Bots

[Deacon]

It's certain, I'll not invest any more RL currency into the game, until such things...bots and cheaters are outlawed and steps taken to remove them. If you want to play a game..for gods sake...PLAY IT!!!!

Thanks

[MvGulik]

Makes you wonder why the mafia(s) can maintain itself as a Billion dollar industrie.
Emotional tunnel vision no doubt.

[Slayblaze]

I saw this thread the other day and thought it was just an attempt at sarcasm, or to see who would take the bait and actually say "good idea" and be exposed as the scum they are. Bingo! Got a few bites on the bait.

It would be quite hard to believe that the developer stance against bots would be apathetic, as I'm sure they understand that it completely undermines the very game systems that they designed. Almost everything in Salem seems designed to foil the effectiveness at botting - I've seen many new players ask "why is game system XYZ designed this difficult way?" and I've seen the answered reply be "because it discourages bots".

As for the official stance being 'not liking them', I would think that it should be enough for anyone actively botting to reconsider their choice. They might not be 'policing them' quite yet, but the hammer will eventually fall if any degree of integrity exists in the desire to build a game world free of hacks, cheats, and bots as is humanly possible.

The only viable excuse for allowing bots right now is since the game is still beta they might be interested to see what bots people come up with so they can be better stamped out and kept to a minimum in the future.

[Nixman]

enough for anyone actively botting to reconsider their choice.

Botters don't give a flying fug about rules, the very nature of botter's is opportunistic and if rules are ever put in place they will just attempt to circumvent them. That's the nature of a botter.

Im actually with Deacon on this, I wont be putting money into a game which doesnt follow fair play rules. I dont mind spending £100 and losing it, if it is won fairly within the rule of the game, anything else is a scam.

[harflimon]

I'm sort of curious what exactly a bot would be able to do well at this point. I guess farming is sort of one thing, but given how long it takes for a crop to mature and the little amount of time it actually takes to harvest/replant aren't you saving a very small amount of time? And I highly doubt there are sophisticated enough bots that could navigate around the world to get fertilizer/things for compost. Would be hard to ensure it doesn't run into a snake/bear or getting stuck on objects. I mean anything is possible programmatically, but I'd think it would be quite difficult. You'd have to practically design a low-level AI for something like this to be possible.

I suppose Mining/Smelting could be botted easily if you stocked up a lot of lime, or just did it without any lime. But still you'd have to have a lot of phelgm food stockpiled for it to use, which I suppose wouldn't be too hard. I guess that's one area where botting would give an advantage. Not exactly world changing though. And given that carpentry takes so freakin' long for the timber piles to dry I don't really see a bot being super useful there either.

I'm not an expert programmer, I've only really dabbled in python for ***** n giggles. But I feel like people are overestimating the abilities of botting in this game, at this point anyway. But perhaps someone with more programming experience could come tell me I'm a moron.

[staxjax]

compost bot:

dig dirt, drop dirt, inventory full of worms, put all the worms in bin, eat a food, repeat


Somebody make me this bot please. Thanks.

[harflimon]

compost bot:

dig dirt, drop dirt, inventory full of worms, put all the worms in bin, eat a food, repeat


Somebody make me this bot please. Thanks.

I'd rather use the worms to feed my turkeys. With all the moldy boards/wood chippings I've gotten since the last update my composts have been more than full.

Seriously though, that is a good use for a bot, but I can spend 15 minutes killing a couple deer or some rabbits and fill up all my compost. Not an astronomical advantage gained.

[staxjax]

Fine then, turkey fodder bot.

[Slayblaze]

I'm sort of curious what exactly a bot would be able to do well at this point. I guess farming is sort of one thing, but given how long it takes for a crop to mature and the little amount of time it actually takes to harvest/replant aren't you saving a very small amount of time?

Instead, what you have to do is think small things on a large scale. For example if you have 200 fields and want to get to Tier 3 crops on each, the best way to raise influence bars is Hay. You'd have to gather 1000 grass to make 200 Hay if all you wanted was 1 hay per field, more than 1 per field obviously would double, triple quadruple that amount just for one single planting cycle. So someone makes a bot that only gathers grass all day and crafts a hay for every 5 gathered. They drop a few of these bots around the area for gathering, then send them to their fields. Bot detects a field tile and drops a hay on it and moves to next field tile. Not that hard.

You'd have to practically design a low-level AI for something like this to be possible.

That's exactly what it is, you are correct. It does take programming knowledge and the right tools, but people do it all the time in almost every game imaginable.

[Sevenless]

Far as I know, the main bot programmers from haven haven't started playing Salem "seriously" and as of yet haven't really tried to churn out the bots. I've been assured by a couple it's easily possible though.

Ontop of hay and compost, you could probably bot fishing with some success (except it's worthless so why bother).