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

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Update to this situation

Last cycle, the bots managed to out vote our consolidation vote and prepped in huge numbers the loss making system Soholia.

This is a call to any CMDRs available to undermine Mahon. Please undermine our expansion in the Soholia system. Any time you can put into this will be appreciated.

If they can do this to Mahon, they can do this to ANY power. Don't let them win.

It's happening to ALD this week now too. Some anonymous force with huge hauling power is prepping a loss expansion and outvoting consolidation.
 
I dont know if i'd jump to conclusions that something is being done by a bot because of a swing in powerplay. There are very few players that still actively do powerplay to a serious level. Depending on the power in question, 1-4 determined people with nothing else to do but play the game can really cause problems. Especially when everyone has billions of credits these days and jump ranges that can exceed 40ly fully laden and what not. Very easy to hijack powerplay ....especially if you can keep your activity secret until the last few minutes of the cycle.

I mean, it wasn't hard to do that back when powerplay was new. It's much easier to do it now.
 
Not sure if its been mentioned as I may have missed it but... Some of the bot play could be used to simply rank farm for a normal player. Pick some back water nobody goes there pair of systems...

Trade A to system X and B to system Y.... repeat and Elite trader several hours later, not to mention a healthy bank balance.
Set that sort of play to just dealing with say Fed or Imp factions and you are in your Cutter etc and a few quid better off, before you know.

The whole thing seems to be exactly the same as the continued war between Virus and Malware writers and the AV software writers.

A total war of Attrition.
 
To be honest, stop dreaming. I ll give you an example : we have given proof to FD that a group of players were cheating and multiboxing. Guess what ? They are still in the game.

Does multiboxing even count as cheating when FD have added game mechanics that directly incentivise it? I.e. the 2 magical bonus pips from multi-crew, just get 2 extra accounts to sit afk in your ship to be able to rock stuff like 4 ENG + 4 WEP in a fight! Not that I condone such actions nor this game mechanic, but I clearly see the ball here in FD's court.:rolleyes:
 

raeat

Banned
It wasn't the multiboxing itself that was the issue. It was multiboxing combined with scripted automation.
 
These threads... guess what, if I were really interested in playing Hose the BGS, my ESX host can handle 10 VMs running Elite at defaul settings easily, and probably 20 if I cranked the settings down to minimal.
Then I just need to buy 9-19 more accounts, fire up each instance in Solo, dock up all my ships in the same starting place, and fly 10-20 ships exactly the same at the same time, by binding all my VM inputs to one set of controls. If I lose one, I lose one, no biggie.

Also no scripting or automating required. Nothing to detect, nothing against the rules.

But Elite and the BGS isn’t worth $269.91-$569.81 to me. No game is. No minor game aspect is. So you’re safe, at least from me.
 
Get rid of the docking computer. I'd love to see scripts try and dock a ship automatically without any game engine help. However humans can do it extremely easily.

There's no way the docking computer will be removed, it's been a significant element since 1984. Maybe push for a bot-filter on the engage-docking-computer sequence? CAPTCHA is a bad example, but if the engage button was secretly a bot-test that felt like cockpit operations, that's something that might at least get on the table.
 
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These threads... guess what, if I were really interested in playing Hose the BGS, my ESX host can handle 10 VMs running Elite at defaul settings easily, and probably 20 if I cranked the settings down to minimal.
Then I just need to buy 9-19 more accounts, fire up each instance in Solo, dock up all my ships in the same starting place, and fly 10-20 ships exactly the same at the same time, by binding all my VM inputs to one set of controls. If I lose one, I lose one, no biggie.

Also no scripting or automating required. Nothing to detect, nothing against the rules.

But Elite and the BGS isn’t worth $269.91-$569.81 to me. No game is. No minor game aspect is. So you’re safe, at least from me.

I think that would be an interesting experiment. Agreed the cost is not worth it even though your server and mine could do this. Back when they had the buy the game for 7.99 or what ever it was that would push me to more curious end of things
 

sollisb

Banned
There has not been a peep in recent months about botting, and suddenly it's of paramount importance.

Maybe the problem just isn't as big as the claim? Because from my way of thinking, I'd be expecting to see videos every other night along with complaints!
 
I can guess the bot was initially created for more material purposes - making money in game without effort - and someone thought it could do other things.

As a matter of fact. There's a bot, a video of which has been shown on this very forum, that can succesfully autopilot between stations.
The creator built it as a demo to show that it could be done.

Now imagine that the source code for the bot has been published on a developer website.

Now take a talented script kiddie and a few dollars more...

o7
 
There has not been a peep in recent months about botting, and suddenly it's of paramount importance.

Maybe the problem just isn't as big as the claim? Because from my way of thinking, I'd be expecting to see videos every other night along with complaints!

Clearly you haven't really read the OP's posts or you would know that the bots only operate in solo or PG now.
Just so you know. You can't video anybody that's not in Open.

o7
 
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There has not been a peep in recent months about botting, and suddenly it's of paramount importance.

You can get a full briefing from the 58 minute mark: http://laveradio.com/podcasts/laveradio-ep216.mp3


Maybe the problem just isn't as big as the claim? Because from my way of thinking, I'd be expecting to see videos every other night along with complaints!

As is pointed out in Lave Radio Episode 216 (fairly late in the episode)
- "It's not a big deal until it happens to you."


In the meantime, the teams that are monitoring them continue to do so:

dL5Nb9k.jpg


If you are on a team of Professional Players who can deliver 160 cutters into a system in 24 hours and sustain that for days straight -
Then good on ya - you are the new BGS paradigm. The galaxy is yours.

If you can't do that - then you're not a team of Professional Players; and maybe you'd better think about how you are going to compete with teams who are Professional Players.

Git Gud Scrubs.
 
The Dead Horse Society presents this thread with the 2018 “Still Kicking” award.

tbrf32a.jpg


Congratulations. All your efforts in collecting and taunting circumstantial evidence have been rewarded. Do come back with some actual internal, verified data.
 
Game sucks...everybody out of the pool!

Would say that the botters mission is now complete....they aren't botting to win the game....they are botting to destroy the game.
 
There has not been a peep in recent months about botting, and suddenly it's of paramount importance.

Maybe the problem just isn't as big as the claim? Because from my way of thinking, I'd be expecting to see videos every other night along with complaints!

Just because it's out of sight of most doesn't mean it's having any less of an impact or is in any less need of Frontier's attention.

Congratulations. All your efforts in collecting and taunting circumstantial evidence have been rewarded. Do come back with some actual internal, verified data.

And how, precisely, is a third party supposed to do that without themselves engaging in cheating on a massive scale?
 
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