Bots are playing the same card over and over again.

[Paps]

More and more players are activating a bot in the middle of a game. Normally I don't care that much because they usually do it in the middle of the game and bots aren't good enough to be a threat. (that said, some wiser players activate them only when running out of time, but they're still few)

The problem I have is when these bots prevent a game from finishing by playing the same card over and over again until the server disconnects everyone.

That user did it twice recently in ranked games where he wasn't finishing high enough to his liking: https://account.asmodee.net/fr/game/TerraformingMars/history?u=3706874

I'm currently stuck with a bot ran by this user: https://account.asmodee.net/fr/game/TerraformingMars/history?u=5279269 and you can see has quite a few games where everybody is disconnected (a score of 0). Screenshot of the game state: https://imgur.com/a/MUbXpWH

This is already very annoying and it won't be long before it plagues multiplayer games...

[Flysh]

I experienced this too. Bot played 18 herbivores and removed 16 plant production from an Ecoline player alone. Then he proceeded to cluster the whole Mars with nuclear sites until no free tile was left.

Cards and actions can be played as long there are legal targets but only get registered once.
They don't lose MC for playing them.

[memories]

+1 I have similar experiences with certain players activating bots in the middle of games that they are losing

[FrankJones]

Originally posted by memories:

+1 I have similar experiences with certain players activating bots in the middle of games that they are losing

And the silence from the developers is deafening.

3 months without a patch or update, and not even a hint of when anything further might be done.

There are broken cards, glitched and crashed games, the lobby filters don't even work, and there are hacked cheats occurring.

To the programmers and developers:

Do you guys plan to do ANYTHING about ANY of this?

[memories]

Is any dev still here? This issue is still occurring.

Some players are using bots to repeatedly play the same card and crash the game if they are not winning.

Needless to say, this severely kills enjoyment for players.

Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/YCM95zN

[Notagoodname]

Yes the same player as above, DarthTowlie, just did this in a game i was in. He was also playing cards that were in my hand causing duplicates of cards to be played. Eventually the game locked up and no one could take turns and no one was timing out

[memories]

@Notagoodname Wow, that's new. First time I've heard of players being able to play cards from other players' hands. It seems that the exploits are increasing in severity.

[Paps]

Hmmm, that may not be an exploit at all. Sometimes the game bugs out in draft mode and doesn't remove the card that was selected by players. It's pretty obvious when this happens because you see 5 cards in the screen (those you picked + those that were available in the previous round of the draft).

The end result is that all players may be able to select a card that was selected by the player before them. This can happen with or without bots.

[FrankJones]

Originally posted by Paps:

Hmmm, that may not be an exploit at all. Sometimes the game bugs out in draft mode and doesn't remove the card that was selected by players. It's pretty obvious when this happens because you see 5 cards in the screen (those you picked + those that were available in the previous round of the draft).

The end result is that all players may be able to select a card that was selected by the player before them. This can happen with or without bots.

Either way it's a severe game-ruining glitch, and the silence from the developers is deafening. It has now been 91 days since the last update/patch, and the developers haven't even hinted at when another one might be coming.

[chaney]

Funny, I looked over at BGG. I'm terrible at searching for things. The only thing I found on this digital release was this thread:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1832706/terraforming-mars-app-progress/page/1

Digest: A lot of excitement that the game was coming to the computer, with a lot of hopes and dreams. 3 pages of it. Then the game came out. Someone posted that it didn't get the reception that was hoped, one speculative comment about other platforms, and then a year and a half of silence. It's as if the thread were locked. Weird.

[FrankJones]

Originally posted by chaney:

Funny, I looked over at BGG. I'm terrible at searching for things. The only thing I found on this digital release was this thread:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1832706/terraforming-mars-app-progress/page/1

Digest: A lot of excitement that the game was coming to the computer, with a lot of hopes and dreams. 3 pages of it. Then the game came out. Someone posted that it didn't get the reception that was hoped, one speculative comment about other platforms, and then a year and a half of silence. It's as if the thread were locked. Weird.

Most posts related to the online game are posted here, and not on bgg.

[chaney]

The advantage of a conversation on BGG would be that people named "Fryxelius" are active there.

[FrankJones]

Originally posted by chaney:

The advantage of a conversation on BGG would be that people named "Fryxelius" are active there.

Okay, but here on the steam forum, there isn't really a need for rules clarifications or official rulings. The forum here is mainly dedicated toward bug reports and requests for user interface improvements, which isn't something the fryx family is going to have much input on.

There IS a separate forum on BGG for the video game version, but it is rarely used; when people post on BGG about the steam digital version they usually just use the regular tfm forum on BGG.

[chaney]

Ah, with your clue I found the separate digital version listing. I really do suck at searching the internet, so thanks for that.

Ok, it's probably a lost cause then. Thanks for your tenacity.

[Buntkreuz]

Also noticed that cards are returning.
I played the business quarter 3 times in one session. One close to the beginning of the game, one in the middle and the final one close to the end. (Solo session, local against 3 AI players)

In this case, I was getting the same ones, not the AI.
Not in the abundance of above experiences (like ten+ times getting Satellites), but we all know that even getting one duplicate can cause a lot of issues, not only with balancing.

[becephalus]

Yeah Dr. Strange jsut did this to me. 5 fish plays in a row.

Edit now 10...