EVE wormhole exploit is fixed

Two weeks ago, we reported the news that a new exploit had been uncovered in EVE Online. Players in a hidden class 6 wormhole system with a rare magnetar anomaly discovered that they could abuse the anomaly's effects to gain infinite tracking and range on typically short-range turrets. The exploit was uncovered when they used it to defend their home system from attack against Rooks and Kings, a corporation that wormhole-dwelling corps have learned to fear for its precision invasions of colonised wormhole systems.

On September 21st, a hotfix was rapidly deployed to temporarily remove the offending electronic warfare effects from magnetar anomalies. This prevented players from pushing the effectiveness of tracking disruptors over the magic 100% mark that caused the bug. EVE developers CCP Games have announced that after some internal discussion, they've decided to make that change permanent. Removing the effect from all magnetars and not just the currently exploitable ones ensures that similar problems don't occur in the future if new equipment ever raises the effectiveness of tracking disruptors. The only question left unanswered is what will happen to Aperture Harmonics, the corporation that has been using this exploit for some time.

Reader Comments (12)

Assuming Aperture Harmonics isn't outright banned for the exploiting, I think they're going to be the target of a whole lot of brutal beatings. Should be amusing.

Seriously. These guys are a good as orbital chaff...

If i were punishing them i know which race, and which ships would be attacking around the clock for a month straight or until their utter destruction. Disbanding wouldnt even save them. C'mon CCP, be entertaining and yet creative.

What an awesome picture, Brendan.

Oh, thanks! It was from a war campaign in Providence a few months ago. I snuck into the area in a cloaked covert ops frigate and snapped some screenshots for article headers etc :D

"...Rooks and Kings, a corporation that wormhole-dwelling corps have learned to fear for its precision invasions of colonised wormhole systems."

Are you afraid, Mr. Drain? :)

I most certainly am! Although I'm fairly confident that they wouldn't choose to attack our wormhole base and I have a few friends in Rooks and Kings, I know how effective they can be as a PvP force. I was very impressed by their Clarion Call - Triage Special and Clarion Call - Pantheon videos.

I find it interesting that a corp has found such a niche. Am I correct in assuming that the majority of corps that choose to live in wormhole space are small and not part of a larger political entity, and therefore the fallout from attacking such a corp would be minimal?

I would also imagine that the salvage from these invasions would be the driving force behind them? Besides, you know, the simple fun of destroying something/someone else.

R&K have done a lot of territorial warfare, starbase defense and other types of PvP. Knocking down wormhole starbases does seem like a logical choice for their talents. The kind of corps that live in wormholes tend to be small and not terribly active but they usually stash a lot of ships in their starbases that could be taken as loot.

Unlike nullsec, there are no stations in wormhole space and the wormhole route back to normal space could end up anywhere, so there's no way to quickly bring ships in on command. I'd say you're right that this is a very strong motivator. As always is the case with PvP, though, "Because we can, and you can't stop us" is still a pretty good reason to attack.

sorry, but this is hilarious. it certainly seems to be bug abuse to some extend, but exploit? why should they even know, this is against the laws of physics in this particular wormhole? why should it even matter, since the other corps can use this anomaly to their advantage to attack them too? also the impact seems so minor, i can't even understand why there's an article about it. eve must be very very boring these days.

The exploit in question was an abuse of a programming oversight. And it's not something that gets applied to every ship in the system, it has to be done deliberately. Magnetar systems have a bonus to tracking disruptors, which are intended to lower the tracking speed and turret optimal range of your enemies.

Unfortunately, the bonus was enough to push them over 100% strength, which meant they were making the target's tracking speed negative. Because of a quirk of how computers store unsigned integers, the server read this as a practically infinite bonus to tracking speed and optimal range rather than a penalty. If it were just a bonus being applied to all ships in the system, I'd completely agree with you. But I'd definitely call taking advantage of a programming bug to gain a massive unintended bonus an exploit.

you gave rnk way too much credit for sieging tiny corps that cant defend against even a modest 10-15 man gang.

they have yet to mount a reinforcement op successfully and are pulling out of our system even without the old mag boni they cried so fervently over.

I hope massively enjoyed being used as a failed PR spin tool for the HARK.

EVE wormhole exploit is fixed

Reader Comments (12)

Posted: Sep 29th 2010 6:16PM Controlled Chaos said

Posted: Sep 29th 2010 7:46PM Syesta said

Posted: Sep 29th 2010 6:52PM Graill440 said

Posted: Sep 29th 2010 9:15PM DarthDan said

Posted: Sep 29th 2010 9:25PM Brendan Drain said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 1:03AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 1:28AM Brendan Drain said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 1:34AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 2:10AM Brendan Drain said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 2:22AM eNTi said

Posted: Sep 30th 2010 2:37AM Brendan Drain said

Posted: Oct 19th 2010 4:24PM (Unverified) said

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