Deliberate Ramming

[Jukelo]

Hello Commander Arry!

If you mean context (apologies if I am misunderstanding), then we'd probably go with some form of Pilot's Federation Rating system.

This would be like a code of conduct for members. In the dangerous universe of Elite and due to the nature of the organisation, the PF understands there will be conflict within the ranks. So this code of conduct would perhaps be like the Geneva conventions. Rules of engagement, if you will.

As you commit actions that break these codes, the PF would take an increasingly dim view of you, which would translate into them withdrawing support and even working with factions to punish you.

Hypothetically, of course.

Hey Sandro,

Do you plan to keep the Karma system separate from crime and punishment, with one focused on keeping players in line while the other tries to create an interesting experience for criminal characters?
As it stands the C&P system already seems to be designed to punish players : the lack of reaction from the various actors of the galaxy to your criminal status creates a rather dull experience, only spiced up in the wrong way by relentless, unchallenging ant yet unavoidable player-bound bounty hunters spawning every 5 jumps or so when you have a bounty (whatever the amount, whatever the system, whatever the distance) which feel designed to harass the player and encourage them to avoid bounties altogether instead of creating high risk high reward gameplay.
But at the same time some of those changes you are listing sound more like basic consequences that should be used to make "legit" criminal gameplay feel different, more interesting, rather than measures used to disincentivize players from engaging in behaviours you consider undesirable towards other players.
Please do mind the huge difference: if you told me that killing other players is what it would take for the game to react to my criminal behaviour and force me to mind my surroundings and weigh my options, I would stop trying to be a 'nice' pirate and would begin a genocide right away. I have a feeling getting the game - and failing that, other players - to ackowledge their naughty actions is the reason a lot of pirates in Open turned murder hobo.

 

[besieger]

Hello Commander nrage!

Discerning naughty from undesirable would really be such a system's prime function.

so, to spitball a little, here are some potential examples:

* Attacking a wanted ship, no matter how overpowered you were compared to it, would be fine
* Attacking a clean ship when massively overpowered would get minor bad karma
* Repeatedly attacking clean ships that you massively overpowered would get you major bad karma
* Stealing cargo from a clean ship would be fine.
* Being involved in an occasional starport collision would gain you minor bad karma
* Being repeatedly involved in starport collisions over time would get you major bad karma
* Occasionally disconnecting ungracefully in danger would be fine
* Repeatedly disconnecting ungracefully in danger over time would get you major bad karma
* Attacking starports as crew would get you major bad karma

This sort of thing.

Such a system might not be perfectly right in very instance, but punitive measures would increase based on trends over time, which in the end become fairly accurate indicators of intent.

In general, we want to minimise out of game intervention. However, that does not mean that punitive measures would be toothless. We could make life *very* challenging, in ways we currently have not employed, for repeat offenders.

But please remember, as of this moment, this is just discussion, and although we have very positive vibes, there's currently no ETA or guarantee for such a system's arrival.

Just to get this right, my play style is one of murder everyone I see, when you say "punitive measures" does this include things like shadow banning and the like? prison servers etc?

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commander ryan_m!

I don't think you quite understand the concept of how our karma system would work. The point is, if we could absolutely guarantee we understood exactly why an ungraceful disconnect occurred then we wouldn't need the system, we could simply apply a punitive measure there and then.

But the fact is that we can't tell the difference between network outage and someone disabling their network connection, just like we can't 100% tell who is really to blame in a starport collision (if we could, we'd consider working for traffic enforcement).

This is different to someone using modified files which, when we do detect them, we know for sure that they are cheating and can take direct action. It's not like we aren't sure when a ship reports its shield health doing something that it shouldn't.

So what a karma system does is look at activity over time, because the more often a negative event is logged, the more likely it becomes intentional and the more certainty we have when activating consequences.

 

[SmokeWeez]

All I see is, combat logging is treated the same as killing people many times. Something is wrong here.

 

[Crimson Kaim]

Hello Commander nrage!

Discerning naughty from undesirable would really be such a system's prime function.

so, to spitball a little, here are some potential examples:

* Attacking a wanted ship, no matter how overpowered you were compared to it, would be fine
* Attacking a clean ship when massively overpowered would get minor bad karma
* Repeatedly attacking clean ships that you massively overpowered would get you major bad karma
* Stealing cargo from a clean ship would be fine.
* Being involved in an occasional starport collision would gain you minor bad karma
* Being repeatedly involved in starport collisions over time would get you major bad karma
* Occasionally disconnecting ungracefully in danger would be fine
* Repeatedly disconnecting ungracefully in danger over time would get you major bad karma
* Attacking starports as crew would get you major bad karma

This sort of thing.

Such a system might not be perfectly right in very instance, but punitive measures would increase based on trends over time, which in the end become fairly accurate indicators of intent.

In general, we want to minimise out of game intervention. However, that does not mean that punitive measures would be toothless. We could make life *very* challenging, in ways we currently have not employed, for repeat offenders.

But please remember, as of this moment, this is just discussion, and although we have very positive vibes, there's currently no ETA or guarantee for such a system's arrival.

This highlighted point is wrong on so many levels. No it's NOT okay. 'Nuff said.

 

[Sole Hunter]

Hello Commander ryan_m!

I don't think you quite understand the concept of how our karma system would work. The point is, if we could absolutely guarantee we understood exactly why an ungraceful disconnect occurred then we wouldn't need the system, we could simply apply a punitive measure there and then.

But the fact is that we can't tell the difference between network outage and someone disabling their network connection, just like we can't 100% tell who is really to blame in a starport collision (if we could, we'd consider working for traffic enforcement).

This is different to someone using modified files which, when we do detect them, we know for sure that they are cheating and can take direct action. It's not like we aren't sure when a ship reports its shield health doing something that it shouldn't.

So what a karma system does is look at activity over time, because the more often a negative event is logged, the more likely it becomes intentional and the more certainty we have when activating consequences.

So in other words, you can't fix combat logging and it's fine.

Thanks for admitting defeat.

Pathetic.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

Just to get this right, my play style is one of murder everyone I see, when you say "punitive measures" does this include things like shadow banning and the like? prison servers etc?

You'd get sent to the Azkaban prison server

 

[zarking]

I lost my cutter, 62 million rebuy and my elite npc pilot to a bizarre ramming accident last week
I was leaving the station, not speeding but scraped the edge of the mail slot on the way out, at the same time an npc was coming in and as I tried to correct my path I wandered into the npc (I think) and as I was getting the clear the station immediately warnings everywhere, I sped up as I got lined up and I guess I must have crushed the npc as the station obliterated me in seconds. If I'm honest, I didn't see me hit the npc, so that's just a guess as to what happened as there was one nearby (which was an eagle, thinking back it might have been a player, it happened really quick and caught me off guard).
Anyway, nothing I can do about it now, but it did make me think.

Why don't we just have a "safe dock" switch, it can be on or off.
If it's on then within x distance of the mail slot you enter a sort of shielded area in which no damage can be done to your or any other ship. However, if you speed in the safe dock area you get a hefty fine.
With safe dock off, you can enter at any speed and the usual ramming rules apply.

This keeps high speed smuggling as an option, and anyone who wants the risk for whatever reason can still have it.
Safe dock would be an option similar to report crimes against me.
The speeding fine would apply above 10% so 110.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Sandro Sammarco
Re: Combat Logging (illegally, via task killing or pulling the plug, etc)

Maybe there could be a system that, when in combat/danger, a 'mark' is placed on that CMDRs save.
The mark would contain the information needed, such as game mode, and when it was placed, etc.

If they exit the game gracefully, via the menu, the mark is removed, all is well. End of story.

If the game task is killed, or a network is lost, whether it be via a client crash, internet failure, or intentional force close or pulling the plug, the mark is not removed from the save.
Upon reloading the save, it will detect the mark wasn't cleared, and only allow the CMDR to log back in to their previous mode (including exact private group).
It would also need a time limit upon logging back in, to stop anyone logging in, and then gracefully exiting and selecting a new mode. Maybe 30 minutes or something.

That way, anyone experiencing unstable internet (which I get alot), or a client crash, aren't punished, as we generally just carry on where we left off.
But anyone using illegal methods of logging to avoid combat will be forced back in the mode they was previously in, and likely the very danger they was trying to avoid illegally.


If any of that made sense. Lol

 

[nrage]

nrage, aggression should always be an option for a pirate. If the trader chooses to run even in the face of what is considered "legit" piracy, they need to accept there will be potential repercussions, or all we have is impromptu scripted donations that leave a bad taste...

I know, check my earlier post.

The karma system would ideally mitigate this though. If interdicted a trader doesn't need to discern if the pirate is legit or a murderer, because an insta-gank would result in a karma penalty to the attacker in the same way as if he'd just interdicted them and murdered them without the piracy pretense.

.. just like I said

If the pirate is legit and the attacker makes a run for it, quite frankly I think the pirate needs better tools for SKILLFULLY disabling the target. No magic tow-rope. My poison of choice was to strafe FA-Off above the target and blow out their power plant, but this has the obvious risk that if taken to 0%, RNG might decide to insta-blow the ship.

Between the above RNG PP insta-blow, the fact that when thrusters are blown the ship maintains velocity and the "trail of loot" will disappear as it starts to extend over a certain range, and the inadequacy of any other tools, the karma system would only have a slight issue in "legit" pirates being penalised for hindering a runner if killed...but that's too much detail for a ball-park discussion.

I agree, better tools are needed for pirates. However, that's not the issue I was concerned with earlier. The Q/issue is how a karma system can accurately differentiate between piracy and murder, and whether this can help make piracy actually "work" in Elite by giving both pirates and traders the tools/guarantees required to help with that.

 

[ryan_m]

Hello Commander ryan_m!

I don't think you quite understand the concept of how our karma system would work. The point is, if we could absolutely guarantee we understood exactly why an ungraceful disconnect occurred then we wouldn't need the system, we could simply apply a punitive measure there and then.

But the fact is that we can't tell the difference between network outage and someone disabling their network connection, just like we can't 100% tell who is really to blame in a starport collision (if we could, we'd consider working for traffic enforcement).

This is different to someone using modified files which, when we do detect them, we know for sure that they are cheating and can take direct action. It's not like we aren't sure when a ship reports its shield health doing something that it shouldn't.

So what a karma system does is look at activity over time, because the more often a negative event is logged, the more likely it becomes intentional and the more certainty we have when activating consequences.

I understand it's hard to distinguish but by setting it up this way is telling people that killing clean ships will be punished the same way as combat logging. By saying that "occasionally disconnecting ungracefully in danger would be fine" that is essentially FDev condoning combat logging.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

* Repeatedly disconnecting ungracefully in danger over time would get you major bad karma

I consider combat logging an out-of-game event. So this is punishing an out-of-game event with an in-game mechanism, which makes no sense. If you class combat logging as an exploit then it should be handled out-of-game.

 

[Jukelo]

I consider combat logging an out-of-game event. So this is punishing an out-of-game event with an in-game mechanism, which makes no sense. If you class combat logging as an exploit then it should be handled out-of-game.

Agreed, there's no sense trying to impose IG consequences, meant to make the game more interesting or guide behaviours, to out-of-game actions like cheats and exploits.

 

[nrage]

This highlighted point is wrong on so many levels. No it's NOT okay. 'Nuff said.

I don't think you understand the technical issues surrounding this. Through no fault, or intent, a player might lose a connection due to a number of potential causes. Bugs in the game, crashes of the game or even a server, network outages, etc. These are less common in some places and more common in others. Players who occasionally disconnect ungracefully, especially if those events are not all "in combat" are unlikely to be "combat logging". The only way to fairly test for this is to collect data points and detect a pattern like.. "isn't it odd that your network only drops when you're interdicted" (assuming there isn't a bug in the game which only happens during interdictions ...you see, nothing is simple)

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commanders!

In response to combat logging versus "griefing" (which I will define here as killing a much weaker vessel with potentially a lower combat rated pilot): both are considered "undesirable" behaviour. I'm not saying that they would have to get exactly the same bad karma, just that repeatedly doing either act would see a Commander slide down the karma slope. I'm not sure that this can really be argued against, unless you are bringing a strong bias to the discussion table.

In Open, you can run into other Commanders that want to destroy your ship. We are saying that if they repeatedly pick unfair fights, we will take action against them. Why would we not take action against someone who consistently logs to avoid legitimate destruction? And I'm sure that we could envisage a system that reduced karma loss for combat logging when aggressors are also low karma Commanders, so it feels reasonable to me?

Hell Commander besieger!

As we're speaking hypothetically here, we would want to avoid shadow banning where possible. As an example, for a Commander that repeatedly killed clean ships that were significantly weaker than them, I'd rather see a removal of insurance cover (so when a ship is destroyed it's gone, or you have to pay the full price to get it back), docking privileges rescinded at all starports and outposts except those in anarchy jurisdictions and game applied Pilot Federation bounties rather than a shadow ban.

Of course, we'd always reserve the right to apply out of game measures if we felt they were justified.

 

[Misaniovent]

Hello Commander ryan_m!

I don't think you quite understand the concept of how our karma system would work. The point is, if we could absolutely guarantee we understood exactly why an ungraceful disconnect occurred then we wouldn't need the system, we could simply apply a punitive measure there and then.

But the fact is that we can't tell the difference between network outage and someone disabling their network connection, just like we can't 100% tell who is really to blame in a starport collision (if we could, we'd consider working for traffic enforcement).

This is different to someone using modified files which, when we do detect them, we know for sure that they are cheating and can take direct action. It's not like we aren't sure when a ship reports its shield health doing something that it shouldn't.

So what a karma system does is look at activity over time, because the more often a negative event is logged, the more likely it becomes intentional and the more certainty we have when activating consequences.

Why track it with the same system, though? Why not track disconnects with a separate system?

 

[Cocalarix]

I consider combat logging an out-of-game event. So this is punishing an out-of-game event with an in-game mechanism, which makes no sense. If you class combat logging as an exploit then it should be handled out-of-game.

I'm sorry, are you guys new to the game? It's been common knowledge for a very long time that combat logging can't be 100% fixed. It's the nature of P2P and it's not going to magically change, no matter how much we hate it.

This is probably the first time they're trying to do something about it, that doesn't involve us uploading to Youtube and contacting Frontier support. This is an automated system, so at least we know it should trigger every time.

I'LL TAKE IT!

 

[Sole Hunter]

Hello Commanders!

In response to combat logging versus "griefing" (which I will define here as killing a much weaker vessel with potentially a lower combat rated pilot): both are considered "undesirable" behaviour. I'm not saying that they would have to get exactly the same bad karma, just that repeatedly doing either act would see a Commander slide down the karma slope. I'm not sure that this can really be argued against, unless you are bringing a strong bias to the discussion table.

In Open, you can run into other Commanders that want to destroy your ship. We are saying that if they repeatedly pick unfair fights, we will take action against them. Why would we not take action against someone who consistently logs to avoid legitimate destruction? And I'm sure that we could envisage a system that reduced karma loss for combat logging when aggressors are also low karma Commanders, so it feels reasonable to me?

Hell Commander besieger!

As we're speaking hypothetically here, we would want to avoid shadow banning where possible. As an example, for a Commander that repeatedly killed clean ships that were significantly weaker than them, I'd rather see a removal of insurance cover (so when a ship is destroyed it's gone, or you have to pay the full price to get it back), docking privileges rescinded at all starports and outposts except those in anarchy jurisdictions and game applied Pilot Federation bounties rather than a shadow ban.

Of course, we'd always reserve the right to apply out of game measures if we felt they were justified.

what the actual... go back to the drawing board please.

This is a terrible idea. I don't want to grind for another 600 hours kthx.

 

[besieger]

Hello Commanders!

In response to combat logging versus "griefing" (which I will define here as killing a much weaker vessel with potentially a lower combat rated pilot): both are considered "undesirable" behaviour. I'm not saying that they would have to get exactly the same bad karma, just that repeatedly doing either act would see a Commander slide down the karma slope. I'm not sure that this can really be argued against, unless you are bringing a strong bias to the discussion table.

In Open, you can run into other Commanders that want to destroy your ship. We are saying that if they repeatedly pick unfair fights, we will take action against them. Why would we not take action against someone who consistently logs to avoid legitimate destruction? And I'm sure that we could envisage a system that reduced karma loss for combat logging when aggressors are also low karma Commanders, so it feels reasonable to me?

Hell Commander besieger!

As we're speaking hypothetically here, we would want to avoid shadow banning where possible. As an example, for a Commander that repeatedly killed clean ships that were significantly weaker than them, I'd rather see a removal of insurance cover (so when a ship is destroyed it's gone, or you have to pay the full price to get it back), docking privileges rescinded at all starports and outposts except those in anarchy jurisdictions and game applied Pilot Federation bounties rather than a shadow ban.

Of course, we'd always reserve the right to apply out of game measures if we felt they were justified.

So basically, I lose my ship that I spent hundreds of hours to create because I decided to play a murder hobo? Are you just trying to add more grind to my current grind? engineers takes a long time you know, if you like played your own game that is...

 

[nrage]

I understand it's hard to distinguish but by setting it up this way is telling people that killing clean ships will be punished the same way as combat logging. By saying that "occasionally disconnecting ungracefully in danger would be fine" that is essentially FDev condoning combat logging.

Being unable to detect something is not the same as condoning it. Combat logging is a violation of the TOS, so Frontier do not condone it. They might not be able to detect and punish it in every case however, this may well just be a fact we have to live with. The point of a karma system is to attempt to detect the anti-social behaviour, on both sides of the griefer/logger divide, and attempt to actually do something about it. No-one is saying being a murderhobo is equivalent to logging, what is being said is that both are anti-social and to be discouraged.