If the disconnected player was flying a heavily laden T9, does the other player get to steal their cargo? If so, what happens to the disconnected player's cargo if it's stolen, or indeed if his ship is destroyed? Does it disappear when he next logs in, which might encourage forced disconnections for lulz? Or do both players get to keep it, generating wealth from nowhere and opening up an exploit?
Sure, why not let them steal the cargo? Won't affect the disconnected "Player A" (so won't hurt anybody affected by unintentional disconnection), it only pertains to "Player B" and the instance his client is connected to. If you believe NPCs have feelings that can be hurt, I guess that's a drawback, but I see no problem with it. Pirates know what to do with stolen cargo, I should think. Whether the ship is left alive or not doesn't matter much, honestly, and as for cargo disappearing if Player A logs back in, you're forgetting that Player A has already left the instance - that's what happens when you get disconnected, whether intentionally or not.
All that's changing here is that for Player B, who remained in the instance, the ship he's targeting didn't just suddenly disappear; it instead persisted within his game's realm of existence, under the control of an AI.
As for your last point, again, the only difference from how things work right now, is that Player A isn't getting a loss. Player B still has to succesfully defeat an enemy AI and safely collect the cargo, same as pirating any NPC ship. Ultimately it's up to Fdev to try new ideas on stopping any trade/cargo-related multiplayer exploitation, and I don't think my idea would present any new hurdles to jump over. (Plus, I think they already have fixes in or around the corner in regards to Powerplay commodities...?)
If the disconnected player was carrying Powerplay merits do they get erased upon his next login if the other player successfully destroyed his doppelganger? If so, it invites networking shenanigans to forcibly disconnect players from opposing PP factions to achieve an easier kill. If not, it negates PP-based PVP because everyone will disconnect to retain their merits and interdicting opposing CMDRs will offer no guarantee of affecting the PP outcome.
I don't think it's necessary to track the doppelganger. Unlike a rebuy bill that could show up the next time player A logs in, Powerplay merits could have totally changed by the time he logs in again, and while you could just simply toss a negative number into his current merit amount, it's too many additional headaches with the sole benefit of knowing Player A suffered some sort of consequence for a disconnection that may or may not have been intentional to begin with.
As for networking shenanigans, that's all up to Frontier and their magic, as far as I'm concerned. I'd like to think they can detect if/when that happens and that they act accordingly (and presumably they do so quietly to avoid raising a fuss).
On your final point: I don't think attacking enemy CMDRs with the sole objective of eliminating their collected merits is an effective strategy with the way Powerplay works...plus I'm still a bit fuzzy on how Powerplay works....
But as far as I know, Player B would still get merits upon collecting the doppelganger's cargo/destroying its ship, right? So the encounter is balanced out, at least somewhat. (And I mean, compared to fighting a player, fighting an NPC should be like "yay, free merits", for most dedicated Powerplay PvPers, right?) Seems like this problem has more to do with the value of cargo vs kills in terms of Powerplay merits, something I understand is already being worked on and balanced right now.
If the disconnected player is carrying a bounty what happens when the NPC replacement is destroyed?
Player B gets to collect a bounty from the doppelganger, presumably equivalent to what Player A's bounty was worth when he disconnected - just another variable that's preserved to the ship now controlled by an AI pilot. This issue's tied with the prexisting issue of intentionally killing one another to collect high player bounties, so any solution to that issue would apply fully here. Of course, in the current version of Elite, player bounties are kept low/capped, AFAIK, with the direct intent of preventing this exploit, so this is already a non-issue!
Victorious player collects bounty and bounty is removed from disconnected player? Will be exploited as a Rebuy-free means of clearing a bounty.
Okay, so don't track the doppelganger in order to affect Player A's game. That's what I see as ideal anyway.
Victorious player collects bounty and bounty remains on disconnected player? Will be exploited by friends disconnecting from each other and claiming "free" NPC bounties.
Again, wholly tied to the prexisting issue surrounding killing eachother for bounty collection. Any solutions to that wouldn't be affected adversely. Capped/low player bounties currently prevent this from being effective, and it's certainly not something I'd see as more beneficial than simply RES farming in a wing.
Victorious player collects no bounty and bounty remains on disconnected player?
Yeah, let's not do that, that's just pretty much doing what combat logging does right now.
Your concern is valid and valuable - I believe paranoia is healthy, personally, erring on the side of caution and all that - but I think I've been able to address each of your raised points.
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If they choose not to rejoin Open then that is their choice, no one is forcing them to play in Open in the first place and I see no reason why anyone should either. However, if they did it would allow for easier rematches.
Put bluntly, I think nobody is going to really care about rematches unless they're intentionally engaging in consensual matches to begin with.
As for the relog-in timeout, that would only apply to Combat Loggers for Open so it would not totally stop them from playing the game it would just perhaps limit the potential for them to disrupt players who are willing to accept whatever events happen in Open.
That distinction is acceptable, to me! Though the predictable thing to happen next is these folks then come complaining about how they basically booted themselves from playing in Open....[rolleyes]
As for the replacing of Player A with equivalent NPC A, it would involve duplication since it was obvious that the original proposal was for the in-game benefits of killing the replacement to be equivalent to that of killing the corresponding player...
Only duplication as far as behind-the-scenes-magic is concerned, though. For player B, the ship is being specifically preserved in his instance - *not* winking out, and then replaced by a new NPC ship jumping into his instance with full health/fresh cargo/etc. etc.
All Player B ought to see is the enemy ship's triangle turn from hollow to solid, perhaps drifting strangely for a couple moments due to the nature of latency & server communication, then seeing the ship come to life and respond as much as any other AI ship currently does.
So it's extremly important to fully 'duplicate' all the pertinent variables of the ship over from the moment Player A disconnected. Thankfully, all that data is (presumably, at least) already being tracked and exchanged to/between clients by the servers - otherwise, PvP wouldn't really be possible (and it remains the source of many headaches for Frontier with ongoing instancing problems, I'm sure) - so it's not as daunting a task as it may sound.
Another way to look at this is the server's programmed reaction to a disconnection is changed: rather than reacting to a detected disconnection by Player B's client "just not having Player A's ship exist anymore", the game 'snapshots' the last known full orientation & set of variables of Player A's ship, keeps said ship in 'existence', and puts it under control of an NPC, by doing the aforementioned background magic of 'cloning' the ship in such a way that it occupies the exact same space, has the same oriention, all the same variables, and so on
so that to the outside observer it's the same exact ship.
duplication of bounties and/or cargo
As I mentioned above, this is depending wholly on the value of the bounties (which are currently low and capped, as far as I'm aware), and the cargo is a non-issue: it's no different than players "trading" commodities to transfer funds, the only difference is Player A isn't taking in a loss (or losing things he has collected) - player B still has to work for it, just against an NPC rather than a player.
Heck, you could say it's a small bit of discouragement to combat log, knowing you're giving your attacker an easier target to pirate....
Anyway, no reason to be tossing words like "short-sighted" around.
Surely the main goal of any of the proposed measures is to try and minimise Combat Logging in the first place
Nah, that's about as silly as trying to prevent players from disconnecting from the internet, ever, no-matter-what. You cannot possibly guarantee the circumstances or motive of any given player who is disconnected from the game.
Seeing as - as far as I've been able to tell at least [alien][uhh] - we don't live in the Matrix or Sword Art Online, it's...just not even worth talking about, really.
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You don't gain from corpses really, you gain from intimidation.
That's purely subjective opinion, and many posts from self-professed PvP gankers indicate otherwise: corpses are all they care about.
Also 'Effort of finding that target' you mean.. waiting for them to pop into system and tailing them for a few seconds for a target you.. don't know the cargo of, and doesn't have a bounty to pay you for of which the CLogger often are in ships that can't fight back significantly? So.. What is this 'effort' you are exactly talking about again?
You should try interdicting NPCs sometime. It's not a walk in the park, unless you've practiced a lot and know precisely what you're doing; then you have to account for the higher difficulty of finding and engaging another player. And I can just about guarantee you, anybody who does PvP regularly always checks the loadout of their potential targets from supercruise *before* doing anything else.
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To be fair, CQC is terribly supported. It was a good start when it came out, but no QOL changes have been made to the matchmaker menu and the 3 modes have not had any revamp in some time. I really enjoyed CQC but it got harder and harder to find a match so I've pretty much given up.
Yeah, CQC desperately needs PvE, maybe PvPvE, but PvE nontheless. There's other games I've played that have died out almost completely because of refusal on a part of the devs to allow NPCs to exist as a part of the game...it makes me sad thinking about it....
