Greetings commanders, some tin foil hattery ahead and I’ll caveat that I’m not a hugely active participant in the forums, so chances are this has been said before and widely denounced, but is there any chance that what is widely seen as malicious player-created bots is actually an Fdev creation to drive fluidity in the BGS / Powerplay mechanics? From a cursory glance at the threads, it’s going after the more active groups (or is it that the more active groups are more alert to such incursions?) but that could be a misguided attempt on the Dev side to keep those active groups engaged.
Better yet, what if what you’re seeing (or not seeing in PG / Solo) is an attempt to develop the asked for enhanced NPC behaviour. Something that has npc’s reacts with the game mechanics in a semi-credible way. A rudimentary Turing test of their own making if you want will. They have the BGS data. They gave the combat AI for power play. Launching it through faux player accounts would mean a live AI test against an active player base, that can be shut down individually rather than changing the AI behaviour of all NPC’s throughout the game
Come the paid content next year, fdev then role out “next gen NPC behaviour” as one of the livestream features.
Or maybe I should just take the pills like the doctor ordered...
That's an interesting suggestion, but would require quite a bit of theater from FDev Support, as they are engaging with us on the topic, and of course this has been going on in the PP community for some time, and account were temporarily banned in the past. It's a possibility, but would be downright cruel if this turned out to be the developer.
Moreover, FD would be able to do this without actual flying bots, but just through data.