Should ships always have the ability to flee?

[Lestat]

I think it would hurt game play. Right now players can have a wing of pilots with them. Adding this feature make combat too easy.

 

[KellyR]

First, i'm going to say, yes. There should always be an escape hatch (barring FSD/an or thruster damage).

Outside of combat it should not really be a problem since it's mostly about range from a target.
Sure, "hugging" might be a new griefing method to stop people from going into SC.

The broken part about the current implementation is that ONE ship with a mass lock factor of 12 can lock a ship but two ships with a mass lock of 6 cannot.

That, does not make sense and mass lock itself have no clear explanation either.

- It's not based on mass (T-9 at 1000 tonnes have ML16 and the Icutter at 1100 tonnes have 27)
- It's not based on armour or shields
- It's not based on hull volume
- It's not based on FSD size

I think it might be based on hull area. A T-9 has a mass of 1000 tonnes while a cutter has a mass of 1100 tonnes. The hull area of a Cutter is larger. But looking at it on a size comparison chart, it's not that much larger. I think it might have something to do with combat ability of the craft. Probably not solely, but I'm sure there has to be a reason. And that reason doesn't necessarily have to be based on physics; there are also game play considerations. But in something like this, I feel, there's going to be some physics going into the equation. But no matter; we don't have to understand why something works for it to work. According to all the math, the whirlybird helicopter shouldn't fly. The math says it doesn't produce quite enough thrust to get off the ground. And yet it does. So our math or the way we understand the math is wrong.