Kinda makes me want to get 10 Star Wars accounts and run around 1 shotting all the PVE stuff -

As a person that has Multi-Boxed many games including this one,
I find certain facts about this one, that do not lend itself to these claims of exploitation of the game in a very easy manner.
No doubt someone could create a memory injection method, but thats ALOT of work for a very very limited market

1.) There is no "Assist" function to coordinate an attack easily with a keyboard broadcaster or the other Linking software out there.

2.) There is no Function to "Target Squad Member X"

3.) There is no "Aquire Targets Target" function, that basically allows a 2 step process of using "Target Squad Member X" function then "Aquire Targets Target" function, written in to an external script or macroed command

4.) There is no built in macro capabilities

Yes, there are Macro Keyboards, Mice and Gamepads, I own the full set of Logitech devices, neat stuff can be done for this game, but nothing close to what people think.

Yes there is easily obtained software, to broadcast keys, and "Network" a "Master/Slave" scenario, some even have built in Pixel monitoring for things like activating "heals" and the like.

Someone can call me wrong, but setting up a "Broadcast" or "Network" tool for use in this game, would be of very little use.

Your Challenge for the day..

Sit down,  and write yourself an Action list, of the steps needed to co-ordinate multi sessions of THIS game for the same objective, using the options that exist in the game TODAY, and tell me how that works out for ya. Remember, you need to do all of this from a single keyboard.

If you do it using seperate keyboards/machines, or seperate keyboard inputs to multiple windows on same machine, that is NOT exploiting or cheating.

This is a pretty good post, I've been thinking about the practicalities of controlling say 5 bots as 1, just using key broadcasting, and I came to a similar conclusion, it would be very hard without some kind of additional scripting or automation (which would be against the EULA). In an ideal situation it could be useful (Gropho Alpha) but in many others it would work against you. In the 5 Vagabond scenario for example, what happens when 2 or 3 are demobbed? You moving the 5 as 1 works against you here, as they're all in different places due to the different speeds. Things that an opponent does to one of your bots (Demob, ECM, Supress, etc) will change what you want one particular bot to do, and in any situation where you don't want all 5 to do exactly the same thing, you will be hamstrung by the fact that every button you press repeats that command to all 5 clients.

Also for all this talk of multiple Grophos, etc. In the squad in question, as far as I can remember, anyone who was multiboxing was running a single combat account along with a symbiont (or in one case a couple of symbionts) This is called a follow bot for a reason, you lock your main, click 'follow' and apply reps, RSA, etc. It is by far the easiest way to multibox, and really doesn't require a macro of any kind. The exact reason there are so many of them in the squad is because they're not supposed to do anything fancy like rep the rest of your squad, because that requires you pay attention to multiple accounts. I mean if you get the chance to get reps on others thats great, but mostly you just leave it repping yourself and concentrate on your main.

Grabby - the first use of broadcast is for moving. When you follow another bot, you get a small distance lag, because the approach doesn't kick in until you are 20m or so away. Broadcasting movement ensures that all your bots stay exactly on top of each other, and you have no issues with moving around terrain and plants; with follow its easy to accidentaly scrape off a bot, and you also can't 'duck' all your bots behind cover at the same time because of the activation distance/lag.

There's not need to script anything. The 'power' is the ability to create portal windows to sections of other clients, and put those on one screen. When running accounts manually, you can alt-tab between them to select, but that takes a long time, and only 1 screen is visible at a time. With windowing, you can basically 'cut' out just the pieces of each screen you want, and organize them on one screen. All the actual 'clickin' is still done by the operator, the software just allows you 1000% more control on how information from multiple clients is displayed.

Where the advantage comes in with the UI cut and pasting, at least in this game, is that the modules from all bots are in one place, as well as landmarks and squad windows (and anything else you want to gather).

From an indy view, I can create (4) window views on one screen, and lock/relock tiles as they are exhusted from the same screen. And as a another portal, set up the (4) cargo/cans at one side, so I can unload the cargo without changing screens. Now, IF i were to automate the lock/unlock, cargo drop, THAT would break the EULA. But still manually moving the ore and locking probably wouldn't. But if I've gone that far, HOW would AC know if I did or didn't script it?

Well lets look at all the things that AC can do to stop different types of automation.

I know a little about automation and mmo games.

First time I will chat about this on these forums. I stopped making bots about 5 years ago.

I use to write bots for mmo fantasy grind games.

So here is a small list of ways to bot and I am sure there are more now since I stopped writing bots.

More complex automation.

1. Code injection.
2. Screen pixel reading.
3. Screenshot folder watching. (Believe it not I have seen some bots run this way.)

More simple automation.

1. Keyboard, mice and other input devices with macro capabilities.

I have seen some games lock out G key boards and other devices macro abilities. Not sure what is done to achieve it. But it can be done.

Code Injection has a simple solution. Every time the game is started it does a MD5 scan on the client files and if something is different it just downloads the changed files again.

Screen pixel reading. There are ways to stop this one too. Not going to sit here and explain it all. I gave advice to a game company on how to stop the bots I knew of running a muck in their game. Because one of the bots was my design and it was the last one they could not stop. (hehe)

Screenshot folder one is very easy too. Do not make the file writing instant. Simple solution was to write it with a delay and this slows those types of bots down big time.

They can't or will not know. But they can blanket stop it for everyone.

umm, did you say above you usually skip my posts?  might want to take your own advice, and read everything, so that when you reply, also, you actually know what you are replying to.

As far as I know, myself and the other active posters in this thread have not been accused of anything, much less found guilty. (I don't know why I'm responding to a troll alt )

Also if you want a yes or no, as was made pretty clear earlier, you're gonna need to ask a specific question, not just a vague "third party stuff, yay or nay"

This seems pretty clear in its own way. case by case basis, if you do it don't cry if you get banhammered. I mean the attitude of "I need to know exactly how much of a unfair advantage I can get without risking punishment" seems fairly pathetic to me. Just play the damn game.

I am paraphrasing others Multiboxing happens in most MMOs and I have never particularly noticed the impact on me personally, if it got to the point where it was severely impacting my gameplay, I might me more against it I guess, who knows?

For clarity, it seems theres an assumption that specific people are using software to enhance their gameplay, I am yet to see any evidence to back up this claim. Secondly it bugs me that a number of players are asking about this, not because they are concerned about its impact, but because they want to use it themselves, but don't want to risk bans, the fact you ask the question implies you think there is something wrong with using it, so why do you want to use it?

Personally I don't think the devs need to cater to that kind of player, if you want to play on the edge, as Zoom said, sometimes you might fall

Btw, this fight can be seen in the Perp videos thread (our own fraps posted by Kaldenines) enjoy