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How to deal with Market Bots
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Fango Mango
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2012-01-26 01:41:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Fango Mango
So sadly, one of my markets has been infected by a bot.

Whenever online, it will update the buy/sell orders of a least 2 itmes (only ones I have confirmed it is botting) within 30 seconds of not being the highest buy order / lowest sell order. I suppose it *could* be a person, but I've checked maybe 50 times over the last week and it always updates within 30 seconds. I'm pretty certain it's not a human . . .

Normal buy/sell spread for these items is about 50% with a daily volume around 500Mil Isk. I'm guessing this bot is bringing in an average profit of about 50 Million per day on these two items. Not a lot, but it's annoying because I can't compete with it.

Anyway . . . on to what I should do about.

First . . .Does filing a petition do any good? Will CCP ban market bots or it is filing just a waste of time.

On to the real question . . .
How do I take advantage of the bot.
It seems fairly smart . . . the max I can run it's buy price up to is about 10% above region average.
The max I can run it's sell price down to is about 30% above region average.

The best luck I have had is running the buy price up as far as I can, filling it's order with my stock and then I buying low until the owner sets up another order (apparently it does not do this on its own).

Any other thoughts on how to game market bots, get them banned, or otherwise convince them to move to another market.

-FM
Mr Blueberry
#2 - 2012-01-26 02:28:33 UTC
Make a tiny buy/sell order to compete with it, have your price lower or higher by the 10% you say you can modify it to. Assuming the bot doesn't log it previous orders you should be able to exploit that.

If it does modify its orders using regional average then that can be exploited too...granted it would be expensive for you to do that and not really worth the effort.

But if you have the isk; do it for the lulz.
Fango Mango
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2012-01-26 02:34:05 UTC
Mr Blueberry wrote:
Make a tiny buy/sell order to compete with it, have your price lower or higher by the 10% you say you can modify it to. Assuming the bot doesn't log it previous orders you should be able to exploit that.

If it does modify its orders using regional average then that can be exploited too...granted it would be expensive for you to do that and not really worth the effort.

But if you have the isk; do it for the lulz.


Thanks,

This is what I have tried to do with limited sucess. The end result is that I can make a little bit of cash off the BOT, maybe 10% profit per unit, but it still will make 30% profit per unit.
1) I'd rather be making the 40% profit myself
Or 2) I would rather have the stock of items to use myself.

I was just wondering how other people deal with this issue.

-FM
Jacob Stiller
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#4 - 2012-01-26 02:46:32 UTC
If I run into a situation where someone perfectly monopolizes buys orders day after day, I simply use my buy order to bait them into crashing their own margin. If I can't get into a market at all, I may as well minimize the profits of the monopolizer. Pirate
Severian Autarch
Tribal Liberation Force
Minmatar Republic
#5 - 2012-01-26 03:53:00 UTC
Fango Mango wrote:
So sadly, one of my markets has been infected by a bot.

Whenever online, it will update the buy/sell orders of a least 2 itmes (only ones I have confirmed it is botting) within 30 seconds of not being the highest buy order / lowest sell order. I suppose it *could* be a person, but I've checked maybe 50 times over the last week and it always updates within 30 seconds. I'm pretty certain it's not a human . . .

Normal buy/sell spread for these items is about 50% with a daily volume around 500Mil Isk. I'm guessing this bot is bringing in an average profit of about 50 Million per day on these two items. Not a lot, but it's annoying because I can't compete with it.

Anyway . . . on to what I should do about.

First . . .Does filing a petition do any good? Will CCP ban market bots or it is filing just a waste of time.

On to the real question . . .
How do I take advantage of the bot.
It seems fairly smart . . . the max I can run it's buy price up to is about 10% above region average.
The max I can run it's sell price down to is about 30% above region average.

The best luck I have had is running the buy price up as far as I can, filling it's order with my stock and then I buying low until the owner sets up another order (apparently it does not do this on its own).

Any other thoughts on how to game market bots, get them banned, or otherwise convince them to move to another market.

-FM



So if you were to immediately close the gap by placing a buy at 10.1% above and a sell at 29.9% above, would this effectively cutthe bot out of the market? Your profit would be capped at the 20% spread. But you're still making a profit, the hotter makes nothing, and after a few days of this the botter may move on.
Lucinda Hamu
Doomheim
#6 - 2012-01-26 08:52:47 UTC
Jacob Stiller wrote:
If I run into a situation where someone perfectly monopolizes buys orders day after day, I simply use my buy order to bait them into crashing their own margin. If I can't get into a market at all, I may as well minimize the profits of the monopolizer. Pirate


You're evil but I like your line of thought.
Jorn Isu
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#7 - 2012-01-26 09:02:46 UTC  |  Edited by: Jorn Isu
1) If the item is manufacturable, at a cost below the regional average, I'd get a few billion isk worth of it from a bulk manufacturer and fill his order each time. Or, hell, find someone who manufactures them and tip them off to a little secret. Hopefully the ******* will leave when he realizes he spent 10b on mods worth 9.2b that will take him 3 weeks to flip for his 12b revenue, even if he buys no more. That way, you don't have to do any work, and hopefully you can move back in to that particular market after a month once the jerk's been driven out.
Lyrka Bloodberry
Spybeaver
#8 - 2012-01-26 10:37:40 UTC
File a petition and switch to a different item. It's not that there aren't enough profitable ones.
Ruining the Bot's profit won't help you maximizing yours.

Spybeaver
Nerath Naaris
Pink Winged Unicorns for Peace Love and Anarchy
#9 - 2012-01-26 11:33:49 UTC
Lyrka Bloodberry wrote:
Ruining the Bot's profit won't help you maximizing yours.


Depends on how you define "profit", I guess.....

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Brewlar Kuvakei
Adeptio Gloriae
#10 - 2012-01-26 16:28:34 UTC
CCP will sadly take no action against the bot unelss it is RMT related. Even if they do take action it will be in the form of a warning and the botter will get 3 of these before any sort of ban will be considered. Sadly you just have to stop trading items that the bot markets in that region.

Welcome to the ****-hole bot fest that is EVE online.
Adunh Slavy
#11 - 2012-01-26 22:41:22 UTC
Trade on trends, not spreads.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.  - William Pitt
SOOHN ABREEZ
Doomheim
#12 - 2012-01-27 05:45:46 UTC
I predict you will not find much consolation or satisfying help on this subject AND....... CCP will lock this thread down if the bot discussion continues much further.
EnslaverOfMinmatar
You gonna get aped
#13 - 2012-01-27 08:27:28 UTC
Fango Mango wrote:
So sadly, one of my markets has been infected by a bot.

Whenever online, it will update the buy/sell orders of a least 2 itmes (only ones I have confirmed it is botting) within 30 seconds of not being the highest buy order / lowest sell order. I suppose it *could* be a person, but I've checked maybe 50 times over the last week and it always updates within 30 seconds. I'm pretty certain it's not a human . . .

Sell 1 item to him and send him some evemails saying something like 'haha bot detected'. If it's a player, he'll likey reply with "**** OFF IDIOT" or similar.

Every EVE player must read this http://www.eveonline.com/background/potw/default.asp?cid=29-01-07
Brewlar Kuvakei
Adeptio Gloriae
#14 - 2012-01-27 12:04:32 UTC  |  Edited by: Brewlar Kuvakei
Sad but true most bots will have convo diabled. One thing to do is spam the bot with trade requests with an alt. Trade requests can not be declined and this usally buggers to bot up for a couple of hours if it's not being managed by an actual player while he's on his alt.

Performing trade requests is a good way to detect market bots. As you know when they are closed as your window closes too. So if you offer 3 trades from 3 alts to the bot while he's updating his orders, you will detect the bot by the fact it's orders no longer update and it does not understand how to close the trade windows. If it closes the windopws and continues trading it's probably a human or at least being monitored by a human.

Most market bots I've seen still are not scripted to close trade windows. I imagine if everybody does this to the bots they soon will be LOL
Brewlar Kuvakei
Adeptio Gloriae
#15 - 2012-01-27 12:11:11 UTC
Anyway there is simple solution for market bots. It's called Catha but CCP don't give 2 ***** about botting so dream on for a simple anti market bot system. Every 20 orders or so should ask fora written test but meh. Botters on forum will come monaing saying no that would disrupt gameplay for normal people. Would it hell the only people it would disrupt is botters and that is why you'll be moaning below.
Maeste Madeveda
The Spawning Pool
#16 - 2012-01-27 13:55:44 UTC
Jacob Stiller wrote:
If I run into a situation where someone perfectly monopolizes buys orders day after day, I simply use my buy order to bait them into crashing their own margin. If I can't get into a market at all, I may as well minimize the profits of the monopolizer. Pirate

Which - if the developper isn't a script kiddie - would require a way bigger time investment in reverse-engineering the algorithm
than it will requires the developper to tweak it. Sometimes it's just not worth it.

That being said, to reverse any algorithm you need to make one yourself, predict its behavior (or run it) and experiment the market. Tracking information and responses will be the best allies for anyone facing a bot.
Brewlar Kuvakei
Adeptio Gloriae
#17 - 2012-01-27 14:30:06 UTC
I like how CCP boasts thatt EVE has a ''dynamic player driven ecconmy.''. Someone should complain to trading standards that this statement is utter lies and the majority of the market is controled by scripts thus it's an ai driven ecconemy. Maybe they'll force them to retract this statement :).
Mr Blueberry
#18 - 2012-01-27 14:36:56 UTC
Brewlar Kuvakei wrote:
Anyway there is simple solution for market bots. It's called Catha but CCP don't give 2 ***** about botting so dream on for a simple anti market bot system. Every 20 orders or so should ask fora written test but meh. Botters on forum will come monaing saying no that would disrupt gameplay for normal people. Would it hell the only people it would disrupt is botters and that is why you'll be moaning below.



My market bot will I normally manage about 60 or so orders. If I had to prove I'm a person with Captchas 3 times in a run it wouldn't disrupt me but would certainly **** me off.
Brewlar Kuvakei
Adeptio Gloriae
#19 - 2012-01-27 17:55:32 UTC
Mr Blueberry wrote:
Brewlar Kuvakei wrote:
Anyway there is simple solution for market bots. It's called Catha but CCP don't give 2 ***** about botting so dream on for a simple anti market bot system. Every 20 orders or so should ask fora written test but meh. Botters on forum will come monaing saying no that would disrupt gameplay for normal people. Would it hell the only people it would disrupt is botters and that is why you'll be moaning below.



My market bot will I normally manage about 60 or so orders. If I had to prove I'm a person with Captchas 3 times in a run it wouldn't disrupt me but would certainly **** me off.



Typing a 5 letter word for you is difficult?
Mr Blueberry
#20 - 2012-01-27 19:13:54 UTC
Brewlar Kuvakei wrote:
Mr Blueberry wrote:


My market bot will I normally manage about 60 or so orders. If I had to prove I'm a person with Captchas 3 times in a run it wouldn't disrupt me but would certainly **** me off.



Typing a 5 letter word for you is difficult?
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