On CGs and lockdown: Why the current situation is worse than you think and how I'd fix it

[SaliVader]

I'm sure everyone in the community is already aware of how lockdowns can affect trade CGs. For those out of the loop, lockdown is a BGS state that closes the commodity markets controlled by the faction affected by it. This means that if a faction hosting a trade CG goes into lockdown, players won't be able to sell stuff for the CG until the lockdown is over. Now, let's do a breakdown of this state:

- It is caused by committing crimes in systems controlled by the faction, particularly killing system security ships.

- It has a countdown of 1 day and a minimum duration of 3 days.

- It can be countered by bounty hunting.

Now, let me show you the big problem that this represents for community goals. CGs always start on Thursdays. Since it is relatively easy to cause a lockdown within a day by gathering a few commanders and going on a cop killing spree, a lockdown could typically go pending on Friday, and start on Saturday. The current tick is around 12PM UTC if I recall correctly, which means that by the time American commanders wake up on Saturday, the lockdown will already be active.

Now, some people will say: So what? Start bounty hunting and lift the lockdown! Remember, lockdown has a minimum duration of 3 days, which means that even if every single commander spends the whole weekend bounty hunting, the lockdown won't lift until Tuesday. It is hard coded into the game. And that is, in my opinion, the root of the problem.

There is a way to end a lockdown early by triggering a conflict somewhere (equalizing influence with another faction to trigger a war or elections). However, doing this in reaction to a pending lockdown is literally impossible because conflicts have a countdown of 3 days, so by the time the conflict starts the lockdown would have ended anyway, provided you sold enough bounty vouchers for the faction. Sure, sometimes the hosting faction will already have a pending conflict somewhere, or an active one, and that will ensure that the CG will be lockdown-free, but this isn't always the case.

I won't say something stupid like "CGs should be immune to lockdowns", because I believe in the "blaze your own trail" motto that FDev used to sell ED and I think we should have more options other than "do this CG or don't" to affect the narrative. In fact, I encourage FDev to make give the players some tools that can affect other types of CGs, such us bounty hunting ones. But the current situation with lockdown and trade CGs is just very unbalanced.

Anyway, to end this post, how would I fix this? I'm no programmer or game developer and I know that something that sounds simple can actually be very complicated to program into the game, so I tried to keep it as simple as possible. I would fix it by reducing the minimum duration of lockdown to 1 day. This would allow the community to actually end it before the end of the weekend, and this would also force the players that want to stop the CG to keep killing cops to counter the bounties sold, instead of just killing a bunch of cops one day and then laying back and watching the forums burn. I would also suggest having more than 1 daily tick for CG systems, just to have a more accurate status of the lockdown, but that's probably too complicated. Maybe in Beyond?


TL;DR: The way lockdown and CGs are setup makes it very easy to block a trade CG over the weekend, because lockdown has a hard coded minimum duration of three days that can't be reduced by bounty hunting, and other methods to stop the lockdown are not reliable because they're too slow. This could be fixed by reducing the minimum duration to 1 day.

 

[Arguendo]

The lockdown mechanic is a strange one, and also a bit lopsided with the 1v3 days.

The biggest issue I see with it is however that one cmdr in a fully engineered ship can pretty much do this on his/her own. This is an NPC security problem, and according to FDev this will change in the first Beyond update. With a more aggressive and capable NPC security force, atleast it should take a serious concerted effort to turn a system into Lockdown. We'll see how that works out in a few months.

A change in the minimum duration would be most welcome. I'd like to see a ticker, or something similar, that shows the effort being done against the Lockdown and it being turned when the ticker reaches zero. That ticker could also have a higher number, depending on the amount of crime done in the system. As an example, with 100 NPCs killed, you'd need 1000 bounties claimed to turn the lockdown. With 200 NPCs killed, the Ticker would show 2000 bounties needed to turn it. (ignore the 1/10 factor, that's just an example).

 

[MadDogMurdock]

Lockdown is a crappy mechanic.

A better one would be to actually require the use of those Checkpoints.
I.e. Go to a Checkpoint within X time - register destination - be scanned and get permission to approach the station.
Any ships without permission would be shot on sight at stations.
Any ships exceeding the X time limit would be pursued in SC.

It's still going to slow things down but seems like a more realistic security response than just shutting everything down.

 

[metascrawl]

Would it help at all to simply start CGs on a different day?

 

[Jukelo]

Afaik most CGs are setup to timeout after at least a week, so what is the issue here?

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

in the past year, most trade CGs came together with a bounty hunt CG in the same station
many didn not understand how killing pirates in rez would relate to "keeping the trade CG safe"

maybe now, that there are trade CGs without corresponding bounty CG beeing busted, some will start to understand

 

[CMDR ANCALAGON]

Lockdown is a crappy mechanic.

A better one would be to actually require the use of those Checkpoints.
I.e. Go to a Checkpoint within X time - register destination - be scanned and get permission to approach the station.
Any ships without permission would be shot on sight at stations.
Any ships exceeding the X time limit would be pursued in SC.

It's still going to slow things down but seems like a more realistic security response than just shutting everything down.

Love this idea!

in the past year, most trade CGs came together with a bounty hunt CG in the same station
many didn not understand how killing pirates in rez would relate to "keeping the trade CG safe"

maybe now, that there are trade CGs without corresponding bounty CG beeing busted, some will start to understand

When you see it....

 

[Kaocraft]

The preferred solution to this and many issues with the game is *nuance*. Frontier almost never does this. The game would be better if it were designed to have as few 0/100% binary states as possible, and instead had states which could escalate or deescelate over time. Right now, a system is in lockdown or it isn't; and when it is in Lockdown, you have access to nothing, whereas when it's not in Lockdown, you have access to everything.

There should be progressively more severe degrees of lockdown, with progressively more restrictive and convoluted access to station services (someone else's checkpoint idea is a great suggestion for mid-level lockdown procedures). Simultaneously, you as a CMDR should be able to use your reputation and influence to mitigate any restrictions you might come up against. Station on full lockdown, but you're fully allied with the controlling faction? Come right on in and use our commodities market. Oh you're only "friendly"? Well submit to a scan on the way in and if you're clean then you can use our services. Merely cordial? Go to the checkpoint first and once they scan you we'll grant clearance to land. Neutral? Too bad no soup for you. (But you can run some missions for us and maybe we'll appreciate you more.)

Etc Etc Etc.

 

[Mrat13]

in the past year, most trade CGs came together with a bounty hunt CG in the same station
many didn not understand how killing pirates in rez would relate to "keeping the trade CG safe"

maybe now, that there are trade CGs without corresponding bounty CG beeing busted, some will start to understand

So couldn't Fdev just make it so that a trade CG and a bounty hunting CG happened in the same station, meaning you'd have to try really hard to make the station lockdown.

Not a perfect solution but it would work till a better solution was implemented, as the above requires zero code changes.

 

[Faybs]

This isn't a new problem, in fact we've had the exact same problem before: anyone remember the Eravate UA bombing, that took a couple of months to lift? it takes very little effort to shut down a station with UA's, and literally weeks worth of effort by dozens of pilots to bring it out of that state (IIRC it was a few hundred tons of UAs to bring down the station, and hundreds of thousands of tons of MAs to get it back up). This is the same thing - a small handful of pilots can spend a couple of hours blowing up cops, and in return for that effort the station is locked down for a minimum of three days. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more of these unbalanced game mechanics elsewhere as well.

 

[SaliVader]

The preferred solution to this and many issues with the game is *nuance*. Frontier almost never does this. The game would be better if it were designed to have as few 0/100% binary states as possible, and instead had states which could escalate or deescelate over time. Right now, a system is in lockdown or it isn't; and when it is in Lockdown, you have access to nothing, whereas when it's not in Lockdown, you have access to everything.

There should be progressively more severe degrees of lockdown, with progressively more restrictive and convoluted access to station services (someone else's checkpoint idea is a great suggestion for mid-level lockdown procedures). Simultaneously, you as a CMDR should be able to use your reputation and influence to mitigate any restrictions you might come up against. Station on full lockdown, but you're fully allied with the controlling faction? Come right on in and use our commodities market. Oh you're only "friendly"? Well submit to a scan on the way in and if you're clean then you can use our services. Merely cordial? Go to the checkpoint first and once they scan you we'll grant clearance to land. Neutral? Too bad no soup for you. (But you can run some missions for us and maybe we'll appreciate you more.)

Etc Etc Etc.

I like this idea. BGS states could be mini CGs of their own.

 

[Harley Quinn]

Biggest issue for me, which applies to most BGS, you spend that first day flying in the system and have no idea that a group of people are going on a killing spree killing people.

The first you know about it is at tick when you are informed it is one day to lockdown.

I know we are looking at hard coded game mechanics but as somebody living in the UK if a person goes on a killing spree in the US and kills 10 people I will likely hear about it within an hour in RL. But in ED it takes 24 hours of flying in and out of the station which issues the bounties which apply instantly and houses the security personnel being killed to find out about hundreds.

I could also raise the old issue of modes and how that limits options for stopping perpetrators but that's for the modes board.

Without completely rewriting the BGS system it raises the need for a proper bounty hunting system where you can see real time bounties issued, and who to. A mechanic to hunt and find perpetrators would be nice as well as needed for proper bounty hunting but even without that at least a proper real time bounty board would allow people to react to criminal activity rather than waiting 24 hours before you even know it has happened

 

[Count]

Afaik most CGs are setup to timeout after at least a week, so what is the issue here?

When half that week the CG is inoperable.

 

[Jukelo]

When half that week the CG is inoperable.

Again, what is the problem here? This simply means the CG will be harder to get to a higher tier, which I'd say is not a bad thing.

 

[CMDR-AD]

So is forcing each CG into lockdown shaping up to be the next big thing?

 

[furrycat]

Lockdown pends for one tick. And it starts pending when the faction's current state has finished. So it isn't necessarily the case that CG starts; lockdown the next day.

 

[Mangal Oemie]

Hold on. There is a disclaimer on _any_ CG that BGS states can influence outcomes. What are you really asking for? You want a change to how the BGS works across the galaxy, just to protect CGs? That happen once a week in one system? That's.... completely out of proportion.

The BGS is the best part of this game. Don't mess with it to support a boring one.

 

[_trent_]

Hold on. There is a disclaimer on _any_ CG that BGS states can influence outcomes. What are you really asking for? You want a change to how the BGS works across the galaxy, just to protect CGs? That happen once a week in one system? That's.... completely out of proportion.

The BGS is the best part of this game. Don't mess with it to support a boring one.

There is indeed a disclaimer on every CG that the BGS can affect it.

I don't think the BGS can just be turned on and turned off because at least some of the factions in the CG system will be present in other systems and freezing them would likely cause a 'Butterfly Effect'.

Perhaps there is an argument for tweaking the mechanics of lockdown in terms of pending/active/recovery durations, but insultating the CG system from the BGS doesn't seem to be a good idea at all.

If players care that much about keeping the system out of lockdown there are - usually - methods they can use to protect it.

 

[Count]

Hold on. There is a disclaimer on _any_ CG that BGS states can influence outcomes. What are you really asking for? You want a change to how the BGS works across the galaxy, just to protect CGs? That happen once a week in one system? That's.... completely out of proportion.

The BGS is the best part of this game. Don't mess with it to support a boring one.

I think the point was not that it happens, but that a it triggers a full 3 day lock down that is coded in, being artificial and detrimental to the game. For a 7 day CG, to guarantee 3 days are unplayable is not a good thing.

The complaint is that the remedy is not in parity.

Lockdown pends for one tick. And it starts pending when the faction's current state has finished. So it isn't necessarily the case that CG starts; lockdown the next day.

But given notice of CGs beforehand allows players to prepare and build up for lockdown.

 

[Count]

Again, what is the problem here? This simply means the CG will be harder to get to a higher tier, which I'd say is not a bad thing.

Where is the gameplay there? Sit around for three days?

It is the three days length and the lack of facility to combat within that time that is the main complaint. Regardless of the strength of contra measures, even if the entire galaxy responded, lockdown is three days.

That isn't gameplay. It's artifical and immersion breaking when you know in this case there is nothing you can do to affect the BGS because the Devs have coded it to be so?

But reagradless, I thought this was a moot point now - isn't this something that is going to get picked up in the QoL improvements in Beyond?