Completely by accident, Distant Worlds 2 has made the bubble a nicer place!

Logan Darklighter

Logan Darklighter
So we've had some... Shall we say - most persistent wolves waiting for the sheep to make a mistake and fly in open mode while on the Expedition. Most of you know who I speak of. (I'll mention one of them further down) But it's not just one guy. There are several very notorious names who have followed us into the black.

I was watching the usual "come out to open, it's safe" nonsense devolving into the even more inevitable trash talk out at Omega station. Not chiming in, just watching occasionally as I went about the business of re-configuring my ship for some more mining work.

When all of a sudden the following thought burst forth and I almost laughed myself off my chair!

"So wait-a-minute... these PVP "gankers" are out here - WAY out here. Chasing US. We are arguably more elusive prey. Because most of us do NOT play in open and know better. Oh for certain, there's a trickle of newer players to feed their starved egos with easy kills etc.

But... they are here -- and they are NOT back in the bubble! They are not killing new players just joining the game who don't know better. On the next Community Goal, if the next one is back in the bubble, it will take them a LONG time to get back! So it might be a little bit safer and quieter than usual.

Will they continue to follow us? I HOPE they follow us! Because in a strange, almost completely accidental manner, Distant Worlds 2 has all of a sudden made "The Bubble" a somewhat nicer place to be!

Because CMDR Harry Potter and many of his fellow miscreants are HERE, chasing US. Instead of "ganking the noobs" back home!"

Just thought I'd share that with you all. I find this immensely amusing. And of course I can't take any credit for any genius in this. I don't think the planners of the Expedition had this in mind. This is just one of those social phenomenon type things that when you notice it, it's just damned FUNNY! :D
 

Slange Lands

Slange Lands
Are you sure that it's "by accident"?
Who knows what goes behind Carebears' closed doors?

The joys of community and discovery completely eclipse pot shots in the dark.

The novelty is sure to wear off on the bullies.
What then? Another exercise in futility?

Another thread on the evils of combat logging?
Yawn.

o7

:)

"And everywhere that Harry went, the lamb(s) was sure to go."
 
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Slange Lands

Slange Lands
ryan_m said:
Yeah man, the bubble is definitely safe. No gankers there. Please play in open.

- every PvPer except the 30 that are following DW2
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Most PvPers are deeply honorable and would never consider taking advantage of the weak. Even the gentleman pirates don't kill unless absolutely necessary.
 

Logan Darklighter

Logan Darklighter
You'll note I said "safer" and not safe. And "nicer" not "nice". There's no such thing as completely safe in open. Anywhere.

But just the thought that a bunch of predators have removed themselves from their usual feeding grounds to chase after DW2 is both amusing and impressive. I'm sure - among the ganker crowd, that following an expedition all the way across to the opposite edge of the Galaxy and back has a certain amount of "cred". On an abstract level I can even express a certain level of respect for that kind of dogged determination. I mean - they've chosen to chase after a rather elusive prey after all. I'm guessing that the majority of the expedition roster is not and never will fly in open. The kills they get from this expedition probably mean more because they were harder to get. At least in theory.

Still. It's just an amusing side note of little importance to the Expedition at large.
 

Ozmodion

Ozmodion
robbyp said:
I bought a sidewinder last night and was disappointed not to find any of them.. must try again
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I thought about doing this last night, but i was playing Diablo 3 (you can only chip at rocks for so long and i dont want to get burnt out) and didnt go back into ED.

I think we all should buy sideys and go on a mass attack. hopefully they havent gone into the station and when they re-spawn they will be back in the bubble. I wonder how many sideys it will take with 1E pulse lasers to take out an armed to the teeth FDL?
 

Hasaf

Hasaf
This is the reason that I decided to opt out on DW2. I has hurried back to the bubble to take part in the launch. Then the word of the gankers started to come out.

Add to that I was concerned with the ability to make many first discoveries with the fleet. I decided to go out on my own again.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Ozmodion said:
I think we all should buy sideys and go on a mass attack. hopefully they havent gone into the station and when they re-spawn they will be back in the bubble. I wonder how many sideys it will take with 1E pulse lasers to take out an armed to the teeth FDL?
Click to expand...
The FDL probably has at least 10000 effective shields versus thermal (including pips, SCBs, etc.), so it would take around 20 Sidewinder-minutes to drop those at optimal engagement range of <600m.

Meanwhile the FDL can probably take out an E-rated Sidewinder at least every 30 seconds, so you would need at least 10 Sidewinders total to get through the shields before they died.

Except ... the FDL can cruise faster than an E-rated Sidewinder can boost, so you're not going to be engaging at optimal range, certainly not with the entire fleet at once. And the FDL can retreat out of range entirely to recharge shields between each Sidewinder kill. There's also a good chance that the FDL has long range railguns, so can destroy the Sidewinders from outside their own weapon range with impunity.

You therefore actually need enough Sidewinders to form a shell of at most 3km radius (so the FDL can't just hide in the middle) dense enough so that if the FDL tries to break through, any point of it is covered by enough Sidewinders that it will be destroyed in the ~5 seconds it spends in effective weapons range. By the calculation above that would require around 240 Sidewinders covering each point. Each Sidewinder can cover about 9km2 of the shell surface before damage dropoff makes its lasers only marginally effective, so for the 3km shell you would need approximately 3,000 Sidewinders to prevent a breakout.

Obviously a smaller shell would require fewer Sidewinders - and have the advantage that a greater proportion of the shell was in effective weapons range at once, but it would be harder to assemble such a shell without the FDL noticing and leaving before it was complete. Still, somewhere between 250 and 3000 Sidewinders are likely to be needed for this approach.


(If you fly back to the bubble and pick up some properly engineered Sidewinders, then assuming the FDL chooses to stand and fight rather than low-waking because it can, you would need considerably fewer of them)
 

Slange Lands

Slange Lands
Ian Doncaster said:
Still, somewhere between 250 and 3000 Sidewinders are likely to be needed for this approach.
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Commander Doncaster,

Once again your ridiculously complete and thorough competence overwhelms me.

Rhetorical question: have you ever done anything in which the final result completely bamboozled you?

Well, someone like you needs to be bamboozled now again, I think. It might amuse you.... a little bit.


:)


Anyway, the thought of 3000 sidewinders engulfing a meta PvP FDL is very lovely and delightful. If this were an in game player event I would immediately sign up as one of the 3000 sidewinders.

Frankly, I think you should be piloting the lonely FDL. It might amuse you..... a little bit.



with greatest respect and some concern for your being too competent,

slange

o7
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Slange Lands said:
Frankly, I think you should be piloting the lonely FDL. It might amuse you..... a little bit.
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I have a meta-ish FDL so if you can arrange the Sidewinders, sure, lets do it. (You don't even need to bring thousands - I'm curious about how many Freewinders it would actually take if the FDL played "fair" and didn't deliberately drop out of weapons range, so a few wings should be enough)

Ramming has the problem that it's very difficult to ram something almost twice as fast as you. It would be likely that the FDL would have to ram a few Sidewinders on the way out of the shell, but not enough to make a significant difference to either its shields or speed ... and in general ramming benefits the heavier ship (and it's rare the FDL gets to play that role). Of course, if all 3000 Sidewinders rammed the FDL, it wouldn't survive that.
 

BDelacroix

BDelacroix
It is a very odd obsession these people have. A fun game to play is to watch the forums and more so the discord to guess which ones they are. They'll try to guilt you into playing in open. They come to the discord and try to encourage people to play in open. They even sometimes get upset when you don't bite down on the bait.

There are still thousands of players slipping through their grasp. Completely immune to their shenanigans.
 
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