I tried Stealthy's bot out and although it looks impressive, it is broken in so many ways. The following are the major points:

1) Although this last update (Inferno) has created issues for many of the bot developers out there, I have personally watched the support chat window and watched the conversations. Stealthy is too dependenat on others (Amedaus and Cyber) to make his bot work. He is constantly blaming them for SB not working. He needs to realize that if he is going to charge for a bot - then it shouldn't be up to others to make it work. He needs to get his head in the game and stop blaming others. If his bot is broken and he is charging for it - then make it work independently of others or do their work for them!

2) Evebot is great, although a bit low on functionality, but it is far more dependable than Stealthy's response time for his bot and can with a bit of personal work do all that Stealthy's bot does - and it is free! (after you do innerspace and isxeve).

3) Sthealthbot has not changed in capability or functionality for more than a year. When it does work - between the eventual crashes - it does everthing it did a year (or longer!) ago! Afthough relatively new to SB, I have had several discussions with many of the SB users and they have informed me that SB is really no different from what it was a year ago or more. This is a huge problem since SB users (from what I am told) are getting banned because CCP is looking over how SB does things and since Stealthy isn't going to enhance (past track record) to ensure his customers safety - why pay for it! Oh yea.. There are no plans for enhancements posted anywhere - ever!

4) Documenation is non-existant and what there is is outdated and vague. I suppose the idea is that all of Stealthy's users are mind readers?!? In order to find out anything specific you MUST go to the chat support and if your lucky Stealthy will be on and he MIGHT answer your question. The best support for the bot is with the users who have been feeling around in the dark to get it to work. Typically you wil hear - working on it or silence.

5) Persistance of problems and infrequent fixes. After speaking with several long-time users, I was informed that SB has had major problems in the bot which have gone on for more than a year without being fixed. From what I am told the worst is a client crash that is frequent and could alert CCP to the customer botting. This, to me, is the worst thing about SB. I only started using it a few weeks before the Inferno patch and SB will crash between immediate to 2 hours - guearanteed!! I say the worst because I was monitoring the chat support window and Stealthy himself admitted to someone that he has knowledge about this problem and then asked someone else to find out what was causing it. Does this sound bad to you, but because it did to me.

6) Stealthbot forums can't be posted to or posts never get an answer. Speaks for itself!

7) Stealthbot - not a job, but a hobby - I read in the forums (trying figure things out and finding a way to make it work) and saw a post where Stealthy said outright - "This is a hobbie for me" If its a hobbie - have some self respect and don't charge people or make it work!

Conclusion: Look around the isxeve forums and you will find plenty of scripts and specific function (mission, mining, salvage, whatever) bots that will do the job better and more reliably than Stealthbot and they were made by the isxeve community because SB doesn't work reliably. Now you will not find that all bots work all the time, but SB is the only one that when it is said it is fixed - its really still broken and will probably get you banned because of it.

I'm going to stick my dirty little hand into this topic and say that I've worked quite hard on the missioner module of evebot, the fruits of my labour can be found in the pillboxing branch, while it's not 100%, it supports combat missions with ease, and features a shitload of drone tweaks, upgrades to combat systems, and many many many other upgrades. Oh it also supports using a dedicated salvager using corp bookmarks. Yeah. It's that good. With more testers and a backup dev or two we could convince cybertech to stop being a shithead and integrate it into stable. So if you're looking for a free alternative to stealthbot, and one less irritating and crappy than questor, feel free to try pillboxing branch, it should now automatically be included in the evebot package, I'm almost always available for support in the isxeve irc channel. Do yourself a favour and try pillboxing branch.

On the flipside, I used stealthbot for a long time, and I'm a big fan of stealthy's work, however, I disagree with a few of his design principles and methods. However his product is great, and his customer support is first rate. While he can be a bit of a shithead when it comes to compromises, he's never let a bug he can fix go for very long.

Personally I like having all of the modules I need in one package, as well as the support in one place.

I have only been using SB for maybe 6 months but until now as soon as ISXEVE has been updated Stealthy got his updates out the same day.

I haven't had any problems with bans or undue attention from GMs, and as far as I can tell SB does almost everything in a way that would make detection as hard as possible. As long as the users don't do stupid things like running it 23/7 you shouldn't have a problem with bans.

I have sent Stealthy several emails about small problems and got reasonably quick replies, seeing as how I live half way around the world from him, so don't see a problem here either.

Alright, since you didn't bother emailing me, pm'ing me on forums, or getting a hold of me on IRC, I'll reply here.

1) I will point out breakages in ISXEVE when they're present. If that's what prevents SB from working, then that's what it is. In regards to this, the one (1) thing this expansion that I've actively said was broken and needed a fix from Amadeus was EVEWindow.UsedCapacity - which he fixed a few days ago, and was contributing to jetcan breakage in not just stealthbot, but every ISXEVE based bot. As far as "charging others", I recently credited all StealthBot accounts 15 days of access time, which I announced in IRC.

2) My response time is near instant for emails, and I respond to IRC and forum PMs whenever I get to my home computer. I challenge you to back up your claim with facts.

3) This is simply false. Over the last year I've been significantly enhancing mission and combat support, on top of the usual bugfixes and a new GUI. Take a look at the changelogs and try to tell me nothing has changed.
There have been -no- known bans due to StealthBot detection. I encourage users to report any bans to me so I might stomp any detection issues, and go out of my way to avoid doing things which may cause them. The only bans users have reported to me were from those who ran 23/7. I'd like to see the chat logs of these 'discussions', if you have any.

4) Configuration guide: http://stealthsoftware.net/configuration-options
Getting started guide: http://stealthsoftware.net/getting-started
Both of which are very much up to date. Again, I answer emails near instantly, and will reply to any forum PMs or IRC messages / PMs as soon as I'm at my home PC. I admit I'm slow on checking forum posts due to lack of notifications from them.

5) There is a known crash issue on station undock caused by a stack buffer overrun in ISXEVE, which CyberTech and I have been working on tracing down for a long time, which we are working on solving. If you knew what this crash was, you'd know why it's taking so long to find. That said, this is neither "frequent" no more "suspicious" than a disconnect from loss of internet connection, PC bluescreen, etc.

6) StealthBot forums are very much able to be posted to, as evidenced by the posts that are on the forums. You do need to log in, however.

7) Yes, StealthBot is a hobby for me. It's one I invest a significant chunk of time in, fixing bugs and otherwise constantly improving.

Your post is almost entirely BS. Yes, there are still issues from Inferno. Yes, we are still working on them in various ways. CyberTech is working on an enhanced Inventory access system to solve the current necessary state-based inventory access. I'm working on rearchitecting StealthBot to allow for handling state-based inventory access just in case. No bans that any of us are aware of have been caused from running StealthBot. If you can provide any evidence for ANY of your claims, I'd be happy to discuss them with you. Until then, kindly refrain from posting what is mostly blatant BS.

Edit: For what it's worth, I'm happy refunding any dissatisfied customer their payment as long as they email me so I can do so, and I have done so a good few times in the past. StealthBot isn't for everyone and I accept that. That said, most of my users are generally pretty happy with it - feel free to hop in IRC and talk with them about it.

For what it's worth...

From a customer on IRC chat.