Automation and Scripting - An investigation into further abuses of BGS and Powerplay

[Lestat]

I think they need to adjust Star sizes. So a bot can't use the same program to rotate around the system. Maybe adjust the distance to that star.

Also they need to kill the game if the launcher is closed. That could help some.

Maybe witch space idea. That can give you Trumble and give you a random system to sell them. Or they could waste cargo space.

 

[Fendalton]

But what If the majority are these are faked? Then you have an entire thread of nothing.

You may say that I can't know that, and that's true, but equally no one can know that it's not true.

How can they be faked, it's all video evidence lmao.

 

[Auronio]

I'm both shocked and not surprised.

Reality excelling my worst apprehensions.

A little bit like me trying to beat my chess program running on a modern CPU.
No chance.

Thanks a lot for the exemplary work and analysis!
o7

 

[ZakNaZul]

This is fake, if anyone out there really is using bot - they use it in solo mode/private group for obvious reasons. Or this post is just advertising for bots and OP actually a "Secret Hitler".

 

[IamNickMan]

But what If the majority are these are faked? Then you have an entire thread of nothing.

You may say that I can't know that, and that's true, but equally no one can know that it's not true.

To what end would they fake all this info for? did you read the entire thing and watch the videos?

 

[IndigoWyrd]

To what end would they fake all this info for? did you read the entire thing and watch the videos?

A couple words to research:

"Agenda" and "Propaganda"

It's simply no small secret that certain groups of players want nothing more than for Elite to be nothing more than politics-based endless PvP Pew-Pew fest, and will go to great lengths to pushing this style of play on everybody, until they're the only ones left playing.

 

[Schmack]

I'll be honest, I've faded in and out of this thread as it started and now grew to 43 pages in length, and I've never done macros or scripts so I'm not an expert in that field.

That said, watching some of the posts here I have to wonder on a couple of things:

1. Why would anyone running a bot in this game do it in open at all? This thread is proof that if it's done in open, it can be documented and reported. If it's done in solo, the only person who knows about it would be the person running the bot, correct?
2. Wouldn't there be a repeated set of instructions so exact and so alike that they could be identified on a server as "Hey, too much 'step 1, step 2, step 3 to be a person" that the Devs could find a way to notice it?
3. Since this is mostly done on power play, if FD can't stop them, why not let EVERYONE doing power play do them? At least then everyone is on a level playing field.

Well, #3 is probably impractical anyway, but I'm reminded of a joke heard about a court case:

The lawsuit involved $10,000,000 between plaintiff and defendant. The judge came in, sat down an said "Before we get started I'd just like to explain something to all parties involved. The lawyer for the plaintiff handed me a bribe of $5,500 to find in his client's favor. The other lawyer also handed me a bribe for $5,000 to find in HIS client's favor."

The judge hands $500 to the bailiff who hands it to the lawyer for the plaintiff.

"Now," the judge continued, "I have refunded the excess amount to the attorney for the plaintiff and we're all even at $5,000 from both sides. Now that everything is back to a level playing field, let's get this lawsuit started."

Similar situation but the defendant owns a new car dealership.

Def: "Your honor, I'd like to offer you any car of your choice... when you come down to my lot"

Judge: "You do realize you're bribing a federal judge by offering me a car for free?"

Def: "Free? Oh... I mean.. no, I would give you a great price, 500.00 for any Cadillac on the lot"

Judge: "Oh that's different. I'll be down tomorrow. I'll take 10 Cadillacs CTS's for 500 each"

 

[sollisb]

Great investigaation and I agree it needs action.

Difficult to see what the cure is but looking into what the autopilots are using to work is probably the way forward, shame as the detailed journal has been so nice and useful to have.

I don't realistically think you can expect frontier to stop selling the game for £5, game sales are probably their main source of income and Elite has to make a profit to exist.

Modifying the journal will fix nothing. There were bots before we had all the stuff in the journal.

 

[sollisb]

How can they be faked, it's all video evidence lmao.

Well what could not be reproduced with your friends ?

I could exit a station and just crash into you? I could fly out and go the same way any number of times you asked me to. - In saying that I'm neither agreeing or dis-agreeing with the OP. Turned out a lot of thew stuff supposedly showing combat logging was staged...

 

[PiLhEaD]

How can they be faked, it's all video evidence lmao.

Really, so every video you have seen has been 100% truthful, and not staged or edited, or simply the recording of a fabricated event? Thats an interesting point of view. #AlienAutopsyCropCircle

As an aside, many of the Combat Logging videos have been acknowledged by their makers as staged.

.

 

[Night Parrot]

This is fake, if anyone out there really is using bot - they use it in solo mode/private group for obvious reasons. Or this post is just advertising for bots and OP actually a "Secret Hitler".

I believe this Bot problem is not fake:

1. Video footage,

2. Influence trends in BGS vs. FDEV action/inaction, and

3. The Botter/s would Bot in open if:

a) Wanted to demoralise the competition, and/or

b) Wanted to test interaction with real players.

 

[[VR] Merkir]

I believe this Bot problem is not fake:

1. Video footage,

2. Influence trends in BGS vs. FDEV action/inaction, and

3. The Botter/s would Bot in open if:

a) Wanted to demoralise the competition, and/or

b) Wanted to test interaction with real players.

c) Hubris / showing off

d) Accidentally (99.9% of time they may be in solo)

e) Showing FDev for the lulz

f) Trolling / salt farming

g) Diverting attention from even worse cheating

h) Alcohol induced stupidity

i) A dare / lost a bet


Really, there's no shortage of reasons, is there?

 

[raeat]

This is fake, if anyone out there really is using bot - they use it in solo mode/private group for obvious reasons. Or this post is just advertising for bots and OP actually a "Secret Hitler".

We have already covered this topic. Engage brain before engaging mouth.

The main reason to fly bots in open, in my opinion, is to show opposing players you are using bots and that they cannot hope to win against you. Demoralizing and causing your opponents to quit the PP/BGS out of frustration is the reason.

For those going on about combat logging:
The issue with bots is not "technically" combat logging. Bots insta-log before shots are fired. Think of it more as "scan logging." As for the rest of the combat logging griping, while a worthy topic, is off topic here. Gripe about that in another thread. Focus, people. Focus.

 

[-Pv-]

Interesting read, amazing that people would go to such lengths (spending actual money for accounts) to influence a game this way.

Just one thing to help me understand: I don't get why those bots would even fly in open, making it easier to spot them, why is that, why not just keep them in solo?

As noted in the above report, they gave themselves names to promote their cause not knowing or caring they were exposing themselves, not knowing or caring we might suspect them as bots, attempting to lower moral and influencing new players to join their cause along with many forum posts with arguments to promote soholia. As demonstrated, when they realized we were onto them, they began to be more circumspect only occasionally exposing their cause through open player names "prep soholia" and the like possibly supposing if there were only one or two occasional players perceived as no threat. There is little recognition in this report for the players who not only spent hundreds of hours tracking, documenting and reporting this behavior but also maintained massive contributions to bot opposition game play. This anti-bot effort only seen at a shallow glimpse here was massively sacrificial and above all, NOT FUN as the game should be.

While FD wants to encourage innovative game play, should very hard working players sacrificing their limited real life game play sacrifice their time against 20-30 machines where the account owners are off sleeping, working, on vacation or also playing other games only having to occasionally make a momentary adjustment when their bot is driven offline by combat or a scan? Worse, these players are thumbing their nose at all honest players insisting wining is more important than having fun at anyone else's cost.

-Pv-

 

[-Pv-]

They wanted their effort to be seen for the reasons detailed in the original post. They didn't think they would be identified as bots or though a convincing case could be made to fdev. They were wrong. There are smart players in the game. AOS has data tracked for years every possible bit of information the game exposes to players and the bot effort became obvious in the DATA which then lead to experiential observational data collecting.
-Pv-

Banning them to open would not have had much impact because these bots were Mahon pledged operating in our home system. The bots were programmed to combat log moments after being attacked.
-Pv-

"Was this asked already: if this is a cheat/script designed for manipulating the BGS, why would they do this in open where they could get caught? Why not stay in private group or solo?"

Yes, an often asked question already answered. 1) They didn't care 2) they openly promoted their cause through exposure 3) thought they were being clever 4) Didn't believe FD would take action 5) After suffering action, obviously determined the punitive punishment was no deterrent.
-Pv-

As many have observed, when boring repetitive grind is more important than skill-based adventure influenced game play, automation is actually being promoted by the game design.
-Pv-

 

[Cageman]

For anyone in this thread that say that bots in this game are fake.... wake up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huEXWsRptGY

EDIT: Here is another example when a programmer used Elite: Dangerous to research something called Computer Vision. In the video example, Computer Vision is used to watch areas of the screen to then make decisions, such as Fuel Scooping and when to jump to the next system.

It is essentially using OpenCV, which is a library of open source computer vision and machine learning software library, combined with Python scripting. However, as you can see in the end, it is not perfect... yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcHy6V7qUKo&t

 

[CMDR Tom D]

Yep, these videos and more were detailed in my original post.

 

[CMDR MRMAURICE]

Wow! Some of the comments on the YouTube videos are borderline stupidity. Why not just watch someone else play the game, I mean it's literally the same thing. Why the hell would someone want to just press a few buttons then go do RL stuff, to then come back and have everything done they needed to do ingame. What then? Log out and watch Netflix and chill? But its boring in SC traveling around, (caps for effect) ITS A GOD DAMN SPACE GAME ON A 1:1 SCALE OF OUR GALAXY (or as near as we're gonna get from a game), WHAT DID YOU EXPECT? Seriously Elite has its flaws but come on, this is just ridiculous.

 

[Fendalton]

Well what could not be reproduced with your friends ?

I could exit a station and just crash into you? I could fly out and go the same way any number of times you asked me to. - In saying that I'm neither agreeing or dis-agreeing with the OP. Turned out a lot of thew stuff supposedly showing combat logging was staged...

So you're saying that someone has the time and money to make over 1000 accounts, grind them all to have decent ships, then combat log on said accounts? Grow up.

 

[WorldsGreatestForumDad]

For anyone in this thread that say that bots in this game are fake.... wake up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huEXWsRptGY

EDIT: Here is another example when a programmer used Elite: Dangerous to research something called Computer Vision. In the video example, Computer Vision is used to watch areas of the screen to then make decisions, such as Fuel Scooping and when to jump to the next system.

It is essentially using OpenCV, which is a library of open source computer vision and machine learning software library, combined with Python scripting. However, as you can see in the end, it is not perfect... yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcHy6V7qUKo&t

Jesus.

Renders any competition useless.

Sad Sad state of the game. SOmething that could be so great plagued with not only problems on its own. But crap like this too.

Not all on Fdev shoulders. But good lord this sucks.