Make a tiny buy/sell order to compete with it, have your price lower or higher by the 10% you say you can modify it to. Assuming the bot doesn't log it previous orders you should be able to exploit that.

If it does modify its orders using regional average then that can be exploited too...granted it would be expensive for you to do that and not really worth the effort.

But if you have the isk; do it for the lulz.

So sadly, one of my markets has been infected by a bot.

Whenever online, it will update the buy/sell orders of a least 2 itmes (only ones I have confirmed it is botting) within 30 seconds of not being the highest buy order / lowest sell order. I suppose it *could* be a person, but I've checked maybe 50 times over the last week and it always updates within 30 seconds. I'm pretty certain it's not a human . . .

Normal buy/sell spread for these items is about 50% with a daily volume around 500Mil Isk. I'm guessing this bot is bringing in an average profit of about 50 Million per day on these two items. Not a lot, but it's annoying because I can't compete with it.

Anyway . . . on to what I should do about.

First . . .Does filing a petition do any good? Will CCP ban market bots or it is filing just a waste of time.

On to the real question . . .
How do I take advantage of the bot.
It seems fairly smart . . . the max I can run it's buy price up to is about 10% above region average.
The max I can run it's sell price down to is about 30% above region average.

The best luck I have had is running the buy price up as far as I can, filling it's order with my stock and then I buying low until the owner sets up another order (apparently it does not do this on its own).

Any other thoughts on how to game market bots, get them banned, or otherwise convince them to move to another market.

-FM

If I run into a situation where someone perfectly monopolizes buys orders day after day, I simply use my buy order to bait them into crashing their own margin. If I can't get into a market at all, I may as well minimize the profits of the monopolizer.

Ruining the Bot's profit won't help you maximizing yours.

So sadly, one of my markets has been infected by a bot.

Whenever online, it will update the buy/sell orders of a least 2 itmes (only ones I have confirmed it is botting) within 30 seconds of not being the highest buy order / lowest sell order. I suppose it *could* be a person, but I've checked maybe 50 times over the last week and it always updates within 30 seconds. I'm pretty certain it's not a human . . .

If I run into a situation where someone perfectly monopolizes buys orders day after day, I simply use my buy order to bait them into crashing their own margin. If I can't get into a market at all, I may as well minimize the profits of the monopolizer.

Anyway there is simple solution for market bots. It's called Catha but CCP don't give 2 ***** about botting so dream on for a simple anti market bot system. Every 20 orders or so should ask fora written test but meh. Botters on forum will come monaing saying no that would disrupt gameplay for normal people. Would it hell the only people it would disrupt is botters and that is why you'll be moaning below.

My market bot will I normally manage about 60 or so orders. If I had to prove I'm a person with Captchas 3 times in a run it wouldn't disrupt me but would certainly **** me off.

Typing a 5 letter word for you is difficult?

(a) Report the suspected bot. CCP probably gets tons of bot petitions, so don't expect immediate action. However, if the same player gets flagged several times for possible EULA violations, his/her name is going to eventually move up to the top of the action list. Nothing will ruin a botter's day more than getting his/her account(s) banned.

(b) Increase the buy order price and decrease the sell order price, until the bot stops competing. This will lower your profit margin, but eventually the botter will move on to greener pastures. If you are playing the market over the long haul, this is the best strategy for getting anyone - bot or aggressive player - out of your market niche.

I'm not raging any more if you can't beat em join em,

I hate captcha. It's more like typing two 5 letter words, one of which is (for me anyway) extremely hard to read.

Either the bot has built in max/min limits, or it doesn't.

If it doesn't have built in limits, abuse that to make the bot go bankrupt.

If it *does* have built in limits, find them, then put your order 0.01 above his. You will be trading with a much reduced spread but should be in the clear until a person comes and actually manually updates the orders.