Why are player interdictions so impossible to evade?

[CMDR Curiosity97]

I don't know if there's a mechanic that I'm not aware of, I'm a fairly new player.
But I just got interdicted and instantly killed by another Commander. During the interdiction, I stayed in the circle almost the entire time, but despite that the red progress bar went up far faster than I could get my progress bar up.
Do I need to engineer my FSD? Is this because of the cheating thing that I've heard going around?
It happened in the system around Felicity Farseer.

 

[Morbad]

Do I need to engineer my FSD?

This will not help.

Is this because of the cheating thing that I've heard going around?

Not likely.

The interdictor usually has a modest advantage, both due to networking and the their tendency to use ships well suited for the task. Most habitual agressors are also very practiced in the tunnel game and even if you think you were doing well, chances are they were better.

Personally, I find fighting interdictions, especially when my CMDR is not particularly prepared for a fight, to be excessively risky. I'll take a near guaranteed escape in normal space due to a short cooldown over a low-probability of success gambit to escape in SC as if it fails the much longer cooldown is much more dangerous. So, I almost always have my CMDR submit.

There are people far more practiced in interdiction than I who will be able to give you advice for fighting the interdiction better, if that is the approach you'd prefer.

 

[CMDR Curiosity97]

I got interdicted by that Mamba ship, and In my under-engineered unarmored Krait Mk2 I doubt I even had a shot at escaping or fighting back. Not even mentioning that my ship was destroyed literally instantly.
Back to solo play I go, I guess.

 

[CMDR Cknarf]

If your ship can’t survive the 30 seconds or so it takes to submit/jump to another system, playing in solo isn’t a bad idea.

Either that, or adjust your build accordingly. Engineers are not required for open play survival, but they most definitely help.

If you have any questions about escaping or building a sturdier ship, please, don’t hesitate to ask.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

As I understand, if both the attacker and the defender keep their sights on the target the advantage goes to the attacker. So even if you are perfect, as long as they are perfect they will win.

 

[Morbad]

But then the question of the OP still stands: Why is it so, does it makes sense?

Probably the same reason latency compensation favors the aggressor. If it were the other way around, interdiction would rarely succeed and weapons would rarely hit their mark.

Frontier probably (and wisely, IMO) decided that any uncertainty should fall in favor of interaction and action.

 

[CMDR Curiosity97]

Just curious (no pun intended ): How is fighting interdictions against NPCs, is your success rate (at least close to) 100% here?
I have no idea as I avoid player contacts (by Solo or location), but from hearsay it seems there's a gross disparity between players and NPCs, not just in combat but already in the interdiction minigame. Which I always found somewhat debatable... and why the interdictor has some hidden bonus (if that's true) is also fairly strange IMO.

I have about a 90%ish success rate at evading NPC interdictions. I have been interdicted by three players that I can recall, and all of those were failures, despite me being close to perfect.
Kind of severely disheartening that even if am perfect I'll still lose an interdiction, only to be instakilled the moment I try to run away, whether or not I submit.
Honestly, I might just stick to solo play exclusively just on that fact alone.

 

[Ian Skippy]

I have about a 90%ish success rate at evading NPC interdictions. I have been interdicted by three players that I can recall, and all of those were failures, despite me being close to perfect.
Kind of severely disheartening that even if am perfect I'll still lose an interdiction, only to be instakilled the moment I try to run away, whether or not I submit.
Honestly, I might just stick to solo play exclusively just on that fact alone.

You might want to realize 'being instakilled' is not a given but the result of you making mistakes. If you prefer not to improve and go for the easier and more relaxing solo mode that is fine, but do know due to the way outfitting and escaping works pretty much any ship can be made gank-proof with little effort.

As for interdiction: if your success rate against NPC's is anything other than an easy and problem-free 100% you are really miles behind most attacking cmdrs when it comes to skill. I am not excessively good compared with some griefers but I haven't lost an interdiction to an npc in literally years, and the NPC's that attack me are always very high ranked.

 

[CMDR Curiosity97]

You might want to realize 'being instakilled' is not a given but the result of you making mistakes. If you prefer not to improve and go for the easier and more relaxing solo mode that is fine, but do know due to the way outfitting and escaping works pretty much any ship can be made gank-proof with little effort.

Honestly, I don't really know what mistakes I could have possibly made in the two to three seconds of time that I had to orient myself from the interdiction to getting my shields and hull burned through faster than I could do two engine boosts in order to get away, but go off on the whole "git gud" rhetoric.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Honestly, I don't really know what mistakes I could have possibly made in the two to three seconds of time that I had to orient myself from the interdiction to getting my shields and hull burned through faster than I could do two engine boosts in order to get away, but go off on the whole "git gud" rhetoric.

If you submit there is no orientation period as you have when you lose the interdiction. A properly outfitted krait isn't blown up in 2-3 seconds. You don't try to 'boost away' from a mamba. Boosting away from an Cmdr almost never works, you just make it easy for him to line up shots.

When you say you don't see where you made a mistake, I struggle to see any decision you made that wasn't. Which isn't a problem, we all started somewhere. But I am not quite sure whether you genuinely want advice and help or whether you just want to hear it wasn't your fault.

In this game, when you die it was your fault. The fun is in finding out what you did wrong, and then not doing it again.

 

[CMDR Curiosity97]

If you submit there is no orientation period as you have when you lose the interdiction. A properly outfitted krait isn't blown up in 2-3 seconds. You don't try to 'boost away' from a mamba. Boosting away from an Cmdr almost never works, you just make it easy for him to line up shots.

If I'm just as good as the aggressor during an interdiction, why did I still lose to the interdiction, is my question.
And, considering I'm a new player, that kind of comes with the assumption that very few, if any, of my ships are "properly outfitted". I was actually on my way to see Felicity Farseer about improving my Krait's FSD when it happened, as well as grinding away mining materials so I could eventually go see the armor and hull engineer. Guess I should have just gotten good at that.
By the time I was able to boost and start making turns from the interdiction, I was already being told to eject from my ship, so the assumption I was just boosting in a straight line is kind of a moot point.

 

[Ian Skippy]

If I'm just as good as the aggressor during an interdiction, why did I still lose to the interdiction, is my question.
And, considering I'm a new player, that kind of comes with the assumption that very few, if any, of my ships are "properly outfitted". I was actually on my way to see Felicity Farseer about improving my Krait's FSD when it happened, as well as grinding away mining materials so I could eventually go see the armor and hull engineer. Guess I should have just gotten good at that.
By the time I was able to boost and start making turns from the interdiction, I was already being told to eject from my ship, so the assumption I was just boosting in a straight line is kind of a moot point.

As a new player who still occasionally loses to NPC's you did not perform as well as the attacker, I can guarantee it. Feel free to upload a vid of you doing the interdiction game perfectly Vs a human Cmdr. I don't mean that snarkily: when you watch vids of yourself you are bound to see mistakes you missed when you made them. That is why most PvP players, and pretty much all great ones, record themselves.

Finally; there is being new and being new. When you can afford a krait you are not nearly new or poor enough to have an excuse for flying a ship unable to escape a gank. The krait MK2 is an excellent ship that can be outfitted with enough MRP and hrp that you can survive the 20s needed to survive. This is also very cheap, and requires no unlocks. If you died 'before you can turn' your ship wasn't nearly as well defended as it should, and some low-grade farseer engine mods would not have fixed that.

 

[Morbad]

If I get this right it means an inherent imbalance between attack and defence.

It means that the game isn't perfectly synchronous, with each side's perspective of what they do to the other being treated as true.

For example, if latency is great enough in a turning fight two CMDRs can easily both seem to be shooting the other in the back, from their own perspective and be thoroughly puzzled at how they are taking damage in return.

Interdiction just happens to be a very one sided thing, perforce. Both players can 'win' the tunnel game, but only one really has an effect to inflict on the other. Just as in a duel, if one person's shot lands from their perspective, but misses from the other's, the shot is assumed to land.

In a perfect world, we'd be playing fully synchronous games, where everything was depicted precisely the same way for all clients. However, this is not practical for most MMOs and starts to fall apart after several dozen milliseconds of latency. Elite: Dangerous has to remain playable with several hundred milliseconds of latency, if not more.

I'm not privy to any specifics regarding exactly what ED's latency compensation method is or how it's implemented, but first hand experience clearly shows it's present in some significant form.

If you want to read up some more on the topic, to get an idea of what may be occurring, these links might help:

Lag - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Lag Compensation - Gabriel Gambetta

Latency Compensating Methods in Client/Server In-game Protocol Design and Optimization - Valve Developer Community

developer.valvesoftware.com

Lag Compensation for First-Person Shooter Games in Cloud Gaming

Cloud gaming is an emerging technology that combines cloud computing with computer games. Compared to traditional gaming, its core advantages include ease of development/deployment for developers, and lower technology costs for users given the potential to play on...

link.springer.com

Honestly, I don't really know what mistakes I could have possibly made in the two to three seconds of time that I had to orient myself from the interdiction to getting my shields and hull burned through faster than I could do two engine boosts in order to get away

Boosting away from a significantly faster ship, that was on a similar movement vector and facing, is probably one.

That's the thing about experience, you don't know what you're missing until you've got some.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

But then the question of the OP still stands: Why is it so, does it makes sense?

Its just how the devs made it. IIRC, there was a period where they adjusted it to make it easier for the defender, but then nobody got interdicted

 

[Morbad]

Its just how the devs made it. IIRC, there was a period where they adjusted it to make it easier for the defender, but then nobody got interdicted

They can't seem to strike much of a balance with this mechanism.

I just opt out of the uncertainty by always submitting to CMDRs.

 

[CMDR Curiosity97]

As a new player who still occasionally loses to NPC's you did not perform as well as the attacker, I can guarantee it. Feel free to upload a vid of you doing the interdiction game perfectly Vs a human Cmdr. I don't mean that snarkily: when you watch vids of yourself you are bound to see mistakes you missed when you made them. That is why most PvP players, and pretty much all great ones, record themselves.

Finally; there is being new and being new. When you can afford a krait you are not nearly new or poor enough to have an excuse for flying a ship unable to escape a gank. The krait MK2 is an excellent ship that can be outfitted with enough MRP and hrp that you can survive the 20s needed to survive. This is also very cheap, and requires no unlocks. If you died 'before you can turn' your ship wasn't nearly as well defended as it should, and some low-grade farseer engine mods would not have fixed that.

If I was in the process of going to acquire a blueprint so that I could grind away at it for improved FSD jump range, I fail to see how getting engine mods factors in to that at all.
I wasn't performing as an attacker. I was being attacked. I never made any such claim that I was the attacker, and you can feel free to quote me on that when you find it.

Finally, that isn't necessarily true, but considering that you're an experienced player talking down to a "being new" player, I can see how can already have literally everything figured out, and can cherry pick at every little thing to me, whether or not you understand what I'm saying.
Getting credits isn't hard in this game, and by that vector, neither is getting a Krait.
Since you're talking about outfitting, Let me just add that my krait was outfitted for mining, where all of my optional internals were taken up by cargo racks, limpet controllers, and a fuel scoop.
But, please, grate me with the whole "Git gud" rhetoric. It's absolutely not tired. At all.
Thank you for reminding me why I don't bother going on forums for games like this.

 

[CMDR Curiosity97]

They can't seem to strike much of a balance with this mechanism.

I just opt out of the uncertainty by always submitting to CMDRs.

I'll just have to submit next time then. Clearly that's the only option available to anyone.

 

[Ian Skippy]

If I was in the process of going to acquire a blueprint so that I could grind away at it for improved FSD jump range, I fail to see how getting engine mods factors in to that at all.
I wasn't performing as an attacker. I was being attacked. I never made any such claim that I was the attacker, and you can feel free to quote me on that when you find it.

Finally, that isn't necessarily true, but considering that you're an experienced player talking down to a "being new" player, I can see how can already have literally everything figured out, and can cherry pick at every little thing to me, whether or not you understand what I'm saying.
Getting credits isn't hard in this game, and by that vector, neither is getting a Krait.
Since you're talking about outfitting, Let me just add that my krait was outfitted for mining, where all of my optional internals were taken up by cargo racks, limpet controllers, and a fuel scoop.
But, please, grate me with the whole "Git gud" rhetoric. It's absolutely not tired. At all.
Thank you for reminding me why I don't bother going on forums for games like this.

I didn't say you were the attacker, I said you performed worse than the attacker. In any case, most people including me appreciate it when others take their free time to offer some advice. I see that you are not one of them. There is no need to be so defensive, really.

But fine, best of luck with it.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Its just how the devs made it. IIRC, there was a period where they adjusted it to make it easier for the defender, but then nobody got interdicted

They played with it a number of times. At one point the balance was much better, bit people started losing to NPC's. So it was dialed back so hardly anyone ever loses to an npc again.

 

[CMDR Curiosity97]

I didn't say you were the attacker, I said you performed worse than the attacker. In any case, most people including me appreciate it when others take their free time to offer some advice. I see that you are not one of them.

Fine, best of luck with it.

See this? This is how you be helpful to new players without talking down to and being snarky with them.
Coming up with unhelpful advice for things that don't even apply to my situation, or outright diminish the things that do apply to my situation is not being helpful.
People call that being a jackass.
Have a fine day.