Crime and punishment

[Tarman]

Moaning aside Player time should not be a resource the devs seek to spend.

I don't see my time as a market commodity in the least. I am pretending to be a spaceman in a dystopic future. Firstly, 100% of my time is already wasted doing that. Second, anything that adds to the overall feel of that dystopic future is win in my books, even if it's lose in my avatar's in-world books. Draconian laws, like killing you for parking violations, fit the bill.

I don't play STALKER because I want to have an easy time with no setbacks, I play it because it can kill me inside a safehouse purely due to poor inventory management skills. I want more risk and choice and consequence in my long-term games, not an unimpeded path to, well, in Elite, nowhere really. There really is only Pretend Spaceman, till youdowanna noe moar.

 

[Kaocraft]

I think C&P should kick in when they are starting to take hull damage, not for some shield damage.

If a pirate opened fire on you, but it remained "clean" (and therefore not legally killable) until such time as your shields dropped, would you be happy about that? Would you fire back? If his shields dropped before yours did, and you scored the first hull-damage strike, you would incur a bounty and he (as a clean ship being fired upon by a wanted criminal), would then be within his rights to continue firing on you. If he killed you, you would go to a prison ship. If you killed him, you would receive a murder bounty and notariety, and would be hunted down by ATR ships. Would you be happy with that? Sounds a lot harsher and like more of a no-win scenario than the ones you were complaining about, but these are the things that would happen if the "no C&P until hull damage" rule of yours were enacted.

 

[Burke]

I got mine smuggling twice it let me get right inside before its "scanned" then its trspassing and its shooting at me and i had to flip over and boost myself out with no shields in a conda.

 

[Myou]

I got mine smuggling twice it let me get right inside before its "scanned" then its trspassing and its shooting at me and i had to flip over and boost myself out with no shields in a conda.

Ship scans have nothing to do with station trespass. You simply forgot to request docking before you went in. If you're smuggling request docking as soon able to (7.5km) and THEN sneak in, dont try to cut it short by requesting while you sneak and potentially forgetting, you aint getting anything from it because the 8 minutes they give you to dock is more than enough for taking your sweet sweet time sneaking around.

 

[Jukelo]

You cannot pay this off an intersteller factors. At least not in a different ship. But wouldnt you know the only one anywhere near is a med pad. The large pad is same place as the prison. Isnt that an amazing coincidence? So boring


They are deliberately screwing with the players. This game feels like playing rust sometimes and that is not a compliment.

Frontier didn't force you to get a bounty on your head.

I got mine smuggling twice it let me get right inside before its "scanned" then its trspassing and its shooting at me and i had to flip over and boost myself out with no shields in a conda.

Being scanned with illegal/stolen goods on board gives you a fine, not a bounty.

 

[Underhook]

Ah well there you go now I know you don't understand what you're talking about. If it's an unpaid parking ticket that's going to be a fine not a bounty, and you'll never go to jail for an unpaid fine. And yes, you can pay a fine at the police station where the fine is issued.

If it's a bounty, that means there's a price on your head and even if it's just 650cr, that's how much the police are willing to pay ANYONE to kill you. At that point it's not about how much you *OWE*, it's about how much your head is WORTH. The police aren't trying to turn a profit at that point: they are offering to pay other people to bring you down.

You fly to some lawless backwater and go to Interstellar Factors, you can pay someone to remove the bounty on your head. But you're still not "paying off your own bounty". You're giving someone the reward they WOULD have earned for killing you, plus some extra hush money, and they are manipulating records to make it look like you've been killed/apprehended/whatever, and wiped your status from the records. They Are Not The Police Station.

I dont want to give you too hard a time time because it really is mostly Frontier's fault you're so confused. There is a LOT they could do with iconography, flavor texts, in-game explanations, station service messages, NPC dialogue, and now the Codex, to explain all of this and make it much much clearer.

For starters they should use different side-Nav-panel icons for locations where you are wanted vs places where you merely owe a fine. They should reserve "anonymous protocols" graphics and iconography exclusively for stations where you are wanted, while stations where you owe a fine should operate and appear as normal but with NPCs displaying a message alongside the lines of "I cannot offer you service until you have paid your outstanding fines". And finally there should be a little bit of dressing up of the menu graphics and flavor text in the "lawful" (commodities, authorities, etc) vs "shady" sections of station services (black market, Interstellar Factors), to visually differentiate them from one another rather than making it all seem like part of one big restaurant menu.

But overall the system itself is perfectly logical and internally self consistent and I'm gonna keep defending it, but boy I sure do hope Frontier works on some of the presentation issues, and fast.

Wow, I'm impressed that you are willing to make all that up so that the game makes sense to you.

 

[Fargail]

C&P should be removed from the game its, just there to screw everyone around as far as I can see

 

[DukeIronHand]

It looks like you have a 650cr bounty at Sirius Corporation. I'm guessing you are in one of their stations. If you're in their jurisdiction, you can't pay off your bounty, you can only "turn yourself in".

Yea. This surprised me the first time I thought I would be a good citizen and turn myself in.
The prison ship, while surprisingly far away, was more a a nuisance then a pain.
Learned my lesson though. Interstellar Contact!

 

[DukeIronHand]

Wow, I'm impressed that you are willing to make all that up so that the game makes sense to you.

Coffee? Nap?

 

[sqzbox1]

I just think it could be really easy. C&P is trying to handle two entirely different things in one system. Normal crimes that are game crimes such as piracy, shooting ships, robbery and so on is one, and players griefing players is another. These should be handled in a different manner. But what do I know? I'm just a player, one who is forced to play solo because of the ignorant people who infest open.

 

[galahad2069]

I'm just a player, one who is forced to play solo because of the ignorant people who infest open.

If they are so ignorant you surely must be able to send them to the rebuy screen pretty easily. But how can they force you to play solo then?

 

[Marra Morgan]

I just think it could be really easy. C&P is trying to handle two entirely different things in one system. Normal crimes that are game crimes such as piracy, shooting ships, robbery and so on is one, and players griefing players is another. These should be handled in a different manner. But what do I know? I'm just a player, one who is forced to play solo because of the ignorant people who infest open.

I'd love to see this really easy solution to how the C&P system distinguishes normal crimes from greifing.

Being not at all ignorant, I'm sure you'll oblige?

 

[Jukelo]

The part of the C&P system that is meant to deal with player killing is already in place - the lower in combat rank the victim player is compared to yours and the bigger your rebuy, the bigger the bounty.

The rest isn't meant to address griefing but to add potential consequences you have to take into account before committing crimes. As a pirate, the criminal system is something I have to play with every day. If you don't think you can handle it, don't commit crimes. It's easy enough: crimes involve shooting other ships when you shouldn't. It's a voluntary process.

C&P isn't perfect, and there are plenty Frontier should do to make crime more interesting, rewarding and potentially more dangerous and costly, but none of that is what we are discussing here, is it? This thread is just about somebody messing up and complaining that the game punishes them for it... as every game should.

 

[Kaocraft]

Wow, I'm impressed that you are willing to make all that up so that the game makes sense to you.

The designers made it up, not I. All I did was listen and pay attention, because when they first started working on this C&P revamp it was something I had an interest in. These are all things they've outlined in their live streams and focused feedback forums and patch notes. And I recognize that they have done a poor job of signposting how the system works in-game, and they need to keep working on that. But it's overall a fairly simple, straightforward, and well thought out system; so it's nice to hear, however backhandedly, that you agree it does all make sense after having it explained to you.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Hey, feel lucky you didn't run into a Commander with a Kill Warrant Scanner. They could've killed you for that bounty. Be more careful.

I certainly would have.

 

[GunnerBill]

Break what must be broken, once for all, that's all, and take the suffering on oneself.

 

[Burke]

You simply forgot to request docking before you went in..

Do you really think that is likely? They busted me when i was inside and removed my access. Then i was trespassing and got teh beep beep warning. However you cant just swing an anni around and go back out so now im refusing to leave...

Being scanned with illegal/stolen goods on board gives you a fine, not a bounty.

Look at the op. I had neither

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Do you really think that is likely? They busted me when i was inside and removed my access. Then i was trespassing and got teh beep beep warning. However you cant just swing an anni around and go back out so now im refusing to leave...

Look at the op. I had neither

Whatever you did, you did something wrong. Own it and drive on.

Rather than complaining, if you make an effort to learn exactly what actions result in bounties then you can choose when and where to be a criminal, rather than just being a sloppy player who incurs bounties for no apparent reason.

 

[Burke]

Whatever you did, you did something wrong. Own it and drive on.

Rather than complaining, if you make an effort to learn exactly what actions result in bounties then you can choose when and where to be a criminal, rather than just being a sloppy player who incurs bounties for no apparent reason.

Yes i did. I got caught. I got caught cause i was trying to play the game "properly". As i already said the answer is to fit as many heatsinks as you can and spam them at 2 second intervals while trying to dock. Isnt that just great? So immersion!

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Yes i did. I got caught. I got caught cause i was trying to play the game "properly". As i already said the answer is to fit as many heatsinks as you can and spam them at 2 second intervals while trying to dock. Isnt that just great? So immersion!

I smuggle crap all the time without heatsinks.