Non-lethal options for on-foot combat

[Screemonster]

Maybe in your country. Not the way law worked at the time here though. Not really something I want to debate either. Google king hit laws in Australia if you want to know more though, or read that wikipedia link.

It's interesting to me that that wasn't covered under the Eggshell Skull rule.

As for the discussions in this thread, there are no magic star trek "set phasers to stun" weapons that harmlessly put people to sleep. Even medical anaesthesia requires a specially trained person to monitor the process constantly to ensure no permanent harm is caused to the patient, with that being their sole job in the OR. As mentioned earlier in the thread, being knocked unconscious by a physical blow or electric shock is extremely dangerous, and the idea of people just waking up from it slightly dizzy after a few minutes or that you can just cosh someone over the head to take them alive so they wake up in your lair for you to monologue at them is pure hollywood fiction.

Even animal control darts are risky and require not only for the operator to pick the right dosage for the animal but also a team of vets to swarm the animal once it falls over - there's a reason drug darts aren't used as LTLs against people.

And that's besides the whole part about "maybe it's not exactly nonlethal to puncture someone's spacesuit with a needle while they're standing in vacuum".

 

[Jmanis]

It's interesting to me that that wasn't covered under the Eggshell Skull rule.

Ot, but because you asked ..

Spoiler

It was enough to establish Manslaughter under Australian law, but not enough for Murder, noting these mean very different things in different countries.

Here in Australia, Murder requires establishment of intent... so if you attacked someone, but didn't intend to kill them (but they died because they were an eggshell), that's manslaughter, which is a much less severe conviction.

There's more to it than that (I'm not a lawyer) but the basics of the reform were that this type of assault is now treated as a special case, and absence of intent to kill didn't matter anymore.

Tl;dr eggshell rule applies culpability for death, but distinguishing between manslaughter and murder has different considerations.

 

[Uthael]

As for the discussions in this thread, there are no magic star trek "set phasers to stun" weapons that harmlessly put people to sleep (...)

This game feels just as magical as Star Trek, if not even more so. Logic shouldn't impede fun in a game. Unless it's a simulator, which Elite is not. Many compromises were made either due to making it technically simple or more enjoyable to play. So, why not add some more magic for the sake of having more fun?

Everything else mentioned in that post can be turned into an inconvenience to make non-lethal combat more difficult, including the needle puncturing the suit at the end.
If the target dies, they die. Bounty acquired and optionally, mission failed.
(Edit: Although technically, a good space suit should plug a small hole on its own.)

Spoiler: Some examples of currently implemented magic:

• There's FTL travel and we literally call it "witchspace".
• Biological creatures are solid. Those mushrooms/plants/other-lifeform-colonies popped into existence and never grow or age or multiply or change shape or color or die, no matter the time passed or any other conditions around them.
• Reusing quantum entanglement is possible and it is used for communication.
• Ships are either perfect solids or they're ghost objects in the process of vanishing
• Ships slow down on their own and the turning rate is constant, even with Flight Assist off.
• Physics applies to humans only in the moment of their death. Never before or after.
• The weather is perfectly calm everywhere.
• Your ship wobbles when in "atmospheric" flight, despite those perfectly calm winds. The same wobble on every planet.
• Tiny asteroids are floating in open space, even rotating. Crash into them with a ship 3x the size and they ignore you.
• You can walk and run with the same effort on every surface you can set your foot upon, regardless of gravity. Yet, you can't even jump in simulated 1G on a carrier.
• Projectiles have limited range in space.
• There's no deflecting a bullet, any hit is a full hit, be it at 1° or at 90°.
• You can survive multiple headshots if you apply enough medkits between them.
• I could type more examples, but this is turning into a wall of text.

 

[Morbad]

This game feels just as magical as Star Trek, if not even more so.

In some ways, yes. I don't personally consider that a good reason to adopt more lazy mechanisms.

Logic shouldn't impede fun in a game. Unless it's a simulator, which Elite is not.

Elite is very much a simulator, just a rather loose one, and the world it simulates is fantasy.

Regardless, logic should always enhance a game. Plausibility and verisimilitude are important parts of immersion and benefit almost anything that isn't deliberately trying to be surrealistic.

Stealth should make sense. Whatever non-lethal approaches and mechanisms that are made available should make sense.

I would much rather have a game where I my CMDR can disable settlement sensors and communications, then convince the inhabitants to surrender peacefully through a show of force (e.g. hovering over their settlement in his Federal Corvette and knocking out all their anti-ship turrets in seconds), or provide him with what he came for ("disconnect your power regulator and deliver it, and only it, in good working order, to the SRV waiting one km due south of your settlement and I'll leave you to be rescued. Failure to comply will force us to take it and we won't be leaving anyone to rescue. I know your facility is ensured; I am taking the Bank of Zaonce's property, not yours."), than have exactly the same bland gameplay we have now, but with a magic stunner that does nothing other than add a bit of absurd handwavium to explain how it can instantly render someone insensate with perfect reliability, yet somehow have a near zero chance of maiming or killing them. Done right, it should be possible to avoid scans and thus retain a sufficient degree of plausible deniability to avoid legal (but not necessarily extra-legal) consequences.

Such options shouldn't rule out more direct ways of incapacitating people, but again, anything implemented should make sense. Remotely hacking someone's pressure suit to disable their radio and increase internal suit atmospheric pressure to make it very hard to move--with the risk of a very explosive decompression if they get shot or jostled too forcefully--could be an option. Changing the atmosphere inside a settlement to a partial pressure of O2 unable to support consciousness, but sufficient to keep most people alive, would be another--again, at some risk it takes too long (allowing alarms to be sounded) or isn't non-lethal for everyone. Hell, tackling someone then securing them with a piece of rope--or one of those twelve big spools of Flex Tape every CMDR seems to fit up their butts when looting settlements--would make more sense than 'set tasers to highly improbable and mechanistically indistinguishable!"

Of course, anything that doesn't suck would take work...which is why I don't think we're ever going to get it.

 

[Uthael]

You're absolutely correct. Well written magic and/or fantasy settings always play by the same rules and have some logic to them. I should've probably said "physics" instead of "logic".

You gave some good examples. Tackling someone and wrapping them in tape sounds like a grappling minigame similar to interdiction xD

Changing the atmosphere inside a settlement to a partial pressure of O2 unable to support consciousness, but sufficient to keep most people alive

This reminds me of some dumb thing children did at my school... 2 kids agree to do it. One plays the "victim", another is the "attacker". The attacker comes from behind and grabs the victim's neck with their elbow. Due to elbow's V-shape, the victim can still breathe, but the blood flow to the head is slowed and they fall unconscious for a short time. The moment the victim falls unconscious, they're released and gently placed down.
Never tried any of it myself as it's probably dangerous and/or illegal. But it should definitely be an option in a high-stakes infiltration mission.

Of course, anything that doesn't suck would take work...which is why I don't think we're ever going to get it.

That's what the Suggestions forum is for! Suggesting more work for the developers
Hope they like reading it at least.

 

[Morbad]

This reminds me of some dumb thing children did at my school... 2 kids agree to do it. One plays the "victim", another is the "attacker". The attacker comes from behind and grabs the victim's neck with their elbow. Due to elbow's V-shape, the victim can still breathe, but the blood flow to the head is slowed and they fall unconscious for a short time. The moment the victim falls unconscious, they're released and gently placed down.
Never tried any of it myself as it's probably dangerous and/or illegal. But it should definitely be an option in a high-stakes infiltration mission.

Vascular chokeholds are very dangerous. The option to take these kinds of risks should be there, but they should always be risks, rather than automatical successes.

 

[Nidoboros]

• There's FTL travel and we literally call it "witchspace".

Not to be a pedant, but just because something is called by a spooky name instead of its actual scientific name doesn't mean it's actually magic. (Tangentially related, I love the idea of midichlorians, because that is the type of 'scientific analysis of supernatural stuff' I expect from Jedi who have too much time on their hands to philosophize about the mechanics of space magic).

• Projectiles have limited range in space.

This actually has a neat in-setting reason, but it's also silly, so handwobble

I would actually love more realistic Expanse-y physics, earlier Elite games (according to cursory glances at wikis) measured acceleration and deceleration in Gs, but I don't know if there was a m/s cap or if you could drop out of hyperspace far enough away and build up crazy speed for fly-bys or what. It does pose a problem for ship interiors, though, as Elite's design philosophy is more horizontal/plane than vertical/building style. But physics/simulation engine is going to physics/simulation engine, it's fine.

Flight Assist Off exists, sure, but I want something less chaotic for flip and burns and/or drifting. Not super important, can live without.

 

[metatheurgist]

Yeah, a lot of things claimed in that list as magic are just in fact engine limitations, sensible computing related optimisations or deliberate gameplay decisions.

 

[Screemonster]

Yeah, a lot of things claimed in that list as magic are just in fact engine limitations, sensible computing related optimisations or deliberate gameplay decisions.

Yeah, a lot of the stuff in the setting suggests an absence of reliable FTL comms, and what versions do exist not being particularly high-bandwidth or private, hence courier missions delivering the mail to places, having to drop out of supercruise to have a more private chat with a contact, and so on, yet we can send messages and instantly telepresence to another person's ship from tens of thousands of lightyears away, simply because a multiplayer video game where you can't chat with other players would be borderline ridiculous. When was the last time any of you played a game where you couldn't chat?