Griefers make open impossible, and how easy the solution is.

No please. Shadow ramming is a feature.

By "shadowram" I didn't mean the maneuvre when you are trying to strip your opponent's shield by flying through their shield bubble without touching their hull, but that pretty unpredictable thing when during a flyby the clients don't agree as to whether or not a collision has actually happened. For instance, you can lose a pretty large portion of your hull (not shield) during a joust which seems to be nothing more than a 200+ m flyby from your POV and a proper frontal ram from the opponent's POV.
 
By "shadowram" I didn't mean the maneuvre when you are trying to strip your opponent's shield by flying through their shield bubble without touching their hull, but that pretty unpredictable thing when during a flyby the clients don't agree as to whether or not a collision has actually happened. For instance, you can lose a pretty large portion of your hull (not shield) during a joust which seems to be nothing more than a 200+ m flyby from your POV and a proper frontal ram from the opponent's POV.
If you are advocating that crap like this gets fixed, then you have my full support.
 
Hah. Yep. That's the one. Glad I was able to share that experience with my husband (the one piloting the fighter) and everyone else (via Shadowplay). That's the sort of encounters I'd like to see elite steer towards, in the broad strokes, at least. That sort of anybody's-game, heart-rushing, hand-jittering encounter is only possible when both parties are on a fairly even playing field, effective health- and firepower-wise. It was kinda like that before defenses modules (besides the shield generator) and engineering were added, but the TTK was often a little too short for the situation to properly get those back-and-forth rollercoaster of emotions feel. Nowadays, even when both parties are fairly restricted on how many defense modules they can fit as in that video, TTK is a bit too long. I'd love to see it fall in a happy middle ground, which I believe it would with my various proposed changes.
 
Hah. Yep. That's the one. Glad I was able to share that experience with my husband (the one piloting the fighter) and everyone else (via Shadowplay). That's the sort of encounters I'd like to see elite steer towards, in the broad strokes, at least. That sort of anybody's-game, heart-rushing, hand-jittering encounter is only possible when both parties are on a fairly even playing field, effective health- and firepower-wise. It was kinda like that before defenses modules (besides the shield generator) and engineering were added, but the TTK was often a little too short for the situation to properly get those back-and-forth rollercoaster of emotions feel. Nowadays, even when both parties are fairly restricted on how many defense modules they can fit as in that video, TTK is a bit too long. I'd love to see it fall in a happy middle ground, which I believe it would with my various proposed changes.
For me PvP is never my main focus and as such I'm always running multirole builds. I'd love it if the encounter in your vid was more common, I've only had a few in the years since SCBs and all are memorable, before that it could be almost every play session even if they were on the short side.

I do wish FD would look at all again but I've not seen anything relevant since Sandro moved on.
What are your proposals?
 

Terra6790

Banned
I usually play solo, but every now and then I'll go online to find some CMDRs, and have some interaction. Every single time I did however, I have been interdicted and killed within 10 minutes of launching out of the station. You spawn, you try to fly somewhere and someone interdicts you and kills you without any thought or explanation. That's my complete experience with open. I'm fine with piracy and bounty hunting and all. But these people that just attack for no reason at all makes it that me, and a lot of people like me, don't want to play in open at all. Today I just wanted to screw around with some CMDRs at the community event. Never mind, cause they're waiting to kill you.

I have never, in a year of playing Elite, been in open and not been randomly killed by a griefer. Imagine that. Every time I played in open, a griefer has killed me (and no I have no open bounties). And the saddest thing is, I'm not even exaggerating. Open is completely useless. It has no upsides at all. Doesn't matter what you do, you risk everything on your run by playing in open. Whether you're exploring, mining, trading, bounty hunting or even pirating. All your hard work is ruined by some half-baked gently caresstard in a Challenger.

But instead of complaining, here's my solution: A scoring system. A simple one from the top of my mind: X / kills in the last X hours of play = S. If S < 3, the player is a griefer. IE 6 / 15 = 0.4 (meaning 15 innocent kills in the last 6 hours the player was online), which means this player is a real piece of poopoo griefer. This simple system can be upgraded to use the players full pvp history.

Punishment for players when the score drops below the threshold for the first couple of times:
  • Not be allowed to dock at any station (no repairs, resupplies, engineering, respawns, missions, etc).
  • Immediately be attacked by security forces in any inhabited system. And I'm talking constantly. As soons as the drops in the system the security forces should start interdicting. By doing this constantly, the annoyance of the griefer will be pushed to new levels and he'll stay away from inhabited systems.
  • Be made a large target for bounties. Players can go to a station, go to contacts and get contracts for griefers. With the reward around 1 million per player killed, hunting griefers becomes a liable option for people to make money. Besides, the community will ridding itself of the toxicity. The contracts update to let the hunter know where the griefer is (what system and where in the system). When the hunter attacks, the griefer has 2 options, Flee or fight. If they die, they have to wait for their score to rise before they can spawn in again (cause no griefers at stations). If they fight and win, they just killed another player with no bounty. So their score goes down even more, while more hunters will be on their way. Fleeing grievers will be on the run until their score rises enough. The worse their crimes, the longer they're on the run.

Harsh, but as we say in my country, a cookie of your own dough. You ruin the game for others, the game is ruined for you to.

Punishment for players who go below the threshold more than x times:

Flatout ban these players from playing in open for a week and put a strike on their account. If the player receives 3 strikes the account is banned, GG you played yourself.

I think this is fair because it has clear warnings, you can stop and better yourself at any point. If you get banned it's cause you simply don't do anything other that ruining the game for others. This system however leaves space for killing each other for RP reasons, I mean, you wanna be able to blast some imps on sight. I'm not against PVP, but I am against consistent pointless griefing. As many people are. And it's time Frontier did something about this, cause people have been complaining for years (I've followed the games development for a long time). Elite NEEDS a system. No one stands any real consequence of losing anything if they misbehave in game. The fine for killing a player for no reason is around 150.000 credits. If I saw 150.000 credits floating in space I wouldn't even bother to try and scoop it up. It's nothing, to anyone. Imagine if we had this system in place for murder in real life? You killed a random person now pay a 15 cents fine. It is laughable. There is a reason why you don't need to worry about being gunned down for no reason when going somewhere (except maybe if you live in the US); you murder, you go to jail for a long time. And no-one (sane) is willing to risk that for a stranger. But in Elite there are practically no consequences which is why it's out of control.

Real consequences = less griefing.

Simple as that. And quite frankly, Frontier has tried doing nothing for 5 years now and it clearly hasn't worked all that well. I'd give up space legs, fleet carriers and atmospheric landings for just some peace and interaction with other CMDRs. I've played this game for a year, and have been alone for the entire time. Despite all the hype, all the enthusiasm of people of how great the community is, I have only ever encountered the business end of railguns and plasma accelerators.

Open is impossible, inhospitable, toxic and frustrating , and quite frankly, it's beyond me why Frontier is not doing anything about it. The player pressing alt-f4 when he encounters a griefer is liable for a ban but the griefer is not. It's poor game design and it's poor community management. Frontier should be called out for it. Every other gamestudio actively fights toxicity, Frontier should as well.
why frontier doesnt do anythign about it? maybe they are part of it? lols anyways asking for fairness or anything similar is a huge exercise in futility here plus you will be attacked here as well by 'people' with the same spirit and intention as the useless griefer! cant let it go without saying i tottally agree with you though!
 
For me PvP is never my main focus and as such I'm always running multirole builds. I'd love it if the encounter in your vid was more common, I've only had a few in the years since SCBs and all are memorable, before that it could be almost every play session even if they were on the short side.

I do wish FD would look at all again but I've not seen anything relevant since Sandro moved on.
What are your proposals?
I've had a bunch, over the years. I'm nowhere near as active as I used to be, ad the balance problems finally wooded my interest. Off the cuff,

1) Make sure every ship has at least a few military slots.
2) Make reinforcement modules only compatible with military slots
3) Move SCBs and shield boosters into sub-module slots of the shield generator

These 3 changes make it so you can bring whatever optional internals and utility modules you want without significantly compromising your ship's combat abilities, and likewise a fully combat-ready ship can still bring various modules required to engage with the game (limpets, srv, cargo, whatever) while still being fully ready for a fight.

4) Rebalance engineering to be more about specialization and side grades, rather than upgrades. Factory-spec would a valid, well-rounded choice, while engineering would allow you to tweak your ship to cater to your play style.

Allows a factory-spec ship to be on-par with an engineered one. They'd lose in a close-range fight against a ship engineered to excel at close range, but could win if they made sure to put their well-roundedness to use and stayed out of their opponent's preferred niche, for example. This allows combat, even against NPCs, to be balanced properly, as you're no longer needing to consider such a gigantic range of durability and power for a given ship. Likewise, buying a new ship will actually feel like an upgrade since A-rated factory spec modules, while general use, would still be perfectly capable relatively speaking.

Those are the biggest one. There's plenty of other room for tweaks, changes, and improvements, but those changes are in my opinion required to get things even in the BALL PARK if where they need to be. Once those we done, adjustments to specific values could be made to get TTK in a good spot, tweaks to the ways very modules and weapons function could be made to improve gameplay, etc.
 
My experience in Open has been much different, but now that i'm getting more involved and posting to different forums we'll see if I become a target more often!!!
Honestly, I hear of people getting griefed constantly in open. I've been interdicted a few times and attacked unprovoked a few times; but it is not a common occurrence for me. I haven't ventured too far out of the bubble and have been playing every day for at least the last month. However I do usually play with my son and we do usually wing up so maybe that has something to do with it.

Anyway, from my perspective I don't see this as an issue though my opinion may change due to circumstances. For now I don't mind the occasional interdiction and view this as one of the social aspects that draws me to the game. Not that I support or like griefers and personally don't understand the desire to hunt down, interdict and randomly kill people for sport.

Maybe we should unite and create an anti-greifer squad!!! LOL

Anyway, just my 2 cents and experience thus far
 
Hah. Yep. That's the one. Glad I was able to share that experience with my husband (the one piloting the fighter) and everyone else (via Shadowplay). That's the sort of encounters I'd like to see elite steer towards, in the broad strokes, at least. That sort of anybody's-game, heart-rushing, hand-jittering encounter is only possible when both parties are on a fairly even playing field, effective health- and firepower-wise. It was kinda like that before defenses modules (besides the shield generator) and engineering were added, but the TTK was often a little too short for the situation to properly get those back-and-forth rollercoaster of emotions feel. Nowadays, even when both parties are fairly restricted on how many defense modules they can fit as in that video, TTK is a bit too long. I'd love to see it fall in a happy middle ground, which I believe it would with my various proposed changes.

Any chance we can see your T-10 build? The link on your youtube video causes severe warnings in both Firefox and Chrome, which I'm not going to override.
 
Just put rails and plasmas on all your hardpoints and leave the docking computer at home.
One scan of your ship and nobody will touch you.
Psychology wins the day.
X.

Truer words are seldom shared.

I have a FDL with a PvE set up of old legacy parts called "Hollow Triangle" and ship ID "GANK-U". It's never been used to gank anyone but has seen more than it's fair share of players high waking or disconnecting mid supercruise route.
 
I've had a bunch, over the years. I'm nowhere near as active as I used to be, ad the balance problems finally wooded my interest. Off the cuff,

1) Make sure every ship has at least a few military slots.
2) Make reinforcement modules only compatible with military slots
3) Move SCBs and shield boosters into sub-module slots of the shield generator

These 3 changes make it so you can bring whatever optional internals and utility modules you want without significantly compromising your ship's combat abilities, and likewise a fully combat-ready ship can still bring various modules required to engage with the game (limpets, srv, cargo, whatever) while still being fully ready for a fight.

4) Rebalance engineering to be more about specialization and side grades, rather than upgrades. Factory-spec would a valid, well-rounded choice, while engineering would allow you to tweak your ship to cater to your play style.

Allows a factory-spec ship to be on-par with an engineered one. They'd lose in a close-range fight against a ship engineered to excel at close range, but could win if they made sure to put their well-roundedness to use and stayed out of their opponent's preferred niche, for example. This allows combat, even against NPCs, to be balanced properly, as you're no longer needing to consider such a gigantic range of durability and power for a given ship. Likewise, buying a new ship will actually feel like an upgrade since A-rated factory spec modules, while general use, would still be perfectly capable relatively speaking.

Those are the biggest one. There's plenty of other room for tweaks, changes, and improvements, but those changes are in my opinion required to get things even in the BALL PARK if where they need to be. Once those we done, adjustments to specific values could be made to get TTK in a good spot, tweaks to the ways very modules and weapons function could be made to improve gameplay, etc.
I like those (y)
In particular moving SCB/SBs under the shield generator.

I remember when specialist weapons were first introduced, could only be bought at a few markets and they had trade offs in the way you describe. Increased damage in exchange for a meaningfully shorter effective range and jitter. They were removed from buying early on release (maybe even launch? memory's hazy) but those that already had them could got to keep them till engineering arrived and made them obselete.
Honestly I didn't think much of them at first, but hindsight makes me miss them a lot.

I know that FD/Sandro were a fan of ship specialisation, they wanted ships to be built for, and be better at, a specific role which is fair enough in principle but in respect to combat that's always been a mistake from my point of view as it greatly reduced emergent combat gameplay.
I don't think that approach is going to change though, too far down that path.
 
Any chance we can see your T-10 build? The link on your youtube video causes severe warnings in both Firefox and Chrome, which I'm not going to override.
Yeah, that link is very old at this point. Not telling who even owns that URL anymore. I don't recall the specifics of the build off the top of my head unfortunately, as I haven't played in some time now. It really is a shame FDev never released their own 1st-party tool for planning and sharing builds, and just hoped for the best from 3rd party community volunteer efforts. I THINK the weapon selection I ultimately settled on was rails on the smalls, gimbaled frags on the largest, a mining laser on the ventral medium, and healing laser turrets (for keeping allies / the SLF alive) on the dorsal mediums. Max size biweave for the shield, reactive bulkheads. I think there was a single hull reinforcement and a single module reinforcement, but I don't remember how many military slots the T10 has. Some PDTs since I'm expecting hull strikes, AFMU and hull repair limpets to keep me repaired in the field, and then the SLF and myriad modules for mining. It was built to mine in a haz res, gathering minerals and bounties alike. That's the best I can do from memory. Pretty fun, and can get fairly harrowing if enough pirates dog-pile you (see below video). Obviously nowhere near optimized for PvP, since it could have a massive amount more health if all of the mining and PvE stuff was swapped for defensive modules.

Edit: oh hey, I scroll through my (busted up) modules at the end of that video, so that should give you a good starting point. You're on your own figuring out the specifics of the engineering, though. My memory isn't good enough for that. XD

Source: https://youtu.be/q9V-cyBQStM
 
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Not an indefinite lock. And not for a murder, or several murders. Locks for hours or a day for chainkilling.

Which again is silly. It can take upward of killing 50+ sec ships per day per commander to move things in the BGS (such is the weghting against negative actions)- with a time dependent lock it would make gaining momentum impossible.

If this went ahead it would force people to use nonsense negative BGS tactics instead that are totally illogical (as well as borderline exploits).
 
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