Friendly fire thread

[Dissentient]

If that is so, then why do you complain yourself about people who make more money than you by successfully avoiding to hit security ships?

I'm not complaining about people making more money, I'm complaining about having to make an unnecessary trip once in 150 destroyed ships on average (which is probably better than most bounty hunters out there).

Ok, I agree, a high fine would be more appropriate than a low bounty. But then you'd definitely need some kind of threshold, since otherwise you could continuously shoot at police ships while only receiving fines. At some point (said threshold) the game should say: "enough is enough, this is not just merely a commander with a bad aim, this guy deliberately shoots at security vessels, for which he gets a bounty instead of a fine!"

To finetune this threshold would be much more subjective (and everyone would have his own threshold that he'd think would be appropriate - most likely proportional to his own flying skills or rather the lack of it) than just saying: "every hit on a police vessel results in a bounty, period", and therefore would produce even more discussion and frustrated pilots that would argue "lower that threshold, it's to harsh" until it's meaningless altogether.

It's fairly simple. Just make a threshold of around 10% shield capacity / 5% hull capacity (depending on where that damage goes at the time) that doesn't decay over time. If either is exceeded, turn all fines into a bounty. It would take probably less than an hour of one developer's time to figure out the right numbers.
Fines can also be calculated based on total assets.

With "ridiculously fast" I only meant he got awarded many more kills than he should have, thus exploiting the system.

Current system is so imbalanced that exploiting it doesn't achieve much. You could do same thing before the fix just by using a weapon with high alpha damage, only spending one shot per ship. Wouldn't that also be an "exploit"?
Still we are talking about just 100k per ship in best case. It's not amount of money worth "exploiting" for.

 

[Helvellyn]

The practical impact of one stray shot is just about nil, therefore the punishment is out of proportion. Whining at people to watch their fire doesn't change that.

 

[Dissentient]

what I take umbrage with is those CMDRs who complain about the consequences of their actions to the extent s that they want the mechanic changed, when a simple bit of restraint would suffice on their part. I.e do not shoot when someone else is in your firing arc.

I constantly monitor my radar to avoid firing whenever another ship may pass my line of fire. This allowed me to achieve probably very low rate of friendly fire incidents. But accidents still happen, as all humans make mistakes.
I'm asking for a way of handling of those accidents that makes sense.

 

[Major Lag]

You deliberately misunderstand what he is saying. The police is send where it's needed. Doesn't have anything to do with being a "slave" or not having a choice. If you want to keep talking about it "in-game", you could say "those NPCs choose to become policemen; by this they of course became responsible to fulfill their duties."

He said they have no choice sorry if I mis-interpret that to mean they have no choice. A job is you do something and someone pays you for it, you have choice whether to do it or not, if you have no choice you are a slave. Police can quit and do something else if they don't like the orders they are given again unless they are slave police.

 

[kungfubiker]

FF incedents are caused by us pilots.... if you spam your fire willy-nilly you get clobbered for it with a bounty, if you control your fire this happens at a vastly reduced incedence rate because accidents will happen its the law of averages, i dont see the system needing a change though....yes its happened to me but i accept it for what it is...MY fault simple as that. I certainly dont want it turning nanny on us or where is the challenge then?

 

[Helvellyn]

FF incedents are caused by us pilots.... if you spam your fire willy-nilly you get clobbered for it with a bounty, if you control your fire this happens at a vastly reduced incedence rate because accidents will happen its the law of averages, i dont see the system needing a change though....yes its happened to me but i accept it for what it is...MY fault simple as that. I certainly dont want it turning nanny on us or where is the challenge then?

I think there's a happy medium somewhere in between. You say "vastly reduced", not "none" after all. The last thing I want is for people to be able to blast away in blind ignorance of anything around them but having to scurry back to the station is overkill for something that's had very little effect. Perhaps a fine would be more appropriate, turning in to a bounty (a bigger one) if it happens again soon.

 

[Dissentient]

or where is the challenge then?

Where's the challenge in anything NPC-related anyway?
It's not that authority ships possess any threat to a player.

 

[Arubeto]

I'm not complaining about people making more money, I'm complaining about having to make an unnecessary trip once in 150 destroyed ships on average (which is probably better than most bounty hunters out there).

By not watching your fire - in contrast to those commanders who earn more in the same time - the trip becomes necessary. It's a punishment for being sloppy. And it seemingly is a pretty good punishment, better than any monetary fine would be, since you get so upset about it. I think you proved yourself that the current need to return to a station for hitting police ships is a pretty good incentive, or lets say "motivation" to try harder at not hitting them in the future.

Having to fly to a station every 150 destroyed ships shouldn't qualify as a chore anyway. That is already so rare that lowering this ratio would effectively remove the need to return to a station altogether. You really must hate the stations in ED if such a rare trip once in a while already upsets you.

It's fairly simple. Just make a threshold of around 10% shield capacity / 5% hull capacity (depending on where that damage goes at the time) that doesn't decay over time. If either is exceeded, turn all fines into a bounty. It would take probably less than an hour of one developer's time to figure out the right numbers.

This is where you are completely wrong. Implementing the system you describe would probably just take a very short time. But determining the right numbers would be a pretty hard problem, since it would so much depend on how many "stray bullets" of each individual commander hit the police ships. Having such a threshold would trigger constant discussions and complaints from commanders who are a little more trigger happy than others and want the values updated to "12% shield / 8% hull" (in your example). After that, the next group of even sloppier commanders would demand an increase to "15% / 10%" and so one, while all the other commanders would argue that "now the mechanic becomes to forgiving".
No, avoiding this kind of soft threshold is very much desirable.

Current system is so imbalanced that exploiting it doesn't achieve much. You could do same thing before the fix just by using a weapon with high alpha damage, only spending one shot per ship. Wouldn't that also be an "exploit"?

It seemingly brought that fellow up to "Elite" status in combat rank. Given there is that "Race to Elite" competition among other things (like commanders who like to play the game competitively - to which I wouldn't count myself) I would take those exploits much more serious, even if you think that some parts of the game are not balanced enough.

Still we are talking about just 100k per ship in best case. It's not amount of money worth "exploiting" for.

Might be that isn't a lot money for you, but allow me to have a different opinion. 100k credits is quite a lot of money for a casual commander that don't have time to play hour upon hour every day.

 

[Helvellyn]

By not watching your fire - in contrast to those commanders who earn more in the same time - the trip becomes necessary. It's a punishment for being sloppy. And it seemingly is a pretty good punishment, better than any monetary fine would be, since you get so upset about it. I think you proved yourself that the current need to return to a station for hitting police ships is a pretty good incentive, or lets say "motivation" to try harder at not hitting them in the future.

Instant death would be a good incentive not to hit them too, doesn't make it a good mechanism though. Just saying it's an incentive isn't enough - it's whether the balance is right for the degree of the offence.

 

[Dissentient]

And it seemingly is a pretty good punishment, better than any monetary fine would be, since you get so upset about it.

This is not the kind of emotion you want to invoke in a player.
Player should always feel that punishment for their mistakes is fair and makes sense, this way they stay motivated to improve.
When it doesn't make sense, like it is now, it just lowers player's enjoyment and opinion of the game.

This is where you are completely wrong. Implementing the system you describe would probably just take a very short time. But determining the right numbers would be a pretty hard problem, since it would so much depend on how many "stray bullets" of each individual commander hit the police ships. Having such a threshold would trigger constant discussions and complaints from commanders who are a little more trigger happy than others and want the values updated to "12% shield / 8% hull" (in your example). After that, the next group of even sloppier commanders would demand an increase to "15% / 10%" and so one, while all the other commanders would argue that "now the mechanic becomes to forgiving".
No, avoiding this kind of soft threshold is very much desirable.

Don't go all slippery slope on me.
FD have statistics that they can use. They can see how much stray damage on average hits the authority vessels and can make the threshold as big as they want: enough to soak one hit, but not enough to soak multiple instances of friendly fire.
People then can complain all they want, but if FD think it works well, they won't change anything.

It seemingly brought that fellow up to "Elite" status in combat rank. Given there is that "Race to Elite" competition among other things (like commanders who like to play the game competitively - to which I wouldn't count myself) I would take those exploits much more serious, even if you think that some parts of the game are not balanced enough.

Considering that with 600 bounties and 60 combat bonds I'm not even expert, I'd like to see the exact topic, otherwise, I don't believe you.

Might be that isn't a lot money for you, but allow me to have a different opinion. 100k credits is quite a lot of money for a casual commander that don't have time to play hour upon hour every day.

No, it's a small amount of money for vast majority of players. Only very new commanders in eagles, vipers and adders would consider this amount of money important: starting with cobra you can earn enough that it's a drop on the sea, and cobra takes at most a couple of days to acquire, if you are actually trying.

 

[Speedbird]

He said they have no choice sorry if I mis-interpret that to mean they have no choice. A job is you do something and someone pays you for it, you have choice whether to do it or not, if you have no choice you are a slave. Police can quit and do something else if they don't like the orders they are given again unless they are slave police.

Some wonderful rw mechanics missing from this statement.

1. Notice periods.
2. Minimum service commitments.

both of which nulify the statement on quitting. Try to quick from an armed service if you do not like where you will be deployed to, better yet, try to get away with not turning up for work, I think that is still called desertion, or in best case AWOL.

Some me days is some jobs, a choice is not possible, and you have to run to the sound of the guns

 

[Fredrich]

I dont mind the fine, But i would like the option to pay it directly without going to a outpost.

 

[OldSalt]

I dont mind the fine, But i would like the option to pay it directly without going to a outpost.

This is a very good idea.

I would say my ratio is about 1:20 targets I will hit another ship. Often the police ship comes in directly from underneath you at full boost and John Wayne in a Ninja suit couldn't miss it. Its more inconvenience than anything else because I immediately disengage if it happens and head to the nearest outpost to pay off, in terms of credits per hour its a pain.

 

[Major Lag]

1. Notice periods.
2. Minimum service commitments.

both of which nulify the statement on quitting. Try to quick from an armed service if you do not like where you will be deployed to, better yet, try to get away with not turning up for work, I think that is still called desertion, or in best case AWOL.

Some me days is some jobs, a choice is not possible, and you have to run to the sound of the guns

They don't shoot people for desertion anymore do they? Just like they don't shoot people for friendly fire, just like no one owns slaves anymore, at least in civilized countries. Funny how your trying to justify execution bounties using RL mechanics that would never allow that, ironic no?

 

[Connatic]

Well since this is a game and not real life, and think it's the job of the CMDR to watch their fire or suffer the "penalty". It might be "annoying" for some, but it's part of the challenge. Really I think this is something that should be tied to your reputation with the ship you accidentally shot. An ship of an Allied faction will forgive a couple of stray shots, while one who is unfriendly won't tolerate any.

 

[rparker1866]

last night I had a FED fly over the top of me as soon as I seen him I quite firing but he some how ran into a bullet. I then had fed shooting me from every direction barely ad it out alive. if I had died it would have cost near a million with my bounty's and data I had.


a nother time a fed got direct above me and started to smash my ship. I lost my shields and a bit of hul.
that's not cool. if another ship hits your ship it should be the same as shooting you.

I think some thing needs to change

 

[Tchuvan]

Friendly Fire Friendly Fire

Yes, it has been posted before, but it still baffles me. If this game is supposed to mimic real situations to a point, don't you think that friendly fire would be one of the most obvious situations to keep to reality? It is going to happen, no matter how good you are at keeping on target, how good you are at being aware of your surroundings, or how accurate you are. A stray shot is going to hit someone clean.

So, why do the fuzz go bonkers after one hit? You are all there taking out the crooks blasting away, do you really think that one hit will cause allies to turn on you and blow you out of the water?

Me: "We have him!"
Fuzz: "We sure do!"
*noob cop flies in path of fire for split second*
*ding!*
Fuzz: "ERMAHGERD! GET HIM!"
PEW PEW PEW!

Now, they are easy enough to evade, dock at small outpost, and pay off 200 cred bounty or whatever it is, but seriously. Maybe make a scale. One hit, ignored. Lost 5% of shields, warning. Lost 10% shields and firing for 2 seconds on friendly, ATTACK!

 

[Remiel]

WWII pilots didn't shoot thier own friends if one nicked another with a single stray bullet, this behavior is stupid and illogical, and is not fun, just like true newtonian space flight would not be fun to fly in.




Because real human pilots don't dive in front of their buddies who are already firing at the enemy, and if they did catch a stray bullet they would probably never know who did it and if they did they would never report their buddy hit them, why would you do that to your wingman over a single stray shot? Say they did report them, no one would ever go to jail or be executed over it, friendly fire is an well known and accepted risk in combat.

Actually, you're wrong on all counts, but even if you weren't, allow me to reiterate:

Elite is not the real world. The Devs have decided on a particular rule set, and in video games, those rule sets do not need to be analogous to real life. But let's go back to the part about accidentally shooting 'your buddies' in combat.

When you're flying in Elite, you're not flying with your 'buddies', you're flying with a bunch of cops who don't know anything about you, and a few random NPC bounty hunters. If you're flying with your actual buddies, you have the means to negate friendly fire responses by turning off 'report crimes against me'. But the NPCs aren't your buddies and when you shoot them, it's not 'friendly fire', it's hostile contact.

 

[Major Lag]

Actually, you're wrong on all counts, but even if you weren't, allow me to reiterate:

So WWII pilots shot each other if someone caught a stray from a friendly? Do tell.

When you're flying in Elite, you're not flying with your 'buddies', you're flying with a bunch of cops who don't know anything about you, and a few random NPC bounty hunters. If you're flying with your actual buddies, you have the means to negate friendly fire responses by turning off 'report crimes against me'. But the NPCs aren't your buddies and when you shoot them, it's not 'friendly fire', it's hostile contact.

Really even when I'm "friendly" with the local authority faction? Friends=buddies=friendly fire...

 

[Tchuvan]

So WWII pilots shot each other if someone caught a stray from a friendly? Do tell.



Really even when I'm "friendly" with the local authority faction? Friends=buddies=friendly fire...

Yeah, I really didn't get his points either. Flying with a bunch of cops who don't know you? Then why am I on friendly terms with them if they don't know me. Maybe if I was neutral...