C&P...Does it work?
- Thread starter Hooplah
- Start date
The real problem with C&P is that it became too complex for it's own good. Bounties don't make sense because FDEV were afraid of players using them as an exploit for credits. Whilst it's a valid concern it does take away the point of the C&P system at least from a bounty hunting perspective. The police are also ineffective even in high security systems which is again pointless. Considering they were meant to be systems capable of protecting their trade lanes and enforcing the law. Honestly there are many more issues with it that I won't go into but basically they tried to make it do everything at once therefore it did nothing well.
Players in 2.0: "We need a much tougher C&P system to prevent griefing"
Players in 2.3: "Seriously, where's our new C&P system"
Players in 2.4: "Open is dead because there's no C&P"
Frontier: "Okay. Bounties and fines now no longer expire, holding a bounty or fine has consequences, killing players has much higher bounties than killing NPCs, killing noobwinders has an even higher bounty, and we'll send lore-breaking god-mode ships after the worst offenders."
Players in 3.0Beta: "Yes! Griefers are doomed"
Players in 3.0: "I just committed a crime and had consequences for it. This game is terrible!"
Griefers in 3.0: "This 1 billion credit bounty isn't that much of a problem because max-engineered ships are still invincible"
Players in 3.2: "We need a much tougher C&P system to prevent griefing. Also, we are incapable of learning from experience."
Frontier in 4.0? "To resolve the station ramming exploit, stations will now proactively shoot down any ships travelling at over 100m/s in the NFZ"
What I personally find lacking in C&P to fully work is: security sectors. Zones, rings, pockets... call it whatever you like but the idea is:
- High Security. Core worlds and systems surrounding them. Equal to city downtown. There would be plenty of security forces patrolling stars, stations and main trade routes. Mandatory scan upon arrival at the station. Immediate security response.
- Medium Security. Worlds and systems bit farther away from core worlds. Equal to suburbs. Occasional security presence but not constant. Scans may or may not happen. Generally calm place but bad things may happen sometimes due to lower security status. Security response delayed.
- Low Security. Equal to rural areas. In theory under security but last security forces were seen days ago. Security response is unlikely during the encounter, most cases they appear to clean up the wreckage. Almost non existent scans.
- No Security. Equal to shady places out of the sight. Terra incognita, free for all, no one cares. Zone labelled "you enter at your own risk" and "no crime reports". What gets inside, stays inside.
In this scenario gankers would have really hard life trying to gank in High/Medium Security zones. It would be easy for them in Low Security and like shooting fish in the barrel in No Security as no one would care.
Traders would safely trade in High Security without worrying about gankers and pirates. Tho Low security could bring more profit due to risk involved. No Security would be place for illegal stuff.
Bounty hunting would start at Medium Security and down, the lower the better bounties but at the higher danger costs. High Security bounties would be small fires for bad parking. Low or No Security would be icing on the cake.
Smuggling - pretty much impossible in High Security due to high amount of scans. No or Low Security would pay peanuts with Medium Security being profitable. If you would perform enough runs for certain Cartels you'd unlock "Inconspicuous Cargo Rack" module, half the capacity of given module size but under scan imitates clean cargo (with a 25% chance of failing to resist and fool the scan). With that cargo racks and enough rep you would be given missions to High Security worlds.
Planetary scans - they happen everywhere, some would be in No Security zones and would be free for all to scan with no penalty. In High Security zones it would be highly illegal.
If we get C&P lets us have means to commit a crime and get away without mandatory bounty. Give us means to commit a crime. False identity, false ship IDs, hidden cargo racks for illegal goods. With a chance to fail a scan and severe punishement if caught red handed.
- High Security. Core worlds and systems surrounding them. Equal to city downtown. There would be plenty of security forces patrolling stars, stations and main trade routes. Mandatory scan upon arrival at the station. Immediate security response.
- Medium Security. Worlds and systems bit farther away from core worlds. Equal to suburbs. Occasional security presence but not constant. Scans may or may not happen. Generally calm place but bad things may happen sometimes due to lower security status. Security response delayed.
- Low Security. Equal to rural areas. In theory under security but last security forces were seen days ago. Security response is unlikely during the encounter, most cases they appear to clean up the wreckage. Almost non existent scans.
- No Security. Equal to shady places out of the sight. Terra incognita, free for all, no one cares. Zone labelled "you enter at your own risk" and "no crime reports". What gets inside, stays inside.
In this scenario gankers would have really hard life trying to gank in High/Medium Security zones. It would be easy for them in Low Security and like shooting fish in the barrel in No Security as no one would care.
Traders would safely trade in High Security without worrying about gankers and pirates. Tho Low security could bring more profit due to risk involved. No Security would be place for illegal stuff.
Bounty hunting would start at Medium Security and down, the lower the better bounties but at the higher danger costs. High Security bounties would be small fires for bad parking. Low or No Security would be icing on the cake.
Smuggling - pretty much impossible in High Security due to high amount of scans. No or Low Security would pay peanuts with Medium Security being profitable. If you would perform enough runs for certain Cartels you'd unlock "Inconspicuous Cargo Rack" module, half the capacity of given module size but under scan imitates clean cargo (with a 25% chance of failing to resist and fool the scan). With that cargo racks and enough rep you would be given missions to High Security worlds.
Planetary scans - they happen everywhere, some would be in No Security zones and would be free for all to scan with no penalty. In High Security zones it would be highly illegal.
If we get C&P lets us have means to commit a crime and get away without mandatory bounty. Give us means to commit a crime. False identity, false ship IDs, hidden cargo racks for illegal goods. With a chance to fail a scan and severe punishement if caught red handed.
As I wrote above, that reeks of FDev punishing people for wanting a C&P system. It's as if people on a town complained to the mayor that the police are not doing enough to stop burglaries, so the mayor replies by increasing the fines for illegal parking.
I don't think it's Frontier's fault if the player base consistently asks for something it doesn't actually want. And - obviously - I don't think Frontier would actually do the 4.0 entry, despite it being the only actual way to stop station-ramming. People do insist Frontier "do something" about station-ramming.
You can't have a law enforcement response fast enough to protect a poorly-shielded trade ship from being blown up [1]. They'd need to literally appear in the instance the moment the interdiction completed and open fire with station guns. And even then they might be too slow.
You could stick the default murder bounty up to 100 million and it wouldn't matter because someone in an invincible ship won't pay it. But someone tricked into killing a cheap player Sidewinder at the latest bounty hunting CG would - as we've seen with station ramming once you make the penalty for committing a crime large enough, the "game" then becomes tricking other people into committing the crime.
Engineering is fast enough nowadays (and it looks like 3.3 will bring in even easier material hunting!) that even "you lose your ship no rebuy" would barely be a deterrent - a cheap FAS with G4 engineering will make mincemeat of unshielded trade ships just as well as a more expensive ship, can be made up with remote engineering from easily-obtained materials in ten minutes, and costs less than the rebuy on some bigger ships. Obviously "you lose your ship with no rebuy" would be immensely popular in the Beta it was introduced in, then immensely unpopular about ten minutes after the game went live and the first PvE bounty hunter with imperfect target discipline discovered "zero tolerance for murder" applied to them too.
The basic problem is that the player base - or vocal elements of it - asks for "a better C&P system" when what it actually wants is "not to get blown up". It really shouldn't be a surprise that C&P reform didn't deliver on what those players actually wanted [2]. No C&P system ever will.
[1] And a well-shielded trade ship flown by a capable pilot can just high-wake out long before its shields drop, so C&P is irrelevant to its survival too.
[2] In terms of what I wanted - which was fixes to the Suicidewinder exploit so that the majority of criminals at least have bounties nowadays rather than being "Clean, as in no murders in the last five minutes" - it did pretty well. Now I can get into a fight with a criminal without worrying that the system authority are going to intervene on their side. But obviously "bounties are now persistent and can't be exploited away" was one of the least popular bits with the "I didn't mean punish *me*" crowd.
But there is a difference between prevention and deterrence. I agree that the "blowing up of clueless shiedless trader" cannot be prevented (even tho high-sec should mean something). But deterrence would (should?) work by introducing enough consequences that one decides to attack a shieldless trader only if it's really worth it.
I know, Sandro did say again and again "we want to introduce consequences, but not to deter any playstyle". But, well, that simply makes no sense. It's their way of trying to make everyone happy. "Hey traders look, we're punishing bad people" but also "hey griefers look, we are still OK with your playstyle!". Why would you add consequences if not to deter? To give pirates and griefers more immersion?
As I said elsewhere: I invite all habitual griefers to chime in: do you grief any less because you're scared of acquiring Notoriety, of having to pay high bounties, or because you're scared of the ATR?
Its a balance between consequences and spoiling legit gameplay. Its fine to attack other players, with ATF they can't hang about doing it in one spot.
It makes perfect sense its exactly what they've done. Criminal gameplay is easy for anyone who knows how.
Most have left the forum and the game right after C&P v2.
This is anecdotal, and I'm really not sure that's true. And even those who did leave the game, i highly doubt that it was because they felt terribly oppressed by the new draconian C&P system.
We can debate whether or not the new system was meant to counter griefing (I think it clearly was but FDev don't have the galls to say it out loud, for fear of losing customers).
But then we can also debate whether or not it had any effect whatsoever on griefing, meant or not. I'm pretty sure it had near zero effect.
I'm not sure which circles you are in, but all the discussions about the new C&P I saw on Reddit/Discord/Forum by griefers were all along the lines of "lol, and they think this affects us how? The new C&P system is just g over carebears who can't shoot straight in a Hazres".
No it isn't.
This sort of thread would have attracted them all in the past where are they now ?.
Not here or the PVP subforum either, I know because I asked them.
They did say it out loud, it was explained in detail and repeatedly.
They always say it won't effect them, its part of the salt gathering routine from people who think all PVP should be banned yet log into open anyway. They've not only stopped saying it, they've stopped saying anything (due to leaving).
Everyone should git-gud at shooting straight, or learn to live with the consequences.
This is true. Or better: Frontier should have had a clear idea of what kind of game they were making. A single-player experience as the old Elites were, or a MMO inspired by the old single-player games? Either would have been OK, if consistently done.
But what they did was try to make everyone happy (Frontier does not see PvEers and PvPers, they only see paying customers) with the result of making this hybrid game which does not really commit to any identity. This is why we're getting squadrons so late in the game: because they have now realized that leaning towards the multiplayer aspect is the most profitable choice. But as many have observed, it is a very rough system as compared to those games that were engineered from the grounds up to be MMOs.
But we're getting off-topic here. The point is that lack of conviction in general game design ("do we make a MMO or a single-player sandbox?") also taints a C&P system that tries and fails to make everyone happy.
Or some extra rules for Pilots Federation members or an ATR which actually actively pursues and interdicts criminals.
Sorry but it literally is. The fact that you "talked to them" does not make it true, nor prove anything. Nor does it make it false the fact that I say they're still here, but at least I'm trying to get some card-carrying griefer to directly express their opinion.
Once you've got an ATF level notoriety/bounty you do get chased interdicted and attacked by high level NPC bounty hunters, same sort of ships and loudouts to elite wing assassination targets. They drop G5 mats.
Where are they then ?.
Oh, I see. The fact that nobody has yet replied to something posted half hour ago, hidden on page 2 of one of hundreds of threads on the forum, clearly and uncontroversially demonstrates that you're absolutely right and that the Forum (and the game) has been utterly abandoned by griefers of all kinds.
I apologize for my lack of understanding.
Actually, wait....
What is going on? Zarek Null, the legendary Overlord of Eravate himself....still on the Forum and playing the game?? And arguing that the notoriety system encourages ganking rather than the opposite? Oh my god all my certainties are being shattered right now.
What is going on? Zarek Null, the legendary Overlord of Eravate himself....still on the Forum and playing the game?? And arguing that the notoriety system encourages ganking rather than the opposite? Oh my god all my certainties are being shattered right now.
They've been mostly gone oddly enough since C&P v2.
I hope this helps with your understanding.
ATR is like a barman who tells you to move on because you've had too many, making C+P a bit like Cheers, just in space.