope, say, that the pattern recognition can match within about 5 degrees, when the ship hits the right angle - the so-called "reference angle" from which calculations can be made to "10km in front of the slot". Is that how you see it, or is readily available software out there that pattern matches any angle? More importantly, how reliable do you think this would be?
Why are people arguing how easy it is to write a bot to dock, when the game already has a docking computer? The work's already been done... By FD...
Why are people arguing how easy it is to write a bot to dock, when the game already has a docking computer? The work's already been done... By FD...
My conjecture is that the docking computer is the biggest enabler of bot scripts. Without it, the script kiddies would have a much harder time. So this is a hypothetical. What would they do if the docking computer didn't exist. Would it be too difficult to bot script docking for them to even bother?
No offense but you are starting to be as condescendant than the one putting willingly bot in open.
Then you need to get out more and understand that their are weird people out there and also people with addictive personalities amongst a whole slew of other character traits. One couple let their baby starve to death whilst they spent the weekend playing WoW - so there you go - people are .
- Status