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This is just impossible since in major alliances there's a non written rule about bots: they're not CCP's police, it's not up to them to do their job and you could get yourself and your corp in trouble if you are known or suspected for bot reporting blues.

I guess this makes it pretty clear how the problem should be handled.

What, exactly, do you think is "telling"? Are you making a moral argument about a business solution? If so, you are a giant ****** who doesn't understand the realities of this game and is operating in a moral fantasy land that simply doesn't exist in EVE or in the real world as well.

What is telling is that allowing botting is pretty much something ANY non-tech holding alliance must allow or put themselves at a massive disadvantage due to their anaemic income potential without the influx of isk from botting taxes. If you don't you allow your enemies to gain an advantage over you that you simply CAN NOT match. You allow botters or you cut your own throat, live in highsec and have little to no impact on the game at all. The big nulsec entities don't encourage botting, but they have little choice but to allow it. The rules against reporting blues are simply ensuring loyalty. If you are more interested in reporting a botter, rather than flying with them in fleets and keeping your space, they you can **** right off and go back to running lvl4s in highsec.

You mistake my acceptance of a reality of the game as approval for the methods we are discussing. To be clear, I have no issue with botting per se (I prefer to call it automation), what I object to is an uneven playing field. I have no problem with automation commonly called "bots" as long as EVERYONE has access to them. I actually would encourage more automation of boring activities in the game using internal tools and scripting languages which would allow CCP to control exactly what and to what extent activities could be automated.

The real problem isn't that "Bots are ruining the game".. that is a nul statement with no meaning. It is that botting allows an advantage to those who use bots which upsets the level playing field that EVE is trying to achieve. Alliances allow botting simply because it evens the playing field against their enemies, who DO use bots. Any other course of action is suicide. Giving the enemy a massive advantage because you have moral issues with what you have to do to remain competitive is stupid. You do what you have to do. We have a blanket ban on leadership botting and anyone caught doing it will have themselves and their corp removed from the Alliance. Again, this has NOTHING to do with how we feel about botting, it is simply because we can't risk someone in our leadership being hit with a 14 day ban and leaving us high and dry.

I would be over the moon with happiness if Darius (Screegs) manages to fix botting, or at least reduces it to manageable levels. It would mean a level playing field, but until then I will continue to allow botting. As for the "Reporting Blues".. it is hard enough to hold and keep sov without dealing with botting drama. If your first loyalty isn't to the Alliance and your blues, then we don't need or want you as all you would be bringing to the alliance is more drama and fall-out for leadership to deal with. We don't need such blues.

Pointless, doing it all wrong.

Rather than using bots to fatten up your wallets JUST BAN THEM AND KEEP THEM BANNED.

Honestly, if you have sufficient evidence someone is botting, WHY THE FUK WOULD YOU TEMP BAD THEM.

Once a cheater, always a cheater.

A man will cheat on his wife once and do it again with less hesitance.
Once you type in that GTA San Andreas cheat code, you wont stop doing it every new game you start.
People caught using flyhacks on my Minecraft server = instant perm ban, IP, not username.

Either get the message across or keep failing.

Do it right and ban the fukers perm if you have sufficient evidence.

GOOD DEAL - SMACK 'EM HARD AND SMACK 'EM EARLY!!

How about spicing up the time bans with a little fine to help them lose some of that cheated for ISK? Forget how much they have hidden in other accounts, send them into the red with a billion isk fine per cheating instance. Sieze property to satisfy the fine, set a 50% tax on all future earnings to pay for the fines. Make every chuckle they had about "getting over on the rest of us" cost them a huge amount per chuckle. Don't let them credit card their way out of the hole with plexes.

Crash down on the turd I heard in the computer store a couple of months ago bragging about making 300 - 400 USD a month off of Eve. Strange, he wouldn't tell me his toon's name, but his carseat was sticky when he finally left and sat down in a bucket seat full soda that slipped out of my hand when I was walking by his car. Damn, and that was the last Mountain Dew the store had!

Never let up on them!!!

While I fully admit I am not in any way in charge of banning bots, nor have I ever been in any game. In my opinion YOU have no idea how simple it is to ban bots in bulk. I "personally" report a large number every day casually playing. Most arn't hard to detect, they are all huddled up next to an orca, they almost always have "reject all convos" enabled, they sit out there for 18-23 hours on end, forever.

Let's say all I did was go after bots that fit this exact description, I could personally ban over a 100 a day just going from system to system for about 6 hours a day. (A bit of a estimation, but I feel it's fairly accurate.) Now a developer that works a full day doing just this, has access to teleport type commands, and can bypass convo blocks/send popup warnings etc... should be putting my numbers to shame.

If they really wanted to ban bots, 90% of bots would be gone in a month tops, they also wouldn't be giving this moronic temp bans for botting, it'd just be an outright perma-ban. And if CCP are somehow having an issue with this, hire me, and I will personally take care of almost all the bots in a month. I wouldn't make all these claims unless I could do the damn thing myself, I'm willing to backup my words with action if CCP can't do it.

Lastly, one thing I don't get... CCP could make a small fortune banning the bots rather than keeping them around. each one banned is a new account they have to make, and most bots use PLEX to make new ones. So they make $20 for each one banned, and even more if you nail the ones holding the bulk PLEX. But I guess they are worried the bots will move on or something instead of buying more PLEX.

I don't believe that using Dotlan is in any way a valid measurement of botting activity. If you decide that it is then all I can do is argue with you and you're simply not going to agree with me. Believe it or not everything isn't some giant conspiracy amd if you're using financials as a measurement we believe we benefit more financially from doing something about the problem.

Your statement regarding twice a year is just clearly false as other posts in this thread have pointed out.

The reporting feature provides us with a lot of useful information.

Just gonna leave both of those out there. If this was a simple thing to deal with we'd already be there. I'm sure I could be accused of a lot of things but relishing wasting my time has never been one of them. The conspiracies fall apart when you accept the fact that the easy way out in all of this would have just been to leave the problem alone. We simply didn't feel that was the right thing to do and I've personally put in a lot of time and effort to ensuring things stay that way.

So it seems a few dudes have recieved bans for afking domis while at work.

I would have hoped CCP would at least be banning botters by now