October 06 2011 Box Encryption Announcement

Dark Orbit has announced a strategy to prevent boxing bots in an attempt to make the game more fair for everyone. If you are unfamiliar with boxing bots, they allow someone to be away from their computer while a program either recognizes the boxes in space or monitors the middle code between bigpoint and the flash game to know exactly where the boxes are. Boxing bots have two advantages. First of all, they can be turned on while the player is doing something besides dark Orbit, like sleeping. Second of all, they are extremely fast compared to a real person. As someone who does not cheat with a bot, cloaked boxing bots are incredibly annoying to compete with while boxing. I am excited that the announcement has deterred the botters, but I am curious about the encryption change. According to the announcement, random boxes will require the user to type in the encrypted words shown in the image. If the pilot or bot cannot get it right, they cannot collect anymore boxes until they are successful. If they get it right, they recieve double the box contents. I have collected at least 100 boxes since this announcement and have not encountered an encrypted box. The announcement has been effective at preventing botters, which I believe is because botters do not want to have their account banned after being stuck on a box for a considerable amount of time.

I do have a few concerns about this change. Are the encrypted boxes honestly random? I wonder if Dark Orbit is able to give a higher ratio of encrypted boxes to members who are reported as botters by fellow space pilots. Also, what happens if a pilot is being attacked while trying to type the encrypted words? Can they fight/run and resume the encryption later, but before they collect another box? Will bot developers find a way to recognize the encrypted image through pixel recognition or being able to avoid boxes that contain the encryption? Artificial Intelligence is a fun area of expertise for computer programmers. Developers love logic, challenges, and video games. I doubt any changes will deter bots for very long.