The problem with CnP is not CnP itself. It's how it happens and lack of recourse.

[Aashenfox]

CnP would be fine (even 3.0.3) if it wasn't for the illogical game mechanisms that lead to getting wanted, coupled with the only recourse being 'killed'.

Problem 1. Inadequate friendly fire controls.

Allegedly, steps had been taken between 2.4 and 3.0 to make FF incidents more difficult to have. This didn't work. There are still several weapons in the large and huge varieties that result in an immediate assault.

Increase more the threshold of 'friendly fire', OR, add a 'sorry, my bad! Send me the bill!' comm option. Ideally, make it a public broadcast so it stops ALL attacking ships that were previously neutral.

Problem 2. The AI behaviour toward friendly fire.

It has always been the case, that assaulting another ship should give that ship the right to retaliate in kind (it's amazing how many people are supporting this, who were against this concept in another thread about pvp griefing of clean ships against ships with report crimes off, but that's another topic, just shows the 'argue for the sake of it' attitude of people in here, anyway...). This is illogical. If you think about it logically, this is the decision tree of the AI...

1) I got shot.
2) I try to destroy the ship attacking me, regardless how suicidal that appears to be, or how obvious it is that the other ship is in battle with others.

There are no qualifiers in there. Here is a super simple decision tree that would be better than nothing.

1) I got shot.
2) Am I the player's target? If yes, go to 3. If not, go to 4.
3) Is the aggressor a ship I can reasonably take on and win? If yes, go to 5. If not, go to 6
4) Return to my business.
5) Try to destroy the ship that is attacking me.
6) Try to high wake.

Problem 3. If I am one who transports my combat ships (due to 1D FSD), I am going to get stuck in a hostile jurisdiction if I have a friendly fire incident.

The problem here is one of recourse. Your only options in this case are to go and deliberately commit suicide by cop (immersion breakingly idiotic, I'd rather uninstall the game), or start in the starting sidewinder again.

Please implement a 'hand myself in' mechanism. Make it clear ONLY NPC bounties.


If the way I got 'wanted' was logical, and deserved, I would have no issue with the consequences. The fact is they've installed the punishment system before the justice system.

My 2c.

 

[NeilF]

...no it's the the CnP itself too

IMHO it's too bodgy/contrived/overbloated/gamey... And this is after numerous bites of the apple.


At the end of the day, do too much murder/illegal destruction, more and more stations/systems deny you access (as your reputation/notoriety is now too high). Continue on and the ATR start turning up more and more quickly/frequently, and you're even highlighted to other CMDRs (on their scanners) as a psycho.

And this reputation only decays over days/weeks...

Note: A small amount of illegal destruction/murder over a given time frame would go unnoticed! (And I see this as important!)

There... Done... Easy to understand. Easy to employ. And something that feels organic and realistic instead of gamey.

 

[Aashenfox]

...no it's the the CnP itself too

IMHO it's too bodgy/contrived/overbloated/gamey... And this is after numerous bites of the apple.


At the end of the day, do too much murder/illegal destruction, more and more stations/systems deny you access (as your reputation/notoriety is now too high). Continue on and the ATR start turning up more and more quickly/frequently, and you're even highlighted to other CMDRs (on their scanners) as a psycho.

And this reputation only decays over days/weeks...

Note: A small amount of illegal destruction/murder over a given time frame would go unnoticed!

There... Done... Easy to understand. Easy to employ. And something that feels organic and realistic instead of gamey.

Well, ok, I can't say I disagree, but one thing at a time, eh!? I think addressing the cause first then the result, is the right way to go.

 

[GunnerBill]

It’s the AI FF response.

You clip some poxy NPC Viper in your Corvette death ship then it attacks you incesently thereafter. Despite having suffered no danage at all.
Please!

 

[mono]

I had two System Security vessels, without warning and without me having fired at them or their colleagues in any way be it in aggression or friendly fire, each fire a volley of plasma at me in a Hi-Res for no other reason than they must have been bored. They then flew off. I was not wanted nor had any outstanding fines or bounties on me. Neither of the offenders received a fine/warning/wanted status for their crime. Working as intended?

 

[Aashenfox]

I had two System Security vessels, without warning and without me having fired at them or their colleagues in any way be it in aggression or friendly fire, each fire a volley of plasma at me in a Hi-Res for no other reason than they must have been bored. They then flew off. I was not wanted nor had any outstanding fines or bounties on me. Neither of the offenders received a fine/warning/wanted status for their crime. Working as intended?

This is not hte first post of weird sys authority behaviour since 3.0 I wonder if there's something more here.

 

[DaSucker]

I had two System Security vessels, without warning and without me having fired at them or their colleagues in any way be it in aggression or friendly fire, each fire a volley of plasma at me in a Hi-Res for no other reason than they must have been bored. They then flew off. I was not wanted nor had any outstanding fines or bounties on me. Neither of the offenders received a fine/warning/wanted status for their crime. Working as intended?

Have you got any evidence to prove it?

 

[Dural]

I got a wanted status from splash damage caused by a missile being shot down by the pirate I was attacking yesterday causing lots of angry purple triangles to start shooting at me. Just made it out of the area with my bounties. In principle I like the C&P system, I'm usually good so don't get a lot of bounties but have had warnings instead of lots of ships attempting to murder me for accidentally tagging a fed's shield. Not been in a situation where I'm literally stuck for options and have to self destruct etc, that must be really annoying.

If an AI ship retaliated and you aren't wanted it's breaking its own rules and attacking a clean ship.

A hand myself in mechanism would solve the problems with people getting stranded. Transported to a detention center with your intact ship, pay the fine + ship transportation costs and off you go. Good idea, liking that.

I had two System Security vessels, without warning and without me having fired at them or their colleagues in any way be it in aggression or friendly fire, each fire a volley of plasma at me in a Hi-Res for no other reason than they must have been bored. They then flew off. I was not wanted nor had any outstanding fines or bounties on me. Neither of the offenders received a fine/warning/wanted status for their crime. Working as intended?

I quite often see large fed ships shooting those purple things at nothing in particular, maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

 

[the source 0179]

CnP would be fine (even 3.0.3) if it wasn't for the illogical game mechanisms that lead to getting wanted, coupled with the only recourse being 'killed'.

Problem 1. Inadequate friendly fire controls.

Allegedly, steps had been taken between 2.4 and 3.0 to make FF incidents more difficult to have. This didn't work. There are still several weapons in the large and huge varieties that result in an immediate assault.

Increase more the threshold of 'friendly fire', OR, add a 'sorry, my bad! Send me the bill!' comm option. Ideally, make it a public broadcast so it stops ALL attacking ships that were previously neutral.

Problem 2. The AI behaviour toward friendly fire.

It has always been the case, that assaulting another ship should give that ship the right to retaliate in kind (it's amazing how many people are supporting this, who were against this concept in another thread about pvp griefing of clean ships against ships with report crimes off, but that's another topic, just shows the 'argue for the sake of it' attitude of people in here, anyway...). This is illogical. If you think about it logically, this is the decision tree of the AI...

1) I got shot.
2) I try to destroy the ship attacking me, regardless how suicidal that appears to be, or how obvious it is that the other ship is in battle with others.

There are no qualifiers in there. Here is a super simple decision tree that would be better than nothing.

1) I got shot.
2) Am I the player's target? If yes, go to 3. If not, go to 4.
3) Is the aggressor a ship I can reasonably take on and win? If yes, go to 5. If not, go to 6
4) Return to my business.
5) Try to destroy the ship that is attacking me.
6) Try to high wake.

Problem 3. If I am one who transports my combat ships (due to 1D FSD), I am going to get stuck in a hostile jurisdiction if I have a friendly fire incident.

The problem here is one of recourse. Your only options in this case are to go and deliberately commit suicide by cop (immersion breakingly idiotic, I'd rather uninstall the game), or start in the starting sidewinder again.

Please implement a 'hand myself in' mechanism.


If the way I got 'wanted' was logical, and deserved, I would have no issue with the consequences. The fact is they've installed the punishment system before the justice system.

My 2c.

I like it ashen. But as some of us have noticed both FD and some players are not very logical. But I agree with you.

 

[Aashenfox]

I like it ashen. But as some of us have noticed both FD and some players are not very logical. But I agree with you.

I'm taking the horse to water, it's all I can do! Thanks for your support!

 

[FrogsFriend]

A bounty on you means "we want you dead and are prepared to pay some credits to see that happen", so the hand-yourself-in mechanism already exists. Fly up to an appropriate security ship, let it scan you and then kill you; bounty's purpose fulfilled.

A bounty doesn't mean they want some money off you, that would be a fine.

 

[Aashenfox]

A bounty on you means "we want you dead and are prepared to pay some credits to see that happen", so the hand-yourself-in mechanism already exists. Fly up to an appropriate security ship, let it scan you and then kill you; bounty's purpose fulfilled.

A bounty doesn't mean they want some money off you, that would be a fine.

So you think it's fine under that circumstance, that you either have to suicide by cop (so immersion breaking for me, I'd rather uninstall the game), or lose your ship?

There is definitely room for a third option, imo.

 

[sollisb]

I got a wanted status from splash damage caused by a missile being shot down by the pirate I was attacking yesterday causing lots of angry purple triangles to start shooting at me. Just made it out of the area with my bounties. In principle I like the C&P system, I'm usually good so don't get a lot of bounties but have had warnings instead of lots of ships attempting to murder me for accidentally tagging a fed's shield. Not been in a situation where I'm literally stuck for options and have to self destruct etc, that must be really annoying.

If an AI ship retaliated and you aren't wanted it's breaking its own rules and attacking a clean ship.

A hand myself in mechanism would solve the problems with people getting stranded. Transported to a detention center with your intact ship, pay the fine + ship transportation costs and off you go. Good idea, liking that.



I quite often see large fed ships shooting those purple things at nothing in particular, maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There used be a problem with Federales shooting down missiles that were still present after a skirmish. This then died out, due to being fixed or something. Then came the problem of NPCs firing on you whenever they scanned you. That too went away, but is now back bigly time.

 

[Weps]

I'm assuming this thread has been started in light of the recently "I got stranded" post, but...

Did we rule out that that story was not caused by a bug?

To my understanding of the C&P news description, players should still end up at a detention centre even when they blow themselves up, as long as they do it in the jurisdiction they are wanted in. Blowing up is necessary to trigger the insurance payment as well.

Now, if we are going to talk about the insurance as well... I've always said that E: D system, where ships costs a small fortune and essentially a criminal ends up causing more cost in property damage than his bounty ever amounts to, is beyond idiotic... but this is whole different discussion. Grinding for credits is unfortunately the crooked backbone upon which this whole game has been built.

 

[Sylow]

Welcome back, Aashen. This is much more the analytical you again.
.

Problem 1. Inadequate friendly fire controls.

Allegedly, steps had been taken between 2.4 and 3.0 to make FF incidents more difficult to have. This didn't work. There are still several weapons in the large and huge varieties that result in an immediate assault.

.
The problem here is where to draw the line.
.
Some of the big weapons pack a massive punch and people tend to have more than one of them on board. To go to extremes, picture a pair of G5 overcharged C4 Plasma Accelerators. (Yes, overcharge is not the usual modification done to them, but if you aim to do the maximum damage per shot, it's the way to go. ) Imagine that pair of Plasma Accelerators hit an unmodded Sidewinder. This doesn't just leave a small dent on the shields.
.
Even if you'd make the regulations very lenient, and you'd only get to assault when you damage dealt equals 80% of the targets shield capacity, some weapon layouts would still be able to do enough damage for an assault charge. At the same time, due to how defenses scale in this game, the high punch is necessary to also be able to harm high defense targets. Thus any actual fix for these problems requires to first bring shield strength in line again. So in the end, the current C&P issues here are rooted in our current balance issues. As long as they are not addressed, this problem of C&P also can't be taken care of.
.
.
Also, this one has one glaring problem:

1) I got shot.
2) Am I the player's target? If yes, go to 3. If not, go to 4.
[...]
4) Return to my business.
[...]

.
Implement it like that and railguns will be the absolute exploit. Fire at an NPC without selecting it as a target and it'll not react till it explodes.
.
Mind you, in pure theory some "i am sorry" mechanic would be great, but in the end it has the same issues as the difference between "reckless weapon discharge" vs. "assault". Within the current weapon and defense scaling, it's not possible to find a point where it would generally be useful without also creating (rather simple to reach) cases, where it could be exploited for easy kills.
.
.
That all being said, i generally agree with your notion that C&P still can use a lot if improvement. Unfortunately i don't see how to reach a point which would please all sides as long as the current balancing of weapons and defences is in place. Only when defence (and then in turn perhaps also offense) is brought more in line again, it'll be possible to give C&P better threshold values to work with.
.

 

[Aashenfox]

I'm assuming this thread has been started in light of the recently "I got stranded" post, but...

Did we rule out that that story was not caused by a bug?

To my understanding of the C&P news description, players should still end up at a detention centre even when they blow themselves up, as long as they do it in the jurisdiction they are wanted in. Blowing up is necessary to trigger the insurance payment as well.

Now, if we are going to talk about the insurance as well... I've always said that E: D system, where ships costs a small fortune and essentially a criminal ends up causing more cost in property damage than his bounty ever amounts to, is beyond idiotic... but this is whole different discussion. Grinding for credits is unfortunately the crooked backbone upon which this whole game has been built.

More of a response to culmination of the issues I've seen posted (I had two big threads as a result of my own experience with CnP, in that I had a notoriety of 9 when 3.0.3 dropped and subsequently had to wait 18 hours to change a module with one stored at my home base. Something I personally feel there is absolutely no justification for (others may disagree)), and the fact that they all stem from the same thing (bizarre AI decisions/illogical mechanics). In the course of having 'clean fun' someone gets wanted and the punishment is overly harsh, is really what it comes down to. I hear the guys saying consequences, consequences, consequences, but I fear some have lost sight of the fact that it's supposed to be fun.

 

[Aashenfox]

Welcome back, Aashen. This is much more the analytical you again.
.

.
The problem here is where to draw the line.
.
Some of the big weapons pack a massive punch and people tend to have more than one of them on board. To go to extremes, picture a pair of G5 overcharged C4 Plasma Accelerators. (Yes, overcharge is not the usual modification done to them, but if you aim to do the maximum damage per shot, it's the way to go. ) Imagine that pair of Plasma Accelerators hit an unmodded Sidewinder. This doesn't just leave a small dent on the shields.
.
Even if you'd make the regulations very lenient, and you'd only get to assault when you damage dealt equals 80% of the targets shield capacity, some weapon layouts would still be able to do enough damage for an assault charge. At the same time, due to how defenses scale in this game, the high punch is necessary to also be able to harm high defense targets. Thus any actual fix for these problems requires to first bring shield strength in line again. So in the end, the current C&P issues here are rooted in our current balance issues. As long as they are not addressed, this problem of C&P also can't be taken care of.
.
.
Also, this one has one glaring problem:

.
Implement it like that and railguns will be the absolute exploit. Fire at an NPC without selecting it as a target and it'll not react till it explodes.
.
Mind you, in pure theory some "i am sorry" mechanic would be great, but in the end it has the same issues as the difference between "reckless weapon discharge" vs. "assault". Within the current weapon and defense scaling, it's not possible to find a point where it would generally be useful without also creating (rather simple to reach) cases, where it could be exploited for easy kills.
.
.
That all being said, i generally agree with your notion that C&P still can use a lot if improvement. Unfortunately i don't see how to reach a point which would please all sides as long as the current balancing of weapons and defences is in place. Only when defence (and then in turn perhaps also offense) is brought more in line again, it'll be possible to give C&P better threshold values to work with.
.

Sure, it's a very simple example and it will require more thought and coding effort than I implied, I always knew this. Another alternative would be to have the AI wait a few seconds to see if they are hit again. My point is that this should have been considered BEFORE adding harsh CnP.

Thanks for your usual well thought out and constructed input.

 

[operant]

Still trying to understand the justification (note I did not say explanation) for _having_ to be online 2hours/notoriety point.
Video game for fun versus shadow morality play.
In-game consequences versus personal consequences.
FD need to step back and decide what they are really trying to do, I feel.
At the moment it seems like a random walk to nowhere in particular.

(I just saw the latest improvement proposal: 5% tax per hot modules. Mmmmm 0.05 x 250M credits just for the cutter fuel scoop for a 600CR 'accidental' bounty. Yeah, seems reasonable to me ;-0

 

[CMDR Carbo]

Sometimes I wonder why are there even fines when almost every offense results in a 200Cr bounty.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Sometimes I wonder why are there even fines when almost every offense results in a 200Cr bounty.

There is someone designing the game with a serious obsession for punishments.