"The fleet-in-being principle has been adopted by small nations in
confrontations with great powers. The idea of such a fleet is simple:
keep a viable fighting force together and occupy enemy assets with the
threat of a sortie. Since this force can choose the time and place of
attack, its enemy must keep an equal or superior force in battle
position continually as a counterweight. Considering the need to rest
and refit this masking force, an enemy can tie up a force twice its
size. This has made the fleet-in-being a favorite strategy of weak naval
forces for centuries."
The idea that eliminating an enemy's fighting strength, not capturing territory, is the true object of a military campaign is not new. Eve Online's null sec warfare takes the concept one step farther as an alliance's fighting strength is directly tied to the alliance's membership. In Sins of a Solar Spymaster #57, The Mittani describes the goal of war in Eve Online:
"War in EVE is not about battles between fleets or even capturing
territory. Battles between fleets and territory changing hands are
byproducts of war, of course, but the real purpose is to annihilate the
enemy’s capacity for resistance in all forms. Once resistance is
eliminated, what battles remain can be won easily and territory taken
as an afterthought. Many wars begin with a stalemate of battles won and
lost and systems traded until one side finally breaks their enemy’s
will, whereupon the enemy implodes."
If victory is the destruction of the enemy's capacity for resistance, then preserving one's own capacity for resistance, even if heavily outnumbered, is a requirement for continuing the war. Basic logic, right? Not according to those who mock Against
ALL Authorities' decision not to wage all-out war in Delve and conserve
their super-capital strength. But I have reason to discount such calls for eHonor as mere propaganda.
In strategic naval theory, -A-'s super-cap fleet is a "fleet in being". A concept coined in the 17th century, the purpose of such a fleet is to make a more powerful force tie up considerable forces to counter the fleet's threat. Perhaps the most famous example of a fleet in being was during World War I as the German High Fleet tied down the British Grand Fleet in the North Sea, thus preventing it from supporting land operations in other theaters.
Another reason for dismissing the criticism of -A- is a look at Goonswarm's own history. In 2005, the newly formed Goonfleet disbanded into NPC corporations under pressure from mercenary wardecs and set up a shared communications channel to act as a pseudo-corp until the pressure subsided. In 2006, under pressure from Band of Brothers, Goonswarm actually played possum and convinced BoB that the alliance had disbanded. From stories I heard part of the deception plan involved convincing Goons not to post on forums for 30 days. Can you imagine the effort that took? And finally in the wake of Karttoon going on vacation and failing to pay the sov bills in 2010, instead of fighting long odds after their sovereignty dropped, the Goons chose to abandon Delve and fled to Syndicate. But in each case, the Goons came back from their setbacks bigger and more effective than before.
Can -A- duplicate the Goons' success? They do have some experience retreating to NPC null sec and then regaining sov. But -A-'s margin for error is smaller this time as they face a foe in the CFC that is better led, more numerous and funded by their OTEC wealth. If they are to have any chance, -A- must ignore the calls to follow space Bushido and maintain their status as an alliance in being.
The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players
of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 15 July 2012. For more
details about the methodology, click here. Historical data can be found here.
Rank
Prev Week
Game
Score
Hours Played
1
1
World of Warcraft
55.1
55,139
2
2
Star Wars: The Old Republic
10.0
10,015
3
3
The Secret World
6.3
6,317
4
4
Aion
5.2
5,200
5
5
Eve Online
4.4
4,368
6
6
Metin 2
3.7
3,744
7
7
Lord of the Rings Online
3.4
3,404
8
10
Maple Story
2.7
2,735
9
8
APB: Reloaded
2.5
2,549
10
9
Tera
2.5
2,475
11
NR
Star Trek Online
2.2
2,199
12
11
Need For Speed World
2.0
2,000
Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 135,477
The Xfire community posted another increase in the amount of hours spent playing MMORPGs last week. Sunday's 2.3% increase was the fourth increase in a row. The big gainers percentage-wise were Star Trek Online (+60.5%), Star Wars: The Old Republic (+19.2%) and Maple Story (+13.5%). For the first time in a long time no game saw a double-digit drop in time played on Sunday, although Tera's drop of 7.7% led all losers.
No one can resist the power...: Since falling to its all-time low on 10 June, Star Wars: The Old Republic has bounced back with a 26.8% gain in time played in the past 5 weeks. The increase began on the heels of the announcement of free server transfers in response to howling from the player base about dead servers. However last week's big jump was probably due to the new free trial that allows players to play all 8 character classes up to level 15 plus allowing returning players to return to the game for 7 days beginning 10 July.
I would like to think that SWTOR is healthy, but remember the last big givaway occurred three weeks before EA announced their earnings report for their 2012 fiscal year. Isn't the Q1 earnings call due in about 3 weeks? Coincidence? I suspect that on the call investors will hear the term "active accounts" instead of "subscribers" to discuss the number of players in SWTOR.
Guild Wars 2 Beta Weekend: Watch the number of hours played for every game drop next week as ArenaNet holds the third beta weekend for Guild Wars 2. The last beta weekend saw the Xfire numbers top ten thousand hours played on 10 June. With the Sylvari and Asura as playable races this coming Sunday expect GW2 to post similar numbers.
Normally I find something interesting to write about over the weekend. Not this weekend. I was heavily involved in watching Alliance Tournament X and playing Eve. No time for surfing the net and getting inspiration for a post.
I have to say that this weekend's coverage of AT X was pretty interesting when the stream worked. Apparently the new studio, while looking good, had some wiring issues and it lost access to the internet during one of the matches. I have two sentimental favorites I root for, Red vs. Blue and Capital Punishment.. Red vs. Blue, who should fly under the name "Purple", I think is a sentimental choice for a lot of players. Capital Punishment. is a small pirate corp practicing their trade in Minmatar low sec and as a Minmatar pilot myself I have to root for the home team.
Both Red vs. Blue and Capital Punishment need victories to advance to the knockout stage. RvB, one of the few 2-0 teams to not clinch a spot in the finals, can ensure a spot with a victory over Pandemic Legion. I'm not sure what the scenario is if RvB loses. Capital Punishment. is in a worse spot. They need to win plus Verge of Collapse has to lose. I don't know the scenario for Capital Punishment. advancing if Verge of Collapse wins, but I think it involves Verge of Collapse not getting full points in their match.
While watching the tournament I managed to finish my latest faction grind so I now have stations in my low sec area where I have perfect refining. That isn't as important as it was before the changes that eliminated drops of meta 0 loot from rats and scrap metal taking up hardly any space. But having the capability is handy if I ever try my hand at low sec mining. I hear CCP might buff mining ships one day.
Finally I broke my two-year moratorium and finally flew an armed ship into low sec. I'm still wary of the pros coming in and swatting me around so I fitted up a Hound and went ratting.
If I wasn't undocking, you'd never see me
Ratting in a stealth bomber? I found I could do it as long as I don't mind warping off. Just align to a celestial so if the damage is too bad I can just warp off at the touch of a button. I also have found that finding a celestial that does not point my ship directly away from the rats helps mitigate the damage. With a target painter and firing Nova Torpedoes to take advantage of the Hound's 15% bonus to explosive torpedo damage per Covert Ops level I managed to down groups of 3 Angel battlecruisers and even a group consisting of an Angel battleship with 2 elite cruisers.
I think my tactics not only work against the rats but take into account the realities of low sec. If someone shows up on grid, I can instantly warp away and cloak up. A stealth bomber is pretty squishy. However, I think I have a fit that will allow me to take some potshots at people who do land on grid if the situation is favorable. While I'm not looking for kill mails, I might get one if I run into someone even less experienced than I am.
So no thought provoking post today. I had too much fun playing Eve.
I am usually content to just report on botting tears, not cause them, but I came across this interesting exchange on one of the botting forums last night...
Mining botter:"Set my retriver up in .8 high sec and was ganked by a player since 2004 'ArmyOfMe' as he was in a Loki, and pod killed me as well. how the hell
did this happen? doesn't he get his ship blown up?"
Bot developer:"It goes without saying that nobody uses a Loki for suicide ganking...
It's probably the fault of your drones. The ganker used a newbie ship to
shoot your drones and they shot back therefore flagging you as a PVP
target. Concord killed his newbie ship and then he came back in a Loki
and killed your retriever for free. However I don't think he gets
pod-kill rights as well so maybe it's something else, like a war
declaration on your corp..."
So I have a couple of questions. Would this actually work? Could I use an in-corp alt to shoot a bot's combat drones to cause them to attack me? And when that happens, is the bot criminally flagged to my entire corp for 15 minutes? I know that the OCR mining bots have some safeguards built in to keep a bot from retrieving ore from a flipped can, but baiting drones seems like a winning strategy to me. I know that attacking a drone in high-sec will draw a response from CONCORD and I am assuming will incur a security status hit, which makes it a bit inferior to just can flipping. So if I take from a yellow wreck could I get the drone to attack me?
Okay, so that is more than a couple of questions. But I'm really curious as to whether this is a valid tactic to use against botters. Could those of you who might have a bit of experience help out a curious carebear?
That's right, a botter. I really hope this one doesn't try to petition his ban because there were a few witnesses from CCP on-hand since this botter decided to live stream his actions on own3d.tv, the home of Alliance Tournament X. Soon, lots of devs showed up to prove they hate bots as much as CCP Sreegs, CCP Stillman and CCP Peligro. DJ Funky Bacon linked to a screenshot of local.
Since no one managed to record the stream or fraps the incident, I thought I'd link to some of the tweets in #tweetfleet to give a sense of what happened.
@KanoTranker No, CCP Veritas accidentally reminded him that he was livestreaming in local... :( #tweetfleet
— Two step (@two_step_eve) July 11, 2012
@two_step_eve @KanoTranker No accident, we'd been bumping and talking in local for a while and have better things to do. Got to the point.
— Brian Bossé (@CCP_Veritas) July 11, 2012
@CCP_Veritas He really did. I figured the gig was up as soon as Zulu showed up in local or his viewer numbers started to rise.
— Regner Blok-Andersen (@RegnerBA) July 11, 2012
@CCP_Veritas @RegnerBA Did that seriously just happen? Was the guy really streaming himself botting? I just... don't understand....
— CCP Bro (@ccp_bro) July 11, 2012
Now, ordinarily getting caught on a live stream being used as a soccer ball by a bunch of CCP devs in Jovian frigates is bad enough. But did you notice on the screenshot the EOH Admin chat tab? That's right, he was employed by Eve Online Hold'em. I use "was" because one of the co-owners of EOH, Niraia, posted on the Reddit forums, "Hi, EOH co-owner/security here. As of now, the offending player no longer works for us. Good catch, thank you!"
Hopefully one of the CCP devs did manage to fraps the scene and will post the video on YouTube. Or maybe someone in system will post the chat logs in local. But until then I have to say bot bowling is one of my favorite sports, even though I've never played or watched it.
Last night I was reading Jester's latest post about the silence from the CSM over the past month since the Spring CSM Summit. My first reaction was, "what do you mean, they won't shut up!" Then it hit me; he was looking at the inactivity on their blogs and the failure to publish the minutes from the summit. In other words, the most prolific blogger in the Eve blogosphere is holding the CSM to his standards of writing output. After all, the CSM is made up of 11 members so why shouldn't they publish more words?
I think that CSM 7 is attempting to address the two major weaknesses of CSM 6: the lack of communications and the lack of details in the minutes. Let me address the second point first. As Jester reports, the minutes apparently will resemble a telephone book. At least no one can say that people will not know what their representatives say and think, right? I do agree with Jester that the effort will prove counter-productive and that the minutes needed to come out earlier to try to keep interest in the CSM high.
As for the lack of posting on individual blogs, I just have to point out that the written word is not the only way to get the CSM's message out to the public. When I wrote earlier that CSM members won't shut up, I meant it. The CSM has frequently made appearances on Eve Radio and the numerous Eve podcasts. Given that I try to listen to the Eve Radio talk shows and as many podcasts as I can, I have heard a lot of opinions from our CSM representatives over the past month or so. I know that I have heard Seleene and Hans Jagerblitzen on Bigcountry's Thursday morning talk show and Hans did some faction warfare stuff on DJ Funky Bacon's show on a Saturday morning.
As a service I'll list all of the podcast appearances of the CSM that I know of. Besides getting to hear the opinions of the CSM, anyone tuning in will get to hear some of the fine talent that makes up the current Eve podcasting community.
12 June: Seleene did a one hour interview on Voices From The Void about the summit.
14 June: Alekseyev Karrde appeared on the Crossing Zebras podcast talking about the war dec situation amongst other things. To only listen to the interview, go to 57:20 of the podcast.
1 July: Alekseyev Karrde is one of the hosts of the Noir. Mercenary Group's podcast, Declarations of War, and one of the segments focuses on CSM issues. I am not sure where to find episode 27 but the link will lead to episode 28.
10 July: Hans Jagerblitzen appeared on a 2 1/2 hour roundtable on faction warfare on Ten EVEning News.
Given all the appearances, I think the CSM is trying to get its message out to the player base. I don't know if more people listen to podcasts than read blogs, but the effort is there. If I missed anything since the summit, please let me know and I will update the list.
The rankings of the top twelve MMORPGs as determined by the players
of the Xfire community from play on Sunday, 8 July 2012. For more
details about the methodology, click here. Historical data can be found here.
Rank
Prev Week
Game
Score
Hours Played
1
1
World of Warcraft
55.3
53,220
2
2
Star Wars: The Old Republic
8.7
8,402
3
5
The Secret World
6.2
6,002
4
3
Aion
5.4
5,174
5
4
Eve Online
4.8
4,639
6
7
Metin 2
3.9
3,723
7
8
Lord of the Rings Online
3.5
3,411
8
10
APB: Reloaded
2.8
2,733
9
6
Tera
2.8
2,682
10
11
Maple Story
2.5
2,410
11
12
Need For Speed World
2.0
1,957
12
9
Guild Wars
1.9
1,832
Total MMORPG hours played Sunday: 132,288
Once again the Xfire community increased their time spent playing MMORPGs on Sunday, posting a 1.5% summertime increase in hours played. The big gainers were led by The Secret World (+51.7%), Metin 2 (+18.7%) and Maple Story (+10.6%). The big losers were Guild Wars (-37%) and Tera (-22.5%).
Third time's a charm: After the disastrous launches of Anarchy Online and Age of Conan, Funcom finally appears to have a decent launch of an MMORPG with The Secret World. As expected TSW jumped ahead of both Aion and Eve Online but failed to post Tera-like numbers and jump ahead of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Whether because of Funcom's reputation or the upcoming release of Guild Wars 2 next month many players indicate they are waiting a month or two before giving TSW a try. This trend may work out in TSW's favor as the Funcom offering may avoid the rapid decline in playtime suffered by recent titles like SWTOR and Tera.
Another game, another decline: Nine weeks after the full launch of Tera, the game shows the pattern in the Xfire numbers observers have come to expect of MMORPGs.
In the nine weeks since the launch weekend, Tera has experienced a 70.3% decline in the number of hours played by the Xfire community. This decline corresponds closely with the 62.7% decline suffered by Star Wars: The Old Republic from 1 January to 4 March. Will Tera manage to stabilize its numbers? If Tera continues to mirror SWTOR's performance, the release of Guild Wars 2 could actually knock Tera out of the Digital Dozen.
History has a tremendous influence on how people look upon the world. Indeed, that same experience influences our art, our literature and dare I say it, our video games. I think that is one of the factors that makes Eve Online so fascinating. How does a country like Iceland produce game designers who can produce a game with so much conflict, both military and diplomatic? After all, Iceland is located in the middle of the North Atlantic and never comes into conflict with anyone, right?
Wrong. In the mid-20th century the Icelandic government expanded its control of the waters around the island nation in a collection of 3 conflicts with the United Kingdom known as "The Cod Wars". In 1958 Iceland established control of its waters from 4 miles from shore to 12. In 1972 Iceland successfully expanded that control out to 50 miles from shore and in 1975-1976 finally established control out to 200 miles in the face of opposition from the Royal Navy, the only fleet capable of contesting the matter with the Icelandic Coast Guard. (1)
Over the weekend I found a BBC documentary, History of the Cod Wars, on YouTube and watched it when I wasn't watching Alliance Tournament X. After watching the documentary and doing some additional research, I think I've found some aspects of the conflicts that fit nicely into the game design of Eve Online.
1. Resources drive conflict. For those of us who live in the United States, popular perception is that war and international conflict over the last 70 years was driven for the most part by ideology. Whether the U.S. was fighting fascism in World War II, communism after that during the Cold War or radical Islam starting in the mid-1990s (some would claim that started in the early 1980s) the main driver of conflict was ideals, not wealth.
Not so for Iceland. The island nation's international conflicts centered on natural resources, specifically cod. In the 1970s, the fishing industry made up 15-20% of Iceland's GNP. With such a dependence on fishing and fears that Icelandic cod would face the same fate as Icelandic herring, fishing for which utterly collapsed in 1969 due to over-fishing mainly by the Norwegians and Russians (2), the Icelandic government moved to protect a resource they considered a vital national interest. British leaders, looking to protect their northern deep sea fishing fleet, responded with the Royal Navy.
When talking about Eve Online, game developer CCP will often make references to going to war with other players if, for instance, another corporation begins over-mining in a system a group of players considers home. These references come straight out of the Icelandic experience concerning fishing resources and the Cod Wars.
2. Resource scarcity will eventually make friends fight. Many players in Eve Online look at the many NAPs (non-aggression pacts) as bad because they limit fighting. Some even fear that all null security entities will sign NAPs and that will end conflict in New Eden. Yet CCP doesn't seem that concerned with that particular issue. Why? Because the Icelandic experience is that non-agressions pacts do not prevent military conflict from occurring. During the Cod Wars, both Iceland and the United Kingdom were members of NATO. Indeed, while the U.K. is the United States' closest ally, the U.S. signed a treaty (in effect to this day) that pledges to protect Iceland militarily. Does this sound like some of the actions we see when members of the CFC get bored and start fighting amongst each other?
3. Resource gathering ships are a valid target. Many players in Eve are dedicated industrialists and, like the shipowners of the U.K.'s deep sea fishing fleet during the Cod Wars, would like to see those in authority protect their ships. Many in Eve's carebear community want to see suicide ganking in high sec totally eliminated. Some go further and advocate a complete ban of formal wars in high security space.
Based on Iceland's history, I cannot see CCP meeting those demands. Sure, Iceland's economy depends on its fishing fleet, but the fishing fleets of other nations pose a threat to the health of the fish the island nation lives on. Fortunately by the time the second Cod War began in 1972 the Icelandic Coast Guard had developed trawlwire cutters and so could just cut the trawling lines instead of trying to board ships as had occurred during the first Cod War. That innovation probably prevented a lot of shooting between the two sides. But Icelandic captains were not adverse to shooting unarmed fishing vessels poaching in their waters, as the captain of the C.S. Foresterdiscovered on 19 July 1974.
Also, I was reminded of the call of supporters of suicide ganking to miners to tank (make a ship more resistant to damage) their ships. During the Cod Wars the Icelandic Coast Guard utilized armed trawlers alongside their patrol vessels. According to the documentary one of the converted fishing vessels, ICGV Baldur, had a reputation for giving better than she received in the bumping and ramming that characterized the battles of the Cod Wars. Yes, the concept of the Battle Hulk pre-dates Eve in the Icelandic mind.
4. Anyone can defend themselves. A lot of players in Eve will state that a smaller corporation cannot defend themselves against a larger corporation or alliance. Others will state that a large group of carebears cannot stand against a small group of PvP players. Does anyone think that people who grew up with tales of their tiny coast guard taking on the powerful Royal Navy is really going to deep down in their heart believe that? With no disrespect intended to the members of the Icelandic Coast Guard, they were outnumbered and outgunned by a better trained navy that had a tradition of victory stretching back centuries. And yet, Iceland came out victorious in all three of the Cod Wars.
5. Diplomacy is good. One of the elements that allowed Iceland to come out on top of the Cod Wars was a strong diplomatic effort. One reason that Iceland prevailed with the implementation of the 200 mile exclusion zone was that was the limit being decided on in the United Nations' Conference on the Law of the Sea that began in 1973. A factor that helped is that the U.K. stood to benefit far more from receiving drilling rights in the North Sea than from any economic loss it sustained from the loss of its northern fishing fleet.
Other diplomatic efforts designed to put pressure on the U.K. leadership were overtures to the Soviet Union seeking to purchase additional patrol boats for the Icelandic Coast Guard and threats to deny access to NATO forces to the naval base in Keflavík.
While CCP has not implemented features like a binding treaty mechanic (see point 2 for one possible reason), players in Eve Online are aided by features that allow corporations to form alliances, grant and deny access to their facilities and to mark friendly players, corporations and alliances "blue" in order to prevent accidents from occurring.
6. Smack talk in local is normal. We may have British fishermen to blame for CCP's acceptance of smack talk in local and on the forums. According to the documentary whenever matters were going well for the fishermen, they would blare Rule Britannia! over the radio. I don't know if the Icelanders responded in kind, but smack talk in local is possibly an Icelandic military tradition.
7. Tears. A lot of people outside the game don't like the fact that players in Eve enjoy others' tears and think that CCP needs to do something to stop the harvest. Apparently they don't know Icelandic history. Here is a clip describing a situation from the first Cod War that immediately reminded me of Eve.
I am sure I missed a lot of items from the Cod Wars that slipped into the philosophy and mechanics of Eve Online. I'm not a scholar and don't really know a lot about Iceland. I traveled to Reykjavik for Fanfest and believe that getting to know a bit about Iceland helps in understanding Eve. I received the first inkling that the Cod Wars were a big deal when I ran across a display about the ICGV Óðinnand its role in the Cod Wars when walking to the Harpa Center from my hotel. Watching History of the Cod Wars helped me understand Iceland just a little bit more.
Last night I worked late and instead of just writing a blog post when I got home I jumped into my Prowler, turned on Eve Radio and started doing distribution missions. I have to say that doing missions is a lot more fun in low sec than in high sec. I tried doing distribution missions again in high sec last weekend and I was bored. Multi-boxing just kept my hands busy.
In low sec I only can run one pilot at a time, but I find that I'm a lot more interested in my surroundings. The real possibility of losing a ship keeps one's mind focused pretty well. The whole process of checking local, seeing if any nasty pirates are in system and having to make decisions on whether to jump straight to a station or to one of my observation bookmarks to check out the situation keeps things interesting. Did I mention that I'm nervous every time I undock because the stations don't have windows? Oh, and every so often I see NPC pirates at the gates, but since I don't fly ships with weapons mounted in low sec I just cloak up and fly away. But the wrecks of those NPCs do make the overview more colorful and dead Angel Cartel ships always brightens my day.
Is the risk worth it? I don't know about mining, but distribution missions definitely are, especially in a blockade runner. I have a set of bookmarks over a large area, although I need to bookmark a few more systems because I didn't figure missions could take me into another region. I don't know if making all the bookmarks was really necessary, but I feel a lot better having them.
I should add that I am not doing distribution missions for the isk or the loyalty points, although the payouts are much better in low sec than in high. I want to have some stations in low sec where I have perfect refining. Sure, for the corporation I am currently running missions for I could do the standings grind in high sec, but low sec is just more fun. One of these days I will need to learn how to blitz combat missions, but until then distribution missions are what I do to grind standings.
So I have a ton of systems bookmarked, I'm hopefully two weekends away from having standings for perfect refining in some of the local stations and I have a NAP with a 300-man alliance. Looks like I'm moving to low sec, doesn't it? I'm still not sure about that, but I do plan on spending a lot more time there just to see what that part of the game is like.
The trolls posting about botting on the Eve Online forums are beginning to irritate me. I really hate the ones that claim that bans only occur once a year because I think people will begin to believe them. Since CCP Sreegs or CCP Stillman haven't written a new security blog (for understandable reasons) and the CSM hasn't really shared the details of the Security briefing at the Spring Summit (checking to make sure the NDA is not violated), I guess I'll post some more botter tears, this time from the Eve Pilot/Eve Miner forums.
I can hear the groans now. More botter tears? Sorry, but this batch of tears may be interesting, or at least tasty. At least I think I saw the complaints that CCP Stillman hinted at on Twitter a few weeks ago. Also, patch 1.1 came out so I included some of the posts about that to describe some of the frustration of the bot users and to also point out places that CCP is messing with the bot developers.
I should add one additional note. Most of the technical details described in the below forum excerpts have been floating amongst most of the botting forums I visit. One piece of news I have not written about until today is that with CCP's increasingly successful detection of botters using virtual machines, users have been asking bot developers to look into a software called Redguard. I don't know too many details about the software except that most of the developers didn't think too much of the software when first introduced to it. Now? Something for me to research and watch.
Enjoy!
June 14:
baldur: "My bot got banned today and also one of my main chars wich has had no interaction with the bot what so ever my other alt did not get banned tho dont know why? What should i do what should i change. I admit my bot had been running for 2 days mining maby i should tone it down a bit? How did they figure it out? and what can i do to fix it ? and how did they ban my other account wich is not a bot and never has been ?"
June 15:
Famine: "Yup got banned also, right after DT. So far my main is not banned though. Guess ill check back soon. Only been using the bot again for about 4 days, before that i had not used it in over a month. used a VM, transfered isk directly to main, contract trades also, and in game trades to main. He only has 2 days in his skill queue thats what im annoyed about lol. If it was a 14 day ban and i had a long skill in there i wudnt really mind, have no plans to ever sell that character anyways. Id be surprised if my main doesnt get the 14 day ban also. Luckily holidays next week."
Famine: "Hmmm thats strange, they negative isk'd my bots wallet to nearly -700m isk... I know they negative your wallet for the estimate value you used the bot for but roughly that would equal the amount value of what i mined this week i think... if they went further back on the logs wallet wud be down in the -40 to -50bisk range."
spod: "I have just had 4 accounts banned :/ .. thought I was being so careful too. Ah well. I guess eventually they catch up. Time to roll some different ones I suppose. This only came a week after I started ice-mining with 2 of them that got banned. 3rd was a relatively new miner. The 4th was on a VPN, so I don't know why that got flagged. Others on a VPN and mains did not get it. All were using VMWare. I think the worst thing is that they have the stuff in their hangars that I can't get at. Slav, when can we have auto-place to a corporate hangar?!?
"They also negative ISK'd the characters wallets too. I wonder if it's worth biomassing them. Pity though since some are 15mil+ SP characters. Might be a good time for me to properly separate the bots and mains!"
spod: "Yea, it will take around 3 billion to zero out the balances on the chars I've had banned. I'm thinking that might be the end of the bot-box. Just say screw it and go play Skyrim or Civ5. Got nearly a year out of EVE thanks to EVE Pilot, in the end it just feels like a second job."
June 18:
spod: "Just temp banned. May make a new fleet of miners to pay off the ones that got negative ISK'd. It still bothers me how they came to ban mine. I had the timers set to take breaks and be pretty 'human like' I thought. I didn't mine excessively (max of about 10 hours a day, often less). Maybe I just need to reduce the timers further."
June 19:
rrfarmer: "Yep, about 2 billion in the red. Wow I must have mined a ton of Veldspar.
"Been using the bot for about 2 months. This ban is weird, I only booted for a max of 6-8 hours a day, every other day, with a ton of delays and log off times (did a lot of them manually). Also I would take the accounts and go talk in chat on them, get ganked, run corp OPs, and everything a human would do. they must really be getting serious about banning bots. 2 billion in the red is crazy. And with all the regular playing stuff I was doing on these accounts..."
Famine: "Well there would be an increase in bots being banned, CCP used to only mass ban bots every few months. Now they detect and ban bots on a daily basis. I reckon they have some new toys they are using to find them cause there are a hell of a lot of bans going around that started last week."
"Going negative ISK is not just from buying plex, if you are botting they will estimate the total cost of what you mined, negative ISK your wallet, you then have to sell all that ore you mined in order to get your wallet back to being positive. That ensures the economy stays stable."
Famine: "When i started using Eve Pilot i knew it was always only a matter of time until i got caught. Im not bothered about it, i can get caught 1 more time before i have to stop all together and make a new account unassociated with my other accounts. Would never want that char perma banned.
"Using any botting software you WILL get caught eventually, i can 100% guarantee you. It is only a matter of time. Get into botting knowing and accepting this is a must."
June 20:
Dinky: "The program is no longer safe to use if you want to maintain your accounts. Consider this:
1. One account per VPN 2. 6-8 Hours per day 3. Custom bookmarks 4. Custom directories & custom executable names 5. Frequent breaks
....and miner still detected and banned accounts as a result. These miners were new. Had never used the same computer configuration and were all running VMWare.......go figure!"
Dinky: "I only lost 2 of my 5 active botting accounts so far. The 2 accounts were on vmware with each using its own subscribed VPN. Only 1 account per VM and VPN so 5 VM's were running in total. I expect to loose all of them shortly so I have taken the precaution to move the assets out of them and monitor the situation over the next few days. I will then use redguard with new toons and see how I get on.
"My main accounts are okay as they all have separate email addresses & don't use VPN or VMWARE.
"As I said in my original post I only botted a few hours per day on each toon so I think the flagging must have come from the client itself perhaps through the new launcher.
"Whilst I understand the reason for you changing my statement I still think it is a very bad time time to be botting. CCP seem to be winning the battle judging by the number of posts from previously very successful elusive botters."
Zdzichu: "maybe what i writing not will be popular, but ... MINING AT BOT ISIN'T SAFE ANYMORE !!! that was , 2 - 6 years ago, right now - after that many years CCP got toys to catching botters, SLAV EB is a great and usable toy but - like others program like this easy to detecting..."
spod: "I've wondered about only mining in evening hours, i.e. drastically reducing the number of hours and then taking a day/days off every now and then. Maybe that will help. I'll have to crunch the numbers and see if it will even be feasible to run the bots for that short a time and be able to keep the accounts running + make anything decent. If they're only making a few hundred million over the cost of the monthly plex then it's just not worth it."
June 25:
macrolab1: "1.1 changed Inventory windows so Slav has work to do."
Slav2 (EP developer): "Ok, it will take some time to fix. Changes in setting files so first run wizard cannot be completed."
Slav2 (EP dev): "Dont try to use bot while it is not fixed. In best case it will not work, in worst - you will get banned."
Slav2 (EP dev): "CCP implemented crc checks and logging time intervals between making settings. You can see these timers in core_public__.yaml file and I think we need to add more randomization intervals here just in case if this info will be used by CCP to track bots."
Slav2 (EP dev): "The first test version is ready. It works with courier w/o any noticeable problems, hopefully it will work with trader and miner too. I will need to sleep couple of hours and go to work. Can continue tests after the work only."
"edited. Storyline missions support is still broken."
June 26:
Famine (On whether a patch will affect a bot): "Normal update yes that takes like 2 seconds to update, pretty much guaranteed to not effect the bot... major updates that are 650 MB that change the GUI, the inventory system and dozens of other changes... well the only answer to that is.. DUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
DSeverach: "Shader Quality, Texture Quality, and LOD Quality all say High and need to be Low."
Slav2 (EP dev): "Yeah, CCP changed place where they store these settings, I will need to add corrections."
ComalDave: "Eve Miner Statistics. Prices are totally bogus. It is telling me I can make 1 Trillion per hour mining Plagioclase. That is 1,065,301,000,000 ISK per hour. I think something is wrong!"
andre.h91: "3 or 4 day after buy evetrader bot got banned... I use this bot for 4-5 hour for day..."
June 30:
xromxxx:
Поймал банан на 14 суток. написано при входе в игру (I was banned for 14 days. This appeared when I entered the game)
User ------- is banned Last login: 2012.06.16 02:33 Number of visits: 171 Reason: EULA/TOS Violation - Macro use Until: 2012.06.30
По идее сегодня истекает 14 суток - но пока перса не разбанили.Кто сталкивался с этим - посоветуйте что делать ? (The 14 days has expired - but not until the Persian unban. Who has experienced this - advise what to do?)
Акк разбанили.Но он щас в минусе на 34кк.Поправить можно это ? (Account is unbanned. But he is currently in the red at 34 cc. Can you fix this?)
