It’s also possible this guy is sharing the account. Three people could take 8 hour shifts, four people could take 6 hour shifts...
Which would also be against the TOS. And perhaps easy to spot if DB looked at the IP addresses and rough location of logins into that single account.
how would you be able to tell the difference, between multiple users and people using different mediums to access their accounts? aka work computers, tablets, phones, pcs, they may all have different ip addys. Also, unless we sign a waiver, that might be some violation of privacy law or something.
You raise some interesting points.
One person using different devices wouldn’t, on its own, show multiple different IP addresses. You are either using a broadband connection (at home, in the office, cafe, etc) or you’re using cellular data (from masts).
Your public IP isn’t really that private. It can be used to determine your ISP and a rough location. There’s no court orders needed for that, it can be looked up freely.
That being said, only DB have access to this information (in general). So they should easily be able to see if 1 account is logging in on east coast US for a few hours, then if it suddenly pops up in Australia for 3hrs, that should ring alarm bells without it being close to a personal data breach.
Laws vary, but I’m pretty sure a players public IP address can be analysed without it being a privacy breach.
Nothing short of an outright permanent ban on the offender, a first position chievo, restitution on the event rewards for the true winner, an apology, a public explanation, and an effective countermeasure, will resolve this issue for me.
Shameful.
“Crucifixion’s too good for ‘em” I believe someone once said.
Agreed - but I suspect if someone digs into it, they will find that it's probably some 17-year-old Kid, that is doing it for just for fun, or perhaps a summer project . . . and he'll be a F2P player as well.
F2P doesn't have anything to do with macro use.
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I was in second place for most of Thursday and I think I saw the message once early on. I say think because I was pretty much on autopilot and didn’t bother reading the message just clicked thru it. That said, the message really needs a right and wrong answer so there is some thought put into it.
DB needs to take notice because macros are ruining the fun of the game. You have dedicated players spending their valuable time to play this game, which makes DB money, only to have computer macros ruin it. Please value the players that keep you in business and not the computers that expose the flaws in the game.
It is appalling (and naive of me) to imagine why players here would use a macro in a game based on a story-universe which is all about honor and honesty winning the day.
That said, I have only seen the "playing too long" banner when I have not been actively playing the event.
And, Inner Planets Alliance is utterly against macro use. DB, shore up the holes in game.
I was in second place for most of Thursday and I think I saw the message once early on. I say think because I was pretty much on autopilot and didn’t bother reading the message just clicked thru it. That said, the message really needs a right and wrong answer so there is some thought put into it.
That's a very good point - make the message come up periodically (perhaps 90 min?), and make 2 buttons that switch places randomly - one says OK, and one says QUIT. that should deter most macro users, I would think. The other option is to introduce a captcha popup.
Task Force April is also completely opposed to macros, sharing, or any form of cheating.
We are indeed.
And the sad thing is... this kind of crap, that DB allows, or incompetently can't prevent, kills my motivation. I don't spend on the game anymore and barely take part in anything other than set and forget faction events. Why should I dedicate my time to playing on a very uneven playing field?
First place dude is still going strong. Still steady climbing. Wouldn’t it stop if you ran out of resources?
It would but chrons are easily attainable nowadays so anyone, macro user or not, making a run for the top spots would (should) be smart enough to stockpile enough for the 4 days.
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First place dude is still going strong. Still steady climbing. Wouldn’t it stop if you ran out of resources?
It would but chrons are easily attainable nowadays so anyone, macro user or not, making a run for the top spots would (should) be smart enough to stockpile enough for the 4 days.
That’s a holy helluva lot of chrons. And if he were getting chrons through the extra rewards that’s a holy helluva lot of dilithium
First place dude is still going strong. Still steady climbing. Wouldn’t it stop if you ran out of resources?
It would but chrons are easily attainable nowadays so anyone, macro user or not, making a run for the top spots would (should) be smart enough to stockpile enough for the 4 days.
That’s a holy helluva lot of chrons. And if he were getting chrons through the extra rewards that’s a holy helluva lot of dilithium
I really don’t think it would take much chron to buy enough intel to run skirmishes continuously throughout the event.
It seems it would be fairly trivial to convert 20-30K chron to intel right at the start of the event, clawing back a lot of that through rewards even without using dil for extra rewards.
Some math around what sort of chrons we're talking about here:
141k chrons is certainly a large number, but consider that even F2P players have been able to bring similar looking amounts into galaxy events. Someone paying extra for voyage extensions and MWF cadets can bank them even faster.
This also doesn't include re-investment of chrons. If memory serves, you see a return of about 62% of chrons while running a kit. Re-investing them will, also, return ~62%. The math (eventually) works out to 100 chrons being worth, on average, 263 chrons. that factor (2.63) means that you "only" need to bring in about 54k chronotons to the event (a more reasonable number).
Now, running constantly 24/7 is another matter entirely. I think the main problems here are:
1) It takes too long to exhaust one's intel. If you bring in a sufficiently large number of chronotons, it is not humanly possible to actually exhaust all of the intel it is generates. For my own sanity this event, I actually skipped all of the 5th missions, since all I really care about are the "other" rewards and not the actual character.
This ends up being a combination of mission animations are too long, intel costs are too low (or chron exchange rate is too high), and/or chron return rates are too high. All of these are contributors to the above problem and I think all should be addressed in some manner for balance.
2) The missions themselves are too predictable. It is very easy to automate.
In a lot of ways, these missions are the same as a galaxy event that has a 3min cooldown to build a recipe. It's feasible to macro galaxies, but it takes more chrons to get to the point that it is literally taking all of your waking hours to achieve it. Due to the much lower chron threshold to "max out" a skirmish, it becomes a battle of who can either stay awake the longest or write the most efficient/accurate macro.
So, are we supposed to be genuinely surprised that macros are still being used?
Did you really believe that popup screen - that appears every 8 hours or more - was really going to stop macros?
Astonishing, Will Robinson, just astonishing.
It’s also possible this guy is sharing the account. Three people could take 8 hour shifts, four people could take 6 hour shifts...
Which would also be against the TOS. And perhaps easy to spot if DB looked at the IP addresses and rough location of logins into that single account.
how would you be able to tell the difference, between multiple users and people using different mediums to access their accounts? aka work computers, tablets, phones, pcs, they may all have different ip addys. Also, unless we sign a waiver, that might be some violation of privacy law or something.
You raise some interesting points.
One person using different devices wouldn’t, on its own, show multiple different IP addresses. You are either using a broadband connection (at home, in the office, cafe, etc) or you’re using cellular data (from masts).
Your public IP isn’t really that private. It can be used to determine your ISP and a rough location. There’s no court orders needed for that, it can be looked up freely.
That being said, only DB have access to this information (in general). So they should easily be able to see if 1 account is logging in on east coast US for a few hours, then if it suddenly pops up in Australia for 3hrs, that should ring alarm bells without it being close to a personal data breach.
Laws vary, but I’m pretty sure a players public IP address can be analysed without it being a privacy breach.
Interesting, I never thought about the geography of it, I would agree it is pretty suspicious if there is a log in from an account in different time zones.
As far as different ip addys, some people play this game at work, or from different locations, that might show a different IP addy from home.
Either way I'm not sure DB is willing to track peoples IP's for this problem but you never know.
This might sound like a noob question and maybe it is;) but are these offenses actually prohibited directly by DB? I mean they never came out and said, You cant use macros, other then to install a afk timer that they claim was for an entirely different purpose.
I would assume account sharing might be a violation, but is it actually written anywhere.
Realize I am not condoning or supporting any of these actions, simply curious on their stance if they have one.
Also I notice a lot less people assumed Paladin was using a macro last skirmish, so is that because he is well known and well established? because his ending VP score will not really be different then the current leaders.
First place dude is still going strong. Still steady climbing. Wouldn’t it stop if you ran out of resources?
It would but chrons are easily attainable nowadays so anyone, macro user or not, making a run for the top spots would (should) be smart enough to stockpile enough for the 4 days.
That’s a holy helluva lot of chrons. And if he were getting chrons through the extra rewards that’s a holy helluva lot of dilithium
lol .... A while ago you and I battled for top spots in the Operation: Earth Event (Mirror Mega) and I had 90 00 chrons saved for that occasion so I'm assuming you had quite a bit yourself.
For a Skirmish you don't need nearly as much.
- assuming 3 minutes per round that is 20 skirmishes per hour
- 20 skirmishes = 24 000 intel needed per hour
- running ship missions that cost 24 chrons and provide 2400 intel you would only need to run 10 missions to get the amount required
- 10 missions per hour = 240 chrons
- 240 chrons x 96 hours = 23 040 chrons.
And that total doesn't include extra chrons that you get from the loot boxes or voyages that come in during the 4 days. Plus, and most importantly, it's assuming you're playing 96 hours straight. Since humans can't do that, a real person would need a lot less than 23 000 chrons.
The Guardians of Tomorrow Protecting the Galaxy's Future from Itself
Fleet Admiral
Do you honestly think DB has the resources to track IPs, etc.....when its taken 6 weeks to settle the Polywater Yar problem? And then they are going to cut off an account that spends oodles of cash to feed a macro? Let me politely say: Get Real.
First place dude is still going strong. Still steady climbing. Wouldn’t it stop if you ran out of resources?
It would but chrons are easily attainable nowadays so anyone, macro user or not, making a run for the top spots would (should) be smart enough to stockpile enough for the 4 days.
That’s a holy helluva lot of chrons. And if he were getting chrons through the extra rewards that’s a holy helluva lot of dilithium
lol .... A while ago you and I battled for top spots in the Operation: Earth Event (Mirror Mega) and I had 90 00 chrons saved for that occasion so I'm assuming you had quite a bit yourself.
For a Skirmish you don't need nearly as much.
- assuming 3 minutes per round that is 20 skirmishes per hour
- 20 skirmishes = 24 000 intel needed per hour
- running ship missions that cost 24 chrons and provide 2400 intel you would only need to run 10 missions to get the amount required
- 10 missions per hour = 240 chrons
- 240 chrons x 96 hours = 23 040 chrons.
And that total doesn't include extra chrons that you get from the loot boxes or voyages that come in during the 4 days. Plus, and most importantly, it's assuming you're playing 96 hours straight. Since humans can't do that, a real person would need a lot less than 23 000 chrons.
I suppose now I can reveal my hand on the Mirror Troi event. I had 65,000 chrons and enough dilithium to transistor from the faction part to the Galaxy part in 4th place. I ran out of chrons Sunday close to midnight so had to stop there. That got me 3rd place. Never forget that cuz my daughter was in the NICU at the time. She spent 50 days in there. This was very early in her stay. I would go there and visit for about 8 hours. Was off work during that time so when I went home, grinding away helped to take my mind off of it. I was thinking this may be my last serious run at first place due to the circumstances.
Also I notice a lot less people assumed Paladin was using a macro last skirmish, so is that because he is well known and well established? because his ending VP score will not really be different then the current leaders.
There were some people doing pretty close tracking during the last skirmish event. It was very clear that Paladin didn't have a 24/7 up-time.
DB please step up to what you told(promised?) us about how you wanted to handle macro usage.
I quote(fulll link below):
„...Our engineers and designers took the time to assess the situation and looked at how such programs were being used in our game. To discourage attempts to circumvent our efforts we will not provide any details about what is being done to counteract these applications, however we want to stress out that we take this issue seriously and that steps have already been taken to address the situation.
We will monitor the game closely to make sure that our measures are working properly. We will also continue to take any action necessary to hinder these attempts to circumvent normal gameplay...“
Also I notice a lot less people assumed Paladin was using a macro last skirmish, so is that because he is well known and well established? because his ending VP score will not really be different then the current leaders.
There were some people doing pretty close tracking during the last skirmish event. It was very clear that Paladin didn't have a 24/7 up-time.
Which doesn t proves anything. Just saying. Nor do i say his win wasn t legit.
Just wanna point out the well known obvious, that most macro users, especially names you often see high on the leaderboards wouldn t be so „dumb“ running a macro 24/7. They would do breaks on purpose, at different times and length, to avoid extra attention.
Also I notice a lot less people assumed Paladin was using a macro last skirmish, so is that because he is well known and well established? because his ending VP score will not really be different then the current leaders.
There were some people doing pretty close tracking during the last skirmish event. It was very clear that Paladin didn't have a 24/7 up-time.
Which doesn t proves anything. Just saying. Nor do i say his win wasn t legit.
Just wanna point out the obvious, that most macro users, especially names you often see high on the leaderboards wouldn t be so „dumb“ running a macro 24/7. They would do breaks on purpose, at different times and length, to avoid extra attention.
I made no claims about it being legit or not. The graph of his scores was significantly less linear than the ones from the event prior to his. I haven't seen a comparable one for this current event's leaders.
Also I notice a lot less people assumed Paladin was using a macro last skirmish, so is that because he is well known and well established? because his ending VP score will not really be different then the current leaders.
There were some people doing pretty close tracking during the last skirmish event. It was very clear that Paladin didn't have a 24/7 up-time.
Which doesn t proves anything. Just saying. Nor do i say his win wasn t legit.
Just wanna point out the obvious, that most macro users, especially names you often see high on the leaderboards wouldn t be so „dumb“ running a macro 24/7. They would do breaks on purpose, at different times and length, to avoid extra attention.
I made no claims about it being legit or not. The graph of his scores was significantly less linear than the ones from the event prior to his. I haven't seen a comparable one for this current event's leaders.
He also had photos of his phone at the poker table playing the game at the casino....
I am a new player to DB. I left Scopley games because of similar issues. I do recommend that this issue gets looked into since it will be a deciding factor on my decision to buy items to heighten my game play experience. I am certain I am not the only one that has realized that there is absolutely no fun in competing against any lazy individual that chooses to have a computer play the game for them. Allowing this to continue does indeed hurt DB’s capital gains. If they can’t be bothered to fix it then the players may not bother to even play. Balls in DB’s court. Hope they decide to run with it.
I have to say I am really torn on this issue. Partly because Im fairly certain that some people are using macros, just because if it makes sense it is usually true. On the other hand this also starts to feel like a witch hunt, I think unless DB gets directly involved it is going to be alot of speculation and indirect or maybe even direct accusation.
Ive also yet to see or a graph on the leader for this skirmish, but if the pts are consistent time wise 24,7, then Id say thats pretty dumb and blatant.
I know Ill probably get flamed for this, but I will bring up again, that it would be nice if DB would make these events a tad less repetitive, and for skirmishes at least a bit shorter? do we really need 4 days of fighting the same battles over and over again. I think this would definitely discourage the want to use macros in the first place.
Ive also yet to see DB actually take a stand on this issue on forum or thru game message, unless I missed it.
Perhaps this guy is doing this intentionally to show everyone how easy it can be and how messed up it can make things. This could be why he is being so obvious about it
What happened the last time someone showed graphs? Anything?
If someone is doing it to 'prove' macros still work I expect them to fess up and have their rank stripped and the real players have their rightful place instigated.
I'm not going to go out if my way to 'prove' macros work because
1/ I don't want to cheat
and
2/ It's already been proved they work
It puts paid to any effort I'm going to put in to win. It's hard enough as it is without blatant cheaters giving it a go.
I know for a fact that my fleet (SECTION 14) don’t use macros. I always get the highest skirmish rank in my fleet and I just go hard for the first phase by grinding my life away. The second phase I don’t enter aside from using the intel accrued by time, not by using chrons. I always find the chroniton drop rate a major let down in the second phase.
We love the game, we grind occasionally, but we just don’t go to those lengths to get an unfair advantage. I agree that something needs to be done about this.
And for the record, during my first phase grinding, I never received a single notification about playing too long, and I never have.
Comments
You raise some interesting points.
One person using different devices wouldn’t, on its own, show multiple different IP addresses. You are either using a broadband connection (at home, in the office, cafe, etc) or you’re using cellular data (from masts).
Your public IP isn’t really that private. It can be used to determine your ISP and a rough location. There’s no court orders needed for that, it can be looked up freely.
That being said, only DB have access to this information (in general). So they should easily be able to see if 1 account is logging in on east coast US for a few hours, then if it suddenly pops up in Australia for 3hrs, that should ring alarm bells without it being close to a personal data breach.
Laws vary, but I’m pretty sure a players public IP address can be analysed without it being a privacy breach.
F2P doesn't have anything to do with macro use.
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That said, I have only seen the "playing too long" banner when I have not been actively playing the event.
And, Inner Planets Alliance is utterly against macro use. DB, shore up the holes in game.
That's a very good point - make the message come up periodically (perhaps 90 min?), and make 2 buttons that switch places randomly - one says OK, and one says QUIT. that should deter most macro users, I would think. The other option is to introduce a captcha popup.
We are indeed.
And the sad thing is... this kind of crap, that DB allows, or incompetently can't prevent, kills my motivation. I don't spend on the game anymore and barely take part in anything other than set and forget faction events. Why should I dedicate my time to playing on a very uneven playing field?
It would but chrons are easily attainable nowadays so anyone, macro user or not, making a run for the top spots would (should) be smart enough to stockpile enough for the 4 days.
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Fleet Admiral
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All are welcome to join and use the Bot.
That’s a holy helluva lot of chrons. And if he were getting chrons through the extra rewards that’s a holy helluva lot of dilithium
I really don’t think it would take much chron to buy enough intel to run skirmishes continuously throughout the event.
It seems it would be fairly trivial to convert 20-30K chron to intel right at the start of the event, clawing back a lot of that through rewards even without using dil for extra rewards.
141k chrons is certainly a large number, but consider that even F2P players have been able to bring similar looking amounts into galaxy events. Someone paying extra for voyage extensions and MWF cadets can bank them even faster.
This also doesn't include re-investment of chrons. If memory serves, you see a return of about 62% of chrons while running a kit. Re-investing them will, also, return ~62%. The math (eventually) works out to 100 chrons being worth, on average, 263 chrons. that factor (2.63) means that you "only" need to bring in about 54k chronotons to the event (a more reasonable number).
Now, running constantly 24/7 is another matter entirely. I think the main problems here are:
1) It takes too long to exhaust one's intel. If you bring in a sufficiently large number of chronotons, it is not humanly possible to actually exhaust all of the intel it is generates. For my own sanity this event, I actually skipped all of the 5th missions, since all I really care about are the "other" rewards and not the actual character.
This ends up being a combination of mission animations are too long, intel costs are too low (or chron exchange rate is too high), and/or chron return rates are too high. All of these are contributors to the above problem and I think all should be addressed in some manner for balance.
2) The missions themselves are too predictable. It is very easy to automate.
In a lot of ways, these missions are the same as a galaxy event that has a 3min cooldown to build a recipe. It's feasible to macro galaxies, but it takes more chrons to get to the point that it is literally taking all of your waking hours to achieve it. Due to the much lower chron threshold to "max out" a skirmish, it becomes a battle of who can either stay awake the longest or write the most efficient/accurate macro.
Did you really believe that popup screen - that appears every 8 hours or more - was really going to stop macros?
Astonishing, Will Robinson, just astonishing.
Interesting, I never thought about the geography of it, I would agree it is pretty suspicious if there is a log in from an account in different time zones.
As far as different ip addys, some people play this game at work, or from different locations, that might show a different IP addy from home.
Either way I'm not sure DB is willing to track peoples IP's for this problem but you never know.
This might sound like a noob question and maybe it is;) but are these offenses actually prohibited directly by DB? I mean they never came out and said, You cant use macros, other then to install a afk timer that they claim was for an entirely different purpose.
I would assume account sharing might be a violation, but is it actually written anywhere.
Realize I am not condoning or supporting any of these actions, simply curious on their stance if they have one.
Also I notice a lot less people assumed Paladin was using a macro last skirmish, so is that because he is well known and well established? because his ending VP score will not really be different then the current leaders.
lol .... A while ago you and I battled for top spots in the Operation: Earth Event (Mirror Mega) and I had 90 00 chrons saved for that occasion so I'm assuming you had quite a bit yourself.
For a Skirmish you don't need nearly as much.
- assuming 3 minutes per round that is 20 skirmishes per hour
- 20 skirmishes = 24 000 intel needed per hour
- running ship missions that cost 24 chrons and provide 2400 intel you would only need to run 10 missions to get the amount required
- 10 missions per hour = 240 chrons
- 240 chrons x 96 hours = 23 040 chrons.
And that total doesn't include extra chrons that you get from the loot boxes or voyages that come in during the 4 days. Plus, and most importantly, it's assuming you're playing 96 hours straight. Since humans can't do that, a real person would need a lot less than 23 000 chrons.
Protecting the Galaxy's Future from Itself
Fleet Admiral
For more info on us, check our wiki page:
https://sttwiki.org/wiki/Fleet_Guardians_of_Tomorrow
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All are welcome to join and use the Bot.
I suppose now I can reveal my hand on the Mirror Troi event. I had 65,000 chrons and enough dilithium to transistor from the faction part to the Galaxy part in 4th place. I ran out of chrons Sunday close to midnight so had to stop there. That got me 3rd place. Never forget that cuz my daughter was in the NICU at the time. She spent 50 days in there. This was very early in her stay. I would go there and visit for about 8 hours. Was off work during that time so when I went home, grinding away helped to take my mind off of it. I was thinking this may be my last serious run at first place due to the circumstances.
I quote(fulll link below):
„...Our engineers and designers took the time to assess the situation and looked at how such programs were being used in our game. To discourage attempts to circumvent our efforts we will not provide any details about what is being done to counteract these applications, however we want to stress out that we take this issue seriously and that steps have already been taken to address the situation.
We will monitor the game closely to make sure that our measures are working properly. We will also continue to take any action necessary to hinder these attempts to circumvent normal gameplay...“
https://forum.disruptorbeam.com/stt/discussion/10566/macro-usage-in-star-trek-timelines#latest
Which doesn t proves anything. Just saying. Nor do i say his win wasn t legit.
Just wanna point out the well known obvious, that most macro users, especially names you often see high on the leaderboards wouldn t be so „dumb“ running a macro 24/7. They would do breaks on purpose, at different times and length, to avoid extra attention.
I made no claims about it being legit or not. The graph of his scores was significantly less linear than the ones from the event prior to his. I haven't seen a comparable one for this current event's leaders.
He also had photos of his phone at the poker table playing the game at the casino....
Ive also yet to see or a graph on the leader for this skirmish, but if the pts are consistent time wise 24,7, then Id say thats pretty dumb and blatant.
I know Ill probably get flamed for this, but I will bring up again, that it would be nice if DB would make these events a tad less repetitive, and for skirmishes at least a bit shorter? do we really need 4 days of fighting the same battles over and over again. I think this would definitely discourage the want to use macros in the first place.
Ive also yet to see DB actually take a stand on this issue on forum or thru game message, unless I missed it.
If someone is doing it to 'prove' macros still work I expect them to fess up and have their rank stripped and the real players have their rightful place instigated.
I'm not going to go out if my way to 'prove' macros work because
1/ I don't want to cheat
and
2/ It's already been proved they work
It puts paid to any effort I'm going to put in to win. It's hard enough as it is without blatant cheaters giving it a go.
Check out our website to find out more:
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We love the game, we grind occasionally, but we just don’t go to those lengths to get an unfair advantage. I agree that something needs to be done about this.
And for the record, during my first phase grinding, I never received a single notification about playing too long, and I never have.