Open letter to Devs, Why I am now combat logging and what to do with this pirate.

Open letter to Devs, Why I am now combat logging and what to do with this pirate.

  • Let him go on his way, he is clean.

    Votes: 42 12.2%
  • He's a pirating scumbag and should be taught a lesson

    Votes: 102 29.6%
  • Wait for devs to fix stupid wanted status mechanic and then go after him

    Votes: 201 58.3%

  • Total voters
    345
  • Poll closed .
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
You realize that if the devs read this thread you're going to get banned to solo for openly admitting to cheating right? Despite a warning against doing so right at the top of the forum?

The devs haven't stated anywhere that they ARE 100% going to ban people to solo for it afaik. I never combat log personally, but I completely understand why people have started doing so. Why should traders lose their entire cargo, when pirates face no real consequences what-so-ever? It's not exactly fair is it?

The whole scenario just screams "BROKEN & POOR GAME MECHANICS"
 
Just adopt the security status system from EVE where repeated criminal acts gradually lower your sec status until you become fair game in empire space to anybody who fancies taking you out, NPC coppers included. This has the effect of driving "pirates" into anarchy space where they belong. Bounties should stick for a month or until you're killed and they're claimed.
 
Yes it is... no matter how you try to cut it m8.

Look you just took that away from my post? It's part of the game under the current game mechanics which I have stressed lots in my post.

By the same logic it's "unsporting" to attack another ship unless you're both in the same ship and load out. It was unsporting to abuse seeking luxuries and it was also unsporting to trade before 1.1 when they fixed the market dynamics.

I'm not condoning the behaviour but if it's in the game rules at the current time then people are going to play that way whether you think it's "sporting" or not.

Pirates like Derath are great players and it's good that they show their bounties like a badge of honour, but under the current game mechanics their play style is no less valid than a pirate who pays off their fines and shouldn't be looked down upon.

**

I'm a trader btw. I agree that piracy needs consequences. I could lose 12 mil if I get wiped out in my T9 whilst the pirate walks away with a 6k fine so I know this more than most. Discussing whether the current game mechanics are "sporting" doesn't help but discussing how to improve the game mechanics might.
 
agreed, (lot's of good thoughts) all good healthy game play.

Absolutely.
The idea of paying off a murder fine is just ridiculous in concept. You destroy a law abiding vessel, you become wanted in that jurisdiction. No arguments, no fine. Period.
If you really need a mechanic that allows you to build your rep back, then add special missions to the bulletin board that are specific in letting you do so. Horrible missions, like 'dredging' an asteroid field during which you get a probationary status. Any aggressive acts during this probationary period and that's it for you in that system.

The only fines you should be allowed to pay off are ones such as speeding in the station, collisions, friendly fire, illegal trading...

Live by the sword, die by the sword.
 
My cat approves your gameplay choices :) It is pretty stupid to let somebody claim your bounty when you can either sell it or let one of your buddies claim it and profit from it, so there will be no bounty hunting for human targets. Not sure how FDev can fix the bounty mechanics, but now it goes against common sense. And I am not talking about paying it off, which is a stupid thing to do with the current rules as long as your fine/bounty is higher than sidewinder cost. I am talking about going to some anarchy outpost, jumping to a sidewinder and letting your buddy claim your bounty, may be with a small kickback to pay for your sidewinder :).
 
Last edited:
Look you just took that away from my post? It's part of the game under the current game mechanics which I have stressed lots in my post.

By the same logic it's "unsporting" to attack another ship unless you're both in the same ship and load out. It was unsporting to abuse seeking luxuries and it was also unsporting to trade before 1.1 when they fixed the market dynamics.

I'm not condoning the behaviour but if it's in the game rules at the current time then people are going to play that way whether you think it's "sporting" or not.

Pirates like Derath are great players and it's good that they show their bounties like a badge of honour, but under the current game mechanics their play style is no less valid than a pirate who pays off their fines and shouldn't be looked down upon.

**

I'm a trader btw. I agree that piracy needs consequences. I could lose 12 mil if I get wiped out in my T9 whilst the pirate walks away with a 6k fine so I know this more than most. Discussing whether the current game mechanics are "sporting" doesn't help but discussing how to improve the game mechanics might.

No I agree, and tbh m8, I'm not busting your balls. I like lads like Derath who I see as real pirates in ED. Good pilots who aren't scared of carrying their bounty, and all that comes with it. That's how it should be... Wiping bounties after every interdiction is unbelievably lame and cowardly and we've both suggested ways FDev could stop it. They just need to do it sooner rather than later, before too many people stop playing over it. I mean we've already lost a decent chunk of the playerbase over content issues, and open is getting thinner by the week due to issues like this.

Fix the bounty at 50% of the targets total losses (Ship value plus cargo value) and fix their next insurance payout cost to the same price as that of the ship they're currently flying. Then they can't switch out to a sidey and give their mate free money... if they killed that trader in an Anaconda... they're gonna have to pay out Anaconda level insurance, regardless of what ship they decide to switch to.
 
Completely agree with OP. IMO being able to wipe your criminal record instantly is worse then combat logging. Pirates get to be pirates with no consiquence at all. Either jack up the bounty for pirating and murder or put a timer on the bounty, hell if they were real pirates they would be proud of there bounty.

Criminal action needs to be treated on a whole other level then finding cargo in space. I mean come on guys how does this not make sense?
 
Piracy as it stands is a "cowardly" way to play the game..........in Clippers, attacking unarmed traders....then running and paying off fines so they look sweet and innocent. And it leaves a bad taste as this and countless other threads will show........
.
Looks like there could be a big push to fix this, the penny seems to have dropped...............The ones who have been shotuing the loudest, calling everyone else CareBears.......are the ones who are running....paying off their fines and living like ChoirBoys....laughing with the police as they pay off their fines......Solo and Groups have grown becasue of this......
.
It is time they acted like men, and women..........took responsibility............Pirates who kill should be Wanted, have large Bounties on their heads....and should be living in Anarchy space, not sipping tea with the Police in a Fed station..........
.
And people will escape to Solo and Groups until this gross injustice, which even THE PIRATES agree is a broken mechanic, is fixed...............people will avoid un-fair gameplay.............period. Wann play tennis? Cool.....want me to tie my shoes together and use a News Paper as a racket?......Not happening.......but maybe that is the only way some pirates can win a game.........stacked odds.....
 
No, I'm saying "the guy who is using the exploit the devs have specifically warned using will be punished because its bad" is worse than "playing the game as it was intended by the devs at this point in time" even if the current mechanic isn't that great.

I'm not supporting his choice to combat log, for whatever reason. It's against the spirit of the game and is bad sportsmanship, quite apart from the fact that FDev have spoken out against it. I am however going to give the OP the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a poorly implimented protest against the problematic bounty system.

Especially since there is absolutely no shortage of pirates with bounties to hunt. I just killed a few hundred of them the other day. It's an asinine complaint.

Again I'm gonna assume something here... I'm assuming you're talking about NPC pirates, as I've never seen a few hundred players of ANY sort in a single day, let alone a few hundred with bounties. Regardless, it doesn't matter whether only a few pirates do it or if it's all of them, the mechanic that allows them to easily clear bounties for murder isn't working, and the fact that they do it to avoid being hunted while mocking traders who go to solo to avoid being pirated is the height of hypocrisy, and it is just as much bad sportsman as combat logging is. This may be the mechanic as it was implimented, but I strongly doubt that this was the outcome that FDev intended, in fact I know it's not, as DBOBE spoke in more than one video of bounties encouraging cooperative play and discouraging antisocial play.

Look how well THAT worked out. :rolleyes:
 
Fix the bounty at 50% of the targets total losses (Ship value plus cargo value) and fix their next insurance payout cost to the same price as that of the ship they're currently flying. Then they can't switch out to a sidey and give their mate free money... if they killed that trader in an Anaconda... they're gonna have to pay out Anaconda level insurance, regardless of what ship they decide to switch to.

No worries m8. Forums aren't the best way to discuss things sometimes as you can read a word wrong and get a completely different feeling from the post from what was intended.

Your suggestion is along the right lines but the main problem with this is we're only talking about murder bounties and as stated before the main bounties people are wiping out are the interdiction and shooting the ship fines.

As I said before a good and feared pirate will rarely be killing people. This needs to be dealt with by the rep mechanics, security increase and other mechanics to push piracy to the desired areas (low security and anarchy systems).

The current fine system is no way to deal with piracy as the problem is killing through piracy through fines is indistinguishable from bounty hunting if a ship is clean in the current system.
 
A Bounty of 50% is fine but I'm not too sure about your idea about fixing the next insurance payment to the value of the destroyed ship. In the real world this is exactly what you'd do because in the real world we actually want to stop piracy.

In ED however we want piracy to continue but in a more balanced form....If I was to kill 2,3,4 or more ships my insurance costs would soon end my career. Piracy wouldn't be an option for anyone but people already wealthy enough to own an "unassailable" ship. Remember...if there's no pirates, there's no bounty hunting either. Trading would get pretty boring too. How would it work for a wing of small fighter..eagles,vipers say?

They could stop people "giving" their bounty to mates by just not allowing friends or even past friends to collect bounty from each other. Tying the bounty to the ship is a good idea, to collect the bounty you should have to kill the ship that committed the crime. So when you commit murder you risk your ship.

Then, you should be able to work bounties off by completing community or charity missions.

Hitsuke I understand where you're coming from with this but like a lot of discussion on this thread regarding pirates I think you're exaggerating a little. Everytime I play I talk to other pirates, I hunt with some of them, some of them jump me for my bounty. sometimes I jump them if they get a stray hit. not saying it doesn't need fixing but the ops description of a world devoid of players with bounties doesn't tally up with what I see.
 
I'm not supporting his choice to combat log, for whatever reason. It's against the spirit of the game and is bad sportsmanship, quite apart from the fact that FDev have spoken out against it. I am however going to give the OP the benefit of the doubt and assume it's a poorly implimented protest against the problematic bounty system.



Again I'm gonna assume something here... I'm assuming you're talking about NPC pirates, as I've never seen a few hundred players of ANY sort in a single day, let alone a few hundred with bounties. Regardless, it doesn't matter whether only a few pirates do it or if it's all of them, the mechanic that allows them to easily clear bounties for murder isn't working, and the fact that they do it to avoid being hunted while mocking traders who go to solo to avoid being pirated is the height of hypocrisy, and it is just as much bad sportsman as combat logging is. This may be the mechanic as it was implimented, but I strongly doubt that this was the outcome that FDev intended, in fact I know it's not, as DBOBE spoke in more than one video of bounties encouraging cooperative play and discouraging antisocial play.

Look how well THAT worked out. :rolleyes:

In complete agreement on everything there m8.

No worries m8. Forums aren't the best way to discuss things sometimes as you can read a word wrong and get a completely different feeling from the post from what was intended.

Your suggestion is along the right lines but the main problem with this is we're only talking about murder bounties and as stated before the main bounties people are wiping out are the interdiction and shooting the ship fines.

As I said before a good and feared pirate will rarely be killing people. This needs to be dealt with by the rep mechanics, security increase and other mechanics to push piracy to the desired areas (low security and anarchy systems).

The current fine system is no way to deal with piracy as the problem is killing through piracy through fines is indistinguishable from bounty hunting if a ship is clean in the current system.

I know, the system is a complete mess at the moment. To be honest, this issue should be at the very top of their priorities list now. People have been complaining about content, when fixing this will be like giving us new content anyway lol. I'm a firm believer that FDev need to get the core right before they introduce anything major to the game, and the bounty system will be a huge step in the right direction.
 
Whatever else they do, they NEED to prevent the "letting a mate kill me in a free sidewinder". I do like the idea of tieing bounties do specific ships on face value, but it' d just mean that if blackbeard the space pirate gets too much bounty up he's just going to strip the ship for parts then either just leave it in a station and buy a new ship, or let his mate kill him off and split the bounty.

Wasn't there a mechanic that had the player "come back from the dead" with a debt for the bounty? If I recall correctly Cmdr Titus Balls was complaining about it mightily at one stage (which means it was effective at least). Did that get dropped? I liked it coz it'd prevent the whole "letting a mate shoot me" thing.
 
A Bounty of 50% is fine but I'm not too sure about your idea about fixing the next insurance payment to the value of the destroyed ship. In the real world this is exactly what you'd do because in the real world we actually want to stop piracy.

In ED however we want piracy to continue but in a more balanced form....If I was to kill 2,3,4 or more ships my insurance costs would soon end my career. Piracy wouldn't be an option for anyone but people already wealthy enough to own an "unassailable" ship. Remember...if there's no pirates, there's no bounty hunting either. Trading would get pretty boring too. How would it work for a wing of small fighter..eagles,vipers say?

They could stop people "giving" their bounty to mates by just not allowing friends or even past friends to collect bounty from each other. Tying the bounty to the ship is a good idea, to collect the bounty you should have to kill the ship that committed the crime. So when you commit murder you risk your ship.

Then, you should be able to work bounties off by completing community or charity missions.

Hitsuke I understand where you're coming from with this but like a lot of discussion on this thread regarding pirates I think you're exaggerating a little. Everytime I play I talk to other pirates, I hunt with some of them, some of them jump me for my bounty. sometimes I jump them if they get a stray hit. not saying it doesn't need fixing but the ops description of a world devoid of players with bounties doesn't tally up with what I see.

No hard feelings m8. They just need to get this fixed! They definitely need to address the issue of friends taking bounties though, that's a glaring exploit just waiting to happen.
 
Whatever else they do, they NEED to prevent the "letting a mate kill me in a free sidewinder". I do like the idea of tieing bounties do specific ships on face value, but it' d just mean that if blackbeard the space pirate gets too much bounty up he's just going to strip the ship for parts then either just leave it in a station and buy a new ship, or let his mate kill him off and split the bounty.
That really means getting rid of the entire bounty concept :) Tying it to a ship will likely allow to clear it by just jumping to another ship one way or another. I would say it is likely impossible to make bounty concept compatible to PvP in some coherent way.
 
A Bounty of 50% is fine but I'm not too sure about your idea about fixing the next insurance payment to the value of the destroyed ship. In the real world this is exactly what you'd do because in the real world we actually want to stop piracy.

In ED however we want piracy to continue but in a more balanced form....If I was to kill 2,3,4 or more ships my insurance costs would soon end my career. Piracy wouldn't be an option for anyone but people already wealthy enough to own an "unassailable" ship. Remember...if there's no pirates, there's no bounty hunting either. Trading would get pretty boring too. How would it work for a wing of small fighter..eagles,vipers say?

They could stop people "giving" their bounty to mates by just not allowing friends or even past friends to collect bounty from each other. Tying the bounty to the ship is a good idea, to collect the bounty you should have to kill the ship that committed the crime. So when you commit murder you risk your ship.

Then, you should be able to work bounties off by completing community or charity missions.

Hitsuke I understand where you're coming from with this but like a lot of discussion on this thread regarding pirates I think you're exaggerating a little. Everytime I play I talk to other pirates, I hunt with some of them, some of them jump me for my bounty. sometimes I jump them if they get a stray hit. not saying it doesn't need fixing but the ops description of a world devoid of players with bounties doesn't tally up with what I see.

So don't kill the ships, there is a difference between pirating a few tons of cargo and killing a trader just for the hell of it. If it's murder then Yes big fine and payment of the value of the destroyed ship because your actions may have just ended the career of the trader by murdering him/her
 
That's easy enough to get around...if you buy another ship of the same type the bounty moves to that ship. Granted people could leave their bounties behind as they move along the upgrade path but it's a damn site better than what we have now and when said ship is the fer de lance you've saved up so long for.....

it's never going to be completely fair because unlike real life we want piracy to be a viable option but you've got to be careful because at the moment it's great fun but not very profitable which is fine. If it becomes too hard a lot of the fun will disappear from ED, now I know a lot of traders made this same argument but the difference is...trading is hugely profitable.
 
I haven't read the entire thread. 11 pages? But I have to say that normally I think combat logging is wrong. In this case however, I do NOT think it is wrong. He is not logging to avoid being killed. He is not logging to avoid paying a pirate. He is logging to prevent this person from profiting when he can't profit himself as a bounty hunter against this target. Why should the pirate profit when there is no chance for a bounty hunter to profit off of him?

So, wrong to combat log, sure. But it's also just as wrong for this person to fly around with a clean tag when he is clearly a pirate. 2 wrongs don't make a right? Maybe not, but there are times when 2 wrongs make a justice.
 
So don't kill the ships, there is a difference between pirating a few tons of cargo and killing a trader just for the hell of it. If it's murder then Yes big fine and payment of the value of the destroyed ship because your actions may have just ended the career of the trader by murdering him/her

Yeah...I know, but the thing is...when I say "stop your engines or I'll kill you" it has to mean something. Piracy works on fear, if all traders know pirates will take them down to 10% and then let them go it'll be a bit boring for both parties. A high bounty and a decent police response would be plenty I think.....piracy isn't that profitable anyway if the police killed you a bit more often...or at all it'd spice things up without making it a dead end career.
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom