The "Friendly Fire" Issue

[Bigcheese]

Your gun, your bullet, your fault.

Thank you for confirming that no matter what happens, it's the player's fault.

I mean it's obviously foolish, but it's what you believe I guess.

I believe NPC ships are reckless.
I believe missions telling you to go kill this or that should be sending you to areas where there is not a strong police presence (otherwise what the hell do they need you for?).
I believe that if you are working directly in conjunction with authorities (rarely implied in the game) that they should assign you a specific jurisdiction and that they should keep out of it (at least beyond an observation role where they don't chase down stuff you are supposed to kill).
I believe that NPC vessels should generally treat even minor FF harshly, because it's plausible (not to mention probably part of doctrine/training) for individuals to put their safety over that of a potential hostile's and because the likelihood of taking fire in open space from someone not intent on your harm should be minimal.

Good suggestions. It would be cool if the game were that dynamic. It might be easier just to have them warn you once or have a low bounty limit before reaching most wanted status considering how the game is setup though.

As it stands, they throw you all together on a regular basis. Yes, I disabled report crimes long ago.

I wasn't being sarcastic, those are good ideas. They are just beyond the current scope of the game.

 

[Remiel]

It really is cute how no matter how bad the AI is, no matter how badly they fly, no matter how stupid the system is setup, it's always the player's fault. Always.

How do you guys get like this? I seriously don't understand it at all. It's not like having npcs give a warning for accidental fire is something new to the genre...

Oh the AI is terrible at times, but I like 'em like that. It provides a challenge, and some entertainment, especially on stations. They're good for a giggle. No matter how good the AI could be though, to not have a few incompetents flying around doing dumb things amongst them would be flavourless. It's be like a wedding without that one drunk girl who tries to seduce the celebant.

The AI is also very good sometimes too. Especially the AI bounty hunters you encounter at times, the ones who scan you and tell you you're clean and aren't police. I have seen them, clear as day (and I'm trying to catch one on video) staying out of the path of friendly fire.

They aren't all stupid, some of you just happen to be encountering a few stupid ones.

No, having NPCs give warnings wouldn't be new, not at all, and where's the fun in that? Here we have something new, a unique challenge to learn and grow from. You wanna be a dangerous bounty hunter? You're gonna have to start by learning some of the basics of aerospace combat. I have not lost a single ship to having bounties against me that I didn't intend to get from the outset, and it really doesn't take that much to learn how to pay attention. You already know how to line up a shot and squeeze the trigger, and you have all the information right there in front of you to help you in not shooting what you don't intend to. Literally nothing needs to be changed here, but if the devs wanna change it, I'm pretty indifferent either way. It would be sad to lose the entertainment of the stupid AI though, and the hassle they cause for unsuspecting (incompetent?) pilots.

 

[Kitiara]

You need to have a point, like how you are trying to blame that absurd npc flying on FFace. It looked like it might go past him, not dip in front like an idiot. Only someone who's completely lost their ability to be objective would even suggest that wasn't stupid.

The AI's piloting is the AI's fault.

FFace's piloting is FFace's fault.

The rules are simple - shoot a non-wanted ship and you turn wanted. Whether you agree with that being desirable or not, you have to accept that it IS the situation. There are enough pilots out there that do not habitually shoot friendlies, and when they do error, just go pay the bounty off and get back on with it. Only a few are constantly in the forums demanding that the game be changed to compensate for their lack of firing control.

 

[Bigcheese]

Oh the AI is terrible at times, but I like 'em like that. It provides a challenge, and some entertainment, especially on stations. They're good for a giggle. No matter how good the AI could be though, to not have a few incompetents flying around doing dumb things amongst them would be flavourless. It's be like a wedding without that one drunk girl who tries to seduce the celebant.

The AI is also very good sometimes too. Especially the AI bounty hunters you encounter at times, the ones who scan you and tell you you're clean and aren't police. I have seen them, clear as day (and I'm trying to catch one on video) staying out of the path of friendly fire.

They aren't all stupid, some of you just happen to be encountering a few stupid ones.

No, having NPCs give warnings wouldn't be new, not at all, and where's the fun in that? Here we have something new, a unique challenge to learn and grow from. You wanna be a dangerous bounty hunter? You're gonna have to start by learning some of the basics of aerospace combat. I have not lost a single ship to having bounties against me that I didn't intend to get from the outset, and it really doesn't take that much to learn how to pay attention. You already know how to line up a shot and squeeze the trigger, and you have all the information right there in front of you to help you in not shooting what you don't intend to. Literally nothing needs to be changed here, but if the devs wanna change it, I'm pretty indifferent either way. It would be sad to lose the entertainment of the stupid AI though, and the hassle they cause for unsuspecting (incompetent?) pilots.

I've never died to this. I just dislike poorly implemented systems. This doesn't add any difficulty really, just annoyance. I hardly ever hit them for what it's worth. I just recognize poorly implemented mechanics when I see them and they will inevitably fly directly in front of you at some point.

We can pretend players are supposed to just work around areas of improvement, but that's not really helpful to anyone or anything. Suggesting that you should "pay attention" and successfully predict AI that you say yourself is terrible at times is contradictory. They do completely unexpected and senseless things on a regular basis.

Instead of bending over backwards trying to pretend flawed design is okay, why not help the developers with some decent feedback instead on how it can be improved. Calling people incompetent for noticing how bad things are setup is rather lame, especially considering you said yourself the AI is terrible at times. It just shows you know it's a problem but you're too much of a fanboy to acknowledge it. That's really sad.

Relentlessly pretending everything in the game is perfect is one of the most harmful things you can do to a game's community and it's ability to give feedback. We're talking about basic AI stuff here guys....

I think none of you have bigger ships where turrets are useful either.

 

[ArcticFenrir]

It's probably been suggested already, but I'd like to see something like an aggro counter implemented. Hit them once, a 5 - 10 second counter starts where if you hit them again its considered intentional aggression.

This.
The whole check your fire thing really works. I can't recall the last time I had an accidentally hit another ship, but I have had to hold fire a lot to avoid incidents. But adding in an aggro system where it takes multiple shots/damage based to gain a bounty would be a great solution. But only if the shields are still up. Damages to hull should warrant a fine or bounty depending on the damage done.

 

[Morbad]

Problem: There is a stream and we don't want to get wet crossing it.

My solution: Build a bridge and until that bridge is complete, take your chances leaping from stone to stone.

Some people's proposed solutions: Demand that Frontier make water less wet.

 

[Remiel]

I've never died to this. I just dislike poorly implemented systems. This doesn't add any difficulty really, just annoyance. I hardly ever hit them for what it's worth. I just recognize some poorly implemented mechanics.

We can pretend players are supposed to just work around areas of improvement, but that's not really helpful to anyone or anything. Suggesting that you should "pay attention" and successfully predict AI that you say yourself is terrible at times is contradictory. They do completely unexpected and senseless things on a regular basis.

Instead of bending over backwards try to pretend flawed design is okay, why not help the developers with some decent feedback instead on how it can be improved.

You keep calling it a poorly implemented system, but I just don't think you've experienced enough of it, or really paid attention to the details. See, as I just explained, there is good AI as well. There is a mix. Just like in reality, sometimes there's a bad egg or ten just waiting to do something dumb that could affect everyone around him. You need to watch out for that guy, because friendly or not, he's your greatest threat. Welcome to the wonderful world of aerospace combat, where the guy shooting at you is only one threat out of literally thousands within a 5km radius. Next up, idiots, both on your side and theirs, followed closely by FOD (or foreign object damage, ie, birds, debris, etc, obviously there are no birds in space though...). Then there's the possibility of the environment itself giving you a headache - in Elite right now that could be random bits of cargo dumped by guys you're trying to kill, or the asteroids you're fighting in, etc.

We're not even pretending it's up to players to check what they shoot at, that is basic aerospace combat 101. No one is going to get good at combat without learning how to understand their environment and developing a keen sense of situational awareness. And no, the game should not be changed to make it so that awareness is not required, because the combat would become generic and bland like flying fighters in Battlefield MP is - it's fake and crappy. Even Ace Combat does a better job, and that's arcade.

The AI is actually very predictable. Here's a tip, it's actually one of the first lessons for developing good situational awareness: if you see weapon fire that is not yours hitting what you're shooting at, you're probably on a deflection course for a non-hostile. Only then do I even bother to check my radar to see what's around me.

The premise of all this seems to be that this is a flawed design. I haven't seen this demonstrated yet, and I've explained how much flavour the AI really has already. Of course, I actually pay attention to it. Anyway, I don't see the need for improvement on the part of the game. Instead, I see a need for improvement in piloting amongst those who think the game should change to suit them, so that's the focus of my feedback.

 

[Bigcheese]

Problem: There is a stream and we don't want to get wet crossing it.

My solution: Build a bridge and until that bridge is complete, take your chances leaping from stone to stone.

Some people's proposed solutions: Demand that Frontier make water less wet.

Actually a warning would be the bridge, so I agree.

This.
The whole check your fire thing really works. I can't recall the last time I had an accidentally hit another ship, but I have had to hold fire a lot to avoid incidents. But adding in an aggro system where it takes multiple shots/damage based to gain a bounty would be a great solution. But only if the shields are still up. Damages to hull should warrant a fine or bounty depending on the damage done.

Sounds reasonable to me.

You keep calling it a poorly implemented system, but I just don't think you've experienced enough of it, or really paid attention to the details.

Do you use a bigger ship where turrets are useful?

If no, then right back at you. This is a common sense change. Having security issue death warrants over a single stray shot makes no sense and is extremely at odds with current game design.

That's all there is too it.

 

[Remiel]

Do you use a bigger ship where turrets are useful?

If no, then right back at you.

Did you just make an assumption? That would be rather silly and brazen of you now, wouldn't it.

 

[Bigcheese]

Did you just make an assumption? That would be rather silly and brazen of you now, wouldn't it.

You mean like assuming someone doesn't have enough experience or paid attention to the details? You did, and it just bit you in the butt. So do you use turrets or not? I'd hate to think you came in here with all your rationalizations without having the experience...

Again, death warrants for single stray shots make no sense and are at odds with current game design which makes use of autofire weapons and crowded, close proximity combat.

There's really not much else to say. Good day.

 

[cptzipzap]

I'm sorry but those saying "check your fire" and "if you shoot at a cop" are being rather unrealistic to the "reality" of what the game would be here.

I'm allied with the Feds, we are all ganging up on a pirate anaconda, one of the feds on full burn flies right in front of my beam lasers, there is really NOTHING I could do to prevent that sort of thing. I'm using a oculus, I as good a situational awareness as you can have in the game but stuff happens.

So I'm their friend and ally, they fly in front of ME, and I get a 200 wanted bounty which makes every one of them instantly attack me as if I just blew up one of their own. With shields its simply a ding to the paint here, no one was even remotely hurt. Its not like firing on a cop, or punching one, its like a cop walking in front of you while you were running and then pulling his gun to shoot ya when you bump him.

Reckless behavior SHOULD be punished, but it should take at least 2 incidents before they decide to kill you. A fine for the first one would make logical sense, especially if you are in high standing with the faction.

That being said its not THAT big a deal, its just annoying after a long supercruise.

this is anything that should be said.

change bounty into fine after 2 warnings

/thread

 

[Remiel]

You mean like assuming someone doesn't have enough experience or paid attention to the details? You did, and it just bit you in the butt. So do you use turrets or not? I'd hate to think you came in here with all your rationalizations without having the experience...

Again, death warrants for single stray shots make no sense and are at odds with current game design which makes use of autofire weapons and crowded, close proximity combat.

I didn't assume that at all, I know that, because you wouldn't be blanket dismissing the entire AI of this game as crappy if you were paying attention.

Do you know what negativity bias is? It's the notion that even when there is equal amounts of positive and negative in something, the things of more negative nature affect one's judgement more than those of a positive nature. ie, a lot of you are seeing bad AI, but have you noticed the good ones? Because I have. The AI has flavour, both good pilots and bad pilots, and I've seen my share of both. So yes, by your blanket statement that the AI is bad, I can safely deduce without assumption that you aren't paying attention. Negativity bias doesn't affect people who pay attention.

 

[Mixxi Pal]

My eyes tend to run in a triangular pattern from crosshair to sensors to bandwidth meter (because much activity here means there is another CMDR in the instance).

I slightly hate how important the scanner is to be honest as I find myself looking at it a lot and missing most of my own amazing pro-skill flying and shooting. Usually I only notice how great I am when I watch the videos back. Also, I lost an eye as a kid when my friend shot me point blank-ish with an air pistol. I can't do triangles so good.

 

[Alric]

The rules are simple - shoot a non-wanted ship and you turn wanted. Whether you agree with that being desirable or not, you have to accept that it IS the situation. There are enough pilots out there that do not habitually shoot friendlies, and when they do error, just go pay the bounty off and get back on with it. Only a few are constantly in the forums demanding that the game be changed to compensate for their lack of firing control.

Everyone accepts that is the situation, but that does not mean it has to stay that way. The mantra here forever has been x will improve, y will get implemented, z will get fleshed out, give it time. We accept that there are parts of the game which aren't as sophisticated as they should be. To me this is one of them.

As an example, right now the auto docking computer will fail, do crazy things and sometimes get you killed. This is the situation and I accept it. A great many pilots can land anyway, and I'm one of them. But I still think they should fix the auto docking because while it does work most of the time and can be worked around all of the time, it's too crude a system to be believable.

Likewise with police. People are talking about if you hit me I will destroy you, aggressive cops, etc. I think it would be cool if some cops were super aggressive and went after you at the smallest excuse. But it's not even the actual guy you hit who is the main problem here - it's that you're declared kill on sight to everyone across a vast region and can no longer even dock. If that cop turned red but you could declare friendly fire, I'm withdrawing - and withdraw from the area with just a fine, ok. Even if you had to evade said cop to do so.

But getting shot to pieces on sight by a space station long after the incident, is a stretch. It's like walking in to a station to admit you let a cop cars tires down, and getting a bullet through the head as soon as you step through the door. And not just in some areas.. but in every police station everywhere.

 

[Morbad]

Actually a warning would be the bridge

Not in my metaphor.

Do you use a bigger ship where turrets are useful?

I've found beam laser turrets to be useful, in some situations, on a Viper, and have seen them used to good effect against me on ships as small as an Eagle.

The AI has flavour, both good pilots and bad pilots, and I've seen my share of both.

The AI does have a fair variety, and some NPCs fight much more competently than others, but there are still areas where the game's AI is universally bad.

Nearly all NPCs have poor lateral/vertical thruster use, and flying backwards confuses almost all of them, for example.

I slightly hate how important the scanner is to be honest as I find myself looking at it a lot and missing most of my own amazing pro-skill flying and shooting. Usually I only notice how great I am when I watch the videos back. Also, I lost an eye as a kid when my friend shot me point blank-ish with an air pistol. I can't do triangles so good.

There isn't really any other way to get a 360 degree perspective of what's around you without watching the sensors, but I do think the sensor display could be a bit more clear; the lines are too thick and tend to obscure each other, while the scale is not intuitive and takes considerable experience to interpret on the fly (switching to linear just reduces detail near your ship too much).

 

[MartinW]

Briefly my hairy backside, he was there for long enough to see coming.

I'm very sorry you have a hairy backside. I would strongly recommend a hair removal cream, in no way should you use anything sharp on such a sensitive area.

As for your "he was there long enough"... yes the evil miscreant was in the vicinity, but he didn't become a threat and change his heading, threatening to cross the line of fire, until 2 seconds prior to the incident. If we were to regard all nearby craft as vehicles about to cross our line of fire, we would never fire our weapons.

 

[Kitiara]

I'm very sorry you have a hairy backside. I would strongly recommend a hair removal cream, in no way should you use anything sharp on such a sensitive area.

As for your "he was there long enough"... yes the evil miscreant was in the vicinity, but he didn't become a threat and change his heading, threatening to cross the line of fire, until 2 seconds prior to the incident. If we were to regard all nearby craft as vehicles about to cross our line of fire, we would never fire our weapons.

It was closer to 5 than 2.

The second incident on Mixxi's video, where he died to a collision was something that should be altered. Collisions between ships should not be desirable, and in principle, collisions between equal mass ships should result in severe damage to or destruction of both. You have to make a concession to gameplay for the effects of a much smaller ship ramming a larger one doing little damage to the larger, or you'de open up pilots in free sidewinders consiously ramming type 9's just to incur costs on other pilots.

 

[Mixxi Pal]

There isn't really any other way to get a 360 degree perspective of what's around you without watching the sensors, but I do think the sensor display could be a bit more clear; the lines are too thick and tend to obscure each other, while the scale is not intuitive and takes considerable experience to interpret on the fly (switching to linear just reduces detail near your ship too much).

Aye. I actually had a proper - as in, my own stupid fault - friendly fire incident recently whereby.. I was in Federation space and I'm hostile with the feds so I had maybe 8 or 9 red targets on my scanner while I was finishing off a wanted ship and one of them began attacking me and I genuinely couldn't work out which one it was in my moment of panic and took a shot at the ship I thought was the aggressor and of course instantly became wanted. It's not easy being a crack space commander sometimes.

 

[AndyHill]

I don't really know why these threads deteriorate into arguments about how someone should fly better and shoot less. That simply does not matter, the question is not at all about who is guilty (there are one or two parties in friendly fire accidents, one of which is almost always the shooter) but entirely about what the consequences are. Please note that the AI are doing it as well all the time, not just the cops but law abiding citizens as well who were often just defending themselves against aggressors.

And then they get murdered by everyone in front of your eyes for doing no harm to anyone (except perhaps some wanted person they were focusing on). The reason games are so immersive is because you have to interpret the explicit and implicit rules and focus on the gameplay, you can't just close your eyes and sleep until the movie ends. That's why this kind of silly mechanisms are so counterproductive, people just realize that this kind of weirdness would lead to a pretty disfunctional universe where people get killed and even valuable ships shot to pieces for nothing.

Even if for some reason the Elite universe needs to be a total dystopia where everyone is a sociopath just itching to murder someone else wouldn't the station authorities rather ask for a smuggler or parking offender to stand down or ambush him after landing, taking away his ship and all possessions before shooting him on sight (or perhaps selling to slavery or labor camps or something like that)? Right now I'm checking all the bounties beforehand just so that I know it's not just a few hundred C from an accidental bump - and far too often it is.

The solution is quite simple: make the AI care less about inconsequentially small damage and only reacting to something significant while the human players get an option to forgive team damage before it turns into bounty (unless it's significant). Simple and somewhat hard to exploit.

 

[MartinW]

The AI's piloting is the AI's fault.

FFace's piloting is FFace's fault.

The rules are simple - shoot a non-wanted ship and you turn wanted. Whether you agree with that being desirable or not, you have to accept that it IS the situation. There are enough pilots out there that do not habitually shoot friendlies, and when they do error, just go pay the bounty off and get back on with it. Only a few are constantly in the forums demanding that the game be changed to compensate for their lack of firing control.

Actually it's more than a few. Seems like 50/50 to me from all the posts on this I've read.
In any case, it's clear neither side of the argument is going to back down. But that's not an issue. It should be relatively easy for the developer to give us a setting. "ON" = Sensible mode activated. "OFF" = How the fan boys want it... After all, we do have settings in the game. Both camps can be catered for.

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No one is saying the AI isn't , but I cannot control the AI. I can control my ship and my weapons.

Yes we can do our best to control our ships and weapons in the short term... but in the long term any aspect of the game that is, as you put it, "" should by definition require fixing.