EVE General Discussion

My brother and a friend were banned a few days ago. The explanatory mail accused them of "Macroing".

They weren't macroing.

Here's what they were actually doing:

1. Find area in HIGHSEC where rats spawn
2. Turn on local tank
3. Launch a few sentry drones
4. Target each drone and apply remote reps to drones
5. Sit back and watch as wave after wave of rats attack the ship and/or the drones, and are blown up

As you can clearly see, this setup requires NO CLICKING OF ANY KIND, much less automated clicking.

Both players asked for an in-depth explanation of their bans, and received identical copypasta responses claiming that GMs had investigated and found evidence of "automation", and stating that further petitions would be ignored.

YOU'D THINK LAUNCHING SENTRY DRONES AND REMOTE REPAIRING THEM IS OK, but I guess I need to get a Dev ruling on the acceptability of this practice.

(If any dev actually reads this, please PM me with some advice on how I can help my associates get un-banned.)

Devs don't make game policy. They make games. What you want to do is click on the escalate button and get a senior GM involved.

Yeah well that led to the "We'll be ignoring your future petitions" response.

I can't see why this is bannable.

You didn't use any additional programs.

It's simply a case of a game mechanic allowing for afk behaviour to be profitable. In the same way that miners can leave their lasers running while they go and do other things. I realise that this allows much more protected periods of time afk than mining since their cargo fills up sooner or later but I doubt the profit is equivalent either.

Would you be banned if you were just idling in a belt with drones out? Thats equally automated but altogether more dumb because you're not guaranteeing the safety of the drones.

One interesting approach would be to drop 2 Domis out with sentries + 5 RRs decdicated to drones and one for a Noctis. Then bring a Noctis in and loot while the domis AFK it. Use a Hauler to carry loot back to the station - so now you're quad boxing but only need to pay attention to 2 of them (noctis + hauler).

-Liang

Actually, that sounds like a great idea. Using a dominix with 5 medium reppers and 5 sentry drones. I've had trouble with the whole drones getting aggro, but this makes everything much simpler!

(I dualbox dominixes, and both use sentry drones, one also has guns. It's a pain to pull both batches of drones and so on.)

I don't see how this is a banable offense...

You either indirectly pissed off a dev or 2.
Or someone reported you and thought you were macroing.

easy fix. remove remote repping modules from game. will fix also neutral remote reppers in hisec ...

That may well be. But for the time being, I would like to minimize the number of clicks I must engage in by using drones; that's the playstyle I have chosen. I would also like to remote repair my drones when they take damage.

If the devs can crawl out of the woodwork to declare the webbing mechanic an exploit, they can give a ruling here too. If it's an exploit, I won't do it, and neither will my mates when/if they get reinstated.

IBL!