No you don't code or understand networking. "Other" games run on a client server model with the server maintaining the client in game, ELite runs a Peer to Peer model with the client computers maintaining themselves in the game, take away the client computer and you take away the client, you can't maintain the character ingame because the computer doing that is no longer connected. That's fairly much a simplicification but it gives the basic idea.
The Fix For Combat Logging (MENU LOG)
- Thread starter Swizzy o7o7
- Start date
No you don't code or understand networking. "Other" games run on a client server model with the server maintaining the client in game, ELite runs a Peer to Peer model with the client computers maintaining themselves in the game, take away the client computer and you take away the client, you can't maintain the character ingame because the computer doing that is no longer connected. That's fairly much a simplicification but it gives the basic idea.
What you are talking about is the difference between a dedicated server instance and peer-to-peer networking. Elite currently uses p2p, and the suggestion you are requesting for a problem that is a statistical minority would require a total rewrite of the networking architecture.
Menu-logging (rather than combat-logging) is supposed to cater for situations where you have to abandon the game to deal with a real-life emergency while you are in a combat situation. That's why it's inappropriate to impose a long timer or to reset the timer if you take damage - you still have a legitimate need to get out of combat. Otherwise you might as well use self-destruct instead (and ironically you don't have to "confirm" a self-destruct when the timer expires).
The most urgently-needed fix is to remove the confirmation when the timer expires. Another suggestion I'd like to make is that your ship doesn't just sit there, it continues to fight as if being controlled by an NPC copilot with a combat rank equal to your own. Unlike the combat-log situation, you are still logged in to the instance while the timer is running, so there is still a "you" to continue the fight. You might even win! And if that is possible, the timer could be extended if this is deemed appropriate: menu-logging would no longer be an "I surrender, kill me now" option.
The most urgently-needed fix is to remove the confirmation when the timer expires. Another suggestion I'd like to make is that your ship doesn't just sit there, it continues to fight as if being controlled by an NPC copilot with a combat rank equal to your own. Unlike the combat-log situation, you are still logged in to the instance while the timer is running, so there is still a "you" to continue the fight. You might even win! And if that is possible, the timer could be extended if this is deemed appropriate: menu-logging would no longer be an "I surrender, kill me now" option.
This would punish honest players. And with the track record of my ISP, this would have been quite costly for me at some times. WE cannot forget about all the support cases this would generate to have their rebuy costs reimbursed.
I do not like systems that assumes guilty until proven innocent. I also do understand the challenges in trying to get to the players we are actually want to have stop abusing the system. This is also why we should not mix how the game should react and handle menu log and combat log, as these are two different things.
FDev have already announced a system that would deal with this kind of situation in their Karma system. Karma system in itself would not be able to tell if a single disconnect was deliberate or not, but what Karma system would do was to look at your previous data aswell, and by doing this we could see a trend. Karma system was announced before the update to C&P, and I would rather have had the Karma system in place before they updated the C&P system, as they would have been able to use C&P to react to the Karma system.
So if just look at the Karma system from Combat logging perspective.
If you genuinely have a bad internet, you would appear to be dropping out of the game any time, when safe, when in danger, and in winning and loosing situations. So Karma system would not flag you. As the data shows this. Would this give these players a free disconnect in loosing situations? yes. But it is not these players we are after. Because if they keep doing it, then the system would eventually flag them.
If you only (mostly) disconnects when you are in a fight and risk of loosing, then the Karma system would see this trend and start acting accordingly. Now this is what we are after. And the more a players does this,the faster the Karma system will flag for this. When you reach certain thresholds, we could now start acting on this at your next login. for example we could do warning messages followed by fines based on rebuy, that has to be paid before entering the game and at the top level we take you directly to the rebuy screen.
So Karma system would take time to identify the players doing constant combat logging disconnects. But it would in the end force those players to change behaviour or keep paying the rebuy anyway.
How would that respond to a save wipe?
I would expect the Karma system to retain the old data
So something like this, the old data is marked as "old".
Then we start to build a fresh Karma profile and as data is gathered, we start to see a trend, it will be run against the "old" data aswell, so we will pretty soon see if the player is trying for a fresh start or just trying to game the system by getting a "clean" Karma by resetting their CMDR.
If you are going back to the old ways, we simply re-add all the old Karma data and continue from there. And this too could be used to see if you tried to do this multiple times in the past as well, making each reset of your save to have the Karma system go back to your old Karma score faster and faster.