Created by groups which realised that they aren't on the top of things anymore.
You mean this thread can't possibly only be here out of the goodness of the heart?
No.
I'm shocked. Almost too shocked for words.
Created by groups which realised that they aren't on the top of things anymore.
For the record: I'm against botting, cheating and anything that is against the rules of the game.I must admit I keep thinking, 'But wouldnt it have been easier to defend Carcosa with more info?', and if both sides have the info its an ever-evolving game of tactics and that is what BGS is about isnt it? I can see the dont want a game of spreadsheets a la Football Manager argument, but again thats just BGS all over to me. Seen it burn out at least one player. Vice versa I love stats, as many as I can get, dont need to be identifiable.
Bit surprised the Anarchists and 'if its not against the rules' people arguing for a clampdown on freedom of information or to restrict it. Seems anathema.
Edit: P.S. I am not Spartacus either, just in case.
This gameplay is definitely more interesting than simply spreadsheeding who has the most CMDR-drones (not bots) running stuff.It would not have made any difference in Carcosa, we would probably have stopped defending it earlier with the extra data. There was just to much player count difference combined with unfavorable and/or missing levers for Anarchies and the result was a foregone conclusion before it even really started. You have to remember at the time the rest showed up we were already at a long lasting bgs war with Civitas. Not even bots would have prevented the outcome. It made still for a good story and year-long intense play with ups and downs.
If you put all the information op wants to be seen in the game you take a lot of the fun parts, at least for me, out of the bgs. You will end up with spreadsheet wars and grinds. No more novel strategies or disinformation, as the data will reveal it all. What makes the bgs fun is trying to outwit the spreadsheets and/or strategies of your opponents, not the grind to actually do it. I'm doing bgs for fun and further a story not to build an empire, so what I think the bgs needs and what data should be available differs from somebody who has or wants to build an empire. I also like data, but at least for the game, I more interested in the detective work of finding clues/strategies than putting it all into a database and analyze it. It's a game, not work.
- first of all, i'm not one of those anarchists in the game, being one of the filthy independent cooperatives. my main gripe with the OP comes from asking for commander identifiable information in 3 of 4 cases - having experiences with stalking and doxxing in other games.I must admit I keep thinking, 'But wouldnt it have been easier to defend Carcosa with more info?', and if both sides have the info its an ever-evolving game of tactics and that is what BGS is about isnt it? I can see the dont want a game of spreadsheets a la Football Manager argument, but again thats just BGS all over to me. Seen it burn out at least one player. Vice versa I love stats, as many as I can get, dont need to be identifiable.
Bit surprised the Anarchists and 'if its not against the rules' people arguing for a clampdown on freedom of information or to restrict it. Seems anathema.
Edit: P.S. I am not Spartacus either, just in case.
The big issue that I have... is that people keep denying it is a problem. Not saying it is you, but even though the botting is obvious, a lot of people will just point out that someone attacked you and that you're crying foul because you are losing. Whether they do it in bad faith or because of legitimate concern for witch hunts is a bit irrelevant when they do have some plausible deniability.
... which needs to be argued in the first place. i still remember the peculiar case, working in switzerland, when the local conservatives (!) voted against (!) more security cameras in public places, not because privacy, but because they deemed it ineffective in terms of reducing criminality. it's not like more data = more security necessarily. or the discussion around encryption for raising security, or breaking encryption to do so.for more security or transparency
'Hard' evidence goes to Frontier confidentially, even the reporter wont know whats happened.
Hard evidence posted here would get Moderated so fast under so many breaches of TOS.
We are not the judge nor jury. Witch hunts and online abuse are real.
The topic is basically 'how' do we / players get that 'hard' evidence in the first place to raise a ticket, Im all for barring people making too many false accusations from making any more. The system relies on people reporting to draw Frontiers attention to a potential offender so they do need some info beyond outcomes alone.
Other people want more info for their own satisfaction, some maybe for BGS, you can play Checkers or Chess on the same board but maybe not at the same time seems to be the issue.
So as usual its how much security / privacy do you give up for more security or transparency? What info is 'acceptable' and what isn't?
The problem is that they maintain cutters at a constant 200 traffic for... months? You can predict the traffic too. Tomorrow the station they are supporting with trade enters a lockdown, and suddenly 200 cutters dissapear and 200 Condas show up, switching their efforts to failing missions by dumping passengers and a few other activities.
Or when you say "tomorrow their best move would be to hit the outpost" and they replace 300 ships torn between Cutters and T-9's into 300 Pythons. All of this goes on for months. What you are suggesting is a great way to hide if you're a real player... but not a good way to hide a constant, 24/7 never ending effort of automated accounts.
In my experience the vast number of these accusations in games are false. In another game I played it was so common for players to just say whoever beat them was a cheater without evidence, it became a meme: "HACKusations" the community dubbed it. If you said someone was cheating you were laughed at and dismissed, and we were all better for it to be honest.
If this is so common and "obvious", where is the hard evidence? I see none being presented here.
There are some people who believe that if someone is able to better them it can only be by cheating...Many people can't tell the difference between standard gameplay and 'hacking' - or botting in this case
Out of curiosity, how do you know that the bots are failing missions, pax or otherwise? ... I'm genuine interested in the answer as I can't see where failed missions would show up. BM trade is another one as it doesn't show up anywhere either.
(I have to do that post on BGS forensic at sone point...)
- negative actions lead to a different structure of influence gains and losses, than positive actions for all other factions:
- as losses are distributed as gains relative to influence in system, low influence factions gain less from losses, than factions of higher influence - and even that in a predetermined way.
- while gains distributed as losses by positive actions for all other factions lead to low influence faction gaining more than high influence factions, and can't really mimic the other.
(if of interest, i can post an exampel calculation)
here an exampel calculation:
System with 4 Factions A,B,C,D.
Influence:
A: 70
B: 20
C: 9
D: 1
exampel I: applied negative influence of -9 to faction A
leads to:
A: 64,5
B: 23,7
C: 10,5
D: 1,2
exampel II: positive influence applied to B, C, D +3 each at original value of 70,20, 9, 1:
leads to:
A: 59,8
B: 23,9
C: 12,3
D: 3,8
... if you watch out for D, you can easily tell negative and positive influence actions apart
- during lockdown many other options for negative influence actions are disabled, so failing passenger missions is one of the few reasonable ways to go about (- if you decide to go about; i personally wouldn't as that feels gamey to me: you have to fail a mission, so outside of having it run out of time, bumping into a station for hulldamage with passengers on board, which will leave the ship after some is a common technique. it will cost your rep, and you'll lose access to more missions, so can't be repeated often - if you don't have a lot of commanders or accounts doing so.)
... so that's how people conclude, "what we are seeing despite lockdown is negative influence effects. this negative influence effect can more or less only come from failing missions. failing missions means probably failing passenger missions." - and probably, with some other numbers, like 200 condas on the traffic report, come to the point concluding that what they are seeing can't be for legit gameplay.
Excellent suggestion. Anything requiring a little skill! I would love to see some bgs stuff involving getting into and hacking installations without being scanned. That would be hard to bot.If you are going to want more information, you will require more gaming to go with it. For example- make it so that if you are detected you appear on the traffic boards. That way, you can smuggle yourself in (which requires skill). A hypothetical bot would not care about that, but for a switched on BGS attack it would add more spice. So you could ghost a system if you ran cold, and ran away from scans.
This is another really stupid idea...Anti-Botting, Telemetry & Verification approach
<SNIP>
It's about the data, the way the data is pulled and processes, and most important from there the data comes. Some of the data pulled is on the edge if not over to be in violation of the Eula(maybe GDPR too). Also the ones most active in this threads are the ones who use extensive automation (bots) and data harvesting in and out of game to get a competitive edge. Some also use known exploits in game (player bounties, slf's in CZs) and Eula violating shared accounts for bgs stuff (explorer accounts). Clearly some double standard here.Been thinking about the 'game of spreadsheets'. Isnt this just the same as any meta-game in anything though, I want to play on 'this level' and you want to play on 'that level' and I hate it but cant actually do anything about it as its an MMO. To me its the same as a meta-build ganker blowing up a non-meta casual player. Both want to play on different levels and the game allows that but clearly gives an advantage to the meta-gamer. It always does in any situation. So to apply that argument here opens up all the other meta-imbalances in game, to me, in my opinion, after thinking about it.
The meta game is to find out how the bgs works and how to leverage it to your advantage. Giving more data removes that as anything you find the opposition can see in the data. Part of the appeal for bgs activities for me personally are the theories, validation tests, and deploying the theory in the wild. Doing the actual bgs stuff in game is the boring part of it.On the other hand, more stats the better for me, if people use them against me well so be it, I could do the same back if I wanted or try and counter it. Thats the meta-game. Or I could just do my own thing and ignore them. If they use them to highlight accounts and notify Frontier then as long as theres checks and balances on 'malicious' reporting its just the same as now, some people just think it will be easier. If they find out its active actual players instead then they have to accept bots not real and you get to laugh and say 'told you so'. Either way we all know the game is 'clean' which surely everyone wants?