Will Colonisation Attract Gankers?

[Ian Doncaster]

I think it's fair to say that everything needs to be dialed-back, to some extent, until FDev manage to devise a meaningful system of C&P.

I think that "C&P" is the wrong way to think about that, though.

Was "Distant Ganks 2" perfectly fine player behaviour because it (largely) took place in uninhabited systems?
Is someone who picks up a 200cr trespass bounty from a PvE mission now a perfectly valid target for CMDR MurderBoat so long as they pack a KWS?
Is it absolutely fine for a high-rank Delaine pledge to shoot whoever they like on their territory (but bad and wrong and griefing for the other player to fire back?)
Back in the Thargoid War was shooting down AX combat pilots (crimes off or uninhabited system) absolutely fine but shooting down AX haulers (crimes on, inhabited system) bad?

Powerplay certainly complicates it further: any other pledge can fire on any explorer pledged to LYR/Antal for the payout bonuses, in any system, without gaining more than token bounties and no notoriety.
- if the LYR/Antal pledge is carrying back that data to reinforce a system that's clearly a perfectly legitimate Powerplay action to shoot them down
- if they're just planning to sell it to their HQ system to get the payout bonus but not apply merits anywhere, the game can't know that in advance (and neither can the person firing on them know that they were planning to sell it inconsequentially)

Personally, I'd much rather FDev impemented a more plausible, yet robust, system that created a sliding-scale of jeopardy, in both directions.
At one end, lawful players could feel secure in high-security systems and outlaws would be terrified of entering them.
At the other end, lawful players would be terrified of Anarchies while outlaws could feel secure there.

The problem is that a mechanism which works for PvE outlaws doesn't really apply to PvP outlaws, and vice versa. Differentiating security levels further - especially if "Low" became similarly dangerous to Feudal/Multigov in the previous games - would work for PvE (sort of) but not for PvP. Similarly, the point of a PvE C&P system should be to make crime interesting and fun [1]. That's not generally what people are saying killing unarmed explorers should have more of.

About half the basic Engineers are in "low security" systems. One of the starter engineers - Ryder - is in a system essentially forced to Anarchy by Ryder's own unlock requirements. In practical terms, "ganking people at Farseer is very bad", "ganking people at Martuuk is okay" and "ganking people at Ryder is encouraged" isn't generally how people express their complaints about people camping engineer bases.

There's just nowhere near a strong enough correlation between "is this action legal?" and "will I get accused of griefing if I do this?" for the C&P system to be a remotely useful way of attempting to regulate inter-player conduct.

[1] Odyssey having lots of supposed-to-be-fun criminal content wedged on top of Horizons' "why are you doing crimes, we didn't implement those so players could do them?!" C&P system is the obvious example of the clash.

In ED, it's all a bit "meh", with every system being as likely as any other to be sketchy, regardless of theoretical security levels etc.

Yes. The problem is that security levels do actually have a substantial effect on supercruise NPCs and the security response to them ... but we have SCO drives and NPC interdictions were trivially escapable in multiple ways even before then, so it doesn't make any actual difference to even a slightly experienced player. They don't usefully affect POIs at all, which is where you go if you actually want to fight an NPC.

Can't be fixed now. There have been layers and layers of things built on top of the "combat is optional, it's the destination not the journey" design of ED over the last decade that can't be unpicked.

 

[Screemonster]

Fair comment.

Seems like FDev have always looked at individual things one at a time and tried to "balance" them individually.
It'd all work much better (although it'd certainly be harder to implement) if they could create an overaching framework for C&P that applied to everything - related to PvP, PvE, players and NPCs.

It's a bit hackneyed, now, but I really, really, want to feel the same level of trepidation that I felt when I dropped into Riedquat in Elite84, and also the same sense of relief that I felt when I arrived in a system like Lave.
In ED, it's all a bit "meh", with every system being as likely as any other to be sketchy, regardless of theoretical security levels etc.

I'd love if there was an actual meaningful difference between security levels besides "how long it takes for the cops to show up". Including numbers, ability and aggression of NPC pirates.

Jump into Riedquat in ED and it's largely the same as any other system. Especially with it being, in complete contradiction to the lore, yet another generic corporate system because that's what the sim allows. Jump into Orrere nearby, an actual anarchy system, and... it's largely the same as any other system.

You have the same odds of having assassins sent after you for a mission in highsec as you do in an anarchy. Does sec even affect the spawn rate of pirates coming after you for regular cargo?

 

[Screemonster]

[1] Odyssey having lots of supposed-to-be-fun criminal content wedged on top of Horizons' "why are you doing crimes, we didn't implement those so players could do them?!" C&P system is the obvious example of the clash.

Yeah. The original crime and punishment system with the timers, for all its flaws, at least seemed to be designed with the idea in mind that players will be actually doing crimes, and doing a crime should have gameplay consequences of making it more dangerous to fly for a while without actually throwing a hard brick wall in your face. The C&P update seemed a lot more focused on "you shouldn't be doing crimes you baddie, all crimes should be punished and there must be no getting away with them".

There's a happy medium to be found between the two. IMO the C&P update would have been fantastic if they'd only implemented about half of it.

 

[Stealthie]

Can't be fixed now. There have been layers and layers of things built on top of the "combat is optional, it's the destination not the journey" design of ED over the last decade that can't be unpicked.

I did mean to add, in my previous post, that I'd honestly prefer it if FDev rebuilt C&P instead of creating another "headline feature" but I fear that wouldn't make good business-sense and it would almost certainly be just as big a task.

 

[Screemonster]

I did mean to add, in my previous post, that I'd honestly prefer it if FDev rebuilt C&P instead of creating another "headline feature" but I fear that wouldn't make good business-sense and it would almost certainly be just as big a task.

Honestly I'm curious whether it would be easier to just rip out and redo the whole thing than it would be to fix it at this point.

Nearly four years on and superpower bounties are still bugged in odyssey.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

You have the same odds of having assassins sent after you for a mission in highsec as you do in an anarchy. Does sec even affect the spawn rate of pirates coming after you for regular cargo?

It's been a while since I did enough missions and trading to be sure, but I think yes in all three cases:

- mission enemies aren't that much more likely to appear in low-security systems, but I'm fairly sure that the chance of the "enemies present" wrinkle starting is higher in a low-sec system
- certainly I get more "tasty cargo" pirates specifically after me in low-sec than high-sec
- the generic supercruise NPCs tend more towards criminals (pirates/smugglers) and more towards higher-ranked criminals comparing low sec and high sec.

But there, of course, is the problem. In the average system, the supercruise instance is created for you on arrival, and therefore doesn't contain NPCs. By the time they show up (even if specifically aimed at you) you're already beyond their reach even without SCO unless you deliberately go for a Pirate Approved supercruise approach.

(I've been attacked by NPCs which only existed because another player had created the supercruise instance earlier tens of times more often than the player has directly attacked me, therefore)

I doubt it would be a popular move to say that "interdictions auto-succeed" and "you always get the long FSD cooldown" but that is the absolute minimum required to make security levels "meaningful" in a PvE context, by making the fights that low-sec generates at least somewhat non-optional; it would probably also need following up by significantly rebalancing SCO (so that it's useful for travelling between stars, but not between planets), making supercruise pre-populate with NPCs even if you're making a new instance of it, and taking out the angle requirement for interdictions.

Honestly I'm curious whether it would be easier to just rip out and redo the whole thing than it would be to fix it at this point.

Rip out and not replace it with anything at all might be the simplest option.

Most currently "criminal" activities already have a lower Cr/hr potential than the legal ones, even before having fines/bounties/notoriety/hostility/etc is piled on top of them, so they're probably discouraged enough that way anyway.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Yeah. The original crime and punishment system with the timers, for all its flaws, at least seemed to be designed with the idea in mind that players will be actually doing crimes, and doing a crime should have gameplay consequences of making it more dangerous to fly for a while without actually throwing a hard brick wall in your face. The C&P update seemed a lot more focused on "you shouldn't be doing crimes you baddie, all crimes should be punished and there must be no getting away with them".

There's a happy medium to be found between the two. IMO the C&P update would have been fantastic if they'd only implemented about half of it.

Ironically timers + persistent ATR (for that timer period) would be better and more fun, coupled with murder going back to its full 1/x / 2/x impact.

 

[Reggit]

I wish FDev would have a system where everyone is in Open all the time, and gankers got their accounts sent to a special zone where they can interact with other gankers and no one else, permanently.

I never gank.
But I enjoy fighting the gankers.
This idea would totally destroy my gameplay

 

[Screemonster]

Ironically timers + persistent ATR (for that timer period) would be better and more fun, coupled with murder going back to its full 1/x / 2/x impact.

ATR is one of the things in the C&P update that I would definitely keep.
Along with the notoriety multiplier - which was funnily enough the thing that made my behated "hot ships/modules" mechanic unnecessary.
Anonymous access would be great if we'd kept the original timer model of "you get a fine, if you don't pay it in a week it becomes a bounty, when the bounty expires it becomes a legacy fine" - apply anon access for bounties but not fines (since the problem it was created to solve was wanted cmdrs just running cold through the mailslot and otherwise ignoring the fact that they were wanted) and maybe apply to legacy fines as well, though personally I'd put a decay-over-time system in on those if that were the case.

And buff the base value of bounties for actual violent crimes. Getting a bounty on your head for murder should be expensive with the chance of avoiding that expense if you keep your head down enough for the heat to blow over, rather than the current "wait for notoriety to run out then get rid of it at your earliest convenience" system.

 

[Rubbernuke]

ATR is one of the things in the C&P update that I would definitely keep.
Along with the notoriety multiplier - which was funnily enough the thing that made my behated "hot ships/modules" mechanic unnecessary.
Anonymous access would be great if we'd kept the original timer model of "you get a fine, if you don't pay it in a week it becomes a bounty, when the bounty expires it becomes a legacy fine" - apply anon access for bounties but not fines (since the problem it was created to solve was wanted cmdrs just running cold through the mailslot and otherwise ignoring the fact that they were wanted) and maybe apply to legacy fines as well, though personally I'd put a decay-over-time system in on those if that were the case.

And buff the base value of bounties for actual violent crimes. Getting a bounty on your head for murder should be expensive with the chance of avoiding that expense if you keep your head down enough for the heat to blow over, rather than the current "wait for notoriety to run out then get rid of it at your earliest convenience" system.

Yes- for a long time I've wanted some sort of laying low mechanic that would ironically be very easy to implement: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-npc-player-scan-spawns-an-atr-vessel.533172/

 

[Doctor Dread]

Much simpler solution would be PvE/PvP flag in "all Open" universe.

 

[Tifu]

Yes- for a long time I've wanted some sort of laying low mechanic that would ironically be very easy to implement:

It's a good idea

Kotuma's proposed limitation also makes sense

source: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...-npc-player-scan-spawns-an-atr-vessel.533172/

 

[Screemonster]

Much simpler solution would be PvE/PvP flag in "all Open" universe.

The problem with that is what happens if you see a powerplay enemy who has the pvp flag off? Or someone with a gigantic bounty? Or you want to hatchbreak a miner for their cargo without killing them?

Or would you make the pvp flag situationally effective? Which, yanno, I don't hate.

 

[Rat Catcher]

Much simpler solution would be PvE/PvP flag in "all Open" universe.

Much simpler, without the, very valid, point by Scree...

The problem with that is what happens if you see a powerplay enemy who has the pvp flag off? Or someone with a gigantic bounty? Or you want to hatchbreak a miner for their cargo without killing them?

Or would you make the pvp flag situationally effective? Which, yanno, I don't hate.

Would be just having 2 'open' universes, 1 with PvP possible (so the pirates can get their goodies) and another without. (just another mode change on the login screen)
The PvE 'open' should not permit PP 2.0 activities for anything bar personal merits (so the player can get to level 100 and have every module) thus removing the possibility of playing the actual competitive content of PP 2.0

 

[Stealthie]

Along with the notoriety multiplier - which was funnily enough the thing that made my behated "hot ships/modules" mechanic unnecessary.
Anonymous access would be great if....

I have, genuinely, never been able to understand how they managed to make all that stuff both so convoluted and, at the same time, so pointless.
It was all just willfully, stubbornly, contrived.

Just been having (literally) this same convo' in another thread.
The galaxy knows you did a crime because we can reasonably assume your target had "Report Crimes On" when you attacked them.
Great. Got it. No problem.

That being said, if there were no witnesses, or you exploded them all, there's nobody who could, theoretically, follow you and go "That's him! He's the one wot dun it!!"

So, having successfully (no remaining witnesses) left the scene of a crime, nobody else you encounter should realise that the ship flying toward them is you... until they either scan you or get physically close enough to identify your ship.

In gameplay terms, as long as you keep away from other ships, and avoid getting scanned, you'd be free to fly about being shady.
Depending on the value of your bounty, other ships would be more determined to find you.
You're flying an FdL (because of course you are) and as soon as any FdL arrives at a station the cops ignore other traffic to scan FdLs.
Same thing in a RES or at a surface base.
Once you're Public Enemy #1, every ship in the vicinity is looking for you but you're free to go about your business as long as you don't get identified.

Additionally, maybe FDev could add a "Transponder Scrambler" utility module which, if activated at the correct time could help you avoid detection.
They wouldn't even have to make a new model for it because it'd be a covert module, disguised as, say, an SB or PDT but maybe a different colour.
If that was too much trouble, just expand the usefulness of the ECM so it does that job.
You'd need this module to bluff your way into every station in every system aside from anarchies.

This would all continue indefinitely, until you either got exploded or you paid off your bounty. No timers or notoriety or any other malarkay.

That could all work completely transparently, behind the scenes, with no timers to check or criteria to meet.
Once you were an outlaw you'd just have that constant concern that somebody might recognise you unless you were in a safe place such as an anarchy.


Oh and, if it was up to me, I'd set it up so that once your bounty reached a certain threshold (both in terms of value and depending on the crimes) there'd come a point where you simply couldn't pay off your bounty.
You're a fugitive until you eat a missile.

 

[Screemonster]

Much simpler, without the, very valid, point by Scree...

Would be just having 2 'open' universes, 1 with PvP possible (so the pirates can get their goodies) and another without. (just another mode change on the login screen)
The PvE 'open' should not permit PP 2.0 activities for anything bar personal merits (so the player can get to level 100 and have every module) thus removing the possibility of playing the actual competitive content of PP 2.0

A while ago I was musing the idea of a pvp flag that (barring a few exceptions like CZs, wanted ships, powerplay enemies and so on) would allow your ship to be damaged but not destroyed. That would still allow pirates to pull, kill drives, hatchbreak and so on, but rocking up with a python full of shotguns and unloading them directly into some random asp wouldn't allow you to kill them.

People here shot it down because "what if you shoot out someone's engines near a planet and they crash". Which, yeah, that's possible, but that's also possible now.

 

[Screemonster]

I have, genuinely, never been able to understand how they managed to make all that stuff both so convoluted and, at the same time, so pointless.
It was all just willfully, stubbornly, contrived.

Just been having (literally) this same convo' in another thread.
The galaxy knows you did a crime because we can reasonably assume your target had "Report Crimes On" when you attacked them.
Great. Got it. No problem.

That being said, if there were no witnesses, or you exploded them all, there's nobody who could, theoretically, follow you and go "That's him! He's the one wot dun it!!"

So, having successfully (no remaining witnesses) left the scene of a crime, nobody else you encounter should realise that the ship flying toward them is you... until they either scan you or get physically close enough to identify your ship.

In gameplay terms, as long as you keep away from other ships, and avoid getting scanned, you'd be free to fly about being shady.
Depending on the value of your bounty, other ships would be more determined to find you.
You're flying an FdL (because of course you are) and as soon as any FdL arrives at a station the cops ignore other traffic to scan FdLs.
Same thing in a RES or at a surface base.
Once you're Public Enemy #1, every ship in the vicinity is looking for you but you're free to go about your business as long as you don't get identified.

Additionally, maybe FDev could add a "Transponder Scrambler" utility module which, if activated at the correct time could help you avoid detection.
They wouldn't even have to make a new model for it because it'd be a covert module, disguised as, say, an SB or PDT but maybe a different colour.
If that was too much trouble, just expand the usefulness of the ECM so it does that job.
You'd need this module to bluff your way into every station in every system aside from anarchies.

This would all continue indefinitely, until you either got exploded or you paid off your bounty. No timers or notoriety or any other malarkay.

That could all work completely transparently, behind the scenes, with no timers to check or criteria to meet.
Once you were an outlaw you'd just have that constant concern that somebody might recognise you unless you were in a safe place such as an anarchy.


Oh and, if it was up to me, I'd set it up so that once your bounty reached a certain threshold (both in terms of value and depending on the crimes) there'd come a point where you simply couldn't pay off your bounty.
You're a fugitive until you eat a missile.

dear god don't get me started on the panopticon

that was a problem in every version of crime and punishment, before and after the update - most players just didn't realise it until Odyssey brought it into sharp focus how silly it was the all-seeing crime database was able to issue you a bounty for blasting some guy at a crash site on an uninhabited planet with no witnesses for a million miles.

Funnily enough FE2 had it much simpler for assassinations - you could blow the guy away right there at the starport and immediately get a huge bounty and be set upon by a million police vipers, or you could follow their hyperspace cloud and kill them in deep space at the other end where there was nobody to witness the deed.

 

[Brrokk]

Much simpler solution would be PvE/PvP flag in "all Open" universe.

I think all-Open is a non-starter for simpler reasons. Last night at the CG I changed from Mobius to Solo because the station was so crowded and NPCs got stuck in the mail slot.

 

[Screemonster]

I think all-Open is a non-starter for simpler reasons. Last night at the CG I changed from Mobius to Solo because the station was so crowded and NPCs got stuck in the mail slot.

Yeah, fighting the titan in sol gave me the endless torus bug in the AXI pg, never mind what it was like in open.

 

[Stealthie]

The problem with that is what happens if you see a powerplay enemy who has the pvp flag off? Or someone with a gigantic bounty? Or you want to hatchbreak a miner for their cargo without killing them?

Or would you make the pvp flag situationally effective? Which, yanno, I don't hate.

Ah, this is all coming back to me now.

I seem to recall constantly saying to people "First thing you need to ask, with any new feature, is if it could be abused".
Cos, let's face it, if it can be abused it will be... about 2 minutes after it's introduced.

In the case of a "PvE flag" system, I can think of heaps of ways it could be abused.
4 ships with healy-beams and PvE flag on supporting another ship with PvE flag off could cause an awful lot of mischief, with no means of intervening.
Big ships with PvE flag on could do a great job of running interference during some PvP encounter (such as, perhaps, something in PP).
Basically, in anything where blocking or ramming other ships could yield an advantage, a PvE flag could cause huge issues.

At which point, somebody might say "Okay then, if you have the PvE flag on and you damage another player ship it is immediately cancelled"
So, you're doing a bit of pew-pew in a RES (with your PvE flag on), Ganker #1 flies in front of you in an unshielded sidey, you damage their ship, flag goes off and Ganker #2 immediately melts your ship.

If it can be abused, it will be.