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Newcomer / Intro Wonderful. Now "wanted" because an idiot flew through my mining beam.
- Thread starter Hythos
- Start date
I have tried to fly through NPC mining lasers, but they never hit me...they always stop firing before I can get hit.
On the subject of fire control...yes it is ridiculous that an NPC would fly through the mining lasers but...this is an example of fire control in the extreme...no furball, lots of ships all flying around. It is a stationary ship firing on a stationary object, and unless the other ship just simply didn't show on radar and was flying so fast as not to be seen, yes it was a dumb move on their part, but certainly, maybe even more easily avoidable than friendly fire in combat.
Well, actually it still does have everything with fire control in addition to situational awareness....you know that little thing in the middle with concentric circles called a radar display.
In the motorcycling world, we call it 'Target Fixation'.
It will get you killed.
Toffs
( '-')7
kinda like that but totally different, I get jumped by a pirate so I get in a dog fight, then a Bunch of Fed fighters jump In and start helping me take em down. It's like 4 on one. Whatever I still get the bounty (well In these cases I have been but I also been getting the kill shots) well in the coinfusion I hit one of the feds. All of a sudden it's now 4 on one against me and the feds don't care about the pirate anymore. I finish the bounty, take a Fed down, and get the heck outta dodge. Idk I just found it funny And this reminded me of it.
I truly hope they don't change this. Why play a simulator game that makes you invincible against a weapon (a mining laser can damage)?
At times I actually try and attract a hit from a CMDR that isn't paying attention and in the area I am patrolling. If he gets wanted, he normally has to leave to clear his name. Leaving me to play in 'open' and collect, not share, the bounties that fly in. Pay attention to your beams, or pay the price! I fall foul of it on occasion, it is a valid real life game mechanic - after all, my friends cars will hit and kill me just as anyone else's would if I jumped in front of them!
At times I actually try and attract a hit from a CMDR that isn't paying attention and in the area I am patrolling. If he gets wanted, he normally has to leave to clear his name. Leaving me to play in 'open' and collect, not share, the bounties that fly in. Pay attention to your beams, or pay the price! I fall foul of it on occasion, it is a valid real life game mechanic - after all, my friends cars will hit and kill me just as anyone else's would if I jumped in front of them!
I have about 500 bounty kills with 3.5 million credits from bounties and over 2.5 million credits from ~20 assassination missions. I'm not a flight sim ace or Elite pilot by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I understand the combat mechanic well enough to aver that it's not the problem people say it is. And yes, it has happened to me too - about 10 times. However, I don't complain about it, I hightail it out of the engagement zone, pay my fine and come back. If it's an assassination mission, the cops bloody wait until the Anaconda is down before turning on you! You always have plenty of time to get away.
The simple fact of the matter is that if you shoot someone, even accidentally, at the very least the police will want to speak to you under caution. If you shoot a cop, even accidentally, they will turn their guns on you. The AI can be improved to stop it making the really stupid maneuvers, and I guess there could be a surrender mode included that leads to paying a somewhat larger fine and immediate return to the police faction's station, but the mechanic is fine as it is. I've died once from police fire, and that was because I had turrets installed and I forgot to switch them from 'fire at will', accidentally hit a cop with my multicannon when engaging a wanted at a nav beacon (I was about a kilometre away and I fired without checking the line of fire properly) and then, well, the turrets took over and brought the whole system armada in on my position firing everything they had at me. It was my fault (and hilarious).
I appreciate that people dislike having to compensate for the stupidity of others, but stupidity is a fact of life, as is friendly fire, and many players don't seem to want to recognise that they play a significant role in the incidents. Look at the video posted - there are dumbfire trails indicating that a ship is on a course that will intersect, and the scanner clearly shows that it's moving really, really fast. It was the first thing I noticed after the video looped. The video is too short to really make a strong determination either way, but from what there is, I feel that the player wasn't paying enough attention to what was going on around them.
Yes, the AI is a bit dumb. Improve it. But removing the mechanic that actually requires you to have a basic spatial awareness in a 3D flying and shooting game is just as dumb. Why should the police be like "Oh, it's OK, don't worry about shooting me a bit - it was just a bit! You only shot me a bit. It wasn't shooting me a lot, so it's nothing to worry about"? It's just absurd!
The scanner is the second most important thing to be looking at when you're engaging a target, and the most important when they're out of your visual arc. There are videos where people are showing off the free-look, and yes it's useful. But that's just a bonus - the representation of the ship on the left of the scanner and the tailed dot on the scanner itself give you enough information to infer plenty about target position, relative momentum and orientation. Try playing modern FPS without looking at the minimap (or playing a hardcore server that turns it off) and see how often you get gubbed from behind. Play with the minimap on for 100 hours and note the change. The same principle applies in Elite - you have limited visibility in the cockpit, especially in a ship like the Viper (which I use), and combat in RESes is too constrained and fast-paced to make free-look really viable without an expensive face-tracking solution (FaceTrackNoIR is a bit patchy, especially if there's a light source behind you). The sensor display is there for a reason.
Understanding it is therefore paramount.
Many players just want the combat to be simple point-and-shoot. It's not and it shouldn't be. The scanner is the single best tool for spatial awareness in the game, and I genuinely believe that not enough people pay it enough attention, which has led to the proposed "you only shot me a bit" mechanic. I won't complain about it greatly - it makes my job easier, but it will dumb combat down so people don't have to learn.
To reiterate, my initial comment about the mining laser incident was a joke.
I've not heard of it happening very often - is it worth gimping a game mechanic to fix a separate, minor issue?
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