Can I use bots to raid?
 

Is that possible? Im picturing a raid entirely populated by bots.

I did it on my own server a year ago, worked fine. 6 groups of bots, then my group with 5 more bots. So 7 total groups, very little if any lag if you are playing locally.

Yes it can be fun and very much needed if raiding live-tuned mobs. The only thing that brings the whole experience down for me is inventory management. I've developed a series of db triggers that outfit the bots based on class/level (see: live mercs) but that ruins the fun of having that fully customized bot in your group.

That's what I was thinking would make it difficult. Having to manage them all at once, even if the computer itself is able to handle that much AI.

Has anyone tried to develop a bot GUI within the in-game UI? Something where you could run through a menu divided up by each bot in the group/raid and open to a list of available commands or management functions? That seems like a great idea.

I can easily run 9 groups of 6 for 53 bots (plus me). That's on a 2Ghz 1GB ram old computer running the server. I know it would lag a lot if others were doing the same on my server with me, but a decently spec'd server should easily be able to run that many. They use less bandwidth than a comparable number of clients as well. You can't use the raid UI, but just run with #botgroups. Use #bot group help for more info.

I maintain a spreadsheet of drops, then use George's tools to give loot to my bots when I'm not playing. Granted, that wouldn't be possible for those not running their own servers, but it works for me. The only thing that's a pain for me is augments. I plan on writing something of my own to handle it at some point.

I assume a mq macro or pugin could be used, but I stay away from all of that. I know mqemulator.net had something to manage inventories of your boxes if you run multiple characters as once, so I assume something similar could be used for bots.

Locally I never had a problem running 6-7 bot groups at a time, but another guy playing would go link dead when that many bots would buff, etc. This was before I wiped the database and brought the server public. He seemed to have little problem with 5 groups but he went kind of nuts with it doing 7 groups.

Yeah, it's probably different running outside your local network. It's most likely not the server side, but the client side that's having the issue. I would guess he had a slow connection or high ping times, etc.

Since I'm only running my own server with no other players, I bet it wouldn't be too big a drag. I'm on an i5 2.4 ghz.

Can't use the raid UI? Are there any plans to incorporate bots into the raid UI?

Yeah, it would be nice, but raids would need to be completely rewritten because they are based on clients, and would need to use mobs, like the group code. I looked at it a few months ago, but put it off into the future. I'll probably try to get mercs working before that.