The problem with all these ideas is the basic problem that security is non-existent. There is no such thing as a "safe" system.
Attacking Fleet Carriers
- Thread starter Pikkoro
- Start date
As I said, the FC puts his carrier in a save system, where attacks could be disabled.
Beside that, minor factions can be attacked, while the people are offline as well. I also put 100s of Millions into my minor faction beside a lot time. This mechanic is already implemented in this game, that people can do stuff against you, while offline ^^
Well, I was suggesting only the idea, how it is implemented is another story. Hostile systems could be defined by Power Play (which could need some rework anyways). Or every system could be hostile except those systems from a certain minor faction. Squadrons can select a minor faction, so maybe FC owner could also select a minor faction. There are many ways to do that.
It is totally possible to implement the idea of attacking Fleet Carriers.
Yes, that is true, I already said that in another thread, that we could need a good security system. So yes, with those ideas, the security systems could need a rework
That's the BGS. Are you suggesting that only system where your friendly with a minor npc faction that is in control of a system that your carrier is in as the only safe place?
Are you suggesting that FC's are at the mercy of the BGS, really? Because that's what it sounds like. That's even worse that the original idea.
That's a capital ship, not a fleet carrier, fleet carriers are essentially privately owned vessels, not warships, I would be most annoyed if they decided to turn my FC into a warship.
This is tricky, because if unchecked it would turn anarchy systems into a mess. It would put things like the DSAA at huge risk, and give room to hunt and bleed FCs outside the bubble since those are all lawless spaces by definition, and leave those FC players stranded in deep space.
The only way I see attacking FCs as a thing would be in opt-in specific scenarios, with very clear purposes instead of just griefing a FC owner:
Since this is PvP content, players accepting a mission to attack a FC or pledged players attacking a FC would have to override the block function and get switched to open mode with forced instancing together in order to perform such tasks, while those tasks last.
The only way I see attacking FCs as a thing would be in opt-in specific scenarios, with very clear purposes instead of just griefing a FC owner:
- BGS: Squadron A supports faction A while another squadron B supports faction B in the same system and those factions are at an active war state with each other and the FC is inside that system. Squadrons are an opt-in feature, and squadrons choosing a faction to support are a one-time process.
- Mission: A fleet-mission category of missions that make use of fleet carriers:
- USS for FCs that require you to move them in, and doing so triggers the mission progress (and opens the FC for potential attacks while in these USS). Players in the system from the same platform as the player that owns the FC may get mail from a pirate faction hiring them to attack it.
- Transport missions that would ask for cargo deliveries in the FC range (10k-20k of a commodity). While holding those mission commodities, a FC can get attacked and lose those commodities, same thing about factions sending mail to players.
- PowerPlay: FCs get their commodity markets enabled for holding PP goods. A power contact gets added that can hold combat-related merits. A pledged owner of a FC can opt-in to make use of these PP-related FC functions on the owner's platform, but doing so will change the commander to forced Open Mode, and while in hostile territory, enable the FC to get attacked on the same platform as the owner (this will really need to be a pattern since FCs are cross platform but the players themselves can't cross play). Changing existing PP content to open-only breaks the core design, but adding this new option for FCs could be the way to go to provide open content.
Since this is PvP content, players accepting a mission to attack a FC or pledged players attacking a FC would have to override the block function and get switched to open mode with forced instancing together in order to perform such tasks, while those tasks last.
If carriers were destructible, unless rebuys were free, there would not be any left in game inside a month except way out in the black somewhere. Someone would figure out a trick to dealing with FC, put it up on youtube, and gank wings would fly around blowing them up wherever they saw them. Even the ganker's FCs would get destroyed by other gankers.
I do believe there should be a mechanism to drive an FC from a system for a period of time, but I can't think of any non complicated way that can't be easily exploited to manage even that fairly. So, I just don't see this going very far.
I do believe there should be a mechanism to drive an FC from a system for a period of time, but I can't think of any non complicated way that can't be easily exploited to manage even that fairly. So, I just don't see this going very far.
Go for it, attack a carrier and see what happens, then come and tell us how it went 
Go for it, attack a carrier and see what happens, then come and tell us how it went
They do have some spicy firepower.
That's a better suggestion i think, although again, people being people, they might repeat attack forcing a FC further and further away. But as long it was set to force it to the nearest system, then shouldn't be too bad.
Still... fuel tanks could be drained. Hmm...
Not everyone who owns a carrier plays the BGS with any particular intent. Or powerplay, for that matter. Of the people that do participate in powerplay, not all of them are doing any more than moduleshopping.
Imagine the salt that gankers would have just heading out to whatever the latest New Borann is and trashing some random miner's carrier for fun.
This would be absolutely terrible. Effectively every system would be rendered "hostile" to people who don't want to permanently tie themselves to a PMF. In a game about travelling the stars some people really don't like being tied down to one place. If they wanted to be restricted to docking only in a single faction's system, then outside of the largest factions they don't need a carrier as they can just dock in one of that faction's regular stations.
Imagine the salt that gankers would have just heading out to whatever the latest New Borann is and trashing some random miner's carrier for fun.
But then people would attack FC's in crowded systems just to force create a space to get their own FC in and parked. While I am not absolutely against the entire idea, it would not be a valid reason to attack an FC, a sort of OOG justification rather than an IG dynamic. Of course it could be a big issue out at the edge of the galaxy if someone forces your FC to a system to far for you to jump and your FC didn't have enough fuel to get back to you, you would have to suicide to get back to it and that would be very immersion breaking.
I've given this a little thought, and there is a way I think this would work and still be "fair". Provide carriers a "public locator beacon" which can be toggled on or off. When on, the carrier appears as a static object just like it does now, visible in system maps and nav panels. When this beacon is turned on, the carrier is attackable. The carrier cannot be destroyed, however, only driven from the system like a capital ship, and this would require a lot more effort than breaking a few heat regulators on a cap ship.
When the public beacon is off, then the carrier would only be visible to the owner and friends / squadrons (if landing access is configured as such), thus taking it off the table for attack, but also decluttering the system map. The idea is that if you want to clutter the system map and take up a "public" parking space, the cost is that you open your carrier to attack. Make this beacon easy to toggle, so that players can turn them on when they are online, and turn them off when they are offline. However, if a carrier is already under attack, then it remains visible to anyone involved in that attack.
The biggest negative I see with this proposal is DSSA, which are public service-oriented carriers that don't bother anyone (they don't clutter busy systems), and yet would likely be prime targets for griefers who love to pizz people off for the lulz. The other negative that comes to mind is the cross-platform attack - a PS4 commander would have a hard time countering an attack launched by PC players regardless if he is online or not.
Anyway, just thinking out loud - I'm sure there are other "gotchas" I'm missing as well.
I'm friendly for all ... however, other players live in 3 different galaxies (xbox/ps4/pc) while carrier lives in all 3 at once. That is a key problem. I'm friendly on PC, but could be hostile on PS4, how could I know.
Impossible to balance. Some players are retired or unemployed, and can spare many hours per day. Some have full-time jobs and young kids, and can spare 2-3 hours per week. Many are somewhere in the middle. We'd end up with a situation where maintenance is trivially easy for the retired, absolutely impossible for those with families, and a godawful treadmill for those in between, who never get to do anything else in-game.
The only sensible decluttering policy would be to base it on last login time. That way, even a DSSA Carrier out in the middle of nowhere could be "maintained" by the owner just logging in regularly, even if he's nowhere near it.
So perhaps a Carrier could be rendered "attackable" only if its owner hasn't logged in for a few months.
Nothing HAS to be done, and adding additional credit sinks to a credit sink is absolutely terrible of an idea that just allows gankers to bleed FC owners until their forced into decommissioning the FC because thanks to the FC being attack by gankers over and over, mind you that FC's can be tracked, the gankers would ultimately completely ruin players they go after in this manner, and it's not just gankers on pc you'd have to worry about, xbox and playstation can get in on this gank-a-plooza. This is why I'm completely against this idea.
The main reason stations are indestructible is the danger that gankers would fly around and destroy them all and burn the galaxy, destroying any form of game play for anyone but them. There's some sort of high minded ideal in some forum users, that given a chance all players would behave in a reasonable and predictable way to further the galactic society, this is unfortunately complete rubbish and given half a chance there are players who will burn the galaxy just for laughs! That wouldn't work in real society because they would be locked up, but we can't do that because it's a game, therefore some things have to be safe from attack just so normal people can actually play the game.
My two pennies.......
Why not have FC's only attackable during CG's. If the owner sign's up for a CG then their FC would be liable for attack for the duration of the CG.
Why not have FC's only attackable during CG's. If the owner sign's up for a CG then their FC would be liable for attack for the duration of the CG.