Power Play NPC opens fire on me near a Space Station. Stays clean. I move closer to the station, ask for a docking permission - he's still firing at me as I enter the mail slot, clearly inside the No Fire Zone. No reaction from station or security vessels - is this really supposed to work this way?
Power Play NPC behaviour out of whack
- Thread starter psyantologist
- Start date
I too have had wings of 'system security' NPCs trying to gank me, I think so far only at fleet carriers, possibly also a colonisation ship... if they're dockable...? To the point that a SS Vulture had its drives shot out by its wing mates and floated off into the local star.
But I dont get any aggro from PP escorts when I drop out of SC and eliminate the big one, Anaconda/T9s usually... The escort just fly about being angry before waking or getting blown up.
But I dont get any aggro from PP escorts when I drop out of SC and eliminate the big one, Anaconda/T9s usually... The escort just fly about being angry before waking or getting blown up.
they have been attacking me in auto dock while delivering mats to my colonisation depot.my cutter should shrugs them of and lands,npc.s what would we do without them lol.love em or hate them there here to stay.
Yes. Power supporters are legally allowed to open fire on supporters of other Powers, while in their own Power's space. Perk of the job.
This is a completely consistent rule - when in your own Power's space, you can shoot at Clean ships from other Powers without getting a bounty (they will get a bounty if they retaliate); when in another Power's space, you are a valid target for any ships from the local Power and will get a bounty if you retaliate.
(Note that Power-Power kills never give notoriety, however, so the bounty you get is relatively simple to clear if you haven't picked up notoriety from other causes)
This is the key thing about the NFZ.
Breaches of the NFZ which are not otherwise crimes are fines, not bounties - which means no law enforcement hostility, and it means that they're completely irrelevant to NPCs.
This tends to surprise people, who think the NFZ is rather more enforcing than that - but of course much of the time when someone fires in the NFZ, they also hit something, and that can independently be a bounty-level offence, with law enforcement already on-site and heavily armed.
Some people do.
So...players aligned with the system Power would be allow to gank players aligned with another Power in the NFZ without triggering the station defense?
I find this new mechanics inappropriate. It's not like all Powers are at war with each other.
I find this new mechanics inappropriate. It's not like all Powers are at war with each other.
Correct. So long as they don't hit the station with a stray shot, or commit another severe crime such as loitering in the process, this is just the same as shooting at any other locally-valid target, except that they'll get a fine for the NFZ breach.
All the Powers are at war with each other, though.
(That there are basically no individual or strategic incentives for players to take part in that war over peacefully reinforcing their own territories is a major balance issue, but doesn't change that people could if they felt like doing something fun rather than efficient)
Its not quite so clear within the game that this is the case. it might make it more obvious if the powers were generally neutral towards each other, except when they weren't. So enemy/friendly status could be assigned between the powers that makes it very obvious who you can and should shoot at, and who will be shooting at you without it turning into a total free-for-all murder fest.
Correct. Been there, done that
And it's not ganking, it's commerce raiding at worst and usually just preventing contraband from being smuggled in for the purpose of undermining your power. Plus you get merits for that.Also, rebuys are free for powerplayers
It's not overt war, but it's a covert backstabbing contest using hired black ops contractors and plausible deniability. That some players have decided that they are allied with some other powerplay faction's players doesn't mean there's an alliance in the game. Not when your in-game PP handler specifically sends you to raid the system under the control of the allegedly "allied" power
which of course, makes the open murder in front of the cops even less appropriate.
It's not murder, it's warranted killing. The cops have absolutely no right to intervene so long as the bounty hunter keeps to the law.
If you get a KWS and scan a locally clean ship, and find a third-party bounty on it, you're then allowed to open fire and claim that bounty even though the ship is not wanted by the current jurisdiction. You won't get wanted for doing so, they will if they return fire. That's just some random minor faction out of tens of thousands which can make people executable on sight in any jurisdiction in the galaxy. The local cops won't intervene (it's not a matter for their jurisdiction) until one side or the other commits a local offence.
The Powers are some of the most influential politicians in the galaxy. They can bribe judges to issue similar warrants en masse against people who are threatening their interests. Which is you, if you're in one of their systems working for one of their rivals.
Hmm, not convinced. If you turn up somewhere and get shot out out of the blue, and return fire, then you become the bad guy with a bounty (even when you return to a system controlled by your power they put you in prison for fighting back against an enemy power!). This isn't exactly "I shot the criminal" thing, and the powerplay politicians shouldn't be outwardly killing each others followers - that's for the pirate bloke to do. The others should very much be doing it subtly. Via missions, or organised disruption. Hence my feeling the explicit kill without compulsion is wrong, should be better organised around a friend/enemy system.
i mean, why is Winters killing Aisling supporters, or Aisling killing Arissa supporters? Doesn't make sense.
i mean, why is Winters killing Aisling supporters, or Aisling killing Arissa supporters? Doesn't make sense.
Yes - there are major problems with the rest of the crime system in both directions.
This happens plenty outside a Powerplay context too - faction A can send you on a mission to attack faction B; in the course of this you can end up getting a bounty with faction A for the mission they sent you on, or faction A caring about the notoriety you built up attacking their enemy. Powerplay is at least a bit better in that your own Power will never punish you for acting in their interests (but minor factions might still try)
Conversely with the minor factions (who are the implementation point for the crime system) there are quite a wide range of things which obviously hurt a faction's interests for which you won't be punished at all. For example, you can blow up a faction's warships in a CZ all day long and never drop below max-Allied with them, provided you always leave before the CZ completes, and still potentially lose them control of the system just from the combat bonds cashed in.
Scrapping the whole current legal system and replacing it with a more consistent "are you hurting our interests? then we'll hurt you" system (as Powerplay does, as Odyssey settlement gameplay does) would be a big general improvement, though rather a culture shock for the existing non-Powerplay spaceship part of the game.
While a 12-way peace treaty between the Powers would probably get majority player support for each individual pairing of it, Frontier were trying to make a competitive system, however unsuccessfully, so having the Powers be able to undermine each other is a necessary part of that.
Justify that in lore however you like, or decide that there's no plausible lore justification (as with 99% of the gameplay, of course [1]), whichever. But a competitive feature needs some actual competition from time to time, and the ED setting is violent enough that "shooting the other side" makes sense as part of that.
[1] One of the sillier examples staying in the "legal systems" area: about half of government types ban trade in personal weapons. If you try to smuggle a canister of those into a station and get caught with it, that's a substantial fine. Those same governments are all absolutely fine with you walking around their secure facilities carrying three of those weapons, provided you don't actually draw them. They'll even sell you some more, or buy your spares. This makes as much logical sense as anything in Powerplay - i.e. not much - but you never get players suggesting that democratic/corporate governments should close the Frontier Supplies services on concourses, or at least only sell suits rather than weapons there.
Yes. And when you get caught doing this subtle stuff? That's the point that you get very unsubtly shot. Or, if you're in your own Power's space, that's the point you get to shoot the enemy agent trying to subtly undermine your system, of course.
Yes, although I'm a little jealous that you were fired upon. PP 2.0 seems a lot safer than I remember the old system being.
Enemy is enemy
Not sure that, from a lore perspective, it's kill-on-sight between Aisling and Arissa, for instance. Or Mahon and Antal.Enemy is enemy
If the Power Security ships would scan you, and open fire only if you are bringing Power commodities to the station for undermining purpose, that would make more sense to me.
Try that open murder in front of cops in a system not controlled by your power
You catch an enemy agent in your system, you have all the authority to apply deadly force. Remember, reinforcing a system brings stability and prosperity to the system (or at the very least, to the ruling class); but undermining destabilizes the society and provokes public discontent with the current governance. Cops will ignore you dealing with a troublemaker they can't because they're not obviously breaking any local laws (that's the covert backstabbing part). On a flip side, if you start shooting at opposing Powerplay agents in their system, you're now publicly commiting an obvious crime and the local cops have a reason/excuse to pile on you along with "their" PP agents even if you never intend to harm any locals who have nothing to do with PP.
And what if you're bringing something else to the system for undermining purposes, or planning to extract something from the system
A probably incomplete list of things you can use for undermining if you can get them into the system:
- limpets (in at least five different ways, in some systems)
- low value cargo
- locally mined commodities
- any commodity usable in a donation mission (roughly: any commodity the system imports)
- credits
- ship-mounted sensors
- ship-mounted weapons
- an on-foot suit
I agree that if you can get into the system carrying none of those the Power Security should leave you alone.