Recommendation to help new players and old ones too

[IcewindZG]

The beginner systems are locked out because some sociopaths are intent on making life hell for the rest of us. While I personally think those people are the ones who deserve to rot in solitary confinement for eternity, this game has all makes.

Rather than having to lock out certain areas from psychopaths so that new players have a chance, I propose a solution that actually encourages open play and doesn't drive off potential players.

In order to PVP kill a ship, it should require fulfilling one of these requirements (not an exhaustive list):

• Wanted with bounty
• Rival Power Play faction
• Opposing CZ faction
• Has fired upon the attacking vessel

In the case that none of these or any other reasonable criteria are met, the attacking ship cannot reduce the power plant, life support, or hull strength below 5%. This would allow for safe PVP piracy on other players as you can disable engines and extract cargo, but a new player need not worry about losing their ship "for the lulz" because some degenerate needs to attack weaker people to show their abilities. This also allows for world PVP in a fashion that does not force those who do not want to be needlessly killed into solo or private servers.

This would also serve as a discouragement from simply trying to anger new players as it takes away the explosion from psychos against players who do not want to participate, again, without forcing them into solo or private instances. If another player accepts the engagement by firing back, then the "game is on".

While I would personally prefer not to include the power play faction in this, I can justify its inclusion because joining a power play faction is not required for progression. This still allows for powerplay to be a dangerous choice to make.

For those who are initially against this, consider this: If this is the expectation there will be fewer players who default to solo/private, allowing for more potential interactions. You will be able to fire on them, but they will be able to choose if they want to retaliate. If they do, you get a full combat interaction with more of a selection of available players who know they made the choice to allow the combat. FDev gets more active players because new players aren't ran off by sociopaths, and Elite has a chance to grow with a happier player base.

 

[Mohrgan]

That's simply not what Open means in ED. The Open environment is as much a promise to players as is Solo or PG. FDev have stood firm, in the face of much debate, on the notion that Open is just that.

 

[sidereal6]

The problem in every game, not just this one but all of them, with trolls/gankers/team-killers etc, is asymmetrical risk. If you’re playing by the rules, then you’ve loaded up with cargo or whatever - you have more at risk than the troll does.

Ultimately what causes this difference between a game and the real world is the concept of a respawn. I promise you, a lot more people would be robbing banks if we could escape the consequences of getting caught by respawning.

Of course, if you remove respawning, nobody would play the game!

What you could do in ED is have another mode like Open but the difference is, if you ever kill a player (who didn’t have a bounty), you lose the ability to respawn in that mode. You could still play open or solo, but once you die (after killing a player) you’d be locked out (unless you reset your account)

There’d still be pirates, but now they’d face consequences. And the players who hunt them down would be making a real difference.

 

[Weps]

What you could do in ED is have another mode like Open but the difference is, if you ever kill a player (who didn’t have a bounty), you lose the ability to respawn in that mode. You could still play open or solo, but once you die (after killing a player) you’d be locked out (unless you reset your account)

Yes, the concept of Ironman was hinted at by FDEV even before Beta. What was the name of that forum, the DDF?

Ten years later I'm still waiting, my beard has grown white, and no Ironman in sight...

 

[Dragsham]

I have a much simpler suggestion.






Solo

 

[Darrack]

Rather than having to lock out certain areas from psychopaths so that new players have a chance

Why? The system as it is works, new players don't have contact with any of these muppets until they have at least a grasp of the game and are able to recognise the game modes.
Keep the starting areas locked, after all they will only be there for a few days max.

O7

 

[anShpan]

C&P system in ED had lost something, namely any sort of meaningful Punishment. Just IMHO, but when I was playing Elite on ZX Spectrum, if I remember correct (35 years ago) it was a ranks for criminals, highest was "Fugitive" (?) and actually it was pretty uncomfortable to fly with it since almost every arrival in system was followed with attack of two System Security ships, and those were pretty tough to deal with since their ships, lasers and thruster were above anything purchasable in game.
And it was no AI and game somehow was fitted into 4Kbytes on mag tape...

 

[Darrack]

C&P system in ED had lost something, namely any sort of meaningful Punishment. Just IMHO, but when I was playing Elite on ZX Spectrum, if I remember correct (35 years ago) it was a ranks for criminals, highest was "Fugitive" (?) and actually it was pretty uncomfortable to fly with it since almost every arrival in system was followed with attack of two System Security ships, and those were pretty tough to deal with since their ships, lasers and thruster were above anything purchasable in game.
And it was no AI and game somehow was fitted into 4Kbytes on mag tape...

The C&P system is fine, the game needs to balance not making life hell for those who want to be a pirate or live the life of crime, those folks need to have fun to.
However the game needs to keep some of those people away from the majority who just want enjoy their time without PvP, which is why the way Fdev introduced Solo and PG modes was a stroke of genius.

O7

 

[sidereal6]

almost every arrival in system was followed with attack of two System Security ships, and those were pretty tough to deal with since their ships, lasers and thruster were above anything purchasable in game.
And it was no AI and game somehow was fitted into 4Kbytes on mag tape...

You could escape them (and pirates) pretty easily in FFE by just not turning the stardreamer all the way up. In those games, you arrived in a system at the outskirts of it, instead of by the main star, and had to fly in under constant thrust. Like you said, the police could pull more G's than you, but as long as you didn't use the highest level of time compression, they'd burn at full thrust toward you ...and then go screaming past, and usually it'd take them too long to turn around and catch you again.

 

[anShpan]

The C&P system is fine, the game needs to balance not making life hell for those who want to be a pirate or live the life of crime, those folks need to have fun to.

Well, OK, it is if you say so.
Me personally, can see at least 2 major complains from PvP adepts: not enough risk (for others) leads for boredom and NPCs are to weak and predictive. Having Security in more berserk altitude will, perhaps, solve at least one of those complains if not both. And could drive attention from human CMDR, especially new ones.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

In order to PVP kill a ship, it should require fulfilling one of these requirements (not an exhaustive list):

• Wanted with bounty
• Rival Power Play faction
• Opposing CZ faction
• Has fired upon the attacking vessel

In the case that none of these or any other reasonable criteria are met, the attacking ship cannot reduce the power plant, life support, or hull strength below 5%. This would allow for safe PVP piracy on other players as you can disable engines and extract cargo, but a new player need not worry about losing their ship "for the lulz" because some degenerate needs to attack weaker people to show their abilities. This also allows for world PVP in a fashion that does not force those who do not want to be needlessly killed into solo or private servers.

"Any other reasonable criteria" is always going to be a problem, though that list looks pretty decent for all the major points in practice.

I'd add:
- "winged up with a ship which does meet those criteria" (stops some annoying exploits with regen beams)
- "Opposing scenario faction" (megaship fights aren't CZs)
- "the system is an Anarchy" (to avoid odd problems with the "ship is wanted" criteria)
...and probably make the "has fired upon" requirement reasonably sticky (so you can't reset it by a brief hop to supercruise), and include interdictions and successful KWS scans as counting as "fired on"

Ramming as usual causes a problem, though. If your target is valid for you, but you aren't valid for your target, you can ram them without counting as "has fired upon". Your hull is capped at 5%, their hull isn't. But you can't count a ram as an attack to stop that because it's not practical to determine who was ramming who.



But it doesn't stop you killing someone who doesn't meet those criteria, either.
1) Open fire on them to disable drives, FSD and sensors (and AFMU if fitted)
2) Their choices are now to reboot/repair or to self-destruct, because they can't make it to a station without those three modules
3) If they reboot/repair, shoot them again
4) Pretty soon they won't have any other modules which have the integrity left to allow a reboot/repair.

(Or more quickly, shoot out their drives and all but 5% of hull when they're above a planet surface or heading towards an asteroid, or similar, or have an NPC in the instance which is also attacking them. The planet, being an NPC, is allowed to kill people who haven't shot it first)

C&P system in ED had lost something, namely any sort of meaningful Punishment. Just IMHO, but when I was playing Elite on ZX Spectrum, if I remember correct (35 years ago) it was a ranks for criminals, highest was "Fugitive" (?) and actually it was pretty uncomfortable to fly with it since almost every arrival in system was followed with attack of two System Security ships, and those were pretty tough to deal with since their ships, lasers and thruster were above anything purchasable in game.

This isn't really the C&P system that's at fault here - the problem goes back a bit further in that combat is designed (possibly accidentally at first, deliberately now) to be ultra-optional:
- you spend most of your time in-system in supercruise where you can't be attacked
- you can be interdicted, but you can beat the interdiction or SCO boost or turn so the NPC can't get a lock
- you can lose the interdiction but you can just boost and low wake (from NPCs) with your engineered drives and shields
- or you can high-wake which can't be blocked

The older games had the expectation that every ship - Clean or Fugitive - was going to get attacked by someone when it went from system to system as a matter of routine (whereas the last time anyone tried to interdict me was a month ago). ED is not set up for that to happen, and the "my shieldless trader got blown up by a player" complaints would get thousands of times more intense if the NPCs were capable of routinely doing the same, at least for a few years until players adapted.

The older games were also single-player, so uncontroversially able to focus on "Crime and Fun Gameplay" without trying to be a weird arthouse game which punishes people for playing it [1]. I think we'd be way better off in Elite Dangerous if we went back to that (illegal actions are fun to do, and dealing with the law is a fun part of that), and found some other way to regulate inter-player behaviour [2] than hoping that a few bounties would be a discouragement


[1] https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threads/just-got-locked-out-of-brewer-corp.637434/ etc.

[2] Which Frontier do for most forms of inter-player behaviour as it is. Hacking the game to give your ship invincible weapons, or spewing racist slurs across a busy system chat, are not punished with a 4000 credit bounty and a point of notoriety. Going AFK on a landing pad even if someone else really wants to dock there doesn't result in ship destruction for "loitering". The in-game system to regulate player-versus-NPC violence shouldn't be expected to regulate player-versus-player violence (it doesn't meaningfully regulate NPC-vs-NPC violence either, though obviously no-one cares about that)

 

[Darrack]

And could drive attention from human CMDR, especially new ones

New Commanders wont have an issue with PvP in Solo or PG, that's why those modes exist.

O7

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Wouldn't stop things like chain interdictions, wedging someone in the mailslot or other things more annoying than being simply attacked.

As has been said, if other players being able to interfere with what you're doing isn't going to be fun, select the mode which aligns with that. Less stress for everyone concerned, and less work for FDev who can get back to what they were going to do.

 

[Dragsham]

What if, assumption it's open only, each & every cmdr had Ai monitoring his/her actions ingame? I mean really smart adaptive cognitive Ai that could tell the difference between being rammed & actually ramming intentionally?
That could take action, like summon an ungodly wing of feds that had super duper firepower, and rain hell on a cmdr who breaches law n order.
Forget noteriety, forget clean or even wanted. It simply wouldn't get that far in populated systems (except anarchy/unpopulated systems).
you break the law, you ultimately pay the price of an inevitable rebuy followed by a spell incarcerated, busting rocks for whatever sentence is handed out for whatever infraction your guilty of. Not measured in hours but in weeks.
The only loophole is a button consenting to pvp. Then the gloves are off. There's no consequences.
Otherwise it's fly around do your thing and your Ai monitor watches keenly waiting for you to do something stupid. Do it and as above applys namely rebuy/clink.
It can't be hacked, can't be exploited, you don't know it's there except subtle messages warning of possible breaches of the Law.
So a Murder hobo let's say, fresh out of Jail or jumped from an anarchy/unpopulated system, flys off and immediately picks on a dude in supercruise in a populated system. Cos this hobo has a 'record', he is immediately subject to the Ai response of an inevitable rebuy. And a longer spell eating porridge.
Thus it goes on till his/her sentence is measured in mths/years hehe.
That would stop em.
Mindless ganking/ramming etc has serious consequences for the guilty cmdr. All monitored and dealt with in-house.
Ai can even detect deliberate pad blocking. It warns, it takes action.
It would need to be sophisticated. Highly tuned, bug free, and underlyingly intent on galaxy wide retention of law n order.
Now l don't know if this is possible in today's computing capacity? But if it is. Elite wouldn't need solo, pg, etc.
Obey the law and your gameplay goes without incident. Break the law and your in hell. Course it's a sliding scale. And the Ai has your record on tap.
Sounds good to me.
Piracy, hobos, etc could still exist, but consigned to anarchy systems and unpopulated areas where Ai has no sway.
But leave those systems and it gets nasty real quick for them.
Course their engineered ships can perhaps offer them some brief window of respite allowing them to quickly high wake out.
It's realistically close to how it would be lorewise.
As it stands atm its just segregated and convoluted & all l would like to see is all of us in one safe mode with universal comms/block facilitated for those who choose to do so.
Have us all in one mode but protected IF you obey the Law.
Routing across the bubble would have to be carefully executed if you wanted a peaceful run.
Yes it's not ideal but having areas where trouble exists is also realistic.
But having trouble exist in populated areas isn't, their would be actions taken in this case by the Ai to prevent it.

 

[aRJay]

What if, assumption it's open only, each & every cmdr had Ai monitoring his/her actions ingame? I mean really smart adaptive cognitive Ai that could tell the difference between being rammed & actually ramming intentionally?
...

I have a feeling that AI with that level of sophistication and affordable enough to be used in the game will only be available sometime between next year and affordable universal fusion power being available.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

I have a feeling that AI with that level of sophistication and affordable enough to be used in the game will only be available sometime between next year and affordable universal fusion power being available.

Not at all. The point of a super-sophisticated AI is that its outputs are incomprehensible, non-deterministic and unchallengable, not that they're "right" by mere human standards. So something like the following would be unexploitable, efficient, definitely AI (no human input required), completely fair, and would probably keep players busy coming up with over-complicated theories about how it did work for decades.

determineFault(CMDR a, CMDR b) {
return random(a, b, 0.5); // coin flip
}

It's realistically close to how it would be lorewise.

Once you get into "realism" things break horribly, though.

The "realistic" consequences of a super-war-fleet on standby to stamp on any pirate activity should be that the NPC pirates disappear too.
- so PvE player bounty hunters are out of a job
- and at any rate it's a rare powerful government that lets random passers-by drive live military hardware around even if it could take them out if they cause trouble

Now the galaxy is perfectly safe, there's really no reason to pay pilots big money to haul cargo when an automated tug could do the same thing much cheaper
- so player traders are out of a job, or at least getting paid a few credits per tonne at most

You might just about be able to handwave explorers still being viable, or at least willing to do it without being paid much.

 

[Rebel Yell]

I have another solution, very easy and immediately available for being implemented: explo-data and haulage/cargo receive a specific insurance (a small amount like 0.1% of explo-data and 1% of cargo value, both goes at 0% under powerplay R100 covered situations) so that they're not totally lost upon ship kaboom so nothing is lost (except rebuy, and the small insurance cost, if not covered by current powerplay R100 perks).

 

[Dragsham]

I don't believe that piracy would exist in a populated system. If it did it would be stamped out. Literally.
The classic piracy era of the late 1700s existed for just 8 years! Just 8 years before the Royal Navy annihilated them all.
That's the reality. Piracy conflicts with trade. Trade is money. Money rules supreme. And for trade to go unmolested, pirates cannot be allowed to operate unhindered. So ld argue that piracy simply wouldn't exist in populated areas. Neither would murderers. They'd be stomped on and destroyed by the state.
Unpopulated/anarchy systems different story.
I'm convinced that elite would benefit from a single mode that's secure, safe, from ganking & piracy. That having cmdrs in various modes detracts from the whole idea of an MMo.
Yes alot would change. The whole bounty system would probably cease to exist in its current format.
Haz res etc wouldn't be farmable anymore in populated systems. Alot of profound changes indeed.
But elites ultra dependency on hauling & trade would take centre ground. Much as it has in colonisation.
Most cmdrs can shake off a gnat that is a pirate npc. But a cmdr hobo/pirate is a different story. And forgive me for comparing the two, there isn't a comparison. They both simply break the law. Just to more or lesser degrees.
1 galaxy, 1 mode, harsh consequences for law breakers.
Ai could radically change things for the benefit of most, forever.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

The classic piracy era of the late 1700s existed for just 8 years!

1650 to 1730 if you want what is considered the golden era of piracy - 80 years, not 8.

Which highlights piracy and that sort of crime, like this and the wild west era of the US is a short lived phase in the development of an area if you can mount a response that combats it and establishes a rule of law. Much of this relies on patrols and deterrent that are simply impossible when pirates can just pop up instantly with no warning thanks to FTL travel.

Piracy would also have taken a very different track if the pirates could have literally disappeared into a jurisdiction they couldn't be followed 15 seconds after realising they'd been spotted by a navy fleet.

Plus since you're paying pilot's federation commanders absolutely exorbitant fees to move even a couple of hundred tons of compost around, spending large amounts on new system security ships is probably out of a lot of budgets.

So while it's true factions could be better organised at taking out pirates in ED, pirates could be far more organised in how they're raiding traders. Wouldn't be quite so much of a fun game to play though.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Unpopulated/anarchy systems different story.

Well, not really. The FSD makes it practical to move ships between systems easily. Unpopulated systems likely wouldn't have pirates because there'd be no reason to expect pirates there; lawless inhabited systems would be taken over by the nearest regional power in short order if the NPCs could just do that rather than relying on random player noise via the BGS (and even then, random player BGS noise gets rid of Anarchies pretty efficiently)

The point is that ED is a game about flying armed spaceships. For that to work there has to be something to use the weapons on. So it can't depict a society where the state has pretty much any strength whatsoever - no matter how nonsensical that is, either narratively or in terms of anything else depicted in-game - because there's not a game if it does. Ability to respond to pirates is not the only area where the ED governments have way less power than they should (see also: cargo inspections, dock traffic control, etc.)

Spaceship-flying games certainly don't need to have weapons. KSP doesn't and is better off for it. But in Elite (whether Dangerous, or the previous three) it's core to the entire concept, so the setting needs to be in service of making carrying and using weapons a sensible thing to do.