It finally happened.

I deliberately sent another player to the rebuy screen that hadn't attacked me first.
They were in a smaller ship, they were of lower rank, they were damaged and trying to flee, and I did it anyway.

To give you an idea of what led to this, a couple of months ago I relocated to a nice quiet little backwater. Near-ish to diaguandri, but off the beaten path enough to avoid too much traffic. Inara reported it as almost completely dead, trafficwise. It had a few other nice little features, I ran a good chunk of pirate-lord hunts in the system next door, stuff was good. It was quiet.
Then the anarchy faction went into civil war. I'd never tried it before and I like having an IF handy to clean my ship after I go out and do surface scan missions, so I supported them. Won, apparently completely unopposed. I ran some missions for them. Another war. Won - though only on the days I bothered to fight. No biggie.
At that point, someone seemed to notice and started running missions and bounties like mad - the anarchists were still in second place, but apparently this upset someone. Or many someones. I thought maybe I'd forgotten to clean my ship and showed up with a 600cr bounty somewhere, but.. eh.
I just let them do it - I'd got the itch for stirring the BGS up and doing sneaky smuggling shenanigans, running in and doing subterfuge at settlements, knocking over generators, all that other fun stuff, and the great thing about that is you can do it anywhere so I just dipped out to another system nearby and waited for them to grind themselves into a war.
They did. I went there, fought for them.
Close victory.
Victory.
Total vict- am I even being opposed here? The station says people are still running 100+ bounties a day?
Jump into the system to fight today, and I see a guy in supercruise. A conda. Damaged. Heading to the station. He doesn't seem interested in intercepting me and I don't have an interdictor fitted (I'm here for war, not murder) so I watch him drop out and continue on my way. Another guy passes through. A python. I reach the CZ before he gets close. Don't see him again. Later, in SC, I see another guy in a krait. Send an "o7" in local. No answer, as usual. Continue in the zone.

A few zones later, I'm low on ammo, I've had a really annoying spawn of two corvettes at once that I was tying up - I'd shot out their FSDs but CZ NPCs being CZ NPCs, they were bulletsponging and I was just concentrating on keeping them from paying any attention to my guys, who were being annoyingly reluctant about helping finish them off - when I saw a hollow square. It was the krait from before. They seemed to lurk for a while, dropped off the scanner, I figured they might have left the zone on account of another player being present, but no - a short while later I see beams coming out of a hostile-coloured cmdr krait.

I only had like 7% on my shield. I had no idea how engineered they were. Could they actually put up a fight? If they're halfway decent, a player-flown engineered krait could kick my lumbering backside. On the other hand, I was still tankier than the majority of the NPCs in the zone, and if I could just tie them up long enough for my team to score another couple of kills, I'd win the zone.
I targeted them. I opened fire. Their shield just... popped instantly, I reflexively let off a volley of missiles as soon as the shield dropped. They started flying away in a straight line.

... for the longest time, I'd told myself "now, if I'm fighting another player and they start charging their drives, I'll treat that as a win and let them go". I could have let them go. They were retreating. They wouldn't even count towards the massacre mission I had going on. In the heat of the moment though? All I saw was a target at 12% drives flying in a straight line away from me, and I had a railgun. Pop.

All the horror stories I hear about engineered murderboat gank squads, the times I've gone looking for trouble in my DBX looking for a mixup with the regular murderhoboes for fun and thrills, and here, my first "pvp fight" wasn't so much a fight as a curbstomp.

... should I feel guilty about this? I feel slightly guilty.
 
You're kind of overthinking things here. Why would you treat an escape as a win? That means they get away with whatever bonds they have. Why would you feel guilty? they were opposing you.
I guess I'd feel less guilty if it was more of an even match, rather than a "swoop in out of nowhere and obliterate their shields in seconds with a fusillade of laser fire, cripple them with a salvo of packhounds, then finish them off with an imperial hammer when they try to run".

But... I guess. I wasn't exactly being inconspicuous when they arrived in the zone after all, so if they picked a side knowing there was another cmdr in a cutter flying around...
 
My first reaction is: if I see a hostile Commander in a Cutter in a Conflict Zone and I am in a medium ship, I run if I am not itching to fight a human for a looong time. It seems like suicide to not run. To me it is common sense. The Krait now has greater situational awareness. That is a good thing.

Second, if their shields Insta popped, could this mean an unoptimal build or lack of engineering the shields? Anyways, hopefully, the Krait now is more likely to take engineering a bit more seriously. That is a good thing.

Third, I agree that letting them go instead of taking out that last few percent would have been better. Especially since they were running in a straight line, meaning they were less experienced. However, you now know that perhaps you may be more of an instinctual or impulsive pilot.than you thought you were. That is a good thing. ( I do understand, however, how easy it is to be in "obliterate everything" mode when doing CZ after CZ after CZ.....)

So you felt guilty. Stop feeling guilty, you already did that. Concentrate on the positive... the valuable lessons that may have been learned. Gotta learn them at some time or another, eh?

And it's only a game.
It's really cool though that we can learn about ourselves through it, isn't it?

Best wishes.

:)
 
My first reaction is: if I see a hostile Commander in a Cutter in a Conflict Zone and I am in a medium ship, I run if I am not itching to fight a human for a looong time. It seems like suicide to not run. To me it is common sense. The Krait now has greater situational awareness. That is a good thing.
True enough. When I saw them I was immediately wary of what they were up to since I know I was being opposed (admittedly not very effectively), and my remaining shields and ammo were honestly not up to a PvP fight against a fresh opponent and I had no idea how engineered they were. Guess they didn't pay as much attention to their surroundings as I did in that regard.

Second, if their shields Insta popped, could this mean an unoptimal build or lack of engineering the shields? Anyways, hopefully, the Krait now is more likely to take engineering a bit more seriously. That is a good thing.
Actually having thermal resistance would have made them last longer for sure. If they'd come straight after me instead of pewpewing on NPCs and handing me the initiative, they could have outflown me - I knew that, which is why I kept an eye on them when they arrived! As it happened, he popped faster than the NPC eagles.

Third, I agree that letting them go instead of taking out that last few percent would have been better. Especially since they were running in a straight line, meaning they were less experienced. However, you now know that perhaps you may be more of an instinctual or impulsive pilot.than you thought you were. That is a good thing. ( I do understand, however, how easy it is to be in "obliterate everything" mode when doing CZ after CZ after CZ.....)
Yeah. I've shot other pilots in CQC before and in that I get a bit target-focused when I'm chasing a damaged opponent too, but in CQC there's no high-waking.
But oh god yes, going after enough zones back to back to complete a massacre mission and I see that little "surge detected" pop up, definitely had me in "quick finish them off before they jump out" mode.
I don't even remember making a conscious decision to switch from rails to missiles and fire when their shields dropped, it was pretty much automatic at that point.

So you felt guilty. Stop feeling guilty, you already did that. Concentrate on the positive... the valuable lessons that may have been learned. Gotta learn them at some time or another, eh?

And it's only a game.
It's really cool though that we can learn about ourselves through it, isn't it?

Best wishes.

:)
o7 cmdr!
 
My first reaction is: if I see a hostile Commander in a Cutter in a Conflict Zone and I am in a medium ship, I run if I am not itching to fight a human for a looong time. It seems like suicide to not run. To me it is common sense. The Krait now has greater situational awareness. That is a good thing.

Second, if their shields Insta popped, could this mean an unoptimal build or lack of engineering the shields? Anyways, hopefully, the Krait now is more likely to take engineering a bit more seriously. That is a good thing.

Third, I agree that letting them go instead of taking out that last few percent would have been better. Especially since they were running in a straight line, meaning they were less experienced. However, you now know that perhaps you may be more of an instinctual or impulsive pilot.than you thought you were. That is a good thing. ( I do understand, however, how easy it is to be in "obliterate everything" mode when doing CZ after CZ after CZ.....)

So you felt guilty. Stop feeling guilty, you already did that. Concentrate on the positive... the valuable lessons that may have been learned. Gotta learn them at some time or another, eh?

And it's only a game.
It's really cool though that we can learn about ourselves through it, isn't it?

Best wishes.

:)
Many people have bad builds, i once killed a cutter in while in a viper.

Source: https://youtu.be/CtvNHs039pM

this guy was probably hauling stuff i don't remember but most of the time players are equipped to handle a sticky PVE situation, not PvP.
 
Why the guilt? Does a lion write an essay on ethics each time it rips a gazelle apart?

No. The lion licks his bloodied paws and watches the sun set.
I dunno, maybe I'm too empathetic for my own good, I can just picture some underdog sports movie about the little kid getting excited to try out his first league game, and instead he gets beaned right in the face and the pitcher screams "WELCOME TO THE SHOW" as he scrambles to pick up his broken glasses
 
This was someone fighting against you in a CZ and chances are it may not even have been a new player. As has been mentioned, even bringing back bonds would have set you back a little bit. Justified kill IMO.

Hopefully they'll take away the knowledge that their build wasn't suited to proper combat.
 
Well, at least I feel a lil' better with both lawful and unlawful players agreeing on CZs being fair game. I seem to recall when I first started mobius allowed pvp in CZs, then they changed their minds on it. Oh well. :D
 
Well, at least I feel a lil' better with both lawful and unlawful players agreeing on CZs being fair game. I seem to recall when I first started mobius allowed pvp in CZs, then they changed their minds on it. Oh well. :D
wait! Mobius doesn't allow PvP in CZs?
 
wait! Mobius doesn't allow PvP in CZs?
nope, not for a couple of years now.

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