Ramming - Yes there is a solution!

[Acaelus Thorn]

I would like to generate a poll to see what everyone believes about my proposed solution to the issue of griefing via ramming. I received several +reps for my proposal under the other ramming solution thread, and believe that it may be contaminated by a lot of the folks who are actually doing the ramming.

I'm going to give you my proposal, some of the complaints I've read regarding my proposal, and the rebuttals to that proposal and let you decide for yourselves via the poll. Hopefully, this will provide a useful graphic for the FDEVs to use.

***Please if you're going to comment, be constructive and very specific to these suggestions only - this is for poll purposes only. I do not want it to degenerate into what https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=136054&page=5&p=2086437&posted=1#post2086437 has become. If you have something else to say, keep it centrally located in the other Ramming thread.

The problem:
CMDRs ramming individuals in a non-combat situation resulting in the destruction of the other CMDR's ship. I believe most of us will agree that all is fair in Love, War and any situations that involve being fired upon or firing upon.

The proposal with justification is as follows:

The Rammer should have to pay the re-buy cost, galactic average of any cargo and an inconvenience fee equivalent to 5% (percentage up for debate) their total credits.

Just like in real life, if you hit someone with a vehicle you're insurance has to compensate them for damages, and can get sued medical and property expenses related to the incident whether due to negligence or an intentional act. (Primary difference being prison time)

The complaints thus far with my responses:

The game can't tell who.

Yes it can. The FDEVs are good at what they do and they already have the data. The game makes numerous calculations to determine damage when two objects collide. It knows exactly what collided with what and determining who is responsible would only be one more variable (assuming it doesn't already exist anyway).

How does the game know whether it was in combat or not?

The same way the game determines who gets the credit for bounty. Target is flagged as belonging to one pilot or another for a certain amount of time. When target dies, bounty gets rewarded accordingly. IF this flag (or a flag like it written specifically to deal with the ramming issue) exists on the player when they die, then they were in combat.

People will just grief you by ramming into you with no shields so they will blow up and you'll be stuck with the bill.

Program a check at collision to see which ship had the highest velocity; they're the one at fault. Just like they measure speed by tire tread braking on the roads in real life. If someone is doing this more than once, it will be easy to tell who is at fault anyway.

Just turn the flight assist off and aim another direction right before you hit them.

This doesn't affect the velocity of the Rammer, just the direction they're facing. They'll still be at fault.

Popping up in front of someone so that they ram into you is not a difficult move, especially in a busy combat or in a situation with limited visibility such as the station mailslot.

I specifically stated I wanted it to be for out-of-combat situations only. If you're getting "griefed" by someone pulling out in front of you while you're leaving the mail slot because you were going to fast, that's your own fault. Go slower.

 

[Valethar]

There is nothing to suggest that this one will not suffer the same fate as the other with regards to being 'contaminated' by the griefers. Adding the extra poll option for them will do nothing to keep this one 'clean' and will only encourage satirical votes by people who are bored, like trolling meaningless polls, etc...

If you feel you have a solid solution to the issue, your best course of action is to write up a well thought out and expressed proposal and post that in the Suggestions forum for the Dev team to look at. Posting a mashup of quotes and replies with a poll attached to it, here in 'general chat', isn't going to garner much in the way of serious discussion or attention from anyone who can do anything to solve the issue.

I'm not saying it's not a legit issue, or that your proposal sucks, I'm just pointing out that this is not the best method or location in which to present it.

 

[Armour]

From the other thread:

There probably isn't a foolproof liability determination method, or insurance companies would all use it. There are however distinct types of collision, some ably described by posters in this thread, for which liability could be estimated to a reasonably high degree of accuracy. I would suggest that a good start could be made by dealing with those classes only at first. Changes in momentum and movement vectors can be used to deal with lots of cases, probably most of them. Once all the easy targets are picked off, then more ambiguous cases can be data mined for telltale characteristics that allow liability to be estimated. Or maybe those unsolved edge cases will be so ambiguous that random chance is as good as any method for determining who gets the blame?

So a simple one-size-fits-all function probably won't do the job, but the job can still be done, and it probably should be attempted.

 

[Ommasaur]

I didn't select the last option in the poll because I like some of your ideas, but I don't think it helps when you label all those that like the current system as griefers. It skews the poll straight away and doesn't make it objective.

 

[Acaelus Thorn]

I added the extra choice because I feel the griefers have just as much a right to vote as every other player - they paid for the game too; I just decided to label their choice accordingly.

As for those who like the current system the way it is, and are not griefers, honestly I just find it hard to believe that they actually exist (maybe haven't been rammed enough?) To each his own logic I suppose.

I chose this forum, because it is the most visible and I want to achieve the largest result. I do appreciate the feedback though.

 

[shazbot]

OP says it should be easy to do? It must be easy then!

Real talk: people should try to understand how development works a bit more before making polls. It's NOT an easy problem to solve whatsoever. If two ships are flying out of a station, head to head, at the exact same speed and crash...who pays? The person with stronger shields and hull reinforcers? The ship with more mass?

Take some time and think about what it would take to have foolproof collision detection and fault determination that can't be blatantly exploited to troll folks. Fly around with 1% hull in an Anaconda and let the Lakon bump you, watch them cry having to pay for the insurance because they had a higher velocity. I can think of a dozen other ways to game this.

It's not a very well thought out proposal IMHO.

 

[Spork]

Sorry you don't believe it, but it's impossible to determine who is at fault in a collision in software with any useful degree of accuracy. Highest velocity doesn't automatically mean at fault. That's grossly over simplifying it and open to exploitation.

I play racing simulators where it's a much bigger issue and even they can't do it.

 

[Acaelus Thorn]

OP says it should be easy to do? It must be easy then!

Real talk: people should try to understand how development works a bit more before making polls. It's NOT an easy problem to solve whatsoever. If two ships are flying out of a station, head to head, at the exact same speed and crash...who pays? The person with stronger shields and hull reinforcers? The ship with more mass?

Take some time and think about what it would take to have foolproof collision detection and fault determination that can't be blatantly exploited to troll folks. Fly around with 1% hull in an Anaconda and let the Lakon bump you, watch them cry having to pay for the insurance because they had a higher velocity. I can think of a dozen other ways to game this.

It's not a very well thought out proposal IMHO.

Those portions of the post were responses to the "complaints" and "questions" for a reason. They are not all inclusive. They are not necessarily the best informed. They are however my best attempt at the time to provide answers to peoples complaints / concerns who, in most cases, do not care to provide better alternatives. I do not believe that it would be very difficult to implement, regardless of whether it is or isn't that does not provide a reprieve to Frontier for an aspect of their game that is being taken advantage of because of the current system. Otherwise the open population will drop and eventually the game population will drop.

I did not claim to be an expert. My goal was to provide what I thought was the best solution - not comprehensive proposal for how Frontier Devs should achieve that end goal. That is their job.

By the way, if you're going to complain about someone else' solution, you should provide a better, more thought out solution that you deem appropriate. It is rather rude to just bash someone else' post, saying it was poorly thought out, without taking the time to come up with a solution yourself.

 

[Distance]

This poll is awful and biased as hell.

 

[AlexRyder]

This poll is terrible. There is no option for "I am not a griefer and recognize that the game is working fine in this respect"

 

[Phoenix]

The game can't tell who.

Yes it can. The FDEVs are good at what they do and they already have the data. The game makes numerous calculations to determine damage when two objects collide. It knows exactly what collided with what and determining who is responsible would only be one more variable (assuming it doesn't already exist anyway).

No, it can't.
Just because two objects collide, and one does damage to the other, there is still no way to determine who is responsible for the collision.

Examples:

You fly around with your ship. I point my larger ship directly at your ship, boost and ram you from the side. You blow up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?

You fly around with your ship. I point my larger ship into your trajectory, and fly along. You don't see me in time, and your ship rams into my side. You blow up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?

I leave the station in my Anaconda and fly in a straight line press boost, and leave my keyboard for a minute to grab something to drink, as my ship drifts out of the docking bay.
You circle your Asp in a tight curve around the station and are in a hurry to dock. You use your thrusters to align yourself with the docking bay, right in the moment my ship leaves the bay.
My Conda hits your ASP and you blow up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?

Someone parks his Eagle in front of a station. There is enough space to avoid him under normal circumstances. You boost your Python out of the docking bay, and don't have enough time to evade him. You ram him. He blows up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?

Someone parks his Eagle in front of a station. There is NOT enough space to avoid him under normal circumstances. You are in your Anaconda and you have no other possibility if you want to leave the station in time. You ram him. He blows up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?

And so on.

Honestly, a computer program needs to follow very specific rules to determine certain states. There is no way you can construct a ruleset that will determine who is guilty of ramming, where I cannot create at least one case that will result in a false positive, where the wrong guy would have to pay, being innocent.

 

[MJC]

This poll is awful and biased as hell.

This poll is terrible. There is no option for "I am not a griefer and recognize that the game is working fine in this respect"

Yep. I am not a griefer and I like ramming just the way it is . Even if I'm on the receiving end, but that rarely happens as I know what 4 pips to sys does.

 

[Acaelus Thorn]

This poll is awful and biased as hell.

If you could be more constructive, I would appreciate it. How would you like it to be less biased for example? What specifically makes it awful? Are these concerns that you have better addressed to myself via PM instead of the thread that I specifically requested be specific to the suggestions above and constructive?

I honestly thought I created the choices to be fair, open and comprehensive for each possible opinion regarding the proposed solution. (With the exception of automatically labeling people who like the current system as griefers, but there was a reason for that which I listed above.) I also meant it to be somewhat humorous. If you like the system the way it is then select that option. Your name isn't displayed and no one will know, unless of course you post here stating that you do like it the way it is and (allegedly) are not a griefer.

 

[Armour]

No, it can't.

It doesn't need to, as I said. There are ways and means to determine liability in a few obvious cases - look at whose trajectory changed last, whose velocity changed last, who had line of sight last... and sure, there are grey areas, for which player history might offer some clues - or if not, just flip a coin!

After all, it's a tricky problem in real life, and law and insurance companies get it wrong too, but we accept that errors will occur in real life, so why not in a game? If the guilty party has at best a 50-50 chance of getting away with it, they might take those odds - or they might not. And so the non-combat ramming stats would probably drop a bit.

 

[dioogio]

If you could be more constructive, I would appreciate it. How would you like it to be less biased for example? What specifically makes it awful? Are these concerns that you have better addressed to myself via PM instead of the thread that I specifically requested be specific to the suggestions above and constructive?

I honestly thought I created the choices to be fair, open and comprehensive for each possible opinion regarding the proposed solution. (With the exception of automatically labeling people who like the current system as griefers, but there was a reason for that which I listed above.) I also meant it to be somewhat humorous. If you like the system the way it is then select that option. Your name isn't displayed and no one will know, unless of course you post here stating that you do like it the way it is and (allegedly) are not a griefer.

The poll is awful because you either have to agree that a fix is required or agree that you are a griefer.

 

[Mercy Killing]

Problem is...all throughout history...ramming is a viable battle tactic. I only play solo, so I'll never ram another player..but be damned if I'm paying that fine for ramming an NPC.

 

[Matt Hawkins]

You can't tell who rammed who. It's all about intention and that is impossible to determine in code. If two ships collide you can not determine who was doing it deliberately. Calculating damage is easy but has nothing to do with intention. The damage is related to shields/speed/angle etc and nothing to do with the intentions of the pilots.

The "poll" is pointless as the answers are completely loaded.

 

[yukimono]

It wouldn't be a permanent solution, griefers will always grief and if you weigh economy into it they can make a very horrid meta-ramming where they position themselves to get new players in particular to accidentally crash into them, it's not impossible since a ship can't stop that fast, so what if the griefer positions himself in such a way that it would get the victim to ram into him and get the penalty? Would the victim get the fine? Would the griefer get the fine? How would the system know if it was intentional or purely an accident? As far as I can see, it doesn't need solving, I'm not for or against ramming, I just acknowledge that it's a thing you have to deal with. It may just be in action movies but in there at least people ram into cars to get them to stop or just crash entirely. There are too many calculations to determine what happened and who the offender is, it scales up exponentially with the complexity of the scene. Yes, the game does make thousands of calculations in real time, but basic momentum calculations for damage is nothing compared to something like stochastic calculus. The solution is a solution, but it's one that makes more problems than it solves.

 

[Distance]

Ramming in docks is a rare occurrence. Griefing by docking ramming is even rarer and confined to like one or two stations in the whole galaxy. In this case a simple report to fd giving the exact date, times and station in which it occurred gives FD all the information they need to see what happened and possibly reimburse you. It's probably the same old players (from the videos I've seen) doing the ramming so FD should be sympathetic.

From the whole post it sounds like you got rammed, lost a ship and came here to cry about it. The way people are talking about this issue makes it seem like this is an everyday occurrence in every station in the game every time someone docks.

Considering there are bigger problems with open play right now like combat logging or interdiction evasion that have had massive threads since like beta I think this is a non issue. I've played in open for like 850 hours and never been killed by ramming in a station or had someone intentionally trying to ram me in a station let alone died from it outside of combat.

The problem seems to be more down to the player's lack of situational awareness whilst docking. You can clearly see what's going on on a radar and if you see certain players are hanging around outside the station then you should know better than to be complacent whilst arriving at or leaving the station.

If you think ramming is griefing then I suggest you use FD's in game tools to combat said perceived griefing and set your matchmaking flag to group or solo :

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=90583&page=127&p=2006822&viewfull=1#post2006822

 

[Acaelus Thorn]

You fly around with your ship. I point my larger ship directly at your ship, boost and ram you from the side. You blow up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?

According to what I suggested, the person with the highest velocity, since you boosted that will probably be your larger ship. Again, not saying that better solutions do not exist, but it works in this case you posted.

You fly around with your ship. I point my larger ship into your trajectory, and fly along. You don't see me in time, and your ship rams into my side. You blow up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?

Really, it's my opinion that this is a lot easier said than done, especially with a slower velocity than the intended target. I can't imagine this happening often at all. Not that it's impossible.

I leave the station in my Anaconda and fly in a straight line press boost, and leave my keyboard for a minute to grab something to drink, as my ship drifts out of the docking bay.
You circle your Asp in a tight curve around the station and are in a hurry to dock. You use your thrusters to align yourself with the docking bay, right in the moment my ship leaves the bay.
My Conda hits your ASP and you blow up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?

The person with the highest velocity would be at fault. If either party didn't want to be at fault then they should go slower and fly safer when approaching the mail slot whether from inside or out. It will only take someone paying off someone else' insurance cost once to fix this issue for them. (Sort of like getting in car accident) If it takes more than once, than the CMDR still deserves to pay the fee.

Someone parks his Eagle in front of a station. There is enough space to avoid him under normal circumstances. You boost your Python out of the docking bay, and don't have enough time to evade him. You ram him. He blows up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?

The person with the highest velocity, fly more carefully through the slot. The point of the game is to be realistic right? Reckless flying has its consequences. (As does reckless driving)

Someone parks his Eagle in front of a station. There is NOT enough space to avoid him under normal circumstances. You are in your Anaconda and you have no other possibility if you want to leave the station in time. You ram him. He blows up.
Who's fault is it? And why? From what information could the game tell?
The anaconda for having the highest velocity, fly carefully through the slot and nudge him out of the way if you have to, just slowly enough so you don't blow him up. Yes it's a pain, and yes I think the Eagle would be griefing at this point. File a ticket, maybe extend the loitering range on stations.

Honestly, a computer program needs to follow very specific rules to determine certain states. There is no way you can construct a ruleset that will determine who is guilty of ramming, where I cannot create at least one case that will result in a false positive, where the wrong guy would have to pay, being innocent.

There is no way to construct a ruleset that is perfect in most situations for a lot of things. That doesn't stop us maintaining order in most situations. If you can severely reduce the amount of griefing that takes place, it makes submitting individual tickets for violators a lot more manageable, and keeps the rest of the community happier in general.