I acknowledge that this potential isn't what everyone is looking for.
The game's balance is heavily slanted toward survival of the defender and most CMDRs absolutely could escape the overwhelming majority of the time. Parity of skill and equipment implies a ~50% chance of victory in an combat encounter where no retreat is possible. However, escape can be almost a certainty, even if the opposition is more numerous, more skilled, and better armed. The skill floor to make escape far and away the most common outcome of an organic PvP encounter is not high.
I 'lose' far more PvP encounters than I 'win', but I have many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of organic PvP encounters and less than a dozen rebuys associated with them. The only time my CMDR has ever been shot down without at least trying to fight back was the first, and only, time I allowed him to fall victim to a suicidewinder. Unless the opposition is very numerous, perfectly outfitted, and phenomenally skilled, I have to make a chain of serious mistakes for escape to be anything less than virtually guaranteed. Pilots much worse than I should be able to escape the overwhelming majority of the time against pilots much better than I. You don't need to be part of the top 10% to survive, but you probably have to be part of the bottom 10% to lose a ship more often than not, if one's only goal is survival/escape.
Frankly, the game is already slanted too far in favor of the defender. It effectively negates any hope of meaningful consequences for anyone other than the abject novice. It's a big part of what has encouraged the (still generally overstated) level of ganking we have, and what makes non-accidental criminals immune to punishment. To keep from burdening those players who never learned to fly, the level of consequence has to be virtually nonexistent for everyone else.
The problem here isn't really even a PvP vs. PvE, or an Open vs. other modes, thing. It's a 'how to make a game that can even pretend to exist in the setting described by the Elite franchise if the most ignorant, unaware, and laziest pilots are always pefectly safe?' sort of thing. I don't think this is possible in a multiplayer game where the difficulty, whatever that is, is going to apply to everyone, in practice.
It's impossible.
Open, as it is today, is already frustratingly safe for many of those who aren't willing to handicap their characters.
About two hours hours in an unEngineered Hauler with a fuel scoop.
That said, his build is far in excess of anything remotely required for survival. You don't even need Engineering.
Says the guy with an f**ing carrier
And the guy who had 5k ly from Sol as a primarily combat pilot in a Viper Mk III more than a year before anyone had any idea it would have been a requirement for anything.
I tried an FC out in the beta. Even if I thought they were a positive addition to the game (I don't), managing it was enough of a chore that I have no intentions of my CMDR ever purchasing one on live.
I'm rather frustrated that the Elite Solo experience doesn't mandate a head-on-a-swivel, at least when in space that could be expected to be dangerous, or when flying a CMDR with the background of my own anywhere near inhabited space.
My CMDR has sided with and betrayed a thousand different factions, traded slaves, supplied terrorists, hauled dangerous contraband, personally murdered tens of thousands of people, and condemned countless more to fates worse than death, all without any pretense of necessity...he's a well heeled genocide tourist, the kind of sociopathic terror that exudes an aura like he's real, but everyone else is just an NPC in a video game. He should rightfully have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life. If he's docked in Sol under the protection of the Federation president, someone should bomb his ship in the hangar and an angry mob should march into the starport concourse and manually tear him to pieces...cheering as they run off (to do the same to anyone who was ever even rumored to be associated with him) with bloody souvenirs of their victory over such a monstrous evil. That would make sense. Being able to go around like there aren't a million of his victims willing to kill until they die in a blood vendetta to give him his just deserts...that's nuts.
At the very least, the PvE consequences that should exist in any credible setting should mean my CMDR has to adopt a new identity and cower alone out in the black, never coming within twenty jumps of the bubble again.
What do I have instead? "Welcome back CMDR, it's a pleasure to have you with us."
PvP has always been an expectation of mine, but rarely a goal. Violence is just another tool.
My first PvP kill was in September 2014, about 40 minutes after binding my controls and doing the tutorials for the first time. The reason? Someone was trying to stop my CMDR from going where my CMDR wanted to go.
Of course, Frontier has been trying to relegate PvP to some kind of 'end game' for a long time...a tactic which I feel does a disservice to everyone, but that basically sums up my opinion of most updates at this point.
