Question about land bids

Hi, I have a question about land bids using the Auction system.

If two residents are in a bidding war, is there any limit to the number or to how fast you can place bids? If not, it seems someone would use an automated script to auto-bid and gain an unfair advantage.

No, there is no limit. But there really isn't much point to bidding too aggressively if you end up paying more than a parcel is worth, as often happens at auction. The only thing really worth bidding on at auction is a full sim.

Wiggy, the bidding is ALREADY automated. It works like this:

Let's say a parcel's starting bid is L$500.

Bidder A decides he'll pay up to L$10,000 for the parcel, and enters that as his maximum bid.

The parcel will now show the bidding at L$500, with Bidder A as the high bidder.

Bidder B decides this looks like a bargain, and enters a bid of L$2,000.

Now an automated bidding war begins, and it's over in a fraction of a second. L$2,000 is still lower than Bidder A's maximum, so Bidder A comes out on top.

The parcel will now show the bidding at L$2,001, with Bidder A as the high bidder.

Bidder A will continue to be the high bidder until someone else enters a maximum bid higher than his L$10,000 figure.

This is the same way eBay auctions work. On eBay, some bidders like to "snipe". That is, they'll wait until the last minutes or seconds of an auction, and enter a bid just slightly higher than the current one, hoping that they can grab the item for a bargain price because no one is looking. There's even software that will allow you to snipe faster than you can enter a bid manually. While sniping may be fun, it really doesn't result in you getting a lower price very often. All it means is that most of the bidding takes place in the last few moments of the auction.

Yeah, as Lindal said, it's based on eBay technology which is implicitly automated, assuming you enter a "max bid" that's higher than the current active bid.

But really, built-in delays don't stop bots anyway. LL implemented a throttle on land sales searches in SL a long time ago to keep land bots from picking up land too quickly, but it didn't stop anyone. It didn't even slow down some of the craftier botters.