Removing rammers

The problem is that there isn't really a way to programmatically identify and penalise such actions without also penalising completely legitimate gameplay.

For instance - I find a miner, scan them. They refuse to drop any loot, and when I hatchbreak them, they run. So I pulverise them. As you might expect a pirate to do.
They're a harmless asp, I'm an elite cutter. Is that ganking or griefing? It wasn't a "for no reason" kill, they ran from a pirate.

How does the game distinguish that from just diving on someone and shooting the hell out of them for no reason at all?
Did I scan them? Message them? Fire hatchbreakers? Sure, that's a thing that pirates do but random gankers don't. But if you put those into the game as criteria to make it "legitimate combat", then all that'll happen is gankers will strap manifest scanners and a limpet controller onto their gankboats. Scan, fire literally anything into chat, fire a hatchbeaker, open fire.
What are you going to do? As soon as you impose restrictions on it like "the scan has to be complete", then how are pirates supposed to deal with people that boost as soon as a scan is detected, considering that not everyone has access to fast scanners? You have to wait 10 seconds before you can attack? I pop a sink, haha, now you can't resolve me as a target so if you try to stop me running you get flagged as a filthy ganker.

These are the sorts of things that always come up in these discussions, because most of the things people talk aboout in terms of punishing "griefers" end up devolving into "punish anyone who doesn't play the game as purely pve".

Yeah it's completely impossible. Having non lethal freezing weapons harpoons or tractor beams to allow piracy like the kind of scenario you describe... It would be drag effect outcry all over again.
 
True, the player can modify the graphics / HUD files and it is tolerated...
I don't think you meet many players in solo... (unless you count system chat 🤷‍♂️)
I don't think external utilities modify game files exactly, although they can interact with the log files to some extent, I use EDDiscovery whenever logged into any of my 3 accounts, it feeds EDSM useful info as well as assisting me...

None of this I think would logically come under the remit of cheats though...

Well you don't think indeed. I'd say, if any file is editable, that means Devs are ok for you to tweak them. I use EDprofiler and it does that.

I could think of voice attack and macros being forbidden in PvP tournaments but completely allowed by FDev.

Having no market connectors means you need to discover market by yourself. Was it the intended gameplay or not, is purely objective at this point.
 
Yeah it's completely impossible. Having non lethal freezing weapons harpoons or tractor beams to allow piracy like the kind of scenario you describe... It would be drag effect outcry all over again.
I mean, cytoscramblers/packhounds are pretty good for the piracy theme - they do a ton of damage to shields/engines respectively with relatively little hull damage. I'd love to see something like the FTL ion weapons that do temporary module damage that goes away on a reboot (or just turning the module off for a while), to keep up the theme of disabling a ship without destroying it. The trick would be making them useful for piracy without making them a horribly effective way to commit murder, since even if a tractor beam/harpoon whatever disabled the attacking ship's ability to fight, it'd make the victim a sitting duck for their wingmates.

One thing I thought of that would be useful would be a variant of a repair limpet that arrests a target's momentum provided their drives are dead. Like regular repair limpets, shooting the target would immediately detach the limpet.
 
I'd love to see something like the FTL ion weapons that do temporary module damage that goes away on a reboot (or just turning the module off for a while), to keep up the theme of disabling a ship without destroying it.

I'd love to see a way to sneak up on a vessel--unidentified, if not undetected--ambush it, knock out it's comms with the opening volley, kill it's crew, then be able to salvage the vessel without any witnesses escaping to tell the tale.

However, in a game where the only way to dispense with the crew is to destroy the ship, where everyone has unremovable name tags, where no CMDR can actually die, and when the identity of the destroyer of a vessel is invariably revealed, both on screen and in logs...this is never likely to happen.

The ability to play an intelligent and rational criminal, who always maintains plausible deniability of being affiliated with any crime, and never suffers a witness to live, is one of my big peeves regarding immersion and verisimilitude.
 
I'd love to see a way to sneak up on a vessel--unidentified, if not undetected--ambush it, knock out it's comms with the opening volley, kill it's crew, then be able to salvage the vessel without any witnesses escaping to tell the tale.

However, in a game where the only way to dispense with the crew is to destroy the ship, where everyone has unremovable name tags, where no CMDR can actually die, and when the identity of the destroyer of a vessel is invariably revealed, both on screen and in logs...this is never likely to happen.

The ability to play an intelligent and rational criminal, who always maintains plausible deniability of being affiliated with any crime, and never suffers a witness to live, is one of my big peeves regarding immersion and verisimilitude.
I saw a story about that in the other space game, where someone snuck aboard another player's ship while it was docked and just hid in a locker and waited for them to take off - and as soon as they were underway, just walked up and capped the pilot in the back of the head and left with their shiny new spaceship.
 
The only time the issue raises its head is when somone insists on playing in open but doesn't wish to be another player's content

I disagree.

I have no issue with being another player's "content". I only play in open as that risk of interception and so forth makes the game much more enjoyable.
So if a player envies my cargo and they want to take it from me then all well and good. They can interdict me and hold me up or whatever as they wish.

If however they simply interdict me and shoot me for no reason other than they like shooting things, then I have a serious issue with that.
Go and shoot NPC ships as the result is the same. Shooting down an empty, unarmed ship has no in game purpose. So I would suggest that non-game nefarious intent is all that is being satisfied, I therefor regard pointless attacks, aka griefing, as being legitimately countered by logging.
 
The problem is that there isn't really a way to programmatically identify and penalise such actions without also penalising completely legitimate gameplay.

I know, prehaps you should review the first few pages of the thread where I narrowly avoid strangling someone
 
What do you gain by ramming ?
Ramming can be quite fun! There's skill involved to ram a ship hard enough to drop theirs shields but not hard enough to destroy them. If you really want to live on the edge, try ramming hard enough to cause them to lose shields and drop hull far enough, but not completely, so that as they careen off your ship and hit someone else's ship (or the station) that the other ship gets blamed and destroyed by the station. I've never been able to pull off the latter stunt but if I ever do, I'd be rolling on the floor laughing. 😀
 
Would it bother you if the person you had done that too was pretty annoyed that you did it to them though?
I never said I rammed players. I ram NPCs and they've always been a good sport about it, not like those hoomanz. I've been the object of hooman rammers and I always get a chuckle out of their futile attempt to scratch my paint.
 
I never said I rammed players. I ram NPCs and they've always been a good sport about it, not like those hoomanz. I've been the object of hooman rammers and I always get a chuckle out of their futile attempt to scratch my paint.

Fair enough but my question to you is if you had as you mentioned in your post "been able to pull off the latter stunt but if I ever do, I'd be rolling on the floor laughing. " ?
Would you really find it amusing to destroy another player just for fun?
You know there could be the prospect that you've just done that to an Explorer who has just returned with 3 weeks worth of data and it's now all down the toilet.
 
@Maggie_Oz, you're so judgmental, and with absolutely no information to be outraged. You assume I would do that to an explorer or a noob. Come down from that tall horse and stick to commenting on what you know, not what you assume. To answer your question directly, yeah, I'd find it funny if the target had previously been a dik. Delivering karma can be quite fun!
 
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@Maggie_Oz, you're so judgmental, and with absolutely no information to be outraged. You assume I would do that to an explorer or a noob. Come down from that tall horse and stick to commenting on what you know, not what you assume. To answer your question directly, yeah, I'd find it funny if the target had previously been a dik. Delivering karma can be quite fun!

I'm not judging anyone or anything. I am also not outraged, I am simply asking what your thoughts are in the context of what the thread is about, that's all.
 
I'm not judging anyone or anything. I am also not outraged, I am simply asking what your thoughts are in the context of what the thread is about, that's all.
Ha! Read your own posts. Your question "Would you really find it amusing to destroy another player just for fun?" is judgmental.
 
Ha! Read your own posts. Your question "Would you really find it amusing to destroy another player just for fun?" is judgmental.

ah no, "You're a terrible person for destroying another player for fun" is judgemental, asking if you would do it for fun, is a question.
 
Questions by their very nature can indeed be judgemental, as yours was. Just because it is a question doesn't eliminate the inference. I'm guessing that you're single and have never asked your spouse a question that they felt upset at the inferred judgement in the question.
 
This tangent has managed to suck all the fun out of this conversation. I still think it would be hilarious given the right circumstances.
 
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