Interdiction Dodgers
- Thread starter Snakebite
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Increasing their cycle time removes almost all of their utility.
They are already hopelessly easy to evade for anyone who is paying attention and not in massive, slow, ship.
This is pretty rare, and hardly a problem.
These guys are all over the place. They go, "Ahahahaha!" and open fire when they interdict you.
I submit to interdictions because I like to minimize uncertainties.
It isn't hard to find a trade route with minimal people on it, I absolutely agree, I need to find a new one every day just about as it is. With less humans my risk is mitigated, though that doesn't make trading less risky to my other choices by comparison. All it takes is one human in a combat ship with an interdictor to find me, and I lose a few days of trading. Less humans about does not nullify my risk. I find systems with 50 ships traffic report, and I still get murdered. It could be the name, however it may not be, this is something I myself will never know.
So, for me, the riskiest thing I can do is trading, that is my experience. I spent two weeks at kappa fornacis and got player killed three times in the warzone, I go off into low population systems for some trading I get attacked at least every other day, however one trading loss to me, is about the same monetary value as 200 combat losses, which is why I say trading is the riskiest thing I can do, and my experience with other players changing is the only thing that can affect this for me.
Though for the sake of clarity, let me explain, I am not calculating risk based on the number of chances I get attacked by humans first, I am calculating it based on my chance to escape the attacks vs the monetary loss if I do not, with the number of attacks being my last consideration. Dying twenty times a day in a combat ship to humans, is still to me less risk than dying once a week to humans in my trading ship.
I can't run with weapons, as this entices me to fight back, and greatly reduces my chances of survival. Chaffs, my ship is so big, they dont make a difference.
They need to ask you got cargo don't you think?
Sandro says if you drop cargo they should stop attacking you! But with them simply attacking and not asking, it feels a little vague!
We must not forget that this should also be fun to be pirate.
As I see it the problem is with the hardware (ship). Large cargo ships getting destroyed suffers a huge bill for the lost cargo, the ship insurance and maybe also exploration data.
The easy solution to this would be to balance it.
1) Allow bounties and exploration data to survive a kill, and allow players to purchase cargo insurance (3% ?).
2) Pirates get a bounty of the loss he inflicts (damages) if he kills, but only if he kills. His bonus would be cargo he gets from the trader is not marked stolen and the trader gets reinbursed by the insurance (if bought one) and some sort of positive reputation.
3) Power plants on board ships should be balanced. It should not be possible to have A-grade shields and dual beam lasers at the same time. Smaller weapons with big shields or reverse.
4) Combat vessels should be much more expensive. A cobra should be at least 1 Mil.
5) As said before in this thread, logging out in combat should give the logger a bounty of 5000 Cr.
As I see it the problem is with the hardware (ship). Large cargo ships getting destroyed suffers a huge bill for the lost cargo, the ship insurance and maybe also exploration data.
The easy solution to this would be to balance it.
1) Allow bounties and exploration data to survive a kill, and allow players to purchase cargo insurance (3% ?).
2) Pirates get a bounty of the loss he inflicts (damages) if he kills, but only if he kills. His bonus would be cargo he gets from the trader is not marked stolen and the trader gets reinbursed by the insurance (if bought one) and some sort of positive reputation.
3) Power plants on board ships should be balanced. It should not be possible to have A-grade shields and dual beam lasers at the same time. Smaller weapons with big shields or reverse.
4) Combat vessels should be much more expensive. A cobra should be at least 1 Mil.
5) As said before in this thread, logging out in combat should give the logger a bounty of 5000 Cr.
Put a bounty on a "murderer" that cannot be paid off for X game hours. And these do not include game hours docked in a station
Not sure how easy it is for the system to log active playing hours, but in anycase, I still think that the only way to lose wanted status / bounty for killing a clean CMDR should be to wipe your save and start over. Otherwise you are a fugitive. I hate to equate a game with reality, it's a game, but that's how it is in life, your crimes don't just evaporate over time, but this would (in my opinion) put a damper on the casual killing for fun players that by all accounts are frustrating open play for many. (I've not been interdicted by a live player, btw, so this is not personal.)
If there were no solo and private group play, combined with Wings etc, that would have the effect of encouraging people to play together. We might then require an escort when trading for the more risky journeys.. Right now trading profits are pretty much assured - its simply a matter of time and repetition.
I've grown bored of it but I have traded, always in the Open, and with ships with no shields to max profits - simply to make the process interesting. What is the point of making a load of credits in complete safety? Its hardly an achievement.
You speak of risk and reward and its a good point but at the moment there is no risk and a big reward for trading playing solo/pg. So anything else, for the risk adverse, would probably not seem attractive.
I realise its likely not to change but I think the game would be better off ditching solo and private group and having a divide of a PvE game and one for the Open as we see it now. My preference would be to only have the present Open play but I think a number of people would object. Its a shame because we are sadly going to miss out on some cool co-op, escorting player traders etc.. Why bother when they can hop into solo?
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Hello Commanders!
Also, on a tangent, we've just discovered that dumbfire missiles have no hit-check. Ouch. Sufficed to say that this should change in a near future update (It should not be a particularly challenging fix). Basically, at the moment, you cannot shoot dumbfires out.
Point defence guns were always meant to be a hard-counter for missiles (and trader ships tend to have a decent amount of utility mounts), so this fix should at least remove the most egregious issues of sidewinders pasting type 9's because they carry twin dumbifire racks), assuming you're prepared to use point defence.
Also, on a tangent, we've just discovered that dumbfire missiles have no hit-check. Ouch. Sufficed to say that this should change in a near future update (It should not be a particularly challenging fix). Basically, at the moment, you cannot shoot dumbfires out.
Point defence guns were always meant to be a hard-counter for missiles (and trader ships tend to have a decent amount of utility mounts), so this fix should at least remove the most egregious issues of sidewinders pasting type 9's because they carry twin dumbifire racks), assuming you're prepared to use point defence.
1) Don't really care.
2) Eh? Stolen cargo should be marked as stolen. Black markets should be looked at maybe though. I think there's a lot of ways to make bounties more interesting.
3) Might be interesting.
4) They are, if you equip them for combat. Heck, my proper fighty Cobra was nearly 10 million.
5) Good idea. I think this is one of the best solutions I've heard.
This is great news! Bravo! Thank you I thought it didn't target dumbfires because they weren't actively tracking you.
Make sure you don't get bounty / wanted for accidentally point def someone!
Then you are not calculating your risk correctly. If I can fly for 50 hours without seeing a single player, then the risk of me losing my cargo to a griefer is not very high. It doesn't matter what your risk of escaping an attacker is if you never get attacked.
Also, depending on the ship you are running, a couple of days worth of trading is easily a couple of months worth of flying around in any other profession. You can easily make 1mil credits an hour in a type-7. You can maybe make 300k an hour camping resource extraction zones, and that's the next fastest way to make money besides trading. EDIT: Forgot about trading rares. I don't trade rares, mostly because I think normal trade routes are more profitable with larger cargo ships, but in smaller ships it may be more profitable than REZs
Trading is by no definition of the word "risky" if you simply fly out to the boondocks and set up a trade route there. I've only changed trade routes 3 times and that was because I got bored flying to the same places over and over. I wanted a change of scenery.
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Maybe, but they're also very very powerful against anybody in Asp or larger. There's room for something between no cycle a long cycle time. 0.5 seconds?
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Surely at the range they're usually fired this won't make much difference.
Just want to clarify that I don't actually know for certain that the ghost interdictions are always player interdictions. I was assuming based on the netlogs, which on interdiction show "state=interdictee;interdictor=<IP>". For normal NPC interdictions, <IP> is my WLAN address, whereas my ghost interdictions have always shown different addresses. They also tend to say "isplayer=no", which puzzled me, but I now wonder if that means it's an NPC somehow "attached" to another player's IP. This may tally with Galactic Midden's post re. being in SC with other players.
I do hope we can fix this, as I don't want players to get the impression I'm an Evil Combat Logger™, nor FD to spend time adding safeguards against intentional dropouts if it turns out it's mainly people like me seemingly being interdicted by nobody.
Dunno. Logged out of combat once myself (alltough in Solo against NPC) simple because there was somebody at the Door and its cold outside. The Game has no actual pause function, so its the only choice one has should real life need attention (other then make yourself a easy target and pay insurance, which ist just as bad).
I don't deny that there can be an abuse of it, but I would suggest not just instantly throw Bountys at People. Maybe only after doing it more then once over the course a few Hours.
I'm too not sure if it solves the Problem in any Situation. A Trader who has Millions at Risk will probably not hesitate to pay that 5000 CR.
Hello Commander Robert Maynard!
First, as a reminder to everyone - there's no iron guarantee or ETA on any of the stuff we discuss here, unless we absolutely state as much. Now, caveat duly issued:
As it happens, we've recently been discussing a "Reboot and Jury Rig" option that would allow you to bring dead systems back online with some minimal health (say a couple of percent) by "eating" an equivalent (or probably double amount) from other systems. This would allow you to come back from being crippled, but not save you from A) destruction at the hands of someone who really wanted you dead and B) further issues and malfunctions (but we think this could be a pretty cool aspect, actually).
Hello Commander Snake Man!
A couple of points: running without shields is incredibly dangerous. If you get caught out and drawn into combat, you've kind of been asking for it. The Type 9 is a big enough ship that, outfitted with the correct modules, can cause some amount of trouble to aggressors whilst waiting for the long frame shift cool down to expire.
Hello Commander elaverick!
Hahahahahahaha! Umm, not intentional...
Hello Commander NeilF!
Pirates, in general, can be persuaded to stop attacking you if you drop cargo (even if you have traded shots with them). Of course, the more powerful the pirate ship, the more cargo they need to sate their greed.
The premise of legacy fines is not to keep a bounty active, but to turn it into a everlasting fine if someone kills you to collect it (in part to stop exploits between players to make money killing each other in starter ships).
Hello Commanders!
A couple more points:
Having your ship be controlled by some form of AI when you log is not straightforward (otherwise we would have done this already!
There's an interesting sentiment that keeps cropping up: if you make it harder to escape from aggressors, then I'll be forced back into solo. I'd like to ask, is this a player-only issue, or would it include NPCs. Because the idea we've always had for trading is that being attacked is the core game play risk.
In fact, I'd posit that one of the reasons (not the only one, obviously) trading is so much more profitable is because there's little risk of losing your ship or taking much damage, or losing cargo (feel free to disabuse me of this notion if you have evidence to the contrary!)
Now I certainly don't want to see traders getting slaughtered like lambs in an eternal spring, but I want to make it clear that being attacked/placed in significant danger has always been part of our plans for the trader role.
Reboot concept (combined with maybe advanced damage visual models? Pretty please
) sounds awesome, +1000 from me!As for subject discussed here - I think problem is that there is already well meant idea about how to make griefers think - and that's it declaration of piracy concept. I know, I know, you said it depends on NPC dialog which I guess is still some time off. But this would exactly put out some flames and lessen initiative of just old school griefing.
1) Yes cargo insurance would reduce losses from trading and punish player less for playing in open.
2) Pirates should have more consequences for killing than just stealing, yes. It should not be simple to wipe clean.
3) I think the ship has sailed for that, that's too big a combat rebalance at this point for devs to consider.
4) They can be expensive, but cheap ones are as effective (dumbfire eagle). This is somewhat fine but Increase punishment for murder instead.
5) You cannot be certain the power didn't go out, the cable tripped, internet went down, or some other reason for the logger to log off. But, if we have to keep the combat logging mechanic then a 5000 cr fine is a meager pittance.
You cannot discourage combat logging by punishing the player with death/credit loss without pushing some traders to solo. We just don't want to deal with griefers.
Instead, make losing a ship less of time loss. Trader loses many hours if ship with cargo is lost. Pirate loses in comparison almost nothing.
Annecdotally, I had two interdiction attempts made by a player on me a couple of days ago which I remember as being a little odd; in the first, I won the mini-game, but despite the blue indicator being at the top, and my staying with the escape vector, the interdiction did not end, until I got bored and submitted (circa 30 secs in this state). In the second instance, I was hitting the escape vector, but the red bar kept climbing uninhibited. I was pulled roughly from supercruise and dispatched quickly (don't drink and fly).
I didn't ticket either, as I assumed that the player was wielding a higher class interdictor than I had previously been targeted with, leaving me little or no chance of escape. Is this not as it should be?
I didn't ticket either, as I assumed that the player was wielding a higher class interdictor than I had previously been targeted with, leaving me little or no chance of escape. Is this not as it should be?
Getting fined for interdicting random clean pilots (I mean players as well as NPCs) is good for the overall game, as long as they also add some "jurisdiction" to players allied to a faction to hunt potential "criminals" like smugglers for example.
I do not want people who combat log in open at all, so this seems like a good thing to me. People who combat log make the game experience worse, so I'd prefer if I didn't have to deal with them at all. Move to solo all you like.
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Not sure. There are some youtube videos. Mostly people don't shoot them unless they'll hit, so fairly close range against bigger targets, in volleys of 10.
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