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 appreciate the effort to show the maths behind this, but I think you made a couple of mistakes;
- The ship missions drop intel at a rate of 40 per 3 chron invested (when using a supply kit). A Skirmish round costs 1200 intel, equating to 90 chron.
- You mentioned running 20 skirmishes an hour, which seems reasonable, but then in your calculations you only did 10 an hour.
If we stick with 20 skirmishes an hour, the true cost per hour is 1800 chron. This equates to 172,800 chron over the 96hr event. This would earn about 11,500,000 VP over the 96hrs, before any bonus VP drops.
This doesn’t take into account the chron returns or intel drops from the rewards. Or the small quantity of cheaper skirmishes at the start of each phase.
My feeling is starting with maybe half of the total required for the 4 days might be enough. Ie about 85,000. Once that’s all spent one would probably have earned back about 50,000, which then if reinvested would earn back another 30,000, then 18,000, etc etc. Adding that all up and we’re over our estimate of 172,800 for the whole weekend and only needed 3 quick (2/3 minute?) pit stops to convert the chrons into intel.
So 85,000 chron is quite a bit over my initial estimate of 20/30K earlier in the thread, but not an impossible amount either.
I really hate that this cheating appears to be ‘being allowed’ to continue. When DB first announced they were looking at ways to detect and prevent macro’s, I was absolutely shocked that there was nothing in place already. Announcing that there wasn’t, and introducing a ‘you’ve been playing a long time’ popup (which doesn’t seem to work) almost seems to have been an open invitation to give macros a go. In short - DB have made it worse, not better.
So, a couple of suggestions to limit the scope for cheating:
1. At the start of a skirmish event, give each player eight "open skirmish event" tickets which last 7 hours each and absolutely no options for getting any more. Skirmishes could only be carried out whilst an "open skirmish event" ticket was still open. You can still require intel for individual rounds but limiting play to 56 hours of the four days would make it more feasible for dedicated legitimate players to keep up with any that might be sharing accounts or using macros. And anyone who somehow managed to play for more than 56 hours would clearly be cheating.
2. Randomly choose which ships you battle. I think there are 120 different orders that you can have 5 ships in. Have the programme randomly choose from the 120 different combinations so everyone is fighting the same ships but in a random order. Add in a very short but random delay after each battle before the next one starts.
Neither of these would completely end the scope for cheating but it would at least limit the impact - especially if combined with other controls.
I think it's rather odd to cry foul in a game that allows people to purchase a lasting advantage over people that pay less. Where someone who runs a successful company is automatically better at playing the game than one who is just scrubbing toilets in said company.
What is it that makes you so sure that this one guy is running a bot and the others aren't? Because he didn't add breaks to the program? or because he wasn't the first to get to the forums and accuse his opponents?
Maybe he's got a family member who takes over during sleep, and who's been instructed how lining up the cooldowns works? Or he's just an experienced pole sitter who laughs at the idea that doing a repetitive task for 4 days straight is considered difficult by some people, after sitting on his tree stump for half a year?
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What is it that makes you so sure that this one guy is running a bot and the others aren't?
I’m not sure who your question was aimed at. Personally I’m not pointing my finger at just the number 1 spot. There could be a very small quantity of players doing this, there could be a very large quantity. I don’t know and that’s not what is important.
What is important is that there’s plenty of evidence around to show that it is happening and so it needs to be addressed by DB.
Considering his line has been an R2 coefficient of 1 for almost the entire event, and maybe 2 breaks of max 15 minutes each, i'm sure he's macro'ing. quite brazen too.
Considering his line has been an R2 coefficient of 1 for almost the entire event, and maybe 2 breaks of max 15 minutes each, i'm sure he's macro'ing. quite brazen too.
These breaks also correlate with the time needed to turn chrons back into intel in order to keep feeding the skirmishes. Stop for 15 min, run a bunch of missions, turn the macros back on. At the end of the event, you are now reaching chron burnout.
So DB promised us that they were going to address this and actively combat it. I guess the toolbox had "Wish the problem goes away on it own" and not much else. Many people shared privately and publicly that this is what they expected would happen.
So DB promised us that they were going to address this and actively combat it. I guess the toolbox had "Wish the problem goes away on it own" and not much else. Many people shared privately and publicly that this is what they expected would happen.
In fairness, it isn't exactly a trivial problem to solve. The best ways to combat macroing are all pretty time consuming to develop.
So DB promised us that they were going to address this and actively combat it. I guess the toolbox had "Wish the problem goes away on it own" and not much else. Many people shared privately and publicly that this is what they expected would happen.
In fairness, it isn't exactly a trivial problem to solve. The best ways to combat macroing are all pretty time consuming to develop.
If instead of trying to stop macros they design events that can't be macro'd they get a 2 for 1 of stopping macros and making the events more enjoyable to play.
So DB promised us that they were going to address this and actively combat it. I guess the toolbox had "Wish the problem goes away on it own" and not much else. Many people shared privately and publicly that this is what they expected would happen.
In fairness, it isn't exactly a trivial problem to solve. The best ways to combat macroing are all pretty time consuming to develop.
If instead of trying to stop macros they design events that can't be macro'd they get a 2 for 1 of stopping macros and making the events more enjoyable to play.
anything can be macro'd that is the problem it is just a matter of coding and even after they move more anti-macro i suspect it will be prevalent to a degree as it always is in any game that has a grind
So DB promised us that they were going to address this and actively combat it. I guess the toolbox had "Wish the problem goes away on it own" and not much else. Many people shared privately and publicly that this is what they expected would happen.
In fairness, it isn't exactly a trivial problem to solve. The best ways to combat macroing are all pretty time consuming to develop.
If instead of trying to stop macros they design events that can't be macro'd they get a 2 for 1 of stopping macros and making the events more enjoyable to play.
anything can be macro'd that is the problem it is just a matter of coding and even after they move more anti-macro i suspect it will be prevalent to a degree as it always is in any game that has a grind
Well sure, anything can be macro'd to the extent that you could write an AI to play the game. But by the time you got OCRing traits and then OCRing crew selection to find crew with the right trait, you've probably past the point of diminishing returns where it's not worth writing the macro.
That's why my desired change to Skirmish events would involve RNG selecting ships/traits so it's different every time, traits providing significant skill boosts, and battles getting much harder so you need to select crew matching those traits to keep winning. Once you turn skirmish events from a grind to a strategic selection of crew for each battle, you've killed the macro and built an event that is more enjoyable for humans to play.
I hate to judge anyone or anything without hard evidence but simple math says that event leader is consistently making approximately 1500 VP per minute in last 27 hours.
Assuming that macro is not used (which is highly unlikely), I'm not sure should I admire him for such dedication or feel sorry for him for having no life (or sleep or food) at all.
Manually I was scoring 6k every 90s so 4k per minute.
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.
It took me between 8-12s per battle so 5 battles at 10s average = 50s so say 1minute.
Therefore 60 skirmishes per hour = 72k intel per hour
100x24chroniton missions = 72k
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.
It took me between 8-12s per battle so 5 battles at 10s average = 50s so say 1minute.
Therefore 60 skirmishes per hour = 72k intel per hour
100x24chroniton missions = 72k
96hrs x 2400 chonitons = 230k chronitons
Seriously, if you believe that why don’t you actually try fhat for an hour and post a timestamped screenshot of yourself on the leaderboard at the start and end (similar to the below)
If you are winning each battle in 6-7 seconds it still takes 2:10 to finish a skirmish because of all the animations at the start and end of the battle. That equates to 27 skirmishes per hour or 164k per hour with no loot boxes.
Here is an example of an hour with 169k (the extra few thousand from loot boxes as this included buying a some of the 10 dil boxes too)
I hate to judge anyone or anything without hard evidence but simple math says that event leader is consistently making approximately 1500 VP per minute in last 27 hours.
Assuming that macro is not used (which is highly unlikely), I'm not sure should I admire him for such dedication or feel sorry for him for having no life (or sleep or food) at all.
Manually I was scoring 6k every 90s so 4k per minute.
I struggle to see how that is possible as 90s seemed to be less than the animation and load time in my case.
I was taking around 3 minutes with each ship dying in seconds. If someone could do it twice as fast they have a major advantage
I share everyone's consternation with and opposition to the use of macros. Just thought I would report that the "you've been playing a long time, prove to us you're human" popup did appear for me for the first time during the course of this event. I'd stayed signed in overnight, apparently -- although I wasn't accruing any points during that time as I was asleep -- because it popped up as soon as I opened my device (can't remember now if it was the ipad or iphone as I alternate between the two) in the morning. Finished rank 857.
So, not trying to be "that guy" but -
your math is wrong.
I have every crew in the game, I have every ship in the game. So does Sisko, so does SilverRose. With the best crew possible, on the best ship possible, it's still 2 mins and change to get from Skirm 1 to "2000VP" screen.
It is completely impossible to do it faster than that.
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.
Excellent brainwaves again Peachtree! Thx for the math and breakdown. So it is a micro at work is it not? You concur?
I hate to judge anyone or anything without hard evidence but simple math says that event leader is consistently making approximately 1500 VP per minute in last 27 hours.
Assuming that macro is not used (which is highly unlikely), I'm not sure should I admire him for such dedication or feel sorry for him for having no life (or sleep or food) at all.
Manually I was scoring 6k every 90s so 4k per minute.
I struggle to see how that is possible as 90s seemed to be less than the animation and load time in my case.
I was taking around 3 minutes with each ship dying in seconds. If someone could do it twice as fast they have a major advantage
I managed to film a 2:12 start to completion. And that was with battle times of 8, 8, 8, 5, 6 (total of 35 seconds). And that included beginning from the last user confirmation screen. So even if you managed to finish each battle in 1 second (which seems rediculous), that would be 1:42.
I hate to judge anyone or anything without hard evidence but simple math says that event leader is consistently making approximately 1500 VP per minute in last 27 hours.
Assuming that macro is not used (which is highly unlikely), I'm not sure should I admire him for such dedication or feel sorry for him for having no life (or sleep or food) at all.
Manually I was scoring 6k every 90s so 4k per minute.
I struggle to see how that is possible as 90s seemed to be less than the animation and load time in my case.
I was taking around 3 minutes with each ship dying in seconds. If someone could do it twice as fast they have a major advantage
I managed to film a 2:12 start to completion. And that was with battle times of 8, 8, 8, 5, 6 (total of 35 seconds). And that included beginning from the last user confirmation screen. So even if you managed to finish each battle in 1 second (which seems rediculous), that would be 1:42.
So yeah, I agree with you.
I had a few runs where I did better (and a few where I did worse) so a 3 minute was a fair average in my case. 2:12 for a best is impressive! What did you use?
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.
Excellent brainwaves again Peachtree! Thx for the math and breakdown. So it is a micro at work is it not? You concur?
I didn't really present any evidence, just the chron numbers that you'd have to bring to bear to achieve such a result.
Barclay actually provided what I would call the best evidence so far. I don't think it's humanly possible to maintain that sort of performance over such a long period of time.
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I have not seen one single pop up in the entire event.
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I appreciate the effort to show the maths behind this, but I think you made a couple of mistakes;
- The ship missions drop intel at a rate of 40 per 3 chron invested (when using a supply kit). A Skirmish round costs 1200 intel, equating to 90 chron.
- You mentioned running 20 skirmishes an hour, which seems reasonable, but then in your calculations you only did 10 an hour.
If we stick with 20 skirmishes an hour, the true cost per hour is 1800 chron. This equates to 172,800 chron over the 96hr event. This would earn about 11,500,000 VP over the 96hrs, before any bonus VP drops.
This doesn’t take into account the chron returns or intel drops from the rewards. Or the small quantity of cheaper skirmishes at the start of each phase.
My feeling is starting with maybe half of the total required for the 4 days might be enough. Ie about 85,000. Once that’s all spent one would probably have earned back about 50,000, which then if reinvested would earn back another 30,000, then 18,000, etc etc. Adding that all up and we’re over our estimate of 172,800 for the whole weekend and only needed 3 quick (2/3 minute?) pit stops to convert the chrons into intel.
So 85,000 chron is quite a bit over my initial estimate of 20/30K earlier in the thread, but not an impossible amount either.
I really hate that this cheating appears to be ‘being allowed’ to continue. When DB first announced they were looking at ways to detect and prevent macro’s, I was absolutely shocked that there was nothing in place already. Announcing that there wasn’t, and introducing a ‘you’ve been playing a long time’ popup (which doesn’t seem to work) almost seems to have been an open invitation to give macros a go. In short - DB have made it worse, not better.
1. At the start of a skirmish event, give each player eight "open skirmish event" tickets which last 7 hours each and absolutely no options for getting any more. Skirmishes could only be carried out whilst an "open skirmish event" ticket was still open. You can still require intel for individual rounds but limiting play to 56 hours of the four days would make it more feasible for dedicated legitimate players to keep up with any that might be sharing accounts or using macros. And anyone who somehow managed to play for more than 56 hours would clearly be cheating.
2. Randomly choose which ships you battle. I think there are 120 different orders that you can have 5 ships in. Have the programme randomly choose from the 120 different combinations so everyone is fighting the same ships but in a random order. Add in a very short but random delay after each battle before the next one starts.
Neither of these would completely end the scope for cheating but it would at least limit the impact - especially if combined with other controls.
What is it that makes you so sure that this one guy is running a bot and the others aren't? Because he didn't add breaks to the program? or because he wasn't the first to get to the forums and accuse his opponents?
Maybe he's got a family member who takes over during sleep, and who's been instructed how lining up the cooldowns works? Or he's just an experienced pole sitter who laughs at the idea that doing a repetitive task for 4 days straight is considered difficult by some people, after sitting on his tree stump for half a year?
I’m not sure who your question was aimed at. Personally I’m not pointing my finger at just the number 1 spot. There could be a very small quantity of players doing this, there could be a very large quantity. I don’t know and that’s not what is important.
What is important is that there’s plenty of evidence around to show that it is happening and so it needs to be addressed by DB.
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These breaks also correlate with the time needed to turn chrons back into intel in order to keep feeding the skirmishes. Stop for 15 min, run a bunch of missions, turn the macros back on. At the end of the event, you are now reaching chron burnout.
It all fits nicely
In fairness, it isn't exactly a trivial problem to solve. The best ways to combat macroing are all pretty time consuming to develop.
If instead of trying to stop macros they design events that can't be macro'd they get a 2 for 1 of stopping macros and making the events more enjoyable to play.
anything can be macro'd that is the problem it is just a matter of coding and even after they move more anti-macro i suspect it will be prevalent to a degree as it always is in any game that has a grind
Well sure, anything can be macro'd to the extent that you could write an AI to play the game. But by the time you got OCRing traits and then OCRing crew selection to find crew with the right trait, you've probably past the point of diminishing returns where it's not worth writing the macro.
That's why my desired change to Skirmish events would involve RNG selecting ships/traits so it's different every time, traits providing significant skill boosts, and battles getting much harder so you need to select crew matching those traits to keep winning. Once you turn skirmish events from a grind to a strategic selection of crew for each battle, you've killed the macro and built an event that is more enjoyable for humans to play.
Manually I was scoring 6k every 90s so 4k per minute.
It took me between 8-12s per battle so 5 battles at 10s average = 50s so say 1minute.
Therefore 60 skirmishes per hour = 72k intel per hour
100x24chroniton missions = 72k
96hrs x 2400 chonitons = 230k chronitons
Seriously, if you believe that why don’t you actually try fhat for an hour and post a timestamped screenshot of yourself on the leaderboard at the start and end (similar to the below)
If you are winning each battle in 6-7 seconds it still takes 2:10 to finish a skirmish because of all the animations at the start and end of the battle. That equates to 27 skirmishes per hour or 164k per hour with no loot boxes.
Here is an example of an hour with 169k (the extra few thousand from loot boxes as this included buying a some of the 10 dil boxes too)
I struggle to see how that is possible as 90s seemed to be less than the animation and load time in my case.
I was taking around 3 minutes with each ship dying in seconds. If someone could do it twice as fast they have a major advantage
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your math is wrong.
I have every crew in the game, I have every ship in the game. So does Sisko, so does SilverRose. With the best crew possible, on the best ship possible, it's still 2 mins and change to get from Skirm 1 to "2000VP" screen.
It is completely impossible to do it faster than that.
Excellent brainwaves again Peachtree! Thx for the math and breakdown. So it is a micro at work is it not? You concur?
I managed to film a 2:12 start to completion. And that was with battle times of 8, 8, 8, 5, 6 (total of 35 seconds). And that included beginning from the last user confirmation screen. So even if you managed to finish each battle in 1 second (which seems rediculous), that would be 1:42.
So yeah, I agree with you.
I had a few runs where I did better (and a few where I did worse) so a 3 minute was a fair average in my case. 2:12 for a best is impressive! What did you use?
I didn't really present any evidence, just the chron numbers that you'd have to bring to bear to achieve such a result.
Barclay actually provided what I would call the best evidence so far. I don't think it's humanly possible to maintain that sort of performance over such a long period of time.
Yes, please keep us advised of their findings. And what course of action will be taken.
Thx.
I haven’t seen anyone answer this