nerf the ability of bots(and players) to gain meaningful intel, from perfectly safe positions (station bar).

+1

Disable chat?
-1000

-1, situational awareness is crucial before undocking

-1

Know where they are, don't go there, can't avoid it? Avoid it better.

-1 deal with it. This isn't Carebear safealot online.

+1 spotter bots are unfair

any player / bot that stays in station for 30 minutes should be disconnected
after a warning in chat
then bots would have to launch every 30 min
and you could kill them

There have been some new mitigation features added into tonight's release that may help with this. But it'll be a bit of a process.. the best way to handle this is a big combination of different systems addressing different mixtures of cases.

-1 deal with it. This isn't Carebear safealot online.

Umm.. no. Spotter bots are not intended gameplay.. at all. They've been ignored up to a point, but they've been getting out of hand for awhile.

Plus, having an unfair advantage over other players thanks to a big, technically-complex and organized network of automated spotter bots.. does not somehow make people opposing that advantage a "carebear". That's a totally inappropriate usage of the term.

We will still find you and shoot you @SC keep hiding :)

/me hands Pandoram/Prince of Persia a mirror

Thank you and the rest of the team for the excellent update Incarnate ;)

Ignore me Inc,I'be been consuming excessive amounts of morton salt lately.

+1. its been long overdue that this be addressed.

Im for stricter regulation on the use of these bots, im a huge proponent for the abolishment of bots in general and bringing back trade for what it was meant to be in vo.

I'm all for this, but there really isn't an army of spotter bots lol. There used to be a whole lot more. There will always be loopholes, people can use a plug in to auto launch a free bus and bind a simple infiniroll and keep that bit active. Spotter bots are a waste of an alt imo though. Short term solution is have a timer for being in one sector, for example if you're in 1 sector for 6 hours, you get a 5 minute log out warning. But then even then you can easily program you're plug in to autolaunch and jump to a random sector, then /explode and repeat. It's an endless battle, but ya, you can make it harder to deter people from wasting an alt on a spotter bot.

I really like that idea but how about.....1 sector for 3 hours? that would be easy to accomplish.
+1 to voidance for a easy fix but lets go for 3 hrs just to waste spotter bot peoples time hehe.

There will always be loopholes, people can use a plug in to auto launch a free bus and bind a simple infiniroll and keep that bit active.

This has already been done, I saw multiple usual spotter bots outside of stations in ECs.

how about making it nerf chat as well. sit in a station to long, no more chat.

The issue isn't limiting afk players. As voidance said, the people running these bots will find a way to bypass them.