Quote:This exploit occurred for just under 2 days, and was spotted when I was doing the work to implement Militant Pilots. I then noticed the obscenely high csu for the route on Darkstat, with several other people reporting it shortly after.
Correction: Since patch update day, I don't recall when It was exactly and the Zoner Pilots were introduced.
I did an artifact run on the 5th and being a chad corsair I took the Penn trade lanes and saw a guy carrying ZPs to Valley Forge. He docked and left the game. Didn't consider much of it.
On the 6th or 7th I noticed the message: "Valley Forge pays extra for pirate pilots" and I found pirate pilots in New Berlin! Said, lets try this out see what goes! New trade route!
Behold: 2.25M$ in 10 minutes. Cause Valley Forge paid 450 Credits for a Pilot!
Quote: Valley Forge Station has serverside price overrides for pilot prices to help new players that are doing PVE and missions. This station buys pilots at $250.
Corrected, station was buying pilots at 450$. 2.25M$/ 5ker.
What did I see when I entered Penn? A Serenity hauling Zoner Pilots to Valley Forge!
Didn't take too many trips to New Berlin and back seeing the same guy doing that route to try it out for myself.
Quote:Over the last few weeks staff have been tracing cash transfers and server logs to determine who was involved in this activity, and the preliminary findings were that the majority were clustered as members of a particular faction. That led us to conclude one of them had probably spotted the issue, shared the news and told their friends to get on it while the going was good.
I'm not from any particular faction, I have ships in all factions except Nomads. I did not get informed by anyone or told anyone about this trade route, cause If things were going to go downhill, I'm not taking anyone with me. This was to clear any Faction affiliation you may have with me.
To set things straight: trade for my EMP Flak Codes occurred on the 5th! The first time you're going to see my ship doing that trade route is 7th. The rest of my codes are purchased either prior the trade route event or post -200M$ Admin Removal Fee. So its all bought with clean credits!
To sum it up:
- "Exploit" is on since patch day and the release of Pilot Commodities (Cause if 1 sell point is an exploit, why wasn't the Omicron Mu Food Rations sell point also an exploit?) So there are a lot more people involved in this, not just "a faction".
- Valley Forge paid 450$ / pilot; and if you recall there is a nice joke about bankers and robbers: you wanna see how much was stolen from the bank by the bankers, watch the news after a robbery. Bank says 250$/pilot, robber says 450$/pilot, thing is, there were a lot of robbers! Shenanigans! Cause: -200$/Pilot > 200x3600 = 720.000 $ per Serenity / Border Worlds Transport trip missing ; 200x 5000 = 1M$ per 5ker trip missing and 200x 30.000 = 6M$ per Barge trip missing! AND THATS A LOT OF CREDITS AND A CONVENIENT EXCUSE TO ENACT HARSH PUNISHMENT!
- Anyone doing Bethlehem > Valley Forge more than once since patch update is your huckleberry.
Cherry picking and yarn spin GO!
