NOTICE: Regarding Pennsylvania Zoner Pilots Exploit

[R.P.Curator]

People playing: estimated 80 +/- 10%
Economy: 30 mins trade = 1.5M$ *Dublin - Omicron Mu in a 5ker* // Dublin Gold mining (with a Hegemon): 900K$/5k ore / 30 min (dock - mine - dock; I am well aware of the previous discussion on this topic, so I timed everything and I HATE MINING!)
Credit Generating events: Lackluster, sorry to all the guys involved, fun for the pews but not so rich (previous best event was the Cardamine which was awesome profit + pew)
New Content: Ships, Guns, Equipment - with skyrocketing prices; which compared to the revenue requires grind; which not most of us are willing to do nowadays or have the time. Oh, did I forget the x2 required materials for ships "update"? Fun fact: the first Consul was in game after 3 days of non-stop hauling and producing materials, with shipyard construction etc. 72 hours non-stop. Keep that in mind!
Encounter Code Farming: Tedious grind; personal experience: 1 Novaspear drop in 2 days, with a party of min. 5 players, shooting for aprox. 6 hours total.
Battlezones: Ugh... Omicron Delta and Omega 5 which are activity hubs cause DTR, R/, Wilde, Core, Order, RPA but not that rewarding credit wise.
Penn Zoner event: Oversight from the Ec. Dev team. Players traded, there was no toxicity, it still required activity and time spent in game (for all those comparing it to the 2B$ bug), there was some piracy, some shenanigans with Barges and Jumpdrives, some new players logging their LN Ships to clear the Rogue Encounter and save the "poor traders".
Yes, I was part of that. No, I am not ashamed, I sank 200M$ in codes + ships in the last months and I'm not a whale when it comes to credits as I do not have the time to grind encounters or trade.
Harsh punishment: What for? Exploit? Where's the harm? Who got hurt? Game saw activity, people got $ to buy new ships, new codes, build their PoBs and start making stuff in them. These things generate activity and keep the players invested.
Admins Bastilled barges and ships and zeroed accounts. More than enough for the majority of players involved, which is around 20-30. If you compare the numbers of players involved with the server population, its 1/4 or 1/3.
Those who laundered the money so its hard to track and find, I'd say they are experienced and know what they are doing. It's hard and tedious, not impossible. To them, whatever you see fit.
To the "White Knights": hypocrisy
P.S.
There is a lot of new content for which we are grateful, but we are still poor. The 2 last events were fun pews, but not so rewarding $ wise. Give us rewarding $ events so we can get the new stuff; you'll see it too in action in game faster. You're keeping a game alive so you and other people can have fun. Keep in mind that and that the server population is not that large. Throw the dog a bone. And increase the drop rates for encounters! Less grind, more fun!

[Sombs]

I agree. We should put more exploits in the game as they are good for activity.

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[Lythrilux]

I find it very hard to believe anyone that took advantage of this blatant oversight did it with any degree of innocence. I'm not even a trader and I knew it something was off when I saw the insane CSU.

It had all the red flags: insanely short route, no danger, extremely high CSU, no event of any sort, no logical or in roleplay explanation.

using the Harrisburg message is not an argument as that message has been around for years.

I think the admin team is being very, very, very lenient here.

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[Nika]

snip

You cheat exploit - you lose. Simple as that. Amazing how this sort of thing even requires explanation that a bunch of players amassing the amount of credits some players traded for for years is not alright and screws up server economy that, naturally, has to be balanced by money withdrawal mechanics (such as aforementioned pobs, (nearly nonexistent in our case) piracy) et cetera.

The notion that anyone would feel any more accomplished with cheated pixel money is hilarious. Did it sting because you were one of those who made the most out of that?

[jammi]

Yes, I was part of that. No, I am not ashamed, I sank 200M$ in codes + ships in the last months and I'm not a whale when it comes to credits as I do not have the time to grind encounters or trade.
Harsh punishment: What for? Exploit? Where's the harm? Who got hurt? Game saw activity, people got $ to buy new ships, new codes, build their PoBs and start making stuff in them. These things generate activity and keep the players invested.

Strongly recommend you file a report explaining which ships you used and how much you earned, or the admins will likely assume all those new CODEs you brought are from dirty cash and wipe them. "I should be allowed to cheat because I don't have much free time" isn't a compelling argument.

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[Xenon]

Hello Discovery People,

With all due respect to your opinions, I hope that you do not judge others too fast.
I am one of those who got dragged to this false route, and I am a veteran player who discovered several exploits and informed the admins about them before, Returning BILLIONS of credits and THOUSANDS of Sci-data files to the admins by myself without anyone telling me about it. I don't like talking about those incidents. Still, I did help many times returning the wrong credits that resulted from a developer forgetting some action to do, or a server error that the players had nothing to do with. I even got rewarded by Admin @Cannon aka Snoopy some time ago with 50 Sci-data files from the admin team because I returned almost 2,000 sci data which were 6 billion credits worth at that time lol.... (50 were so few but I was thankful for at least evaluating my help and honesty).

I was trying to understand how the passengers and persons work as a commodity and was so confused even till now, I was supplying my base and I received a message in-game from a player saying "Hey did you try the new bonus event" ... I asked around and found out that about the Zoner pilots bonus, OR i thought it was a bonus. I cannot deny that there was a part of me saying that this was weird and might be a bug, but then I found two things that confused me more.

- I found that more than 30 players on the server are doing that route
- I found that the route is cut by rogue NPCs and didn't know that it was an encounter, but I thought that this was to spice up the event
- My ship got caught several times on that rogue spawning area and then some Liberty Navy showed up and said that they were going to help by attacking the rogues on the route path.
- I got stopped by a liberty navy and RP'd with him about it, and he said that the LPI is asking Interspace commerce and others who can help to shift those Zoner criminals to the Planet Erie area

It was all mixed up for me, and more players were joining the fake event which made me feel that we were not doing anything wrong... Yet, still part of me was not sure about that size of bonus but I fell into that mistake which was not done by any player but was done by a developer and I am sure that it was not intentionally done.

I don't cry about things or consequences that I do, but actually, I take responsibility full and hope that you revise my history here and know that I NEVER cheated and never will.
I hope that you guys take it easy on judgment, because not everyone is a deliberate cheater, or trying to get money from cheating.
Some people like myself are very rich players in the game, and that is because I run several large business operations, clans, and bases which take thousands of hours from me, and if I was one of those fast cash earners by cheating, then I would have been banned a long time ago, but I am not.

I hope you guys take it easy, and I am thankful that the admins gave me a chance and gave the people a chance to report themselves and deliver the ships used, although, after almost 20 days of that incident, a person like me would not remember everything, I tried my best and willing to receive all the consequences.

Thank you
Xenon

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[Hawksmoor]

I find it very hard to believe anyone that took advantage of this blatant oversight did it with any degree of innocence. I'm not even a trader and I knew it something was off when I saw the insane CSU.

It had all the red flags: insanely short route, no danger, extremely high CSU, no event of any sort, no logical or in roleplay explanation.

using the Harrisburg message is not an argument as that message has been around for years.

I think the admin team is being very, very, very lenient here.

I saw what happened even though i never participated. It was definitely not the fault of the people involved, there was an element of danger when you passed through an event and got assaulted by a ton of Rogue ships. I think it's appropriate for the admins to take the money back but taking ships or PoBs is uncalled for, the devs are at least as much to blame as the players involved. take the money, give the ships back.

[Emperor Tekagi]

From what I heard, flat 800 csu profit on that super short route is basically 25x Gold Route per hour sums and you really thought some measly Rogue NPCs make it "dangerous". This was probably the clearest exploit ever.

Comedy night.

[R.P.Curator]

Strongly recommend you file a report explaining which ships you used and how much you earned, or the admins will likely assume all those new CODEs you brought are from dirty cash and wipe them.

Sorry, I already did file a report and the codes were purchased prior to the event in case, with clean money, as per the player request submitted which predates the zoner incident.
But thank you for clarifying why my request takes so long.
Fun fact: the EMP flak purchase was made from a Server Admin who was in Conn with me at the time the server crashed.

"I should be allowed to cheat because I don't have much free time" isn't a compelling argument.

I made no such argument.
I admitted to what I did, provided an explanation to why. That's it. I didn't object to the credit wiping. I do object on harsher punishments for those who've had their credits deleted and / or ships Bastilled and came clean, as per the admins post.

As for cherry picking from the post and spinning the yarn, that's a poor example and reflection on yourself, especially since economy is your backyard and this pilot incident is your slip.

[monmarfori]

If you find something odd, such as a commodity selling for way higher than intended, you should have reported this to the admins. The desire for greed will only backfire on you.