In game cheating with Baseball Bots

[HeroofTime55]

Forgive me, I am new here, I am not sure if spamming baseball games with scripts to generate money is allowed, but it seems like it is something that reasonably shouldn't be allowed.  I have some evidence of at least one nation spamming baseball, but it strongly looks like at least one particular alliance is heavily invested in baseball botting and is pretty open about their baseball dongs.  I mean they put up neon signs so.

Nation in question: Mountain Dudes
https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=177258

Evidence: 
I decided to manually throw a couple of quick baseball games (hosting) to try the system out.  I was getting results faster than I could even click "back to team."  And it was consecutively the same player.  But then I left, took a shower, came back an hour or so later, and did it again and the same player was still the one showing up consecutively to my home games.  The odds are greater that this nation was rapidly playing baseball throughout at least the whole hour, rather than I just happened to start playing again when they did for a few seconds.  (there are many more consecutive instances with this player than fit in the baseball record window)

I have seen some similar patterns from other nations in the same alliance (all with the same neon flashing signs in their bios) but this was the strongest evidence with my limited engagement with the baseball system.  Screenshots attached.  I am highly suspicious that it is widespread cheating via the use of bots to generate fast cash.  Especially given the similar neon signs advertising for people to "get their baseball dongs" from the nations involved.  It's pretty flagrant and obvious to me.  I don't think so many players from an alliance of that particular nature are actually sitting there clicking baseball buttons.

Nations I've played baseball with hosting such neon signs (pics available if the nations are edited, I reached attachment size limits):
neon1: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=171080
neon2: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=186084
neon3: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=180413
neon4: https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=181883

My belief in it being cheating rests upon the belief that no sane person would actually sit there, for hours on end, spamming baseball games at such rapid pace, and in the case of my interaction with Mountain Dudes, that such a sustained pace is essentially impossible by virtue of the limits of human endurance.

[HeroofTime55]

(In my personal opinion, the best way to deal with this might be to limit the use of baseball to X number of games per tick, for instance.  In all honesty the current system seems outright prone to abuse.)

[Prefonteen]

I'll note that baseball is known to have been a source of exploitation and headaches. As a side-feature intended to provide low-impact recreation, the feature has been grossly misused to impact actual ingame mechanics. As the system as intended has been compromised by bottin and flagrant abuse, i'm of the opinion that removing it altogether might save us  lot of headaches

[Guest Elijah Mikaelson]

3 hours ago, Prefonteen said:

I'll note that baseball is known to have been a source of exploitation and headaches. As a side-feature intended to provide low-impact recreation, the feature has been grossly misused to impact actual ingame mechanics. As the system as intended has been compromised by bottin and flagrant abuse, i'm of the opinion that removing it altogether might save us  lot of headaches

Think it is time for Alex to remove it as he did with Dice and Keno

[Adrienne]

As someone who plays baseball regularly, out of all of those, only one's history looks even remotely suspicious to me but because it's away games, it's probably not either. Away games take significantly less time to play than home games. It doesn't take as long to play and rack up games if you know what you're doing and you get into a good rhythm/a lot of people are online at the time. If they had 4 or 5 thousand games per day or more, like some players in the past who have gotten in trouble for baseball, I would be concerned but they don't.

[Alex]

A reminder that this is a No-Discussion Forum. Warnings have been issued.

---

I'm not sure how likely it is that the games are being botted. The reality is, there's really no way to prove one way or the other. I've made multiple appeals to the community to have baseball severely nerfed or even removed, and even run randomized surveys to the playerbase and the majority of players do not feel that baseball is a problem.

Looking at the data, what I would expect from a bot is that they're playing the max number of games per day. However, very, very few players actually do that. Here's the top results for players hosting home games on 1-21-2020:

The players that you reported did not may that many home games, comparatively:

Away games:

The number of away games played by 180413 could be indicative of botting. But, it's hard to say conclusively. Without more evidence, I'm not inclined to take moderation action, and without more support for nerfing/removing baseball, I'm not inclined to take that action either.

[HeroofTime55]

I doubt any bot currently is going to be capable of max plays in a day anymore due to the captcha - my guess (and this is a guess, "how I would do it" if I was the one writing the bot code) is that they could be letting the bot run quickly through games at a rapid pace, and then the bot halts when the captcha page loads, waits for user input, and then resumes.  So someone would have to still sit there and monitor the bot as it does its thing.  Again, this is a hypothesis.  

I do not know if player polling is the best thing to go by when considering the removal of baseball - rather, the impact on the core game is what should be considered.  And the reality is that it is being used to generate essentially free money by a large number of nations, including those who may not be botting (but I suspect, on such a wide scale, there will be more bots than not - people have lives and stuff, and I think it is reasonable to construct a pattern out of who and how many are spending huge amounts of *time* out of their day playing baseball, and not only the rate at which they are burning through games.)  It's a totally boring mechanic in the current state, and I suggest the popularity is simply because it gives certain groups of players an unfair advantage, and those player groups may outnumber the groups which are not gaining an advantage, and indeed are being set back by it.

Over two THOUSAND games in a single day?  I mean, who in their right mind gets up and decides to commit that amount of time to literally clicking the same four buttons over and over?  Have you ever tried to click a button 1000 times, let alone clicking four and waiting for a server response between each?  Ever play one of those clicker hero games?  It's actually hard.  Your fingers actually grow sore from it.  There is no depth to Baseball, it is just generating literally free infinite money, and that is why certain people like it in the current state.  Infinite free money in a game like this, that is disruptive.

(I also learned what tipping is, after research.  it is no surprise that certain parties automated the tipping process as well, that's what the neon signs were for.)

Also, those four nation IDs that had an even thousand (plus a few probably manual plays) - that smells strongly like four bots.  Smells like someone slapped the maximum "1000" in an input field and ran it.  Smells like four people did it and left a pattern behind in the data.  I wonder how many days also exhibit 1000 even on multiple nations?

I am in favor of Baseball being changed at least - I think, with significant added depth, and common sense limits, it could come to be an important and interesting part of the game.  Currently, it is objectively not interesting, people only like it because it makes free money.  Hell, I've used it to top off my tank when I need to make a purchase.  And anything that makes infinite free money is going to be abused one way or another, if you stamp out one bot, people will craft a workaround as fast as they can.  They'll find ways to run it that don't look suspicious.  It will happen.  And the numbers you are posting, strongly suggest to me that it is happening.

As a new player interested in playing the core political game, I find baseball to be a heavily detracting element due to the ease of exploitation and the lack of limits.

[Guest PhantomThiefB]

16 hours ago, Alex said:

A reminder that this is a No-Discussion Forum. Warnings have been issued.

---

I'm not sure how likely it is that the games are being botted. The reality is, there's really no way to prove one way or the other. I've made multiple appeals to the community to have baseball severely nerfed or even removed, and even run randomized surveys to the playerbase and the majority of players do not feel that baseball is a problem.

Looking at the data, what I would expect from a bot is that they're playing the max number of games per day. However, very, very few players actually do that. Here's the top results for players hosting home games on 1-21-2020:

The players that you reported did not may that many home games, comparatively:

Away games:

The number of away games played by 180413 could be indicative of botting. But, it's hard to say conclusively. Without more evidence, I'm not inclined to take moderation action, and without more support for nerfing/removing baseball, I'm not inclined to take that action either.

Sorry Alex I'm only responding as a baseball player that's looking to add to your assessment and help with a verdict. Apologies.

Before you nerfed baseball to what it is now with the 1k games per day max I'd like to remind you certain players were running over 10k away games a day and were not botting. I never had a problem getting a few thousand away games and while I don't really do much baseball anymore I know if the player is determined it's easy to hit 2k away games in a day. Hope this helps and isn't a problem for you.