Does FDev care about botting?

[Ian Phillips]

I'd like to remind everyone that discussion of moderation actions isn't permitted on the forums.

I have inserted a link in the relevant post so that the user in question can follow the correct procedure to challenge a moderation action.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Looking back at the 'debate' on CNC (FC 'bot') it is still in beta, can stop abruptly if one of the 'remote key presses' are not counted, leaving the 'unattended' Fc stranded until the player picks up on the failure.

I use CNC to move my FC's to/from Colonia - it takes around 16 hours to do so (which is almost exactly the same time as a 'human' could move it, if they were so inclined) which I split into 2 sessions as I am present (and in control) all of the time it is running. It runs on my gaming laptop and 'normally' I am playing on one of my other accounts whilst the journey goes ahead, automatic - but not unattended.

If one of Frontier's would care to drop by and clarify, for certain, if CNC is considered 'botting' and is not to be used I'd be quite happy to stop doing so - no problem. It doesn't provide me with any advantage (not against a user as it probably takes marginally longer to complete than if a 'human' was watching the cooldown timer and setting the next jump as soon as it was in the last 20 seconds) as I don't trade, only give other players a 'lift' if they want to come along.
(Let's be blunt - any player, if they wish, could sit and navigate a FC to/from Colonia in a single session, faster than CNC...)

Bots to give player groups an advantage in-game, as discussed here, have already been classified by Frontier as 'cheating'.

 

[Darth Ender]

there are most definitely bots that have existed for at least over a year now that operate on interpreting the rendered screen and manipulating keyboard/mouse controls.

If they dont impact your game, that's because you aren't playing the "game". You're just playing in your own little world and ignoring the actual game ...which is a shared gamestate that's impacted by player actions.

Botting impacts faction flipping. It impacts powerplay. it impacts CG's. etc.. Anything in the game that requires repetitive action with no skill... which wraps almost every activity available.

It's not just about gaining wealth and rank for yourself... which i assume is all you care about if you think botting doesn't impact the game.

You add botting with the easily hideable cheat methods of just having increased damage against NPC's and playing in solo so nobody can see you do any of this and you have a recipe for making the entire game pointless to play without cheating and using bots ... unless your idea of the game is just ignoring everything that makes it a game and not just a tech demo.

 

[SMcA]

No - believe me - you don't want to see it!

I don’t know about that. I have seen some fantastical things in my life and am always ready to make a new entry in my Bestiary or Grimoire.
Although I am a little concerned that you seem to know a lot about the subject.
Is there anything you want to tell your uncle Stevie?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Looking back at the 'debate' on CNC (FC 'bot') it is still in beta, can stop abruptly if one of the 'remote key presses' are not counted, leaving the 'unattended' Fc stranded until the player picks up on the failure.

I use CNC to move my FC's to/from Colonia - it takes around 16 hours to do so (which is almost exactly the same time as a 'human' could move it, if they were so inclined) which I split into 2 sessions as I am present (and in control) all of the time it is running. It runs on my gaming laptop and 'normally' I am playing on one of my other accounts whilst the journey goes ahead, automatic - but not unattended.

If one of Frontier's would care to drop by and clarify, for certain, if CNC is considered 'botting' and is not to be used I'd be quite happy to stop doing so - no problem. It doesn't provide me with any advantage (not against a user as it probably takes marginally longer to complete than if a 'human' was watching the cooldown timer and setting the next jump as soon as it was in the last 20 seconds) as I don't trade, only give other players a 'lift' if they want to come along.
(Let's be blunt - any player, if they wish, could sit and navigate a FC to/from Colonia in a single session, faster than CNC...)

Bots to give player groups an advantage in-game, as discussed here, have already been classified by Frontier as 'cheating'.

It doesn't? I thought enduring the terrible repetitive grind was the challenge and circumventing it with automation would be very much gaining an advantage when everyone else struggles to do it and many give up half way. Or don't even start it, knowing they would never complete it.
But with automation - a different thing.

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

I'd like to remind everyone that discussion of moderation actions isn't permitted on the forums.

I have inserted a link in the relevant post so that the user in question can follow the correct procedure to challenge a moderation action.

I sit here, reading your post and as I see no link, you sir are a liar

@everyone else, reddit doesn't care what you say about frontier forum moderators, neither does youtube

 

[CptArcher]

Looking back at the 'debate' on CNC (FC 'bot') it is still in beta, can stop abruptly if one of the 'remote key presses' are not counted, leaving the 'unattended' Fc stranded until the player picks up on the failure.

I use CNC to move my FC's to/from Colonia - it takes around 16 hours to do so (which is almost exactly the same time as a 'human' could move it, if they were so inclined) which I split into 2 sessions as I am present (and in control) all of the time it is running. It runs on my gaming laptop and 'normally' I am playing on one of my other accounts whilst the journey goes ahead, automatic - but not unattended.

If one of Frontier's would care to drop by and clarify, for certain, if CNC is considered 'botting' and is not to be used I'd be quite happy to stop doing so - no problem. It doesn't provide me with any advantage (not against a user as it probably takes marginally longer to complete than if a 'human' was watching the cooldown timer and setting the next jump as soon as it was in the last 20 seconds) as I don't trade, only give other players a 'lift' if they want to come along.
(Let's be blunt - any player, if they wish, could sit and navigate a FC to/from Colonia in a single session, faster than CNC...)

Bots to give player groups an advantage in-game, as discussed here, have already been classified by Frontier as 'cheating'.

It's not about a human ability to get to Colonia faster, it's that the bot you're using makes it much easier to do the same thing. You could be running this fleet carrier bot and having tea and biscuits then afterwards a mid-morning shnooze and then wake up and find out, oh my macro stopped working mid-way, I better restart it. Then you restart the macro, go and stretch and watch the daily news and take another nap. Wake up again, and BAM, you're at Colonia! Meanwhile, the other cmdr who is wary of breaking the automation rules has been babysitting his carrier the entire way and wants to charge more for all the work he just did while you're all rested up letting a macro do all the work and figure, I hardly did anything at all, I'm going to sell this cargo cheap.

 

[Susanna]

Automated BGS work. Hundreds of the damn things working in perfect synchronisation, landing on the traffic report. You go to these sites on open though, whether it's PC, PS, or XB, it's a ghost town. I've got the name of the individual showing up and they are well known to be a botter. Thanks to FDev's forum policy though, I can't tell you who they are. 100% certain we're under a bot attack - again. My comrades want to put faith in FDev to sort this, but I'm becoming increasingly convinced that FDev has no intention of ever helping and that I may as well try learn to fight fire with fire, even if it does put extra load on their server.

You expect fdev to give a flying [REDACTED] that some folk are gaming the BGS with bots?

Man, you just don't know fedv if you seriously believe that they will EVER do anything about it!

If they are perfectly happy with the ganker reputation, you think they give a fig about botting?

Never going to happen!

I suggest you get good at botting of you care about this...

 

[Sir.Tj]

I don’t know about that. I have seen some fantastical things in my life and am always ready to make a new entry in my Bestiary or Grimoire.
Although I am a little concerned that you seem to know a lot about the subject.
Is there anything you want to tell your uncle Stevie?

@Reighdar and my good self shared a hotel room at FX17.. I'm almost certain I behaved and portrayed a sane and sober account of myself and was a model of propriety...

Those at FX17 can back me up on this..

 

[Susanna]

This is certainly an awkward conversation to try weave between the forum rules. I have no idea how you'd go about making a bot, or 180 synched bot accounts, or even if I have the resources to run it. Basically sat here wondering whether it's worth me saving up and learning and cheating at the game, to stay in the game, or whether the cavalry is due and that the games' rules actually mean something.

Games rules... Really?
I admire your optimisim, but they don't matter much either...

 

[SMcA]

@Reighdar and my good self shared a hotel room at FX17.. I'm almost certain I behaved and portrayed a sane and sober account of myself and was a model of propriety...

Those at FX17 can back me up on this..

I know, I remember the thread, vaguely.

 

[Nadreck]

It's not about a human ability to get to Colonia faster, it's that the bot you're using makes it much easier to do the same thing. You could be running this fleet carrier bot and having tea and biscuits then afterwards a mid-morning shnooze and then wake up and find out, oh my macro stopped working mid-way, I better restart it. Then you restart the macro, go and stretch and watch the daily news and take another nap. Wake up again, and BAM, you're at Colonia! Meanwhile, the other cmdr who is wary of breaking the automation rules has been babysitting his carrier the entire way and wants to charge more for all the work he just did while you're all rested up letting a macro do all the work and figure, I hardly did anything at all, I'm going to sell this cargo cheap.

Not really a good example to use though, as anyone else could do pretty much the same thing. Setting the next jump requires a few seconds of "work" every 20 minutes.

Tea and biscuits? No problem.

Mid-morning snooze? For 20 minutes, yes. Or 40 minutes if you set an alarm to briefly wake up halfway through. Or just miss one jump in a 40-minute nap.

Watch the news? No problem.

Anyone who has been "babysitting it all the way" has definitely been doing it wrong!

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Elite Dangerous EULA and Terms of Use - Frontier Store

The Frontier Developments Online Store is the exclusive online retailer for products made and licensed by Frontier Developments plc

www.frontierstore.net

3. Licence Restrictions
You are not permitted:

(c) use cheats, automation software, hacks, mods, or any other unauthorized software designed to modify or defeat the purpose or experience of the Game;

I would imagine that would include automated fleet carrier jumping

 

[Northpin]

Humans cannot compete with bots! It's one thing to work getting to Colonia to sell tritium, but it's quite another for someone to just run a script to do the same thing. It's unfair to the traders who don't automate. I don't get why people can legitimate bots for selling tritium (which hurts legitimate traders), but it is wrong if someone using bots for the BGS or power play.

Yes, I just read a bit in this thread. It's strange that no one there is actually talking about "botting" and there is no response from Frontier either. Very strange...

Because apparently the definition of cheating is more complicated than no automation

use cheats, automation software, hacks, mods, or any other unauthorized software designed to modify or defeat the purpose or experience of the Game;

This is from ED TOS. So a certain level of automation might be acceptable if it is not deemed to defeat the purpose or experience of the game
For example pip macros. Or Voice Attack. Or even the spansh router. or other external tools.

Now lets. go back to carriers.
Someone being able to play 16h per day has a vast advantage over someone that can play only 2h oer day
The former can move a carrier to Colonia in a single game session, the later will need a week.
Really unfair for traders that cannot play 16 hours per day, right? (especially since it involves such little interaction to move a carrier, with a lot of free time in-between the jumps, one can shower, cook, work, eat, whatever - even take 15 minutes naps - it only takes 1 minute every 20 minutes to prep a jump)

So IMO a script that is moving a carrier to colonia is quite harmless.
While a bot network flying lots of ships 24/7, programming them to do trading or combat, will be way more harmful than a carrier script.
And truly detrimental to bgs or to pp or the game in general, again IMO.

so yea, I'm against botting.
but a carrier jump script? meh!


However a line should be drawn, but the only people that can say where the line is, are the ones at FD
So once more, if OP has proofs that their ingame sworn enemies are botting they should report them to FD and keep quiet on the forums - after all, if they want to give FD enough time to catch the botter in action, making a fuss about it on forums is rather... not productive.

 

[Ian Phillips]

I sit here, reading your post and as I see no link, you sir are a liar

@everyone else, reddit doesn't care what you say about frontier forum moderators, neither does youtube

Read my post.... " inserted a link in the relevant post "

 

[[PS4] Filthymick420]

Sure I'll just check through 198 posts. No thanks

 

[Linnunrata]

Sure I'll just check through 198 posts. No thanks

But it's a quality thread!

 

[Sublime]

There is just way too much “content” in this game that is repetitive and boring. This is what attracts people to use bots in the first place. Interesting and unique content in itself will naturally decrease bot use.

Personally I don’t even see what people get out of it. There’s no “end game” to ED, the whole game is about the journey so what’s the point of even playing if you want to make the computer play for you?

With regards to the FC automation, I agree that it should be made part of the game. I’d also like if wormholes or gateways could be a thing. Imagine stumbling on a one way wormhole that took you to some remote part of the galaxy. Or two way wormholes can be discovered to help with expansion.

Even if artificial gateways were a thing that could be constructed in limited amounts that could link major population centers..

 

[Linnunrata]

Personally I don’t even see what people get out of it. There’s no “end game” to ED, the whole game is about the journey so what’s the point of even playing if you want to make the computer play for you?

In this (alleged) case obviously scoring a win against opposing human player, possibly even making them to toil in vain - extra points if they get frustrated and complain about it.

 

[CptArcher]

Because apparently the definition of cheating is more complicated than no automation

so yea, I'm against botting.
but a carrier jump script? meh!


However a line should be drawn, but the only people that can say where the line is, are the ones at FD

Fdev makes it clear in the license that there is to be no automation software. What if someone blames you for getting banned using a jump script, because Northpin said meh? The line is drawn by fdev, they've made it clear, and people have decided to use automation despite the rules.