As a bounty hunter, I have to agree with the OP here. Most of the interdictions I've performed last night went like this : pirate submits, pirate boosts away, often trying to purposely ram me in the process (perfectly fine 'till here) and 10 sec later, as their shields have barely been hit, they FSD away. The submission to interdiction is a broken mechanic that spoils the fun for any combat profession in PVP. This design choice was not well thought out.
Why ? Because there are only advantages to it instead of a trade-off : the target does not have to play the mini-game, does not take damage, doesn't tumble like crazy upon exiting SC and does almost not need to wait before they can jumps away. With litterally ZERO drawback. So of course interdicted players will do it. And it renders interdictions mudane and pointless as they always go the same way and are extremely frustrating for the interdictor who will achieve nothing but to lose his/her time.
So here is what I've in mind as a solution : upon submission, the target takes no damage to hull, exits SC smoothly BUT has to face an INCREASED cooldown. Interdictor always takes hull damage and does tumble upon arriving in normal space (unless he slowed to a safe exit speed too, but the interdiction would have to be really slow for this to happen anyway).
Here a the consequences it would have :
- submission finally merits its name : you accept the interdiction and accept to face its possible consequences when you do it, submitting to the will of the interdictor to put you out of SC basically. But you take no damage and better situational awareness / control over your ship than your opponent as a compensation.
- fighting the interdiction is the only way to escape it safely, so the damn mini-game has a real purpose again. And evading becomes a feat of skill to be proud of.
- upon being interdicted, you are presented with an interesting dilemma which makes the experience richer.
- PV piracy / bounty hunting becomes viable as pirates can be sure that if they manage to bring their target out of SC they will have the opportunity to at least ATTEMPT something before it can jump away.
- it would give more time for reinforcements of any side to jump in the wake and intervene, which again makes the game more interesting for everyone.
- interdiction would still have drawbacks preventing the interdictors to mindlessly harrass every potential target : they know that they will always take hull damage, can be pulled out of SC alone if they fail (potentially joining another instance upon re-entering, so losing any other interesting target they would have spotted before) and that even if their target submits they will be at a disdvantage at the start of the fight.
PS : For those who'd claim "but the lore makes the 10sec cooldown logical since you performed a safe exit so your solution is invalid", lore always serves as a justification for gameplay choice, sometimes as an inspiration, but never as a limitation. Furthermore, since the attacker's FSD interdictor pretty much takes the control of the targets' FSD to make its bubble pop, one could totally imagine that submitting allows the former to have full control over it with no resistance thus forcing the longest cooldown possible on the latter.
