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Ask HN: Any war and economy based online games that allow automation via APIs?

4 points by nstart ↗ HN
A long time ago, I used to play oGame. One of those browser based multiplayer games that has both elements of space warfare and economics. Loved it. Eventually left it behind. I tried Eve Online next, and fell in love with it. Left that behind too. Recently, I've been watching the hype of Warframe from afar and wishing I could play.

But I really don't have the time for any of these. And none of the games allow for automation. Even basic macros are sometimes considered bannable offenses.

What I was wondering though was, is there any game similar to oGame or Eve Online that allows or even encourages players to automate their gameplay via scripting/API usage? So I could have a Rasperry Pi playing the game for me 24/7. And build apps for myself to make assisted decisions in the event of something non automatable coming up (eg - Respond to an alliance invitation). The two major mechanics I'm looking for in the game are territory based economics and warfare. Cooperation is an optional thread to look for.

I've searched the internet for this for a while and it hasn't turned up anything just yet. Either this market doesn't exist or it's under-served or my search-fu needs to improve :D.

Do any HN'ers know of games like this?

3 comments

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duiker101
If you find one let me know! I love games like that. Currently, what I found myself playing that scratches my itch the most is Path of Exile. The game requires a minimum amount of actual playing but once you get going you can just play the economy if you want without actually playing the game.

Let me give you some details. The game is playable in Leagues, there is a Standard League that goes on forever and then there are Challenge Leagues that reset the whole game every few months (4/5 I think). Most of the player base plays the Challenge Leagues so you get to start from zero every so often. I actually like that because this stops people from taking over too much and it's not frequent enough to be boring.

The game plays as a Diablo game, top down, you go around, kill stuff and collect randomly generated items.

You can then sell your items to other players. Buying and selling is done with intentionally limited GUI/Automation. GGG (the devs) want to keep the experience as "pure" as possible. Which means that to buy an item you have to actually send a message to the person you want to buy it from, then go to their hideout, send them a trade request and then trade whatever you want. There is no real currency but there are some "currency items". The whole economy is player-driven.

To find items there isn't even an official website. There are however a few officially endorsed third party websites like https://poe.trade.

Now, why do I like this? Because it gives you a lot of freedom and interesting challenges. Botting is not allowed but it's very common (and not excessively frowned upon) with certain items that people tend to buy in bulk or currency items trade. There are also many opportunities to create tools that make the whole game experience better.

There are many different ways of generating currency and the game itself is very fun. I would encourage you to give it a shot!

Ultimately, I do not know of any games that allow automation, the moment you make it legal to automate, the game will be taken over by bots and no human player will enjoy playing.

nstart
So I managed to dig up just one game that looks promising. It's this game called screeps [1]. You program your own fleet of "creeps" using Javascript (or other languages compiled to WASM). There's a fair amount of depth to the game and there is a marketplace and alliances exist.

I'm not a fan of the whole CPU model or the pathfinding model either. Those two are a little too complex for my liking, but there's no doubt that this game is mostly everything one could want in a programmable game.

Overall, I still feel like this market is underserved. But I'm probably going to give screeps a try myself and see what I can learn from it :).

[1] https://screeps.com/