We have it really nice here... +10 above the speed limits it's only a warning, not a fine. So in an 50 zone, 59 is ok, 61 is a fine.
Pip Macros - TOS Violation?
- Thread starter Oh Seven Commander
- Start date
We have it really nice here... +10 above the speed limits it's only a warning, not a fine. So in an 50 zone, 59 is ok, 61 is a fine.
In the UK it is "10% over speed limit +1" - over that and if caught it is a fine.
(Which is a hangover from mechanical speedometers, which could be very inaccurate: Todays electronic speedos are accurate to around +/- 1)
My last was 46km in a non-school 40km zone. Because last time i drove that road it was 60.
Frankly, the "PIP Macro" argument does occupy a super-niche slot in the ED gameplay space... I mean "how much relevant it is" which is strictly related to ships requiring a surgical PIP management under stressful combat situations (= meta/G5 eng FDLs in PvP competitive combat -> something which is considered like heresy on this sub).
Not only in PvP, higher level PvE combat also greatly benefits from precise pip management. Eg AX combat where being in correct pip config is crucial and many times odd configs are recommended like 1-2-3 that you might want to change to 4-2-0 during a shutdown field attack and then back. But also getting the maximum out of a PvE 'Vette, or flying off-meta ships solo in wing massacre missions.
Setting up pip macros makes all this manageable and allows the pilot to concentrate on flying and landing hits. In fact, I think pip macros/presets are so crucial that they really should be built into the game, adjustable to taste like firegroups are. There's a reason why in WWII every next model of a fighter plane had more and better engine management automation. Early models were fully manual where the pilot had to juggle throttle, prop pitch, mixture, cooling radiators and sometimes supercharger/turbocharger settings. By the end of the war you had just throttle, plus mixture to be set either "auto lean" for cruise or "auto rich" for takeoff and combat.
....hmmmmmmmmay be, but it's arguably harder to demonstrate a meaningful advantage, whilst it's in PvP where they offer a tangible benefit i.e. when one side uses them and opponent doesn't.
Absolutely true! I think "meaningful advantage" has a different metrics in PvP and PvE. In the former, assuming combatants of equal equipment and skill, it boils down to who will win—a simple metric to measure and put into statistics. In the latter it's much more subjective—I'd distill it down to "how comfortable I feel in a fight". The less micromanaging I need to do; the less attention I need to spare to power management; the faster I can develop a muscle memory for repeated actions—the more comfortable and less stressful I feel. Naturally it's much harder to quantify and put into R.
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You can buy officially endorsed addons involving VA profiles which contain commands for exactly as in OP as well as a hell of a lot more so imo it is completely officially endorsed regardless of how the EULA can be interpreted.
The only things i have ever seen FD say is anything other than ok which is even close to this would be automation for when you are AFK
and a simple voice command such as power to shields is not automation really as you are still giving the command, its just a different control method (your voice)
The only things i have ever seen FD say is anything other than ok which is even close to this would be automation for when you are AFK
and a simple voice command such as power to shields is not automation really as you are still giving the command, its just a different control method (your voice)
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...same for some macros, where one can program timing of intervals to resemble a human click to perform certain multiple/multiple times actions resolved with one-click only on the macro-user side (i.e. not strictly related to ED, but in some FPS there's usually a cooldown to perform certain actions, which macro-programming can easily circumvent).
Too many rules with too much discretion is how abuse is actualized and why some segments of society seem to reap all the benefits while others suffer the costs.
Anyway, in games, where most of the rules are defining interaction with and defining the depiction of the setting, I've always felt that rules needed to be fairly strict. Otherwise, (game) reality itself appears to be in flux, rather than just character interactions. Problem is that games, and players, tend to confuse the two...often deliberately.
I lost my license for six months and had to cover a $700 ticket for doing 56 (mph) in a 55 that the officer in question marked as 56 in a 35 zone, and that was after it had been reduced because I contested it in court. I could have opted for a trial, but this was before dash or body cameras, or accurate GPS on every police cruiser, were things, so if the officer actually showed up, I would have automatically lost, with significantly greater penalties. Since I was learning to drive at the time and it was a probationary license, the penalties were already worse than they should have been, which essentially made it illegal for me to learn to drive. If I had been 95% of people in my area who needed to be able to operate a vehicle for their livelihood (this was the suburbs, there is no public transportation and nothing is really in walking distance, unless you can walk for hours), I would have been in real trouble...which was of course the officer's intent.
Many years later, I was stopped for doing 95 in a 75...in a hilly area of upper Michigan where all the traffic was doing 95. Had I been doing the speed limit, the truck behind me would have crested a hill and probably killed my wife and I. Because the de facto speed limit was significantly in excess of the de jure limit, and going slower than traffic on an express way crowded with commercial traffic is not even vaguely safe or practical, it gives police in the area the ability to pull people over purely on discretion. In my case, my out of state plates signaled me out as a traveler far from home, who might be willing to cough up a bribe to be allowed to continue. I refused to produce $200 in cash and my license was illegally confiscated. Had I been alone, I likely would have been stopped shortly after and arrested for driving without a license.
Combat in general, with pretty much any ship, benefits greatly from competent pip management. The often extreme differences in ship performance between pip settings clearly suggest pip management was always intended to be a significant factor. This was more apparent back before Engineering could partially mask poor pip managment when dealing with typical NPC encounters.
I've never used, or felt comfortable using, pip macros. As someone who has primarily played with a full HOTAS setup, most control optimization, beyond making sure my control inputs are reflective of my intent and mask specific defects with my controls, feels dishonest. Manipulating the distributor is supposed to be part of the Elite: Dangerous piloting experience.
I don't really have a problem with other people using such macros, within reason, especially those with fewer convienently placed hat switches. I do recognize that, all other things being equal, macros provide an edge. Basic macro capability should probably be integrated into the game, if only because enforcing any ban on such third party tools is functionally impossible.
The fact that nobody has mentioned HCS voice packs, is kind of amazing. Short answer, no it's not. HCS Voicepacks have been around for a long time, it uses voice attack and you can manage pips with those with single call out commands. I mean hell you can auto plot using HCS and have multiple crew members doing different things. So. short answer, using voice attack to manage buttons for you, is not a violation of the EULA otherwise HCS voicepacks would have been banned a long LONG time ago.
) (it was just ignored 
fdev, despite what the TOS says, has im 95% sure made an exception for pip macros specifically, and dont ban for it at all . if it was bannable, almost every pvper would have been banned right now . in especially high level pvp it is imo required for 'high level' to be as 'high' as it is rn the difference between pipping 4 sys with 1 button instead of 4 can determine if you lose a fight or not because you just wouldnt be able to press 4 buttons fast enough, instead of being based on reaction time and skill
PIP macros are not TOS violation
/thread
This is exactly what discretion is.
If the question was "Will FD punish people for using PIP macros?" the answer is "Generally, no", because most pip macro use doesn't have enough impact to warrant any punitive measures.
Being punished under the TOS/EULA needs two things to happen.... in tabular form...
| Breach of TOS? | FD wants to punish? | Punishment happens? |
| Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Yes | No | No |
| No | Yes | Yes |
| No | No | No |
The thing I've tried to surface here is that it actually doesn't matter if you've explicitly broken something under the EULA or not... if you do anything that FD thinks is "bad for the game", even if it's actually explicitly within the EULA, you'll know about it soon enough.
In the best case, it's probably just a warning and a rapid update to the EULA. In the worst case, it's just immediate punishment (and probably a quick EULA update)[1]
But that aside, the second row of that table is explicitly called out in FD's EULA as well.... because keyboard macros aren't a problem, until they are.
Again, context, impact, discretion, intent... also known as common sense (which is usually not very common). It's onerous and unrealistic to have an exhaustive list of scenarios keyboard macros are permitted or not permitted for... let alone every single category of software. So better to just say "automation is against the rules" and apply discretion, otherwise you're constantly updating TOS (and constantly getting reacknowledgement from players) for every exception that comes up.
It's comparable to old 1t trading (where effects were per transaction, so 100x 1t transactions were 100 times more effective than 1x100t transaction), which had a disproportionate impact on the BGS. It was pretty clearly an exploit. But trading multiple types of goods is, pretty clearly, not.
So is trading multiple types of goods as whole batches (i.e selling N-tonnes of dozens of types of profitable goods) in full knowledge you're explicitly trying to get that effect an exploit? Probably not... even though it is taking advantage of an exploitable system. Discretion.
[1] the advantage of EULAs not being legally binding is a double- edge sword like that.
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Noting that the EULA as-is currently gives them the power to unilaterally update it with immediate effect and no notice or notification requirement, should they find any remaining way of playing the game that they have accidentally left as unambiguously allowed.
(I'm fairly sure that as worded there already aren't so the bottom two rows of your table would never come up anyway)
The information from Frontier has arrived. Per Frontier's responses which I even asked for further clarification on, pip macros as quite commonly used by the community that move pips from more or less any config to a predetermined config such as 2-4-0 do in their view violate the EULA since each pip movement is considered by them an individual action, so moving a bunch of pips per key press is doing more than one action per key press. So, for me at least, no pip macros in the future.
Please publish. Given no official response from FDev in this thread I'm still not clear on what exactly has been said.
Well what did you expect the answer would be? Frontier cannot say "PIP macros are fine" because that opens the pandora's box of "why are PIP macros fine, but <macro x> isn't?"
This is a case of "if you ask, you get an answer". Is it likely to be enforced? Probably not. Most of the players with programmable sticks would get kicked, and that's probably a lot. But there was only one possible answer.
Consider it a gray area, exploring which is at your own risk.