Outing an EVE-Online Macro…
In order to understand this post, I’ll explain what Macro Mining is…
Macro Mining is a way of cheating in EVE-Online. It’s against the terms of the EULA (End-User License Agreement) and your account can be permanently banned (with no refund) for doing it. Basically what people do is have a program that records every click of their mouse and every touch of the keys while they undock, warp to an asteroid belt, mine, warp to the station they started at, dock and unload the ore. What they then do is create a loop that goes out to the belt and does their mining over and over again…
My usual way of trying to tell if someone is a Macro is to watch them for a while and see if the pattern of mining varies at all. Do they always select the closest asteroid? Do they always warp to the same spot? Do they always seem to come back at around the same time interval?
If the answer to most of those is yes, I then proceed to targetting the asteroid they are mining and trying to pop it (take all it’s ore) - then watching to see if they target another and continue mining (like a human) or sit there for their pre-programmed amount of seconds (like a Macro).
If that doesn’t result in a suitable answer, or I can’t really get a definite answer, I wait for the ship to come back into the asteroid belt and then I target them. Usually the Macro Miner will not remember to disable ‘auto target locking’ and will automatically target me back… What usually happens is that the Macro-controlled ship will sit there, forever, attempting to mine my ship like it’s an asteroid!
I found one just now (well, twenty minutes ago) and he is still sat there attempting to mine me… His final chance was when I asked him in the solar system’s chat room to respond, and he didn’t…
[03:49:53] Alderan Brere > So Scimeron, are you a macro? I ask because I targetted you when you came into the belt to try to see what would happen - because i suspected - and you now appear to have auto targetted me back and are trying to mine my ship…
I usually report these cheats to CCP so they can get banned, I reported Scimeron as soon as I was sure.
Tags: CCP, EVE-Online, Macro Miner, Petition
April 15th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Yeah, I was macro mining. I started a few days ago and found how to make macros. I’m still on my 14 day trial, didn’t realize it was illegal to do it. I’ll stop now. Thanks for letting me know.
April 16th, 2008 at 11:33 am
You’e welcome. Hopefully CCP will communicate with you about it and you won’t have to start another trial.
May 12th, 2008 at 4:29 am
Lol, in my opinion he did write a very good marco, glad he got caught. Too bad he didn’t write it better.