The Open v Solo v Groups thread

[WhiteHaulerMan]

Im still waiting for someone to actually give an example of botting in ED

O7

There was a massive outbreak of it with Powerplay back in the day. It took up a big chunk of the forums for a time, and included Lave Radio did a big deep dive into the various methods being used.

 

[Darrack]

There was a massive outbreak of it with Powerplay back in the day. It took up a big chunk of the forums for a time, and included Lave Radio did a big deep dive into the various methods being used.

So back in the day then, not currently happening?

O7

 

[WhiteHaulerMan]

So back in the day then, not currently happening?

O7

Not meaning to engage in wordplay worthy of a low tier politician or youtube culture wars vidcaster, but you asked for an example of botting in ED, not an example of Botting in ED within a specific timeframe.

Not much was done about it as I recall, and a lot of the actual powerplayers (I am sure @Rubbernuke could give a better storyboard of the events as I'm fairly sure with it being a Powerplay related issue, they lead the charge against the issue as it deepened) are fairly sure its still ongoing in some manner.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Not meaning to engage in wordplay worthy of a low tier politician or youtube culture wars vidcaster, but you asked for an example of botting in ED, not an example of Botting in ED within a specific timeframe.

Not much was done about it as I recall, and a lot of the actual powerplayers (I am sure @Rubbernuke could give a better storyboard of the events as I'm fairly sure with it being a Powerplay related issue, they lead the charge against the issue as it deepened) are fairly sure its still ongoing in some manner.

Not sure what its like today but here is a great account of it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/855o8r

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/855o8r/scripting_and_automation_an_investigation_into/

 

[Darrack]

wordplay worthy of a low tier politician

'It wasn't my intention to mislead the house' the original poster just inferred it was a common practice for my fellow brothers and sisters in Solo mode.

O7

 

[WhiteHaulerMan]

'It wasn't my intention to mislead the house' the original poster just inferred it was a common practice for my fellow brothers and sisters in Solo mode.

O7

 

[tekwerk]

Wew I gotta stop dropping bombs. I'm not quoting everyone because it's a pain in the ass but I do agree that open world pvp incentives in other games have met with mixed results, and that this game's spaghetti p2p makes open incentives tricky (gta online has the same issue, jiggle the 56k and you can get an empty online lobby to do your transports in)
As to others simply dismissing other games, Elite isn't perfect and taking some ideas to make it better isn't a bad thing. SC sucks ass sure and the flight model is doodoo compared to Elite but the emergent gameplay that comes out of it, highwaymen, player escorts, big ape brawls over trade hubs, is compelling and something to strive for.
Also you can bet your ass there's botters. We have people sending Raxxla messages in giant red text and making disco balls at shindez, you think it's beyond someone's capabilities to just automate a trade route? I do find it funny that some sanctimonious instigator was implying that evidence of botting comes down to "skill issue", where someone's central conceit in not flying in open is being worried about getting toasted by someone who practiced the game more. Just a bit ironic. Yeah I know this game hasn't improved in ten years but that's not something to be proud of, and at the end of the day I think FDev is just anti-skill. We can see evidence of this in their recent AX patches: inbound orthruses were fixed almost immediately, whereas interceptor cannon tracking has been broken for nearly half a year, and ground swarms have been broken since the start of the war. Shows you where their priorities lay.

 

[Rebel Yell]

So back in the day then, not currently happening?

Not to our records, not reported from other PP groups... besides overall the situation for powerplay (in general) is pretty much dismal: most of independent powers are more or less in dormant "maintenance mode" (Antal, Sirius and I'd include Delaine as well), whilst the Fed/Imp confrontation has basically reduced one power (Torval) to a weapon, Patreus is another "tool" in their hands to what I see and the alliance with Grom does still raise some eyebrows. Lately Feds look cornered and bottom line the patched up ZYADA conglomerate does put too big numbers to compete with. Mahon remains on his sideline, but did a good work with the last scrap and now sits on a very robust CC warchest. I'm relatively new to this part of the game... so feel free to correct me.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

The emergent gameplay you get from Elite is its draw. Why handicap one of its most unique features?

Emergent gameplay, in 90% of time = Some never do well shooting you with fully engineered murderboat. Yeah, I'll gladly skip that.

 

[Darrack]

pvp incentives in other games have met with mixed results

That's an understatement, unless its a pure PvP which folks understand from the start, PVE and PVP never mix.

SC sucks

We have people sending Raxxla messages in giant red text and making disco balls at shindez

That's not botting its hacking, but i take your point and one reason i stay out of Open.

someone's central conceit in not flying in open is being worried about getting toasted by someone who practiced the game more

Couldn't be further from the truth, utter myth that PvPers are better players, ive done pure PVE and pure PVP in many games, im still the same person.
With nearly 6500 hours in Elite over 3 years i would say im a pretty decent pilot with fully engineered ships able to handle myself against any ganker, ive never lost an interdiction and many times i blew folks up in much less equipped ships, but it got tedious and i don't suffer fools lightly.
When your block list starts to get like War and Peace its time to stay in Solo.

So bluntly the fact that i play in Solo because Open players are better is utter rubbish.

Yeah I know this game hasn't improved in ten years but that's not something to be proud of, and at the end of the day I think FDev is just anti-skill

The game has improved dramatically over the 3 years ive been here, what game are you playing?
Anti skill? No idea what that's supposed to mean, have you landed a Luga on 'Strong G' ?

Lets get some facts here, we pay NO subscription and yet we get updates, CGs and an ongoing narrative which you either want to get involved in or not.
We cant demand anything, what we have, for some of us, is a never ending exploration sand box to make your own adventures, i for one will be happy with the way things are until i shuffle off this mortal coil.

Elite is pretty average?

Ship mining, i don't need 2 ships to mine and transport like another game, core mining is better than anything any other game has to offer
Ship Combat is aver............... oh wait its better than combat in the other games
Single ship trading is aver.......... oh wait, im trying to think of another game where i can go from port to port trading and never go to the same system twice?
Exploration is borin.............. er hang on 400 Billion? And i can fly in pretty much every system in any ship i want? And actually land anywhere on a landable planet?

Shows you where their priorities lay.

Yep i can see that in what they have already given us.

Elite offers so much to do, if folks need other players to gank and grief then they are playing the game wrong.
In the immortal words of my favourite band

"I'm not here to entertain you"

O7

 

[Northpin]

Elite but the emergent gameplay that comes out of it, highwaymen, player escorts, big ape brawls over trade hubs, is compelling and something to strive for.

Well, it's nothing more than the haves preying on the have-nots.
Aka, G5 murderboats clubbing newbs and/or people not affording or not caring enough to get to the same level of engineering and to match the offense with superior defense.
Which ultimately will drive out of the game (or at least to solo/pg) anyone not enjoying PVP interfering with their activities.

Wait! What? That already happened, right?


Let's be honest.
A properly built ship is un-gankable - it would surely not be build optimal for any other role than surviving in open, but it will be un-gankable
So who's escorting who? A paper plane CANNOT be escorted. Any PVP-er will explode the paper plane and jump out before the escorts can drop the attacker's shields.

In the end, who enjoys pvp - can do it in the game as it is now.
Who doesnt - which seems to be the majority else PVP-er wont be so desparate for targets - will not enjoy someone else meddling in their agenda because even a un-gankable ship can still be delayed to its destination by multiple interdictions - which in the end will waste time for both the gankers and the gankee

Forcing PVP on someone is simply not working.
And ED is not the PVP game you are looking for.

 

[TiberiusDuval]

Basically proposition is another one "we need more targets" propositions. Yeah I understand it might get boring to interdict those "open-ready" built ships, that either escape or gosh, put too much resistance for our "noobslayergitgud" commander. But there simply is no other reason for these kind of propositions.

 

[Hanerib]

Ships have spaceweapons and go boom it's funny.

 

[Morbad]

Single ship trading is aver.......... oh wait, im trying to think of another game where i can go from port to port trading and never go to the same system twice?

I'll argue that trading is the single area where Elite: Dangerous is most deficient. The game doesn't have even a token implementation of what I'd expect in any mercantile simulation depicting trade at any scale. There is no actual economy and only trivial logistical considerations. Trade in this game doesn't look much like trade from either an abstract level nor from a hands-on operational perspective.

So who's escorting who? A paper plane CANNOT be escorted. Any PVP-er will explode the paper plane and jump out before the escorts can drop the attacker's shields.

Escorting an fragile ship is not impossible, but it has to be proactive. If an attacker is allowed to interdict, or is otherwise able to come within weapons range, it's over. The solution to this problem is to distract and delay potential attackers, preferably so they never share the same normal space instance with the vessel being escorted.

Back when TTKs were reasonable and it wasn't utterly inconceivable that someone would be able to shoot him down without his affermative consent, my CMDR had an escort on his final leg back from Sag A*...one ship was at my final destiation, and another was two or three jumps ahead of me. I wouldn't jump into a system that wasn't clear of likely hostiles and if any showed up, they'd have been interdicted or otherwise given a more pressing target while I tried to sneak past. If there were too many potential hostiles to handle, I would have diverted to a different destination. Wasn't entirely foolproof...just reasonable precations for someone intent on maximizing their character's safety, without resorting to context defying solutions.

 

[Darrack]

Ships have spaceweapons and go boom it's funny.

Or they don't have spaceweapons and go silently into the Black

O7

 

[Darrack]

I'll argue that trading is the single area where Elite: Dangerous is most deficient. The game doesn't have even a token implementation of what I'd expect in any mercantile simulation depicting trade at any scale. There is no actual economy and only trivial logistical considerations. Trade in this game doesn't look much like trade from either an abstract level nor from a hands-on operational perspective.

Well its all down to what the individual wants.
I play X4 from time to time which is basically Transport Fever in space, take a single ship and pilot it yourself for trading and its soon time to log out.
With Elite i can pick a ship, head to a port and find something to take and trade to somewhere else building up trade routes as you go.
This isnt for making credits (well not vast amounts) its just being able to do that which makes ED unique.

O7

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Basically proposition is another one "we need more targets" propositions. Yeah I understand it might get boring to interdict those "open-ready" built ships, that either escape or gosh, put too much resistance for our "noobslayergitgud" commander. But there simply is no other reason for these kind of propositions.

Who knows from where you draw this conclusion. It's bizarre and suggests real problems with comprehension.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

'It wasn't my intention to mislead the house' the original poster just inferred it was a common practice for my fellow brothers and sisters in Solo mode.

O7

Common practice is not it. But given the nature of e.g. powerplay combat zones, doing them in PG to earn incomprehensibly large amounts of merits is as close to an admission of botting as you're going to get. Because no-one is going to admit it. The problem is not even whether you did or not, but the inability for anyone to know either way, in the knowledge that botting is a thing, has happened before, some people will go low to win, and given a lack of confidence in FDev's ability or interest in tackling it.

Look at it this way - would you do your great fun hauling in solo if you were 50/50 that I might just press a button and cancel all efforts of you and your group? As someone who won't go to open because you know someone somewhere one day will exploit the weakness of your ship to undo some game progress, I suspect not.

If you want people to engage in a competitive feature, they need assurance that their success or failure depends on merit of the two sides, expressed via broadly sensible gameplay mechanics. I am absolutely certain that the combination of available exploits AND PG/solo to hide their use works against that.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Wew I gotta stop dropping bombs. I'm not quoting everyone because it's a pain in the ass but I do agree that open world pvp incentives in other games have met with mixed results, and that this game's spaghetti p2p makes open incentives tricky (gta online has the same issue, jiggle the 56k and you can get an empty online lobby to do your transports in)
As to others simply dismissing other games, Elite isn't perfect and taking some ideas to make it better isn't a bad thing. SC sucks ass sure and the flight model is doodoo compared to Elite but the emergent gameplay that comes out of it, highwaymen, player escorts, big ape brawls over trade hubs, is compelling and something to strive for.
Also you can bet your ass there's botters. We have people sending Raxxla messages in giant red text and making disco balls at shindez, you think it's beyond someone's capabilities to just automate a trade route? I do find it funny that some sanctimonious instigator was implying that evidence of botting comes down to "skill issue", where someone's central conceit in not flying in open is being worried about getting toasted by someone who practiced the game more. Just a bit ironic. Yeah I know this game hasn't improved in ten years but that's not something to be proud of, and at the end of the day I think FDev is just anti-skill. We can see evidence of this in their recent AX patches: inbound orthruses were fixed almost immediately, whereas interceptor cannon tracking has been broken for nearly half a year, and ground swarms have been broken since the start of the war. Shows you where their priorities lay.

Not going to agree with the hardline on FDev completely but otherwise good reaponse.

 

[[VR] Bulbulunufus]

Not to our records, not reported from other PP groups... besides overall the situation for powerplay (in general) is pretty much dismal: most of independent powers are more or less in dormant "maintenance mode" (Antal, Sirius and I'd include Delaine as well), whilst the Fed/Imp confrontation has basically reduced one power (Torval) to a weapon, Patreus is another "tool" in their hands to what I see and the alliance with Grom does still raise some eyebrows. Lately Feds look cornered and bottom line the patched up ZYADA conglomerate does put too big numbers to compete with. Mahon remains on his sideline, but did a good work with the last scrap and now sits on a very robust CC warchest. I'm relatively new to this part of the game... so feel free to correct me.

There's no point reporting it if you don't have proof (I mean real, very hard to get type proof - short of infiltration or some really fancy statistical analysis I'm not sure how you get that), but the suspicion is there on the regular. E.g. look at every AD cycle post about their rando prep, but there are far less fanciful ones than that too.

If it were just player number superiority from ZYADA that might be okay. More to it than that I'm afraid.