PVP/Crime Consequences required levels (Answers from PVE players please.)

Seems like an honest question Maj, so I'll give you an honest answer. Whether it's a majority or a sizeable minority, a great many pve players probably can't be bribed into coming into a pvp environment. There are players who've been in WoW for over a decade and never set foot in pvp server. It's just not for everyone.
 
Unless there is a carrot to playing in Open, people wont come back.
[…]
There is no punishment for crime, short of putting the offender back into a sidewinder. That is big enough to "scare" player killers. I know this, I am one.
So lets say that give us HUGE fines, for being naughty. NO drama, It would have to be balanced to allow for players to be criminals and making credits is easy.
That coupled with the incredible ease at which you can escape any situation and how fast you can kill a non PVP ship.
What ever they do, the risk will be higher than the safer modes.
Safer modes that give the exact same rewards. As we know no one "wants" to be a victim of crime, why would they allow that option IF there is a safe alternative?
That is the failure of the game design.
IF there was a bonus for playing in open, people might see that bonus balances out the increased risk.
FDEV know this by dropping the bomb today that they want to buff PP in open. Its a great start.
But imagine the poop storm if they then say you get a % bonus on all activities in Open.

The arguments about this game are circular, the threads and talks of punishments are repeated and stated in a variety of different ways.
Although many are great ideas. Just wont stop player killers and make Open safe enough to risk going into it without a bonus for doing so.
New players come in, they make the same posts we made a year ago, people make the same arguments about why its that way and how it must never change.

If you and I are still playing this game in a years time, if they haven't change the mode hoping or given incentive to balance the risk of Open.
New players will still be amazed that it exists as a concept and very quickly realise that if they want to make money, they can do it without ANY chance of a player attacking them. Their only challenge being NPC's. NPC's that they can never make too taxing because of the poop storm that would open up with terrible players.

As always, I cannot make a statement of comment on this game without it coming back to Open vs Solo. Its impossible because THAT is the cause of so many issues.
Then good posts get merged and the circle starts again.

You know what, Maj, if more of your posts read like that rather than being couched in the inflammatory "crybaby / carebear / salty-salty / HTFU / infiltrator / dance for me" stuff, I'm guessing more people would engage with what you have to say. I strongly suspect that there are a more than a few people on this forum who would have repped that post, but who won't even see it because they've already blocked you.

I will happily give you a +1 for this, and I believe it's only the second time I've ever done that*. There's a reason that number is so low, and it's not because you don't have anything constructive to say.


[SUP]*There would be a few more if the moderators had kept the contextualising reputation comment system, with which I could have clarified which bit of the post(s) I was +1ing, but as that too was abused it's gone. But that's a discussion for another day.[/SUP]​
 
But you are agreeing with what I am saying sorta.

Well, kinda and kinda not. I think there are incentives that FDev can put into place to get more players into Open with the extreme being a PVE flag. In that case Solo/Open becomes equal risk with Open being more interesting. I know you put things bluntly to encourage discussion, and that's good, but it is a bit black and white to say 'there is nothing that FDev can do...' because any incentive will increase the average population in Open. Among the thousands of players there will be some who see that incentive as a reason to spend half an hour more in Open, ergo the population goes up. A game of statistics in the end.

Unless there is a carrot to playing in Open, people wont come back.

I like carrots. :D

There is no punishment for crime, short of putting the offender back into a sidewinder. That is big enough to "scare" player killers. I know this, I am one.
So lets say that give us HUGE fines, for being naughty. NO drama, It would have to be balanced to allow for players to be criminals and making credits is easy.
That coupled with the incredible ease at which you can escape any situation and how fast you can kill a non PVP ship.
What ever they do, the risk will be higher than the safer modes.
Safer modes that give the exact same rewards. As we know no one "wants" to be a victim of crime, why would they allow that option IF there is a safe alternative?

As above, not all players will want to play Open even with these measures in place but some more will. Not all players are after the rewards as in 'credits', some may just switch to Open because of the promise of a more balanced experience.

That is the failure of the game design.
IF there was a bonus for playing in open, people might see that bonus balances out the increased risk.
FDEV know this by dropping the bomb today that they want to buff PP in open. Its a great start.
But imagine the poop storm if they then say you get a % bonus on all activities in Open.

Yes, that is what I'm worried about as well. Want carrots but can't have. The PP buff as proposed is not for personal rewards just for PP influence in Open but again, it would increase the population in Open, I'd say.

The arguments about this game are circular, the threads and talks of punishments are repeated and stated in a variety of different ways.
Although many are great ideas. Just wont stop player killers and make Open safe enough to risk going into it without a bonus for doing so.
New players come in, they make the same posts we made a year ago, people make the same arguments about why its that way and how it must never change.

If you and I are still playing this game in a years time, if they haven't change the mode hoping or given incentive to balance the risk of Open.
New players will still be amazed that it exists as a concept and very quickly realise that if they want to make money, they can do it without ANY chance of a player attacking them. Their only challenge being NPC's. NPC's that they can never make too taxing because of the poop storm that would open up with terrible players.

As always, I cannot make a statement of comment on this game without it coming back to Open vs Solo. Its impossible because THAT is the cause of so many issues.
Then good posts get merged and the circle starts again.

Agree. I have probably put the same thoughts forward in other threads, in one or the other form. I hope the game will get more balanced over time and that even these recurring discussions are helpful. I leave that Open / Solo thing alone because there is that other thread already. I also trust that FDev are very imaginative and take the input gained from those threads to discuss possible mods in the future without telling us. Who knows, maybe one day we'll be surprised.
 
I just find the way that "PvP" happens to me to be annoying, not fun gameplay. Take my latest encounter as an example. Come to a CG with a fully loaded Anaconda. Get interdicted by a cmdr and his buddies, escape back to hyperspace, get interdicted again immediately, escape again, do this three more times and finally they get me. I lost 13 mil. Not really complaining about the money, I'll make it back soon enough, but the whole ordeal is just tiring. There's no realistic way of me fighting back, they have me outnumbered. I can't make it 5 LS without being interdicted again, so there's no way I'm going to make it to the station anytime today. I can either give up and jump out of system, abandoning my run for later, after they've logged off, or die. It's just that, if 3 or 4 people decide they want to screw up my day, they will succeed, one way or another, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it. It feels like getting bullied at school, it's not fun, and it promotes combat logging.

I think an appropriate police response is really a great idea to combat this. High security systems should have a heavy response, it just makes sense. I think of it like being in the middle of a crowded city, if you have a gang going around beating people to death in the middle of a crowded city, the police response will be swift and severe, that's what a high security system should be like. The op does have a point though in saying that there's no reason to go to anarchy systems, so make one! In addition to a larger police response in high security systems, make the price of commodities higher in anarchy systems. It makes sense, you're taking a risk in going there, there ought to be some kind of reward. In the same way that NPC police get stronger in High security systems, NPC pirates ought to be more difficult in Anarchy systems as well. Do all of this, and I believe it would go a long way to making the galaxy feel a little more alive. Anyway, just my thoughts.
 
So, the act of ramming would be considered a crime and as a consequence, as I said, the perpetrator would be responsible for the buyback cost of the destroyed ship.

Again: THIS is a problem.

As for NPC buyback amounts, I thought this discussion was about PvP? As such, NPC consequences are irrelevant - I am referring to Player vs Player interaction only.

PvP interactions are NOT a problem. How often do you loose a ship to a PvP player? Usually, you go to open by choice, which means you are already prepared to loose that.

Again: The game's difficulty should not derive from the huge risk arising when docking/undocking by means the NPCs, it should be about challenges during missions/exploration etc.
Am I the only one that thinks combat should be more of a risk than parking?

Anyway, PvP has to be 'balanced' around that - the rules for one game mode must not break the game.
 
Given that the basic premise of the thread was to enquire as to what we'd require to make us want to come back to open so you can continue to get your kicks by doing all that to us, it might be more useful to ask YOU what sort of consequences and mechanisms would be required to make you STOP doing all that, since none of it seems terribly enjoyable from our perspective.

PvP people, there's no need for me to write anything when there are so many good and logical posts around. Therefore I'm pointing this one, with a simple and clear question in it. OP, care to answer?
 
Given that the basic premise of the thread was to enquire as to what we'd require to make us want to come back to open so you can continue to get your kicks by doing all that to us, it might be more useful to ask YOU what sort of consequences and mechanisms would be required to make you STOP doing all that, since none of it seems terribly enjoyable from our perspective.

My prediction is that you'll tell us that there's nothing that would stop you from acting that way, to which I'd have to reply that in that case there's nothing that would make us want to include you in our game time. I'd be very happy to be wrong though, so do go right ahead.

Repped you there Sandmann as that's exactly the problem - he is but one of many hardcore PvP players whose only interest in the game is blowing up other players - that is not in the spirit of the game as it wasn't supposed to be pure PvP. (I accept that it's a player choice to do what they want so if that's what makes Majinvash's boat float so be it)


  • Beefing up the response from the game re murderers is good start. Forcing murderers into Anarchy space for example - Hang about in High-Sec should eventually bring the Navy and massive repercussions (force a high wake out)
  • Beefing up the AI is another but it risks making the game far too hard for casual players - I already find NPCs tricky :eek:



In my opinion though the only thing that would stop him is if he couldn't see them in the first place (cue Transponder argument) because let's be honest here - he's not going to stop hunting players regardless of what the game does. (He represents the extreme end of the PVE-PVP spectrum : just like the other end where some players will never come to Open regardless of what you do)
 
Now hopefully this will not get merged back into another thread.
I am not interested in your feelings or hurt pride, whether it’s right, wrong or working as intended.

What I am interested in is the **level** of consequences that would need to be seen to get players out of the safer private/solo modes and into what will be inherently the more dangerous Open.

The reason this is interesting to me, is that being a Pirate, we need victims. Sorry but this cannot phrased any other way.
Also shocking to many, we do not shy away from challenge.

Consider this before you reply.

· Whatever FD implement will still allow you to get destroyed by another player. (Bar a PVE mode which is unlikely, this is always going to happen)

· Saying that any PVP player who kills another player should be pushed back into a sidewinder is just unrealistic.

· Credits flow like water in this game if you know what you are doing and any changes to this will effect ALL players.

· Having instant endless spawning wings of Defence Cutters, Corvettes and FDL, is just immersion breaking.
( It would also remove Piracy as a career option and would stop bounty hunters attacking a criminal ship, in a clean system. Even if they K-Scanned )

· Currently there is no real reason to go into Anarchy Space, so saying that is only where PVP should happen just won’t.

**Please allow time for any reply from me, while the mods check my words aren't hurtful.**

Majinvash
The Voice of Open
and im not interested in your opinion bcause your not interested in mine
 
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PvP people, there's no need for me to write anything when there are so many good and logical posts around. Therefore I'm pointing this one, with a simple and clear question in it. OP, care to answer?

I don't want to speak for Maj but he did sort of answer it here.

...
There is no punishment for crime, short of putting the offender back into a sidewinder. That is big enough to "scare" player killers. I know this, I am one.
So lets say that give us HUGE fines, for being naughty. NO drama, It would have to be balanced to allow for players to be criminals and making credits is easy.
That coupled with the incredible ease at which you can escape any situation and how fast you can kill a non PVP ship.
What ever they do, the risk will be higher than the safer modes.
...

In my opinion, making repeated player killing very expensive (think fines as an increasing percentage of assets) or very inconvenient (revoking docking rights) or both will reduce crime significantly. It does not need to be as drastic as 'putting the offender back into a sidewinder' for the first offence.
 

Majinvash

Banned
Well, that's very honest and forthcoming of you. Given that the basic premise of the thread was to enquire as to what we'd require to make us want to come back to open so you can continue to get your kicks by doing all that to us, it might be more useful to ask YOU what sort of consequences and mechanisms would be required to make you STOP doing all that, since none of it seems terribly enjoyable from our perspective.

My prediction is that you'll tell us that there's nothing that would stop you from acting that way, to which I'd have to reply that in that case there's nothing that would make us want to include you in our game time. I'd be very happy to be wrong though, so do go right ahead.

There is a solution but its one I have been shot down about already because it would make the whole game more challenging and invite other game mechanics like making blockading possible.

My thread can be found here https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=208483

But to give as short a TLDR as I can produce.

The only way to stop player killers is to have other player killers stop them. There are plenty of teams out there who want to play the good guys.
All the time there is ZERO risk to a player killer, all the fines and slight inconvenience with docking wont make a shred of difference.

I want challenge, in fact I invite it. This is why I PVP not PVE.

If I knew that pirating in Cemiese was a risk to me and my credits, I would have to decide if the risk was worth it.
I could certainly be chased out by a Wing and then as long as they remained, not want to return.

Unless they change Submit Highwake and Masslock not effecting Highwake, there is nothing that can be done that a player killer cannot escape from with ease. Which means they have no risk for their actions, no matter what their payout might be.

If you sort that, combat logging and the 15seconds timer. All the fines and bounties will be worth something. Until then, it does nothing as it is no risk to the PVP player.

But as you will see, the effects of this would be far reaching and everyone starts throwing EVE terms in and we go back to hoping fines will work. Which they will not.
You need a HUGE solution to fix a HUGE problem. A bandaid will not make a difference. Its a community issue that needs a community fix.

If you matched a huge increase of me being caught and killed with large fines, it WOULD effect how I play. But it would need both.
This would still have to be married with a boost in some way to traders who play in Open because the increased risk would still be there.

Majinvash
The Voice of Open
 
Good post btw.

Haven`t had time to read all the responses, so sorry if I reiterate.

For consequences, it should be simple.
Wanted player should owe cost of clean players ship to faction it was destroyed in. (empire, feds, ally, or independent). This fee should be applied as bounty. each time u are destroyed by this faction (probably never) the value of ur ship is subtracted from ur bounty. However, nothing to stop a player wanted in federation, homing in a independent system, and never needing to repay this bounty. That's fair and more to the point, realistic to me. Also supports bounty hunting. NPC actions need to be scaled to accommodate people carrying large bounties in hostile systems.

However, this doesn't get people playing open.

Its not the consequences to the pirate, its the losses to the victim that make people (like me) play solo, most of the time.
So lets look how this can be done and still keep the game at least as real as it already is.

If you die to a pirate, human or otherwise. You lose:-

1) The rebut cost of ur ship (pretty reasonable tbh)

2) Scanned planet data

3) bounties etc

4) Cargo

5) Pride

SO....

If u are not wanted by a faction whose space u are currently in, and are destroyed by a wanted player the following could happen.

1) You wake up in the nearest station with your new ship, having incurred the insurance cost. Lets be serious, death has to hurt a little.

2) Whilst u have been in transit, Rescue One has been into ur wreck site and ninja`d ur black box (I assume he already does this with escape pod, so no further taint to the reality there!). Now the black box contains all your bounties u haven't cashed, and all your planet scans. On ur revival, this is credited to your account.

3) Your cargo is insured with your ship. And sold at a base value on your recovery. So your ship insurance costs increase with your cargo value. But u retrieve most of the cost of the cargo on destruction. Naturally stolen cargos cant be treated this way.

4) Nope sorry, cant do anything for ur pride, but u will be stronger next time - right!

So u see, a good ganking could be all you need to clear all those annoying bounties from across the galaxy, that u will never get round to cashing. And, having been drawn into open play, u might find u actually like the thrill of pvp.
 
I don't want to speak for Maj but he did sort of answer it here.

That should come as part of the crime and punishment review by FD for 2.1

How far they go, or by how much they change things is yet to be seen.

However, we have been through this before .. willing to dig out a post on the same subject to give you an idea .. one sec

*Edit: Try here: Recently Gluttony created a thread about the mechanics of the game regarding crime and punishment and this was my response : LINK

Huge wall of text outlining some possible ways of combatting their behaviour - ever increasing fines // ever increasing response from the game including denial for docking // etc // etc // been saying this a 1000 times already througout the years (1st post on the subject 2013 !!!!) but FD have still yet to implement anything of worth.

Once you have a billion credits who cares if you're fined 6000 credits for murder :rolleyes:

 
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A lot of you are totally misunderstanding the problem. The goal is to take away what's actually negative about open and CMDR encounters, whether it be the lack of punishment or the discrepancy in skill, or whatever.

It's a serious deal that npc's are almost always easier to deal with than CMDRs. Why though? They have the same tools. I'm sure the meta has fallen off scb's, and even if it's shifted to armor stacking instead that's something npc's do anyway. So what's the difference?

Well, first of all, as a new CMDR, your rank is low, and you won't really draw attention from strong npc's early on, and this makes sense since a python has little to gain from pirating anything smaller than a t6, and big time bounty hunters don't have time to waste interdicting a fellow with a 400cr bounty, so why spawn them? And npc psychos are rare, and are typically around your ship level anyway...because being randomly interdicted by an anaconda in your sidey is just not fun...there's little you can actually do about it. But players can and will do this. How do we make it more fair? We step up security response and strength, drastically across systems - it shouldn't be possible to commit crimes successfully without a wing in high sec systems, and the little guy should have a chance in low sec systems to be saved or escape. Anarchy would have no security as normal, and it'd be ideal if the economy revolves around the fact that high sec gets goods far easier than anarchy does (I.e. It's more profitable to trade in anarchy but more dangerous, risk reward etc).

Working on this same trend, ED has quite the varied loadout system, but that goes right out the window when you go to open. This is because making a dedicated trader is fine when you're encountering things appropriate to the ship you're flying - again, you won't see a wing of pythons in a t6, really....unless of course they're CMDRs who just want to kill you. Security will definitely help with this, but why as a trader are you traveling alone? Is it because you don't have the option to wing? Or is it because winging is highly unprofitable for non traders? Well....it's both. The solutions? Allow traders to negotiate an amount of their profit to give to fellow wing mates, perhaps still allowing the 10% bonus for trading. Adding npc wings available for a price is also fairly important, so that players always have the option.

Gameplay should be fair, and this means bringing npc's closer in skill to pc's, and designing the game to give players reasonable agency when it comes to risk and decision making. This is elite: dangerous, not elite: annoying.

I'd like to see that be the focal point of discussion - what's the difference between npc's and CMDR's? What ways do we want to change npc's to be more inline with CMDR's, and how do we change the game mechanics to balance the game against potential CMDR activity in ways that are satisfying?
 
So, they play in Solo/Group to be safe? That's what you just said, you realize that? ONLY Players are a danger to you, not NPCs, so you avoid other players. Excuse me, but the NPCs should be just as dangerous as the players, especially since you see so many more NPCs than players in Open. But you keep telling yourself that you don't fear the NPCs, only the players, and you don't play in Solo/Group to be safe....

I too would like to see more competent NPC's. Safety isn't the reason I play Solo though. I just don't want "you" (not you personally, I rather enjoy your presence on the forums :)) in my game. Personally I don't want anyone else in my game, it's just my personal choice and I've come to grips with the pros and cons of that decision. If Elite: Dangerous was multiplayer only I wouldn't be here right now, and would probably never have given it a chance.
 
It's a serious deal that npc's are almost always easier to deal with than CMDRs. Why though? They have the same tools. I'm sure the meta has fallen off scb's, and even if it's shifted to armor stacking instead that's something npc's do anyway. So what's the difference?

The reason for this is deliberate and an art form in and of itself.

You can make any AI in any FPS game god-like : never miss; always know where you are; etc .. that isn't fun for the player on the receiving end. (An example of this type of code is an aim-bot.)

The artform comes from tuning down an NPC to make it behave more like a human - meaning - doing unpredictable things; missing sometimes; making mistakes.

It's not that easy.

SJA (FDs NPC "mistress of pain" coder) has confirmed that in the up and coming patch the AI will receive some more love.

That will help .. yes, but it's not really a deterrent to wanton Player Killing that the extreme guys do ... Not only do you need to beef up the AI but you also need to make the action itself undesirable (consequences)
 
PvP people, there's no need for me to write anything when there are so many good and logical posts around. Therefore I'm pointing this one, with a simple and clear question in it. OP, care to answer?

He did say that the concept of the ASBO Sidewinder gave him pause for thought, but it's difficult to tell whether he was being ironic or just brutally honest because he knows the chances of FD implementing anything so punishing are slim to nil.

In my opinion though the only thing that would stop him is if he couldn't see them in the first place because let's be honest here - he's not going to stop hunting players regardless of what the game does.

The problem with hiding players, by transponder or otherwise, is that the game's architecture makes it trivially easy to tell when there's another computer talking to yours. As others have pointed out elsewhere, even the primitive bandwidth monitor built into the game itself can be used as an early warning system even before the hollow square appears on the scanner, and it doesn't take a networking genius to set up a second machine to monitor those connections. Hell, a few lines of your favourite programming language and you could have a monitor program look for connections, determine IPs, and cross-reference those IPs with a manually updated database of known players. A bit of extra code to share those data with friends' copies of the client and parse log files for locations and you could have an automated detection system. "CMDR {xxxx} detected in {system} by CMDR {yyyy}."

I would not be in the least bit surprised to find this, or something broadly similar, is happening already. It will be just too tempting for some personality types, and impossible to detect.

At the end of the day, if you don't want anyone else to know you're there then Solo is the only guaranteed option in ED, courtesy of the P2P model.

In my opinion, making repeated player killing very expensive (think fines as an increasing percentage of assets) or very inconvenient (revoking docking rights) or both will reduce crime significantly. It does not need to be as drastic as 'putting the offender back into a sidewinder' for the first offence.
It's quite clear from my posting history that I love the idea of impounding ships and giving out underpowered "loaners" for recidivists, but the difficulty would be deciding on the level of recidivism required to trigger it. The last time I tried to open a dialogue on this subject, despite an attempt to set very specific parameters, it became immediately clear that for some people even a theoretical trigger point would be "never", and the thread showed all the signs of descending towards that place where most contentious threads descend, so I bailed and left it to wither.

I will say this, though. As far as I know, nobody from FD has expressed an opinion either way on the notion of "enforced downgrading of hardware" so it remains a possibility albeit a very unlikely one. Judging by the polarising reaction in the forum, it would be a brave developer who even considered it at this point though.

Fines simply won't work, because credits are too easy to come by in this game. Make the fines bigger and the bad guys will just grind for more credits. Make the fines so large that the grind becomes insurmountable and it will just encourage the bad guys to exploit loopholes to force those fines onto the innocent. If they can't play the game, they'll play the metagame.

Revoking of docking permission seems like an interesting compromise, but as with all ED mechanics both current and speculative it would need to be tweaked "just so" (for some value of "so"). Obviously it would alter the meta in the short term. I foresee PK groups having a large "tanker" on standby, filled with fuel tanks, fuel scoops and limpets, to refill all those thirsty FDLs and FASs that can no longer dock in civilised systems but don't want to compromise their builds with their own scoops. And energy weapons might start to take priority over projectile throwers if the latter can't be conveniently rearmed.

But it's a workable concept, and in keeping with the fictional history of the Elite galaxy. If FD are sincere in their wish to use in-game mechanics to try to control antisocial behaviour, it would be as good a place as any to start.
 
The problem with hiding players, by transponder or otherwise, is that the game's architecture makes it trivially easy to tell when there's another computer talking to yours. As others have pointed out elsewhere, even the primitive bandwidth monitor built into the game itself can be used as an early warning system even before the hollow square appears on the scanner, and it doesn't take a networking genius to set up a second machine to monitor those connections. Hell, a few lines of your favourite programming language and you could have a monitor program look for connections, determine IPs, and cross-reference those IPs with a manually updated database of known players. A bit of extra code to share those data with friends' copies of the client and parse log files for locations and you could have an automated detection system. "CMDR {xxxx} detected in {system} by CMDR {yyyy}."

Granted - the BW usage goes up as you form a P2P link which alerts you to the fact .. but which NPC is the player ? (Assuming FD fix the slow pop rate of NPCs when you transition normal / SC / hyperspace)
 
I'll also throw out there once again that, to echo what others are saying, the real sting is the loss of progress and time...a certain amount of progress lost is just terrible. Because of the great potential of loss, you'll never see a trader, an explorer, or a CMDR without insurance flying in open. All of these really ought to be rectified as well.

-traders should have some cargo insurance available to the player. You're probably thinking that players would just go to solo and not buy insurance. Maybe you're right. What if we didn't make it optional? What if it was tied to your rank? What if it wasn't possible to insure imperial slaves and palladium, but came with silver? You'd have the choice between safe profit and risk reward profit.

-explorer data should be preserved on death to an extent. Whether the profit or namesake should be preserved in part or whole is an important point of discussion - personally I think your discoveries and a small percentage of profit should be preserved on death.

-insurance rates are great right now, until someone dies without insurance and loses everything. This puts an enormous amount of strain on the game overall..."jeez, if I die three times I'll lose my python." When you die without insurance, your ship should be held until you can afford the rebuy, dispensing you a sidewinder on the spot - either at your last station or back at LHS 3447, depending on whether the jump range is an issue (I suppose the latter is a necessity.) When you get the funds you can go back and retrieve your ship from storage. This still maintains a harsh penalty for death, but it doesn't mean you lose weeks or months of progress.

In an unpredictable world, it seems a tad ridiculous that so much can be lost on a whim. I'm a much bigger fan of frequent failure and smaller losses, but that doesn't precisely fit into the game that Elite is, and to make it that game would be taking away a level of risk aversion that it needs. However, right now the risk aversion factor persuades players to avoid player interaction because the game simply isn't geared for it.
 
Granted - the BW usage goes up as you form a P2P link which alerts you to the fact .. but which NPC is the player ? (Assuming FD fix the slow pop rate of NPCs when you transition normal / SC / hyperspace)
A cycle through the targets with a passive scan of each will yield all sorts of clues. Even if you remove the CMDR tag, the name is often enough to clue you in as to whether it's a player or an NPC. NPC loadouts tend to follow a limited pattern too, so checking the loadout of a target can also give the game away. Failing all that, the ship type alone can be the #1 telltale. A Type 9 in a trade-centric CG is almost certainly a player, and there's a good chance that an armour-tanked FAS in a combat zone is not an NPC either. And you can get a ship type list from the Comms menu before you've even selected them as targets.

Granted none of this is as convenient as looking for that ridiculous open square that for some people might as well have "victim" painted on it, and many of these problems could be mitigated by additional changes to the game. But where there's a will there's a way. And that's basically the problem now: PKers have shown there's a will.

Back in the DDF days I'd have agreed (in fact I think I did) that a transponder or some other way of making players indistinguishable from NPCs was the way to go. But now that we've seen the game in the flesh, P2P warts and all, I'm no longer convinced it's the panacea it seemed to be when these mechanics were only theoretical. It's impossible to fully hide players from potential PKers in Open. You can make it difficult, but you can't eliminate it. And if you can't eliminate it, all you do is make the victory that much sweeter for those who can play the metagame better than your developers.

At best it would reduce the problem by an uncertain factor. At worst it would give players a false sense of security, right until the PK wing descends on them.
 
I too would like to see more competent NPC's. Safety isn't the reason I play Solo though. I just don't want "you" (not you personally, I rather enjoy your presence on the forums :)) in my game. Personally I don't want anyone else in my game, it's just my personal choice and I've come to grips with the pros and cons of that decision. If Elite: Dangerous was multiplayer only I wouldn't be here right now, and would probably never have given it a chance.

Yes, and people like you will never come out of Solo no matter what gets done, you don't want multiplayer, which is exactly why Solo exists and that's why some use it, like yourself, simply because they don't want multiplayer. Others go to Solo/Group to avoid other players out of fear, pure and simple, BlueLumen makes that ever so clear, check the posting history. Nothing will entice them to Open either in most cases, the only possible thing that MIGHT do it would be a total lack of costs for death, ships and all cargos replaced at no cost, and even THAT won't entice most of them, they don't want any violence in their space combat game, so they won't face other players. Yeah, I know...

Maj asked, some people give very good answers, but the fact is, most of the folks in Solo/Group won't come out of that if it means they can get attacked, simple as that. And pirates don't need other players to be pirates, Maj also knows that. I'm not sure exactly why he started this, I have my own idea on that, and knowing Maj...well...the guy does make me laugh when he does this stuff, he definitely knows how to work a room.
 
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