Another solution to ganker problem

Condor

Condor
We all know that we pay 5% insurance fee for restoring our vessels. It would be good to deduct the rest 95% from ganker's account. That can be done automatically after victim rebuys the ship or come in a form of a fine, and unless it is paid - a certain big amount of stations should make their services unavailable. At some point this fine should be issued by a superpower thus limiting all services from Federation, Empire or alliance stations.
Thus, How long will their billions last if they are to kill, let's say ax cutters/corvetts with the value around a billion? For cheaper vessels, there can be a progressive ine of fines depending on notoriety, etc.
 

MrShinyTorterra

M
GroG79 said:
Hmmm..

No. Computers cant see the difference between a gank and a friendly play..
Also.. Just stick to Solo/PG if you are doing a CG and are afraid of rebuys. Where is your sense of adventure?

See all the other topics on other suggestions. There have been many
Click to expand...
First of all in friendly play you can turn off the "report crimes against me" button. But the amount of "punishment" you get for ganking is so low it has no consequenses. I think in general the game should punish ganking harder (and that would also be more realistic). Not necesairly in credits but sending a wing of 3 fully engineered npcs to interdict the ganker over and over again would be a better punishment. A lot of people look forward toward meeting other players in open and therefor switch to open.

But hey every possible suggestion to do with open play and ganking has been ignored so just put this one on top of the pile.
 

Condor

Condor
GroG79 said:
No. Computers cant see the difference between a gank and a friendly play..
Click to expand...
Friendly PVP soultion:
1) Turn "crime reports agaist me" to off
2) Do not kill target, leave 1/10/50% of hull
3) You do not kill your friends in a hundred every day, you would not have to pay billions

MrShinyTorterra said:
But hey every possible suggestion to do with open play and ganking has been ignored so just put this one on top of the pile.
Click to expand...

Fdev ignores in the fear to loose income since gankers might leave the game. My proposition only makes ganking harder. And additionally, if it will ever come to life it will force gankers to some other activities
 
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Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
MrShinyTorterra said:
First of all in friendly play you can turn off the "report crimes against me" button. But the amount of "punishment" you get for ganking is so low it has no consequenses. I think in general the game should punish ganking harder (and that would also be more realistic). Not necesairly in credits but sending a wing of 3 fully engineered npcs to interdict the ganker over and over again would be a better punishment. A lot of people look forward toward meeting other players in open and therefor switch to open.

But hey every possible suggestion to do with open play and ganking has been ignored so just put this one on top of the pile.
Click to expand...
The point was that there is no program that can judge player intent and what is "gank" and what isnt. And noone pays lotsa dollas for ppl to conduct such judgements. It'd be a pretty crappy job, too
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Condor said:
We all know that we pay 5% insurance fee for restoring our vessels. It would be good to deduct the rest 95% from ganker's account. That can be done automatically after victim rebuys the ship or come in a form of a fine, and unless it is paid - a certain big amount of stations should make their services unavailable. At some point this fine should be issued by a superpower thus limiting all services from Federation, Empire or alliance stations.
Thus, How long will their billions last if they are to kill, let's say ax cutters/corvetts with the value around a billion? For cheaper vessels, there can be a progressive ine of fines depending on notoriety, etc.
Click to expand...

At least five big problems with this, just for a start.

1) The rebuy on a combat ship is considerably greater than that on a trade ship of the same size class. You're actively incentivising people to pick on the weakest possible target and ignore anything which might have any capability to fire back or defend itself. If you're in a billion-credit ship - especially an AX one which might not be able to fire back effectively but should certainly have plenty of health and defences! - and capable of fighting the toughest NPC enemies in the game ... and still can't escape a player attack? That's on you.

2) You can already pick up bounties and fines, including superpower-level, which lock you out of a wide range of stations. But all the services you need to be a player killer can be found at the nearest friendly fleet carrier. Lots of people wandering around already with billion-plus bounties.

3) It'd be very easy to avoid the worst of the effects by doing the actual killing on a cash-poor alt, which can occasionally declare bankruptcy to clear out the fines at the cost of a cheap ship. Have the actual credit balance held elsewhere so it can't easily be taken.

4) There is no concrete in-game definition of "ganker". Would it apply to any kill of a clean player ship by anyone? If so, get ready for the station rammers to upgrade from badly-damaged Eagles to badly-damaged Cutters themselves ... and for the few remaining PvP players who attempt to fight the gankers to quit overnight. If not, there are probably plenty of loopholes in the definition that they can work with but will still trip up the "accidental" criminal from time to time.

5) With PvE earning rates on optimal routes being hundreds of millions an hour, at best it's halving the amount of time they can spend killing targets. That's not a change anyone will actually notice.
 

BL1P

BL1P
I have always liked the solution of, if you kill or *damage someone outside of an anarchy system, who is not an enemy to you. ( *>20%)
You are moved to and restricted to anarchy systems only for a set amount of time.

Once that times up you are alowed back in Low sec systems but your icon is a Skull to other players, for a set amount of time.
Once that times up you are alowed back in Med sec systems but your icon is a Skull to other players, for a set amount of time.
Once that times up you are alowed back in High sec systems but your icon is a Skull to other players, for a set amount of time.
Once that times up your Icon turns back to normal.

Each time you start or restart that process the timer per stage increases.

Persistant gankers would be basicly locked out of anything but anarchy systems.

Pirates could opperate in Anarchy and Low. Or Join a Pirate faction / Power but make them enemy to all non Pirate factions / Powers so they dont get locked out of Security systems for offences, they are just enemy to everyone in the system, therefor they show as red Icons.
 
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Wlfric

W
GroG79 said:
Hmmm..

No. Computers cant see the difference between a gank and a friendly play..
Also.. Just stick to Solo/PG if you are doing a CG and are afraid of rebuys. Where is your sense of adventure?

See all the other topics on other suggestions. There have been many
Click to expand...
Yeah it can. Yes. Computers can see a difference between a gank and friendly play.
Legit places to kill another player would be anarchy systems, CZs, anywhere there's no law.
Whether you're ganking or being a pirate in a lawful area, having the law land on you for dusting another ship is quite realistic.
And if you convince the other guy to turn off "report crimes against me" then that would make the instance lawless. You can "friendly play" blow him up then. Though I fail to see how blowing someone up could be in any way expressed as "friendly".
 

Jmanis

Jmanis
Wish all these proposals would just get to the point instead of trying to suggest all these arduous, convoluted rules.

They really just want one thing. To make PvP crime so punishing and difficult that nobody wants to do it... in which case, just ask for what you want.

Ask for PvP crime to be removed from the game.

No? Too extreme? Then maybe, just maybe, it's meant to be in the game as it is.
 

CaptainPugwash

CaptainPugwash
Condor said:
We all know that we pay 5% insurance fee for restoring our vessels. It would be good to deduct the rest 95% from ganker's account. That can be done automatically after victim rebuys the ship or come in a form of a fine, and unless it is paid - a certain big amount of stations should make their services unavailable. At some point this fine should be issued by a superpower thus limiting all services from Federation, Empire or alliance stations.
Thus, How long will their billions last if they are to kill, let's say ax cutters/corvetts with the value around a billion? For cheaper vessels, there can be a progressive ine of fines depending on notoriety, etc.
Click to expand...
First we should properly evaluate the ‘ganker problem’, which in my view has been grossly exaggerated in this forum, and is as much a problem of engineering imbalance as anything.

That being said I do believe that a galaxy wide bounty board would be a nice to have in the game, as would a reversion to full bounty payout.
 

Element Priest

E
Then, one would just use a damaged, high value ship to intercept you in a manner in which you run into and destroy them, leaving you with the 95% responsibility and C/P punishments.
 

Morbad

Morbad
Aside from the numerous issues already mentioned, I'm pretty much completely against any proposed solution to any perceived problem that treats CMDR and NPCs differently by in-game entities, except where there is a rational and contextual reason why a Pilots Federation member would be a special case.

It is true that canonically, the Pilots Federation covers the burden of having their Rescue Rangers save hapless CMDRs from death and would rationally wish to discourage CMDR ship losses. However, the organization is also politically neutral and is fully aware that it's members are often working at cross purposes and can be expected to have violent exchanges. About the only place I can see them cracking down hard on intra-organizational hostilities is in systems controlled directly by the PF (Shinrarta is a good example).

In all other areas crimes generally aren't monitored or punished by the PF, but by the local faction and/or super power in question. These entities should not be giving CMDRs a pass to run roughshod over their citizens, and anything that is a crime in these jurisdictions should have the same de jure legal penalties irrespective of whether the victim is a CMDR or not. Indeed, the de facto state of law enforcement could plausibly be prejudiced heavily against CMDRs in many jurisdictions...system security forces ignoring CMDR distress calls and generally looking the other way when CMDR have trouble, but coming down on them hard when they interfere with locals.
 

Ian Doncaster

Ian Doncaster
Wlfric said:
Yeah it can. Yes. Computers can see a difference between a gank and friendly play.
Legit places to kill another player would be anarchy systems, CZs, anywhere there's no law.
Whether you're ganking or being a pirate in a lawful area, having the law land on you for dusting another ship is quite realistic.
Click to expand...
Realistic, yes. But this is a computer game, so the purpose is to be fun. In-game punishments, therefore, need to be at least potentially fun for the player whose CMDR receives them.

So, to take a purely PvE example, you're in a RES, you get your targets confused and accidentally shoot one of the miners. 200 credit assault bounty on your head, all the nearby police ships head for you.
At the moment: fun - or at least potential fun - as you duck through the asteroids and get clear enough of the ring to hyperspace out.
Realistic: on your next docking in that jurisdiction your commander is arrested for assault with a deadly weapon and jailed for three years; please buy an alt if you want to keep playing before then.

The point of having all these crimes in the game is so that CMDRs can commit them, get away with them, and have a bit of fun evading the authorities in the process, so you're never going to get much more than a slap on the wrist for it, in the same way that trade is unrealistically profitable, combateers get an endless stream of incompetent NPC pirates to shoot if they choose (to collectively rack up millions of dead daily), mined goods pay out more according to the time spent mining them than to any realistic economic position that they could occupy, there's an endless stream of NPC mission givers offering to pay millions for something they could do themselves in five minutes, etc etc.

So there's no change that's going to be (or can be) made to the in-game legal system which is going to remotely deter people who want to from committing crimes, including PvP crimes.




If the behaviour is something that Frontier don't want players to do, in-game punishments aren't appropriate. Instead, meta-game punishments get applied. Take for example shouting racist abuse at other CMDRs in the system chat, or using a cheat tool for infinite shields; that's against the EULA, it's reportable, Frontier reserves the right to make punishments up to banning you from the game completely if you're caught doing it. What you won't get for it is a ten million credit bounty with the Federation for it, because that's not the appropriate way to handle that sort of behaviour.



Now, if what you want is for player-on-player violence to move from "a thing which the game mechanics allow" to "a thing which can technically happen but which is against the game rules except in very narrow circumstances", go ahead and suggest that specifically.
 
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Morbad

Morbad
Ian Doncaster said:
The point of having all these crimes in the game is so that CMDRs can commit them, get away with them, and have a bit of fun evading the authorities in the process, so you're never going to get much more than a slap on the wrist for it, in the same way that trade is unrealistically profitable, combateers get an endless stream of incompetent NPC pirates to shoot if they choose (to collectively rack up millions of dead daily), mined goods pay out more according to the time spent mining them than to any realistic economic position that they could occupy, there's an endless stream of NPC mission givers offering to pay millions for something they could do themselves in five minutes, etc etc.

So there's no change that's going to be (or can be) made to the in-game legal system which is going to remotely deter people who want to from committing crimes, including PvP crimes.
Click to expand...

I'd certainly like the balance of the system shift from always being caught, but never suffering a meaningful punishment, to rarely being caught, but if you are, your CMDR actually gets stung pretty bad.

I think this would serve both verisimilitude and provide for more actual gameplay. There could skill-based ways in which CMDR's could get away scot-free, but attempting and failing would be a real possibility, with consequences severe enough to actually serve as a deterrent to wanton criminality in regulated space. Of course, the downside is that casual players, who for whatever reason think it should be ok to even accidentally shoot police or fumble over landing pads in sensitive high-traffic areas, would probably have a hard time.
 

Navigare Necesse Est

Navigare Necesse Est
Wlfric said:
Yeah it can. Yes. Computers can see a difference between a gank and friendly play.
Legit places to kill another player would be anarchy systems, CZs, anywhere there's no law.
Whether you're ganking or being a pirate in a lawful area, having the law land on you for dusting another ship is quite realistic.
And if you convince the other guy to turn off "report crimes against me" then that would make the instance lawless. You can "friendly play" blow him up then. Though I fail to see how blowing someone up could be in any way expressed as "friendly".
Click to expand...
Nope, it can't. And what you describe are rulesets which would needed to be implemented into the game. But that isn't the same as having an algorithm jusdging player actions. And the more complex the rules the more numerous the loopholes and exploits. Simple rules are best. And they should go in right at the start rather than at end of shelf life.
 
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