They most likely have their range set to 0 jumps via the little cogwheel on the right upper side of the trade window. If you do that your order would get filtered out, because it is 1 jump out. They simply don't see it.

They figure that the orders above them are going to be exhausted, so they'll be able to get a much cheaper one.
There's also the possibility that it's all the same guy trying to make it look like there's a lot more competition at that price point than there really is.

Also, they may not be competing with 'YOU', but rather competing with each other.

Lets say I'm trying to buy/sell something and someone (like you) comes in and undercuts me by a margin I'm not willing to go beyond. I do not need to out compete you for the top spot - I just need be in the second spot so when your order clears, mine is the next one to go... Voila... I just sold my stuff, still reasonably quickly and w/o taking a 3mil loss. In Jita, orders clear pretty fast.

Now, I'm not sure this is exactly what is going on in your particular case or if it is indeed the case with bots.

So if you see an order for 20 ships 6 Mil above yours, you gonna spend many hours changing each few minutes your own orders just to make people believe that there is a lot of demand for this particular item at a lower price than the actual one ? Quite complicated explanation but ok, I respect your point of view and thanks for your input.

if you have time, google this : Occam's razor

This is a possibility. Would you manually ofc change your order, let's say 4 times per hour, for 3-4 hours (buy orders for T2 ships are no so fast to complete even in Jita, even on sundays), in the hope to pocket 3 Mil extra buck, meanwhile 4-6 others traders do the same ?

Thanks for your reply

Why do they keep playing the 0.01 isk game constantly with no hope of a match before a long time ?

Would you spend time changing each 5-20 min your orders if you see a big order above which will covers yours for hours ?

In 2 of the 3 captures, there is no order older than 40 min right to the red bracket. My order (blue) is 2 hours old

What kind of operator repeats over and over the same "silly practice" ? (->read stupid routine, hint, hint)

Answer is easy.

Its a robot.

They just activate a program that automatically changes it for them. No effort. They go to work. They play other games. They go to vacation in the Bahamas. And all the while, the bot program is changing their market orders automatically.

Its all robots and automatons.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!

.

This is disturbing. Is CCP not combating bots?

I they are banking that people that are buying want everything in the same station for convenience sake