These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Make Mining Interesting & Eliminate Bots: A Solution
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Nachtweilige
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#1 - 2011-10-31 10:52:48 UTC
I was reading another thread where it was suggested, as it has been many times, that mining should incorporate some kind of mini-game to make it more interesting and discourage bots. Every suggestion offered thus far has been fairly easily circumvented by bots and suffers from the same problem as mining currently, it is repetitive and therefore dull.

An amazing solution popped into my head.

Roid belts with mobile roids and collision damage.

Bump mechanism already exists, adding damage to this (ONLY for roids/non controllable objects due to other balance problems) would make venturing into an asteroid belt a dangerous and even exciting prospect.

This also allows for skill and ship access to higher ores by putting them in more dangerous/faster moving roid fields. Imaging a belt in Jita filled with Arkonor that is so dangerous only a handful of pilots in all of New Eden would dare to enter it... sounds kind of cool... mining=cool? Neato.

Also, designing a bot to circumvent this system would be EXTREMELY difficult because it is largely a question of spatial reasoning with limited non-visual feedback. The only way I could see a bot attempting to function in this type of model would be to shuffle the overview by distance and constantly target the closest 'roid and set it to keep at some distance, cycling mining targets as well so that one is always in range. Doable, but it is easy to see that even in a field that would be relatively easy for a human to navigate the bot would be in big trouble, and the mechanism of setting distance like that would be instantaneously recognisable (on the back end, for banning/monitoring purposes) as non-human, since it is inherently inferiour to the natural human method of simply analysing the spaces between the roids and moving your ship accordingly.
DetKhord Saisio
Seniors Clan
#2 - 2011-10-31 13:24:23 UTC  |  Edited by: DetKhord Saisio
Faster moving asteroids? I was not aware they moved at all. Some rotate on an axis, but you can easily keep them at range while sitting still.

Assuming the movement was from left to right of a targeted asteroid and you were within 5k of the passing asteroids, you could still remain still and target them when they come in range. Mining the ore while it is in range would probably give you at least one full cycle of mining on that asteroid before it moves out of range. Then you select another as it moves around the "asteroid racetrack".

What kind of velocity for the asteroids did you have in mind? If they move too quickly for even an orca to keep pace, normal miners would suffer... but then again, it can use its long-range tractor beam.

Joke: I can see it now, people fitting their exhumers to go 3000 meters / sec
De'Veldrin
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2011-10-31 13:31:38 UTC
DetKhord Saisio wrote:

Joke: I can see it now, people fitting their exhumers to go 3000 meters / sec



That would certainly make suicide ganking more interesting.

De'Veldrin's Corollary (to Malcanis' Law): Any idea that seeks to limit the ability of a large nullsec bloc to do something in the name of allowing more small groups into sov null will inevitably make it that much harder for small groups to enter sov null.
David Xavier
The Capsuleers of Unconscious Thought
#4 - 2011-10-31 13:42:46 UTC
DetKhord Saisio wrote:
Faster moving asteroids? I was not aware they moved at all. Some rotate on an axis, but you can easily keep them at range while sitting still.

Assuming the movement was from left to right of a targeted asteroid and you were within 5k of the passing asteroids, you could still remain still and target them when they come in range. Mining the ore while it is in range would probably give you at least one full cycle of mining on that asteroid before it moves out of range. Then you select another as it moves around the "asteroid racetrack".

What kind of velocity for the asteroids did you have in mind? If they move too quickly for even an orca to keep pace, normal miners would suffer... but then again, it can use its long-range tractor beam.

Joke: I can see it now, people fitting their exhumers to go 3000 meters / sec


What the OP suggests is the belts should consist of moving asteroids which could CRUSH your mining ship into a neat cloud of metal particles if you do not pay attention.

So you not just need to be in range of them but avoid getting tenderized as well.

I don't suffer from insanity.. I enjoy it !
DetKhord Saisio
Seniors Clan
#5 - 2011-10-31 14:06:40 UTC
David Xaxier, How exactly would they crush my ship if I am staying 5km from the "asteroid racetrack"?? If you try to fly through the path of passing asteroids, yes they could damage your ship or even destroy it. I said you would remain near them but not in their path.

On that note, since you bring up the possibility of objects causing impact damage... Newton's Second Law ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_laws_of_motion ). To my knowledge, Force [ F = m x a ; formula for force = object mass multiplied by acceleration] has never been an active or damaging property of any object/ship/whatever in EVE. This would also create the possibility of ships "suiciding" into titans to destroy them.
Corazani
EVE University
Ivy League
#6 - 2011-10-31 14:35:02 UTC
So... you want to introduce a mechanic whereby people can gank mining ships without involving CONCORD?

IE: bump mining ships into asteroids, seeing as under your plan only the asteroids and such objects would do damage, not the ships themselves.

I'm going to have to go with: "Consider all the implications before voicing suggestions."
Rico Minali
Sons Of 0din
Commonwealth Vanguard
#7 - 2011-10-31 15:23:04 UTC
You will also eliminate semi afk mining, thereby even further reducing the minerals and ice market. Botless eve is better eve, but some things you should still be able to watch a movie (pron) while doing...

Trust me, I almost know what I'm doing.
Estheria Quintessimo
Mechanical Eagles Inc.
#8 - 2011-10-31 17:10:52 UTC
Rico Minali wrote:
You will also eliminate semi afk mining, thereby even further reducing the minerals and ice market. Botless eve is better eve, but some things you should still be able to watch a movie (pron) while doing...
Indeed, I totally agree with this!

To OP .... I can watch several great sci-fi movies while mining (on another char). But I would still have to move from time to time anyway, If I'm not jetcan mining but hauling my ore back to a station. It wont be that I am inactive. I'll have my eye on the game several times per minute. Emptied asteroid, get on next one. Or watching at what point in a cycle I have to quit mining, to maximize my load in the cargo and haul it back to a station. In fact, that last one is already a kind of a mini game. Smile

One of the great appeals of eve, atleast for me, is that mining is a simple way to make money whitout doing fancy things and flying around avoiding all kinds of dangers I did not want to interact with all the time and perhaps get frustrated. Yes I am a highsec miner (on another char), and perhaps it makes me a coward, not willing to have some action, .... but atleast I'd be a relax coward, while watching a movie.

If the intend it to prevent botting, ... that would probably only work for a while, because botters would come up with some genius solution soon, most likely.

If preventing boredome is it ... Then stop mining and go do something else, imho.

Neque femina amissa pudicitia alia abnuerit.
Nachtweilige
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#9 - 2011-10-31 17:38:39 UTC
Good criticisms for the most part, glad to not get flamed!

The interesting part of a system like this is that it has a wide range of applications.

Imagine different sorts of asteroid fields:

Some could be an "asteroid racetrack," as we have now. This could be a slow moving belt with low-level ores, good for afk/moviewatching miners, or bots using the strategy DetKhord described, of course it would be tons of fun bumping bots into these slow moving belts in high sec for consequence free lulz, while a real player would clearly see your intent and possibly dodge your high speed interceptor suicide bump, landing you facefirst in an angry veldspar :D That could make for some fun mechanics :P

Others could be an asteroid minefield, a large zone with low level ores at the edges and higher level ores in the center. This could range from slow moving medium difficulty fields to out of control 'roid blenders that are impossible to navigate by all but the most skilled miners in the best ships. If botters can design a profitable program that will dynamically respond to emergent conditions like these using only visual input... well, then I would imagine they could probably just hack the game to dispense aurum at will, or to become self aware... :D


Also, the possibility for new ships and skills and modules is apparent here. Agile barges, heavily tanked barges, bonus to resistance from asteroid damage, repulsor fields, etc... as well as new strategies, like bringing a tackler to put a web on a particularly juicy rock while you strip mine it, or a noctis to sneakily pull some of the smaller valuable 'roids out of the field using your tractor beam range bonus.

This reminds me of another possibility. What if asteroids weren't labeled? I mean, when you look at an arkonor, you know it's an arkonor... but would a bot know? Well, maybe, but it would have to be a hell of a bot :D That might give a little more of a skill aspect to it, giving the composition scanners a little more use, as well, where you might need to bring a scanning ship with composition scanners to designate targets and make sure your barges are getting the best ore.
Estheria Quintessimo
Mechanical Eagles Inc.
#10 - 2011-10-31 17:52:47 UTC  |  Edited by: Estheria Quintessimo
I think the most easy way for a bot to know what it is mining would be:
- mmm .... unlabeled asteroid,
- mine for 1 second, stop mining,
- see what just hopped in my cargo bay.

A more difficult mechanism would perhaps indeed be a visible reckognition system, but I dont think it would be beyond impossible. For instance a smart system coud simply have a database with percentages of coloured pixels used in certain asteroids. If camera's near a soccerfield could pick out rampant hooligans by facial reckognition, ... then I am sure reckognizing pixeled asteroids from a game, is not impossible to find out too.

Dont forget that botters do this for a living. There are lot of smart people around that bot too. And such mathematical wizardry formula's already exist. I play other games too whom are infested with bots, ... they are a true pest, and hard to irredicate.

Neque femina amissa pudicitia alia abnuerit.
Velicitia
XS Tech
#11 - 2011-10-31 18:28:51 UTC
Nachtweilige wrote:
Good criticisms for the most part, glad to not get flamed!

The interesting part of a system like this is that it has a wide range of applications.

Imagine different sorts of asteroid fields:

Some could be an "asteroid racetrack," as we have now. This could be a slow moving belt with low-level ores, good for afk/moviewatching miners, or bots using the strategy DetKhord described, of course it would be tons of fun bumping bots into these slow moving belts in high sec for consequence free lulz, while a real player would clearly see your intent and possibly dodge your high speed interceptor suicide bump, landing you facefirst in an angry veldspar :D That could make for some fun mechanics :P

Others could be an asteroid minefield, a large zone with low level ores at the edges and higher level ores in the center. This could range from slow moving medium difficulty fields to out of control 'roid blenders that are impossible to navigate by all but the most skilled miners in the best ships. If botters can design a profitable program that will dynamically respond to emergent conditions like these using only visual input... well, then I would imagine they could probably just hack the game to dispense aurum at will, or to become self aware... :D


Also, the possibility for new ships and skills and modules is apparent here. Agile barges, heavily tanked barges, bonus to resistance from asteroid damage, repulsor fields, etc... as well as new strategies, like bringing a tackler to put a web on a particularly juicy rock while you strip mine it, or a noctis to sneakily pull some of the smaller valuable 'roids out of the field using your tractor beam range bonus.

This reminds me of another possibility. What if asteroids weren't labeled? I mean, when you look at an arkonor, you know it's an arkonor... but would a bot know? Well, maybe, but it would have to be a hell of a bot :D That might give a little more of a skill aspect to it, giving the composition scanners a little more use, as well, where you might need to bring a scanning ship with composition scanners to designate targets and make sure your barges are getting the best ore.



visual recognition would be fun ... for about 15 minutes. So maybe a skill or something (hey, we already have "prospector" as a certificate chain) that lets you know what rocks actually have something of value.

Make it "hard" to train so some degree...
Veld/Scord -- easy enough to train for anyone (x1)
Plag, Pyro, Kern, Omber -- moderate training required
Hemorphite, Hedberigte, Jaspet -- higher training required
nullsec -- for the pros

essentially, like what the processing skills are now in terms of multiplier and prereq skills. Working off of this, say Level 1 of a particular skill lets you sort out which ones are the vanilla rocks (so they're listed as "Veldspar", "Scordite", "Plagioclase", etc) ... L3 to get the +5% varieties and L5 to get the +10%? without the skills, you can mine the unknowns, but you have just as much chance of getting nothing as you do one of the better varieties or one of the better ore types.

You won't know what it is until you try refining it, and even then you won't really be able to tell, since you'll get say lots of trit, some pye, mex, and iso...

One of the bitter points of a good bittervet is the realisation that all those SP don't really do much, and that the newbie is having much more fun with what little he has. - Tippia
Scrapyard Bob
EVE University
Ivy League
#12 - 2011-10-31 20:27:29 UTC
Estheria Quintessimo wrote:
I think the most easy way for a bot to know what it is mining would be:
- mmm .... unlabeled asteroid,
- mine for 1 second, stop mining,
- see what just hopped in my cargo bay.

A more difficult mechanism would perhaps indeed be a visible reckognition system, but I dont think it would be beyond impossible. For instance a smart system coud simply have a database with percentages of coloured pixels used in certain asteroids. If camera's near a soccerfield could pick out rampant hooligans by facial reckognition, ... then I am sure reckognizing pixeled asteroids from a game, is not impossible to find out too.

Dont forget that botters do this for a living. There are lot of smart people around that bot too. And such mathematical wizardry formula's already exist. I play other games too whom are infested with bots, ... they are a true pest, and hard to irredicate.


Since your client has to have the information to know which color texture to apply to the asteroid - the bot program would just pluck that bit of information out of process memory (or just sniff the data packet sent by the server). No need to do optical recognition.

Which is why mini-games fail as a concept. Anything a human can do repeatedly can be done by a bot (witness the mission running bots or the ratting bots). Worse, the human will get tired after a while, especially if the mini-game is tedious, while the bot can run for hours and hours.
Thomas Turnpoint
Doomheim
#13 - 2011-10-31 21:05:21 UTC
Eve would lose a lot of subbed accounts due to this making it extremely difficult to run 3 or 4 mining ships at once.

Just because you see 4 mining ships working together, doesn't mean there are 4 individuals playing.
Nachtweilige
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#14 - 2011-11-01 07:01:44 UTC
Scrapyard's botting solution is quite elegant... a little too elegant :D

Velicitia's suggestion for additional skills for asteroid identification could add an interesting aspect to the game adding more progression to the mining career, and would at least add additional cost in time and isk to creating mining bot characters.

As for miners unsubbing because they can no longer run 4 accounts at once, this could be problematic for CCP since that sweet sweet irl isk from people purchasing multiple accounts would be reduced to only one account, though the in game isk making ability of the miners would likely remain constant due to increased mineral prices from reduced botting/multiboxing miners.

Then again, reduced revenue from fewer botters and multiboxers means less development resources and that means :(

So I guess the premise that botting should be reduced or high-end ore mining be made difficult enough to fully engage a player may be faulty.

Then again, bots and multiboxers could still get at the cheap, safe ores, so what this would really do is increase the variation in ore values from the bottom to the top.
Franky Sugaz
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#15 - 2011-11-01 08:33:42 UTC
there is no need for complete change in a game mechanic to remove bots from EvE, the game already log every single action a toon do a dedicated group of skilled GMs can catch 90% of them in no time, but you know a bot is a payed account you can immagine if 30% of the current payed account would be permabanned for botting what kind of loss is for CCP?

tl:dr
There is already planty of metods to catch and ban 90% of the bots, if it hasn't already done is because CCP don't want to permaban them and lose their subs.