Friendly fire in conflict zones question

[Susanna]

A couple of times tonight I found that all the ships in a CZ turned hostile after what I believe was friendly fire on my part. A few friendly ships flew through my pulse laser fire while targeting and firing upon an enemy ship. Thing is, this was with turrets set to Target Only. I know I wasn't firing my MCs at the time. Why am I getting friendly fire issues if this is the case? Is it due to jitter perhaps?

Curious to know other people's experience of this.

Thanks!

Susie

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

Hey Sue, this happens to my group all the time, we all have to run for the hills when someone in our wing does it! All part of the fun! Good times!

 

[Deleted member 38366]

AFAIK Turrets should be fully exempt from all Friendly Fire issues when in Target only or Fire at will modes when properly targeting a Hostile.

However, even momentarily Targeting a Friendly with Turrets receiving firing Command (i.e. firing button depressed) will still register as a Hostile act when in Target Only or Forward Fire modes.

 

[Susanna]

AFAIK Turrets should be fully exempt from all Friendly Fire issues when in Target only or Fire at will modes when properly targeting a Hostile.

However, even momentarily Targeting a Friendly with Turrets receiving firing Command (i.e. firing button depressed) will still register as a Hostile act when in Target Only or Forward Fire modes.

Interesting. Thanks for the reply. I have 4 pulse turrets (Rapid Fire with Scramble Spectrum). However, I think the large mount is a gymbaled Burst laser. I can't recall if I was firing this burst laser, but there is a good chance I was as I don't just let the turrets fire on their own usually when taking down a Shields. It's usually go in blazing

Here is my ship build, http://www.edshipyard.com/#/L=A0z0,...56o7Y8qvqEr7iMn3OUp730AA025S025S01LU02UI00nE0

However, I think I switched back to turreted pulses because the capacitor draw was too great with bursts fitted. But the large slot will be correct. As I haven't changed this one for a while.

There may be a few wondering at the two huge MCs in this build, especially as one is Corrosive and one Incendiary... After reading this post here

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...s-Incendiary?p=5427275&viewfull=1#post5427275

I was wondering whether I'd made a mistake doing an Incendiary mod on it. Then I realised that for smaller ships, Many of them turn and attack when you get them down to their last shield ring. I usually open up with the two MCs at this point. The huge incendiary MC rips that last ring away and the corrosive does the hull. So I find this to be a non-intuitive weapon combo that works at least partly in combat for me.

 

[Susanna]

AFAIK Turrets should be fully exempt from all Friendly Fire issues when in Target only or Fire at will modes when properly targeting a Hostile.

However, even momentarily Targeting a Friendly with Turrets receiving firing Command (i.e. firing button depressed) will still register as a Hostile act when in Target Only or Forward Fire modes.

I'll try not firing the large burst today when the friendly ships do their dance right in your line of fire thing, and see what happens then... Time to test this out!

 

[Susanna]

Hey Sue, this happens to my group all the time, we all have to run for the hills when someone in our wing does it! All part of the fun! Good times!

Argh at "Sue"... Susie please.

No doubt but after a couple of times it wears thin. This seems to be a programmed ship flight behaviour in CZs...

 

[Devari]

AFAIK Turrets should be fully exempt from all Friendly Fire issues when in Target only or Fire at will modes when properly targeting a Hostile.

However, even momentarily Targeting a Friendly with Turrets receiving firing Command (i.e. firing button depressed) will still register as a Hostile act when in Target Only or Forward Fire modes.

I have never encountered this behavior myself and I usually use a combination of gimballed weapons and turrets and my turrets are always in target-only mode. After destroying an enemy I will immediately cycle to the next target with turrets engaged without deactivating them and I have never gotten a bounty of any kind from my turrets. The target indicator does seem to remain in target mode for a fraction of a second when I cycle to the next target, but that has never triggered a friendly-fire bounty for me and my turrets have never opened fire.

It's also worth mentioning that simply targeting a friendly and opening fire won't get you a bounty unless the hits connect. It's the act of inflicting damage that gets you the bounty, not whether you simply have someone targeted with weapons firing.

 

[Devari]

Interesting. Thanks for the reply. I have 4 pulse turrets (Rapid Fire with Scramble Spectrum). However, I think the large mount is a gymbaled Burst laser. I can't recall if I was firing this burst laser, but there is a good chance I was as I don't just let the turrets fire on their own usually when taking down a Shields. It's usually go in blazing

I use a gimbal/turret setup on all of my larger ships and although I have gotten bounties from the gimbal-mounted weapons with the occasional stray shot this has never happened with the turrets in target-only mode. In fact if I want to tag a ship for bounty credit and there are a lot of friendlies close to the target I will sometimes just let the turrets fire and even if a friendly NPC flies right into my turret fire I still don't get a bounty.

There may be a few wondering at the two huge MCs in this build, especially as one is Corrosive and one Incendiary... After reading this post here

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...s-Incendiary?p=5427275&viewfull=1#post5427275

I was wondering whether I'd made a mistake doing an Incendiary mod on it. Then I realised that for smaller ships, Many of them turn and attack when you get them down to their last shield ring. I usually open up with the two MCs at this point. The huge incendiary MC rips that last ring away and the corrosive does the hull. So I find this to be a non-intuitive weapon combo that works at least partly in combat for me.

The Corvette is a hard ship to get a good balance between shield-stripping weapons and hull-shredding weapons so many players do find that they prefer an asymmetric loadout for the class 4's. I started out trying to optimize my hull-shredding power and went with two corrosive class 4's and the rest incendiary multis but wasn't completely happy with the shield damage compared to my Anaconda. Now I'm going with two class 4 efficient beams and the rest corrosive multis and that has been working better for me but the engagement ranges are much shorter due to the laser damage dropoff. If you don't mind the asymmetric loadout there's nothing wrong with going with one incendiary and one corrosive for the class 4 multis, I just can't stand the asymmetry with that sort of setup but it's definitely a decent compromise if you want balanced damage abilities vs. both shields and hulls. Another popular setup is two incendiary class 4's and the rest corrosive multis which I will probably try out at some point to see how good that is at maintaining adequate hull damage. My Vulture has two class 3 incendiary multis and it actually does reasonably well against hulls so I expect it will work well on the Corvette but it is sort of a shame to lose the optimal hull-shredding potential of the Corvette's dual class 4's by making them both incendiaries.

 

[Susanna]

I use a gimbal/turret setup on all of my larger ships and although I have gotten bounties from the gimbal-mounted weapons with the occasional stray shot this has never happened with the turrets in target-only mode. In fact if I want to tag a ship for bounty credit and there are a lot of friendlies close to the target I will sometimes just let the turrets fire and even if a friendly NPC flies right into my turret fire I still don't get a bounty.



The Corvette is a hard ship to get a good balance between shield-stripping weapons and hull-shredding weapons so many players do find that they prefer an asymmetric loadout for the class 4's. I started out trying to optimize my hull-shredding power and went with two corrosive class 4's and the rest incendiary multis but wasn't completely happy with the shield damage compared to my Anaconda. Now I'm going with two class 4 efficient beams and the rest corrosive multis and that has been working better for me but the engagement ranges are much shorter due to the laser damage dropoff. If you don't mind the asymmetric loadout there's nothing wrong with going with one incendiary and one corrosive for the class 4 multis, I just can't stand the asymmetry with that sort of setup but it's definitely a decent compromise if you want balanced damage abilities vs. both shields and hulls. Another popular setup is two incendiary class 4's and the rest corrosive multis which I will probably try out at some point to see how good that is at maintaining adequate hull damage. My Vulture has two class 3 incendiary multis and it actually does reasonably well against hulls so I expect it will work well on the Corvette but it is sort of a shame to lose the optimal hull-shredding potential of the Corvette's dual class 4's by making them both incendiaries.

Lots of food for thought...

I may try two huge laser weapons and see how I get on with that. Suggestions on how to balance this idea of an all laser configuration for the Corvette so that only two pips in weapons are required for continuous firing would be most welcome!

Edit. Heat management is as important as capacitor power draw in this balancing act... Is it possible to use two huge efficient beam lasers and still keep with the distribution capacitors limits and not over heat when firing nearly continously? Would this work with either huge burst or pulse weapons?

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

in my experience:
burst lasers are the easiest way to get punished for friendly fire.
simply because the FF rule was "three hits max" or "x damage max"

i will never put bursts into the huge slots... their burst rate is way to slow.
long range modded cannons with projectile speeds close to multicannon are just awesome

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

Do your rapid fire pulses have any jitter? That might do it if your allies get too close.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

btw. when I run inside a Conflict Zone, I hardly ever use anything else then Target Hightest Threat or Target Next Hostile hotkeys.

The only exception would be Select Target Ahead, which of course can occasionally pickup a Friendly. But then during such retargeting times, I don't ever press the Trigger.

Since Target Selection is a key to Friendly Fire discrimination (NPC reaction), it is paramount not to have a Friendly Targeted.
Untargeted hits I've observed to be taken rather lax (even when Friendlies are hit for a split second from 2x C4 Beam Lasers), but the margin gets very narrow with large and huge Hardpoints.
AFAIK i.e. C4 Plasmas can still insta-trigger a hostile response even if the "stray bullet" never targeted a wrong guy.

When it comes to Cannons and MultCannons, quickly de-selecting a Friendly during TOF (and the NPC being hit half a second later untargeted) never resulted in any other than a friendly warning Message (works the same with the far more sensitive NPCs elsewhere, i.e. clean NPCs or Authority in a RES)

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

question:
do heal-beams and bursts trigger npcs?

 

[Xious]

They should fix this... especially in a CZ.

If there is a "Buffer" then the buffer needs to be bigger... simple.

 

[Devari]

Lots of food for thought...

I may try two huge laser weapons and see how I get on with that. Suggestions on how to balance this idea of an all laser configuration for the Corvette so that only two pips in weapons are required for continuous firing would be most welcome!

Most likely a multicannon setup would be best for this and most of my ships that use a combination of incendiary/corrosive multis I just leave 2 pips to weapons, with either 4 pips to shields or engines depending if I'm taking fire or boosting. I suppose you might be able to do something similar with efficient pulse lasers but I don't generally use pulse lasers in my builds so I haven't done a direct comparison.

Edit. Heat management is as important as capacitor power draw in this balancing act... Is it possible to use two huge efficient beam lasers and still keep with the distribution capacitors limits and not over heat when firing nearly continously? Would this work with either huge burst or pulse weapons?

On my Corvette I have two class 4 efficient beams and a low-emissions power plant mod that gives a thermal efficiency of around 0.3 and they never overheat with continuous fire. They will still drain the weapon cap and there is at least a slow drain even with 4 pips to weapons although in practice unless you have a target in front of you continuously you will be recharging your cap as you're maneuvering to reacquire your target so it sort of depends on how long your time on target is. With your Corvette build you've overcharged the power plant and the thermal efficiency is downgraded to 0.6 so that would have a significant impact on firing beam weapons with your current setup. You could probably get continuous fire out of class 4 efficient pulses but in that case class 4 incendiaries would probably be more efficient in terms of both cap draw and effective range given they have a much better damage dropoff than lasers.

 

[Limoncello Lizard]

question:
do heal-beams and bursts trigger npcs?

No. The heal effect only works on wingmates, and you aren't winged with allies in a CZ. So they are just lasers to them.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

No. The heal effect only works on wingmates, and you aren't winged with allies in a CZ. So they are just lasers to them.

ah, ok

so the only weapon to prevent friendly fire, are multicannons or cannons with smart rounds.