Would adding a 'ReCaptcha' or similar to the PP materials purchase cycle be a possibility - inconvenient to 'real' players but only a minor one perhaps ?
Bots in LYR
- Thread starter Phoenix13
- Start date
Might be worth it, but only if they fixed the laundry list of other problems with PP, and to a lesser but still large extent with BGS.
But you would still have the possibility of the one dude just working 20 bot accounts to type captchas. Blows my mind people would do this over a game, but they would.
I'd prefer mechanics and missions for things like PP and BGS that required enough piloting skill it simply would not be feasible to bot profitably/easily. This might be tricky to do without turning off newer players - but in reality, newer players already are irrelevant to PP, no matter what the friendly recruitment pages say. T9/cutter hauls in solo/PG make up the vast majority of forts and preps for every single faction.
For BGS - more thought required. I think ditching transactions and using log(value) might help, but I see no silver bullet for balancing new and elite players, while also being bot resistant.
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Sadly sarcasm tends not to travel well in text format im afraid.
I was only quoting a part of your argument because that part specifically comes up often as argument for "open only PP". And often from people who know it better. I was, in no way, trying to invalidate your other points. But your reasoning (as I understood it) was that the PP rules would prevent you from benefitting by killing the bots - my reason is that you will never even see the bots, even if PP was restricted to open only.
I totally agree - a 24/7 patrol, organized by the PP groups themselves, would be playing the game to the rules. The problem is, with the way instancing works in ED, it won't work even without people manipulating instancing on purpose. I would go as far as saying that you can't change the way ED is handling instancing, so you'll have to take that as a given, a natural law of the ED universe. Starting from there, restricting any gameplay to a specific mode "upwards" will never work, as any player with sufficient intent can always force the instancing to fall back "downwards". A technical solution for that would also exclude those players for which instancing together with other players already is a problem - you mentioned PS4, the cross-platform is also still a huge barrier, and anyone with a less reliable or simply slow internet connection would then be cut off from this content.
So, stopping bots by playing the game is not possible, even with open only. Stopping or otherwise neutralizing the bots by cheating yourselves - let's not go there. The only way to stop them is for FD to neutralize them.
I'm a SW developer. If you can do one you can do the other.
All great points. Maybe just refrain from so quickly calling my benign and reasonable post cow poop next time, k? ;-)
o7
No hacking required. Simply change your network settings and you'll not be instanced with other players.
Also software developer. Only agreed if you're referring to the instancing stuff.
The bots as the exist today simply use a bit of OCR and computer vision to do the same stuff normal pilots do, albeit very very slowly in a methodical manner unlikely to encounter problems or require supervision.
"to stop their ship being visible to other players in open" by any means other than instance/blocking manipulation... I don't see how that can be automated, and doubt it's possible. The bots in question only do what human CMDRs can do, and human CMDRs can't do this.
But yeah. Instancing sucks, even without ill intent. Sometimes I can't even see my 4th wingmate, and my other 2 wingmates can. Light a candle for console players.
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Ok. Sorry for that.
Lol, then why even use a script kiddy bot?
Ok, if you do it that way, but that can be 'fixed'.
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Here's an example; I have coded and it works a complete auto GPS system. Soon as I enter a planet and tell my GPS code the co-ordinate, it will tell me direction, height, distance to target. If I wanted to, I could make it fly the ship. It is also smart enough to know when landing is possible.
A simple injection to the open source encryption/decryption code in Elite memory will tell me exactly what is going on across my network and if I wanted to, modify that data stream. Even worse, I don;t need to do all that, there are much easier ways. Their net code is decades old and easily exploited.
I don't do PP, i have zero interest in PP. You can make it open only all you want. It will not fix the problem. It's like putting a plaster on a patient in cardiac arrest. The only think PP only will do is appease those with the agenda... And P off a lot of the playerbase.
As long as instancing relies on P2P it should be pretty easy to avoid other players using a firewall and a few router settings.
It is really very easy with P2P networking architecture.
Powerplayer myself.
Li Yong-Rui.
Even though I am personally in favour of pp open only I do not believe it would solve the problem.
Other players can be blocked, different platforms and different time zones rule out you ever could catch all opposing players even if you tried. Maybe a way to reduce harmful activities but zero? - never ever that way.
If the game does not allow to change a system's net value from unprofitable to profitable and players have no impact at all on these preset values the simple question always is and was - how can an obviously detrimental activity (preparing/expanding a net loss CC system) be favoured by a vote of 1:3??? Wouldn't you expect at least a 50:50 chance? Players supporting their power are put into a disadvantageous position from the very beginning.
You need three (!) votes for consolidation to counter one (!) vote for preparation. >=75% consolidation vs >=25% preparation.
Good proposals were made and discussed but no action from FDev.
Crap mechanics even for collecting materials which takes ages to collect and deliver merits. What?
FDev are not dumb. If after all that time they didn't change then by purpose. They do not want to change.
Powerplay is an unloved child and personally I believe - unfortunately - it's destined to death. Look at our Torval colleagues.
I carry week by week ~5.4k merits for 50 millions with a net loss of 3-4 millions. Not considering the time loss.
Asking myself week by week how long I want to continue to support a power - which I love - with a crap game mechanic I (meanwhile) detest.
Imho.
o7
Li Yong-Rui.
Even though I am personally in favour of pp open only I do not believe it would solve the problem.
Other players can be blocked, different platforms and different time zones rule out you ever could catch all opposing players even if you tried. Maybe a way to reduce harmful activities but zero? - never ever that way.
If the game does not allow to change a system's net value from unprofitable to profitable and players have no impact at all on these preset values the simple question always is and was - how can an obviously detrimental activity (preparing/expanding a net loss CC system) be favoured by a vote of 1:3??? Wouldn't you expect at least a 50:50 chance? Players supporting their power are put into a disadvantageous position from the very beginning.
You need three (!) votes for consolidation to counter one (!) vote for preparation. >=75% consolidation vs >=25% preparation.
Good proposals were made and discussed but no action from FDev.
Crap mechanics even for collecting materials which takes ages to collect and deliver merits. What?
FDev are not dumb. If after all that time they didn't change then by purpose. They do not want to change.
Powerplay is an unloved child and personally I believe - unfortunately - it's destined to death. Look at our Torval colleagues.
I carry week by week ~5.4k merits for 50 millions with a net loss of 3-4 millions. Not considering the time loss.
Asking myself week by week how long I want to continue to support a power - which I love - with a crap game mechanic I (meanwhile) detest.
Imho.
o7
But... why?
(shamelessly borrowed from diverse ganking threads)
Why what?
Then why not scrap PP and replace it by something more meaningful, for my part something that is open only.
Wasn't PP rushed out of the door anyway after people complained there is not much to do in the game?
Wasn't PP rushed out of the door anyway after people complained there is not much to do in the game?
Why are you doing that? Sounds awfully boring. Even more boring then repairing starports, and THAT was already very boring
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Use 2 way authentication for powerplay transactions, or a captcha as someone else mentioned, bai bots
Or let everyone use bots. You still need a running client with an authenticated user in order to use a bot, maybe thats why we can have only one Commander per account
Bots shouldn't be an issue, FD needs to acknowledge it and do something about it and I'm pretty sure they can, but if they will...
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