Crime and Punishment not fit for purpose - needs overhauling

[rootsrat]

As someone who's experienced every side of the Elite Dangerous galaxy - PVP, PVE, and everything in between - I've had countless discussions about the Crime and Punishment system. Saying that, everything below is my opinion only. One thing to note very clearly - this thread is NOT a discussion about Open vs Solo. If you want to discuss that, please do it here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-open-v-solo-v-groups-thread.607291/

This thread is about the current Crime and Punishment system in Elite Dangerous - mainly in the context of PVP - so if we could stick to that topic and context it would be good. With that short intro out of the way - let's have a look at it.

CRIME AND PUNIHSMENT

Currently the main drivers behind the Crime and Punishment systems are: Fines, Bounties and Notoriety. I won't be talking about fines, they are more or less meaningless.

The players that choose the more serious criminal path get assigned bounties and notoriety. As an effect, the two main "punishments" for crimes seems to be effectively:

• Financial implications - the criminals that destroy other players' ships have to pay a percentage of their victims' rebuy costs.
• Gameplay implications - the inability to use station systems like refuel, rearm and repair until you pay off the bounties (which is not possible unless your Notoriety is 0)

None of these 2 things are fit for purpose in the current game reality.

• Credits are ridiculously easy to get, so the victims' rebuy cost addition is 100% non-punishment, as you can get that money back in a couple of hours tops.
• With the addition of Fleet Carriers and also a gazillion of Odyssey settlements that offer the services - the inability to use the services on the main station(s) is also not a problem at all.

This is why I am of an opinion that the whole system needs revisiting and restructuring to fit the current game reality better. Another reason is that while some players enjoy the thrill of piracy and combat, the balance currently swings too far in favour of gankers/criminals at the expense of traders, explorers and other "victims".

Let's have a look at a typical trading Community Goal scenario. Considering I am a trader that wants to compete in a community goal to get the prizes for top tier of players I am on a lost position from the get-go.

I have a choice - sacrifice some of my cargo space to get more armour and bigger shields to increase my survivability. This means that competing in the CG immediately becomes a lost cause, as the people who fly in Solo can easily go for min-maxed shieldless, defenceless all-cargo-rack builds, which means they will be able to haul A LOT more and win the CG.

And even if I somehow manage to be able to compete with them, the chain-interdictions from people that want to prevent me from delivering that cargo mean that I have literally no chance. It is almost impossible to escape an interdiction from a maxxed out PVP gank-boat in my heavy trader loaded up with armour and cargo. The only viable option is to submit. But when I do that - I'm getting pulled back to the attacker's position. Meaning that if I manage to outmanoeuvre them and get back into Super Cruise, now I have to cover the distance to the station again. This makes it extremely easy for another interdiction, and even if I mange to submit and get back into SC a few times in a row, I keep getting chain-interdicted and after 5th - 6th time it becomes just an annoyance.

It feels like I'm being punished for being a better pilot than my attackers.

You could say - oh but they get bounties on their heads, so maybe get other players to hunt them down. Unfortunately, the player bounties are capped at 2 million, so even if they have a 100 mil bounty on them, once a player bounty hunter destroys them, they only get 2 million. This is extremely discouraging to player BH, just a waste of time really considering that you can make MUCH MORE just by doing PVE BH.

This cap was introduced long time ago, when Credits were not as easy to make (quite the opposite in fact), and the players would deliberately get large bounties and them let their friend destroy them to get rich quick. Again, due to easy way to make billions nowadays, this cap is 100% obsolete and not needed anymore.

Also related to that is the fact that I can't really reward my friendly bounty hunters for helping me out and being my bodyguards. What do they get out of it? I potentially get a better chance of competing in the Community Goal, but what's in it for them? 2 million Cr per ganker kill. LOL.

These are the prime examples of how the game favours the aggressor rather than the victim, how it discourages player bounty hunting and how it makes the punishment rather meaningless.

PROPOSED CHANGES

What could be done to make it a bit better? Below are some of the proposals we came up together (remember I said it's been discussed with a lot of people, some of which were also gankers!)

• Remove the 2 million bounty cap for player bounty hunting. If a player has 100 million bounty - that's how much the bounty hunter should get!
• Increase player bounties greatly. With the cap removed, make it actually worthwhile for the player bounty hunters to engage with Wanted players.
• Make escaping player interdictions easier.
• Make the aggressor being pulled to the victim after the successful and/or submitted interdiction, rather than the other way around. This will mean that the reward for my better piloting skills is the better chance to get to my destination if I manage to escape back into Super Cruise.
• Multiply the victims' rebuy cost being added to the criminal's rebuy after they destroy a ship. Make it scalable with the current Credits value in the economy.
• From certain level of Notoriety (5 and above?) make the criminal get only the stock ship back, losing their engineered modules. Alternatively make them retrieveable after specific amount of time only (24/48 hours?)
• Increase the police response in High and Medium Security systems. Low Sec and Anarchy should be fairly safe for criminals, but Med and High should really make them think twice before they decide to destroy another player's ship.
• Introduce more reasons to be a criminal that don't involve mindless ganking.

All in all, I think it is fair to say the C&P is no longer fit for purpose and even if you disagree with some of the proposals above, it definitely requires another look and changes to fit the current game reality better.

Lastly - a polite reminder that it's just my opinion and it's OK to have a different one. Also, keep it civil and if you want to discuss Open vs Solo - go to the thread linked at the top of this post.

So - what do you guys think? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

 

[Ian Doncaster]

So - what do you guys think? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

As always, in summary, "the C&P system is not the appropriate tool to regulate inter-player behaviour in the first place", since plenty of things are illegal but Frontier absolutely wants players doing them - e.g. Odyssey missions - and plenty of things are legal but generate regular complaints when players do them - e.g. attacking other players in uninhabited systems - and so neither "are you wanted by the local NPC faction?" nor "have you got a global notoriety score?" are particularly good indicators of anything much in a PvP context.

 

[aRJay]

As someone who's experienced every side of the Elite Dangerous galaxy - PVP, PVE, and everything in between - I've had countless discussions about the Crime and Punishment system. Saying that, everything below is my opinion only. One thing to note very clearly - this thread is NOT a discussion about Open vs Solo. If you want to discuss that, please do it here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/the-open-v-solo-v-groups-thread.607291/

This thread is about the current Crime and Punishment system in Elite Dangerous - mainly in the context of PVP - so if we could stick to that topic and context it would be good. With that short intro out of the way - let's have a look at it.

CRIME AND PUNIHSMENT

Currently the main drivers behind the Crime and Punishment systems are: Fines, Bounties and Notoriety. I won't be talking about fines, they are more or less meaningless.

The players that choose the more serious criminal path get assigned bounties and notoriety. As an effect, the two main "punishments" for crimes seems to be effectively:

• Financial implications - the criminals that destroy other players' ships have to pay a percentage of their victims' rebuy costs.
• Gameplay implications - the inability to use station systems like refuel, rearm and repair until you pay off the bounties (which is not possible unless your Notoriety is 0)

None of these 2 things are fit for purpose in the current game reality.

• Credits are ridiculously easy to get, so the victims' rebuy cost addition is 100% non-punishment, as you can get that money back in a couple of hours tops.
• With the addition of Fleet Carriers and also a gazillion of Odyssey settlements that offer the services - the inability to use the services on the main station(s) is also not a problem at all.

This is why I am of an opinion that the whole system needs revisiting and restructuring to fit the current game reality better. Another reason is that while some players enjoy the thrill of piracy and combat, the balance currently swings too far in favour of gankers/criminals at the expense of traders, explorers and other "victims".

Let's have a look at a typical trading Community Goal scenario. Considering I am a trader that wants to compete in a community goal to get the prizes for top tier of players I am on a lost position from the get-go.

I have a choice - sacrifice some of my cargo space to get more armour and bigger shields to increase my survivability. This means that competing in the CG immediately becomes a lost cause, as the people who fly in Solo can easily go for min-maxed shieldless, defenceless all-cargo-rack builds, which means they will be able to haul A LOT more and win the CG.

And even if I somehow manage to be able to compete with them, the chain-interdictions from people that want to prevent me from delivering that cargo mean that I have literally no chance. It is almost impossible to escape an interdiction from a maxxed out PVP gank-boat in my heavy trader loaded up with armour and cargo. The only viable option is to submit. But when I do that - I'm getting pulled back to the attacker's position. Meaning that if I manage to outmanoeuvre them and get back into Super Cruise, now I have to cover the distance to the station again. This makes it extremely easy for another interdiction, and even if I mange to submit and get back into SC a few times in a row, I keep getting chain-interdicted and after 5th - 6th time it becomes just an annoyance.

It feels like I'm being punished for being a better pilot than my attackers.

You could say - oh but they get bounties on their heads, so maybe get other players to hunt them down. Unfortunately, the player bounties are capped at 2 million, so even if they have a 100 mil bounty on them, once a player bounty hunter destroys them, they only get 2 million. This is extremely discouraging to player BH, just a waste of time really considering that you can make MUCH MORE just by doing PVE BH.

This cap was introduced long time ago, when Credits were not as easy to make (quite the opposite in fact), and the players would deliberately get large bounties and them let their friend destroy them to get rich quick. Again, due to easy way to make billions nowadays, this cap is 100% obsolete and not needed anymore.

Also related to that is the fact that I can't really reward my friendly bounty hunters for helping me out and being my bodyguards. What do they get out of it? I potentially get a better chance of competing in the Community Goal, but what's in it for them? 2 million Cr per ganker kill. LOL.

These are the prime examples of how the game favours the aggressor rather than the victim, how it discourages player bounty hunting and how it makes the punishment rather meaningless.

PROPOSED CHANGES

What could be done to make it a bit better? Below are some of the proposals we came up together (remember I said it's been discussed with a lot of people, some of which were also gankers!)

• Remove the 2 million bounty cap for player bounty hunting. If a player has 100 million bounty - that's how much the bounty hunter should get!
• Increase player bounties greatly. With the cap removed, make it actually worthwhile for the player bounty hunters to engage with Wanted players.
• Make escaping player interdictions easier.

Yes.

• Make the aggressor being pulled to the victim after the successful and/or submitted interdiction, rather than the other way around. This will mean that the reward for my better piloting skills is the better chance to get to my destination if I manage to escape back into Super Cruise.

If this can’t occur at the point where the interdiction finishes then the lower massed ship should be drawn to the high mass one, this will usually be as above but not always.

• Multiply the victims' rebuy cost being added to the criminal's rebuy after they destroy a ship. Make it scalable with the current Credits value in the economy.
• From certain level of Notoriety (5 and above?) make the criminal get only the stock ship back, losing their engineered modules. Alternatively make them retrieveable after specific amount of time only (24/48 hours?)

I think impounding the ship would be better, perhaps criminality should have ranks earned by accumulated notoriety and the higher ranked the crim is the more severe the penalties so Elite crims lose the ship and modules.

• Increase the police response in High and Medium Security systems. Low Sec and Anarchy should be fairly safe for criminals, but Med and High should really make them think twice before they decide to destroy another player's ship.

Yes.

• Introduce more reasons to be a criminal that don't involve mindless ganking.

Yes.

All in all, I think it is fair to say the C&P is no longer fit for purpose and even if you disagree with some of the proposals above, it definitely requires another look and changes to fit the current game reality better.

Lastly - a polite reminder that it's just my opinion and it's OK to have a different one. Also, keep it civil and if you want to discuss Open vs Solo - go to the thread linked at the top of this post.

So - what do you guys think? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

It does need revisiting.

 

[HRDiagram]

Aside from all other considerations, whether one agrees or not, I believe the most important change would be the interdiction game.
It should be an even playing field as a minimum, and not an auto-lose for the interdictee.

A pirate, ganker or other interdictor should have a hard time interdicting a player in a T7, and could wear that as a badge of honour, if successful.

 

[Alec Turner]

I haven't thought about this in detail but two immediate knee jerk reactions (which may be wrong or misunderstand what you're saying):

Remove the 2 million bounty cap for player bounty hunting. If a player has 100 million bounty - that's how much the bounty hunter should get!
Wasn't the reason for this cap to prevent two ganker mates (for example) from using this to make huge amounts of money by claiming each others massive bounties?

From certain level of Notoriety (5 and above?) make the criminal get only the stock ship back, losing their engineered modules.
God no. The problem is that it's really easy to gain notoriety accidentally from entirely PVE gameplay (e.g. I recently misunderstood about massacring everyone at a tourist settlement in an anarchy system as a way to get Smear Campaign Plans and am still working off my notoriety of 6 which is already a massive pita). I personally feel like focusing on ganking as the motivation for the C&P system is wrong since 99% of all C&P consequences affect players who haven't encountered a ganker for years. Don't penalise the entire PVE game for the sake of something that very rarely happens in practice.

 

[Darrack]

Don't penalise the entire PVE game for the sake of something that very rarely happens in practice.

Sadly that's how things normally go in MMO type games, PvPers tend to cry the loudest and PVE gets nerfed.

O7

 

[rootsrat]

I haven't thought about this in detail but two immediate knee jerk reactions (which may be wrong or misunderstand what you're saying):

Remove the 2 million bounty cap for player bounty hunting. If a player has 100 million bounty - that's how much the bounty hunter should get!
Wasn't the reason for this cap to prevent two ganker mates (for example) from using this to make huge amounts of money by claiming each others massive bounties?

Yes, that's what I said above as well - but it's 100% irrelevant with the current Cr earning rates.

From certain level of Notoriety (5 and above?) make the criminal get only the stock ship back, losing their engineered modules.
God no. The problem is that it's really easy to gain notoriety accidentally from entirely PVE gameplay (e.g. I recently misunderstood about massacring everyone at a tourist settlement in an anarchy system as a way to get Smear Campaign Plans and am still working off my notoriety of 6 which is already a massive pita). I personally feel like focusing on ganking as the motivation for the C&P system is wrong since 99% of all C&P consequences affect players who haven't encountered a ganker for years. Don't penalise the entire PVE game for the sake of something that very rarely happens in practice.

Yes, that's a very valid point! I didn't want to mix in the "should notoriety be only for PVP" topic into this, but in the hindsight, I should have done.

 

[Ozric]

Actually implement the Karma system.

 

[Alec Turner]

Frankly, I was always quite surprised (given that I seem to recall notoriety was indeed added as an anti-ganking measure) that shooting "innocent" npc's gave any notoriety at all. Let fines, bounties and imprisonment be the penalty for pve crime, leave notoriety exclusively for pvp crime, and then by all means go wild on making notoriety penalities as stringent as you like.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Oh I agree that the C&P needs overhauling. I always though it needed looking at after they'd streamlined engineering (there's a coincidence).

PROPOSED CHANGES

What could be done to make it a bit better? Below are some of the proposals we came up together (remember I said it's been discussed with a lot of people, some of which were also gankers!)

• Remove the 2 million bounty cap for player bounty hunting. If a player has 100 million bounty - that's how much the bounty hunter should get!

Problem with that was that people were exploiting it so that they would have their friends 'Collect the Bounty', then the friend would rack up a big bounty and the player would then harvest that bounty. Rinse and repeat until fleet carrier.

• Increase player bounties greatly. With the cap removed, make it actually worthwhile for the player bounty hunters to engage with Wanted players.

See above.

• Make escaping player interdictions easier.

you mean in low wake? it'd quite easy to high wake out of a situation.

• Make the aggressor being pulled to the victim after the successful and/or submitted interdiction, rather than the other way around. This will mean that the reward for my better piloting skills is the better chance to get to my destination if I manage to escape back into Super Cruise.

I though the aggressor was pulled in and there was a couple of seconds where they were out of control, if you submit. I always though the process was select system to high wake to, submit to the interdiction, wait for the drive to come back online, jump before the aggressor can get a bead on them. The amount of complaining I used to hear from the gankers about this escape technique was wonderful.

• Multiply the victims' rebuy cost being added to the criminal's rebuy after they destroy a ship. Make it scalable with the current Credits value in the economy.

Or if you have flagged as a player killer, the rebuy cost is the full price (because why would insurance protect a murder).

• From certain level of Notoriety (5 and above?) make the criminal get only the stock ship back, losing their engineered modules. Alternatively make them retrieveable after specific amount of time only (24/48 hours?)
• Increase the police response in High and Medium Security systems. Low Sec and Anarchy should be fairly safe for criminals, but Med and High should really make them think twice before they decide to destroy another player's ship.

You should be able to fly a fat T-9, without any free from pirates (player or other).

• Introduce more reasons to be a criminal that don't involve mindless ganking.

Well, make the payout for stolen goods (and for missions that require stolen goods) much larger and make crime pay! The rest will follow.

All in all, I think it is fair to say the C&P is no longer fit for purpose and even if you disagree with some of the proposals above, it definitely requires another look and changes to fit the current game reality better.

I do like the idea of Notoriety stat, but I think we need something like an extra Pilot's Federation Notoriety (PFN) stat. This would only be relevant for commanders who player kill for the lols. Lets assume you kill a player, who's clean, not in power-play and the kill didn't happen in an anarchy system, then you gain a PDN point (to a maximum of ten) in addition to the bounty (If you're powerplaying, you will get powerplay bounties against you, so you don't get off scott free).

The PFN degrades at a much lower rate and bounties can't be cleared at Interstellar Factors. In addition, if you're in a High, Med and Low rated security system; you're position appears on the galaxy map as part of a red ship icon showing that there are players who have been 'naughty' present in that system. Anarchy's systems don't show the icon because we want to make anarchies scary again.

The idea behind this is to show players which systems have the most troublesome, so they can avoid them (i.e. you're in a fat t9), or that there are good bounties in that system. (have you ever tried to track someone through the most wanted boards on the station? urgh!

However, and this might make me unpopular, when you block a player that only blocks their ability to talk via comms. If that player is "stalking" you, then you use the existing report player function to fdev to get a block put in place. The reason for this is that too many power-players just block opposing players to stop them escorting their friends, or to disrupt wings. If the player is continually tracking you and killing you, then that's what pvt and solo is really for, I just feel the block function is being exploited for the wrong means.

 

[rootsrat]

Oh I agree that the C&P needs overhauling. I always though it needed looking at after they'd streamlined engineering (there's a coincidence).

Problem with that was that people were exploiting it so that they would have their friends 'Collect the Bounty', then the friend would rack up a big bounty and the player would then harvest that bounty. Rinse and repeat until fleet carrier.

See above.

This is irrelevant nowadays though, with the absolutely ridiculous amounts of Cr you can get from literally any other activity.

you mean in low wake? it'd quite easy to high wake out of a situation.

No, I mean that actual minigame.

I though the aggressor was pulled in

Nope, unless it was changed recently (which I'm not aware of). The victim gets pulled back to the aggressor's location in space.

I always though the process was select system to high wake to, submit to the interdiction, wait for the drive to come back online, jump before the aggressor can get a bead on them. The amount of complaining I used to hear from the gankers about this escape technique was wonderful.

That is still a lose to me, as a trader in a Community Goal. I am perfectly aware of the high wake escape, but that means I need jump back into the system and have the FULL DISTANCE to cover yet again. I am talking about the scenario when an aggressor pulls me and I am able to survive long enough to be able to jump back into Super Cruise.

Or if you have flagged as a playe0 killer, the rebuy cost is the full price (because why would insurance protect a murder).

Also a great idea, yes!

Well, make the payout for stolen goods (and for missions that require stolen goods) much larger and make crime pay! The rest will follow.

Would be a great start indeed

I do like the idea of Notoriety stat, but I think we need something like an extra Pilot's Federation Notoriety (PFN) stat. This would only be relevant for commanders who player kill for the lols. Lets assume you kill a player, who's clean, not in power-play and the kill didn't happen in an anarchy system, then you gain a PDN point (to a maximum of ten) in addition to the bounty (If you're powerplaying, you will get powerplay bounties against you, so you don't get off scott free).

The PFN degrades at a much lower rate and bounties can't be cleared at Interstellar Factors. In addition, if you're in a High, Med and Low rated security system; you're position appears on the galaxy map as part of a red ship icon showing that there are players who have been 'naughty' present in that system. Anarchy's systems don't show the icon because we want to make anarchies scary again.

The idea behind this is to show players which systems have the most troublesome, so they can avoid them (i.e. you're in a fat t9), or that there are good bounties in that system. (have you ever tried to track someone through the most wanted boards on the station? urgh!

Agreed!

However, and this might make me unpopular, when you block a player that only blocks their ability to talk via comms. If that player is "stalking" you, then you use the existing report player function to fdev to get a block put in place. The reason for this is that too many power-players just block opposing players to stop them escorting their friends, or to disrupt wings. If the player is continually tracking you and killing you, then that's what pvt and solo is really for, I just feel the block function is being exploited for the wrong means.

I have deliberately not mentioned blocking, as it's been discussed to death also In the current state of things - I am 100% behind the current block mechanics. It's the only way to get rid of people who have an extremely unfair advantage over you. Plus, it makes the griefers (clear distinction from gankers) cry "but mah instancez waaaaah!".

Now, if the C&P system was overhauled to be more fair and more fit for purpose - yes, absolutely change how blocking works. As things currently stand - I am very strongly opposed to changing it.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

I have deliberately not mentioned blocking, as it's been discussed to death also In the current state of things - I am 100% behind the current block mechanics. It's the only way to get rid of people who have an extremely unfair advantage over you. Plus, it makes the griefers (clear distinction from gankers) cry "but mah instancez waaaaah!".

Now, if the C&P system was overhauled to be more fair and more fit for purpose - yes, absolutely change how blocking works. As things currently stand - I am very strongly opposed to changing it.

That was the point though. All those changes had to go hand in hand. I wasn't proposing that the block function be removed without the other suggestions being implemented.

 

[HappyMoonMonkey]

Introduce more reasons to be a criminal that don't involve mindless ganking.

An overhaul to the combat logging mechanic would be good here. One of the prime reasons for simply killing CMDRs rather than pirating is that a proportion still combat log, either by killing the game or properly via the menu. The challenge is therefore only in securing the kill in the short moment after interdicting.

Behaviourally people are going to continue to combat log regardless of perceived etiquette or TOS. To encourage legitimate piracy, in the event of a log, perhaps:

• the ship could stay in instance, perhaps invunerably, giving the pirate the chance to hatch break. When the CMDR logs on again that cargo is lost to them.
• some cargo is automatically disgorged on a log. CMDR loses this when they log on again and the pirate is free to collect from free space.

Piracy would be more profitable as cargo would only not be stolen in the event of a successful in game evasion or combat.

 

[Oh Seven Commander]

As a fan of Open - I like most of these suggestions. The two things I would change are -

We should just have anti-interdiction modules that do not take an Optional Internal slot. We have Utilities and Hardpoints, make them go there. A ship like a T9 can only equip a medium size of these modules, but a Cutter could equip a huge one. You get pulled and you can, assuming you have some kind of ammo, fire it off and the aggressor just fails the interdiction if they don't pass a mass lock factor check of some kind. If you want to bring heavy freighters to a stand still, you should have to have the mass lock to back it up.

Police responses should be far more like Eve Online when in High Security space. (people don't like comparisons, but comparing things is normal, natural, and beneficial when another game does something better). After a certain Notoriety, ATR should drop in without warning, it should be near instant, and they should have access to weapons and immobilization modules that simply make fight or flight impossible for the aggressor. Current ATR can be sent to Low security systems, and Medium should get something in between. The current system is unbelievable in the extreme, when you can commit these crimes in very high population and high security systems with impunity.

I would also add, that after a certain Notoriety you should just be locked out of systems altogether. Being able to camp Shinrarta for hours is unbelievable. After 2 kills you should be seeing the super police and after that death you get 1 more chance. After that, you get 48 hours of revocation of your Founder's World permit. After 48 hours you can go back, but this would prevent people sitting there all night. Same for CGs. If it's in Fed space, after a certain amount of crime, your ship should just not let you into Fed space at all, because the Federation has revoked your permits to all of their controlled systems, you are on the no fly list, effectively.

Some of this might seem strict, but Open could be the best mode in Elite if risk v reward were rebalanced and people didn't have to worry about flying through population centers just to be turned into dust.

 

[Mohrgan]

FDev does not intend for the C&P system to regulate anything. It is intended to portray the environment we all play in: a dystopian future with guns. Law and Order in space is hard. The subject was investigated diligently, I believe there was much discussion between the Devs and players, it seems settled to me. I really loath the idea of spending time on this subject again.

 

[Darrack]

FDev does not intend for the C&P system to regulate anything. It is intended to portray the environment we all play in: a dystopian future with guns. Law and Order in space is hard. The subject was investigated diligently, I believe there was much discussion between the Devs and players, it seems settled to me. I really loath the idea of spending time on this subject again.

Completely agree

O7

 

[Rebel Yell]

I believe that one of the main weak links for the game is putting players in same instance no matter what their rank is... so newbies can instance with heavily engineered murderboats as a consequence. On the other side, even implementing instance limiits, the ARX-P2 would literally allow any mostly harmless CMDR to become a ganker at zero rebuy cost and with infinite respawns... last but not least: pledged players get anyway a powerplay-bounty and not a pilot's federation one for murders.

IMHO an enhanced system security is the only one feasible solution: that means in hi-sec a wanted ship with >2 or 3 notoriety has to be immediately and constantly interdicted by security ships (these require some rework, as there's huge gap between standard security ships and ATR -> game needs something in the between). Powerplay hunters should behave in the same way. Strength and frequency of police interdictions have to be affected by system security level.

Rarely pirates destroy haulers, so notoriety level helps at least to provide some discrimination...

 

[Darrack]

so newbies can instance with heavily engineered murderboats as a consequence

That's not a game problem, its the bad attitude of some selfish players, but that's another thread.
The early days in both Everquest and WOW were great when high level players could interact and help newbies, i gave away hundreds of plat at 'first torch' when the ROK expansion was released on European servers just to help new folks out, its never the game, just always some sorry individuals.

O7

 

[rootsrat]

An overhaul to the combat logging mechanic would be good here. One of the prime reasons for simply killing CMDRs rather than pirating is that a proportion still combat log, either by killing the game or properly via the menu. The challenge is therefore only in securing the kill in the short moment after interdicting.

I would be interested to see the combat logging stats for now and then after a theoretical changes to the C&P system. Perhaps if the system was modernised and made more fair for "victims", the CL rate would go down?

But we'll never find out

As a fan of Open - I like most of these suggestions. The two things I would change are -

We should just have anti-interdiction modules that do not take an Optional Internal slot. We have Utilities and Hardpoints, make them go there. A ship like a T9 can only equip a medium size of these modules, but a Cutter could equip a huge one. You get pulled and you can, assuming you have some kind of ammo, fire it off and the aggressor just fails the interdiction if they don't pass a mass lock factor check of some kind. If you want to bring heavy freighters to a stand still, you should have to have the mass lock to back it up.

Anti-Interdictor mechanism would be great! When they introduced SCO, I was convinced that it will be THE way to get out of it - just boost away from the mini-game. Then it turned out it doesn't work like that

Police responses should be far more like Eve Online when in High Security space. (people don't like comparisons, but comparing things is normal, natural, and beneficial when another game does something better). After a certain Notoriety, ATR should drop in without warning, it should be near instant, and they should have access to weapons and immobilization modules that simply make fight or flight impossible for the aggressor. Current ATR can be sent to Low security systems, and Medium should get something in between. The current system is unbelievable in the extreme, when you can commit these crimes in very high population and high security systems with impunity.

Yes, agreed!

I would also add, that after a certain Notoriety you should just be locked out of systems altogether. Being able to camp Shinrarta for hours is unbelievable.

It is absolutely ridiculous.

IMHO an enhanced system security is the only one feasible solution: that means in hi-sec a wanted ship with >2 or 3 notoriety has to be immediately and constantly interdicted by security ships (these require some rework, as there's huge gap between standard security ships and ATR -> game needs something in the between). Powerplay hunters should behave in the same way. Strength and frequency of police interdictions have to be affected by system security level.

It would be a good start definitely. I think it was mentioned a few times, but I also think that separating crimes against NPC and Cmdrs would be a great idea.

 

[Darrack]

The game doesn’t really encourage social gameplay unfortunately

It does on PVE PGs which is why ED is so good (you have that option).
Blizzard soon learned that the overwhelming majority didn't want PvP outside of Alterac Valley, we had a toggle in the early days of battles at the Crossroads, they had to make some PvP servers for the rest.

O7