I cannot understand why other pilots are more successful at the last shot that you are.
With respect.
Worth a rant.
- Thread starter Seethe
- Start date
I cannot understand why other pilots are more successful at the last shot that you are.
With respect.
Gotta say am confused too, I finish targets from an angle that gives me most area to target, so I have 3 gatlins pouring down on the target, but some NPCs still get their shots there.
Well if that's the case, it must also apply to the player or NPC that flies straight into a stream of cannon fire that the attacking player is pumping into the enemy ship.
In a military situation you have established arcs of fire that you never enter, because if you did, you'd be hit, and it would be your responsibility. It seems to me this is broadly the same situation.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
If we liken the security forces to a wing (we'll get the feature eventually!), hit any one and they all go red; if one of them hits another it will probably be ignored. As we are not affiliated with the security forces, they have no reason to forgive us for anything.
Again, in a military situation those firing on a particular target would all be on the same team and would abide by the rules of the team. In our scenario, there is no team.
No, it's called poor fire discipline. I think it's a GOOD gameplay thing that you get punished if you wing a System Authority Vessel while fighting. (In the real world, if a cop accidentally shoots a cop, there will be at least an investigation, administrative leave and other things). The level of the fine is only 300CR so it's hardly fatal. You should lose a little bit of reputation if you can't exercise good fire discipline. Incidentally there's no need to run off and pay the fine straight away, finish what you're doing first. The system vessels are usually not all that aggressive for small fines.
Being able to just fire at will and not care about fire discipline will make combat around others a lot more shallow and less fun. All you do is line up and shoot, no situational awareness required. If you exercise good fire discipline it means you have to have situational awareness and keep a picture in your mind about what's going on. Sometimes it can be quite easy - one "wanted", three system vessels - you know you should hold fire whenever another vessel is coming close to the business end of your ship. It gets more complex and more skillful situational awareness is required if you have 3 authority vessels and 3 perps, since now you have to make a quick decision whether to hold fire or continue, and you can be more efficient the faster you can interpret the scanner and keep an idea where the other vessels are. And use "Fire at will" on gimballed/turreted weapons at your peril. (Without the need for situational awareness, everyone would just use "fire at will", no skill required, just point the ship in the general direction of your enemy).
I hope they don't remove the penalty for winging police ships, it would take away the need for good fire discipline and situational awareness. This aspect of the game shouldn't be dumbed down, it'll just lower the skill ceiling.
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While I agree that this is a skill of sorts, it's very contrived. It results in some very unrealistic behaviour, where rather than trying to kill the wanted ship, you're trying to ALMOST kill it, then wait until the cops shoot it some, then finally going in for a kill when you're sure you can land a killing salvo. The game should never be set up so that it punishes players for doing their best to kill the enemy. Yet that exactly what the current mechanic does.
Even if they changed it so that you get a percentage of the bounty based on how much damage you did, doing the max amount of damage would STILL take a lot of skill and the right setup, and result in a much more compelling experience. The current "Oh, I got you now! No, wait, I didn't get you because I only did 99% of the damage and the cops blitzed in and stole the last shot" is counterintuitive, nonrewarding and punishes the player for trying to play the game.
The only time I've been annoyed by this is when I was at a nav beacon just killing wanted people..... I was engaged with a ship for a good few minutes, enjoying myself. I noticed another player was in the area..... as I was nearing the killing shot, the other player came up from below me in front of me in his viper, blocking my shot (I stopped shooting before I hit him) and he hit my target twice, got the kill shot and went off on his way.
I just sent him a message explaining why it annoyed me a little. I never got a response.
I just sent him a message explaining why it annoyed me a little. I never got a response.
1. Tons of threads on this. I've posted my ideas in those.
2. First up, wings will allow us to share rewards. Secondly, I read a very old dev post in the DDA stating they would look to apply shared rewards in conflict zones. This makes sense, these are collaberative fights. Bounty hunting has no collaboration defined. It's competitive. I would be annoyed if the bounty I won was reduced because an ai caused damage. I destroyed the ship, it's my bounty.
2. Isn't going to change by the way.
2. First up, wings will allow us to share rewards. Secondly, I read a very old dev post in the DDA stating they would look to apply shared rewards in conflict zones. This makes sense, these are collaberative fights. Bounty hunting has no collaboration defined. It's competitive. I would be annoyed if the bounty I won was reduced because an ai caused damage. I destroyed the ship, it's my bounty.
2. Isn't going to change by the way.
so in a real world (in the US i believe there are real bounty hunters, for people not showing at court e.g.).
a bount hunter finds one of those criminals he is in a different state so bringing him back takes some time.
on half of the travel the criminal escapes.
another bounty hunter finds him and brings him to court.
the first bounty hunter now can claim half of the bounty? dont think it works this way ^^
a bount hunter finds one of those criminals he is in a different state so bringing him back takes some time.
on half of the travel the criminal escapes.
another bounty hunter finds him and brings him to court.
the first bounty hunter now can claim half of the bounty? dont think it works this way ^^
At present the core game activities of trading, bounty hunting, piracy, exploration, and so on, all feel under-supported by interesting mechanics. The systems add little to the fiction or to the fun of gameplay and need to be replaced or improved.
Many of the supportive responses to the badly conceived and designed game mechanics of the way law enforcement interacts with the players, and the way the bounty payment system works, just describe ways of cheesing or exploiting them. "Make sure you get that last shot!"; "Don't join a fight until the end!" "If the NPCs all turn red for no reason, just FSD out and come back, they'll be yellow again!" I'm familiar with these kinds of responses and justifications for bad game systems. You hear them a lot around online games that tank without a trace. They do not designate interesting gameplay mechanics or inevitable features of sandbox systems or the learning curve of a challenging game. It's just poor design. It's not satisfactory at all.
There are easy solutions here:
(1) Wanted status. Why can't I pay my fines to individual officers while I am about my business? That would prevent the irritating necessity of travelling for maybe 5-10 minutes to a nearby outpost to pay my dues before shuttling back to continue playing. What's the justification for that, either within the fiction, or in terms of gameplay?
(2) Bounty claims. Let everyone who participated get some credits, with the lions share going to the final shot. Why be precious about handing out the dollars in a non-competitive game? What difference does it make to anyone else if I get a million credits in 4 hours rather than 8? It just means I'd be having more fun, which is what I'm here for.
These are quite simple and obvious fixes, the kind of thing it would take 30 minutes to design and flesh out. I am starting to worry about this game to be honest. There are plenty of other games on my HDD which treat my time with more respect.
Many of the supportive responses to the badly conceived and designed game mechanics of the way law enforcement interacts with the players, and the way the bounty payment system works, just describe ways of cheesing or exploiting them. "Make sure you get that last shot!"; "Don't join a fight until the end!" "If the NPCs all turn red for no reason, just FSD out and come back, they'll be yellow again!" I'm familiar with these kinds of responses and justifications for bad game systems. You hear them a lot around online games that tank without a trace. They do not designate interesting gameplay mechanics or inevitable features of sandbox systems or the learning curve of a challenging game. It's just poor design. It's not satisfactory at all.
There are easy solutions here:
(1) Wanted status. Why can't I pay my fines to individual officers while I am about my business? That would prevent the irritating necessity of travelling for maybe 5-10 minutes to a nearby outpost to pay my dues before shuttling back to continue playing. What's the justification for that, either within the fiction, or in terms of gameplay?
(2) Bounty claims. Let everyone who participated get some credits, with the lions share going to the final shot. Why be precious about handing out the dollars in a non-competitive game? What difference does it make to anyone else if I get a million credits in 4 hours rather than 8? It just means I'd be having more fun, which is what I'm here for.
These are quite simple and obvious fixes, the kind of thing it would take 30 minutes to design and flesh out. I am starting to worry about this game to be honest. There are plenty of other games on my HDD which treat my time with more respect.
Why are you comparing a video game to the real world?
In which way is this in any way comparable to a real world scenario?
In real world you do not respawn.
All games/movies are based on real world variants. They might stretch it a lot, but it's still based on some internal logic model.
So the reason we are getting arguments on FF is because we are discussing system "police" or authority. Y'know something modeled on the real world
We've all seen movie cops and real cops. I don't think any of em take kindly to third party privateers/vigilantes "assisting", let alone shooting them.
It seems that the arguments all distil down to either making it easier or leaving it as is.
Sorry to be blunt but I don't want to play a game fit for my kids to play. They already have Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare. Should BF4 be made easier like that too?
Should all helicopter flight sims be dumbed down? No pre flight checks, no proper flight model with collective and tail rotor mechanics. Reduce it to something you can run on a tablet?
I do believe David Braben has an internal picture in his head of a harsh future based on hard lessons learnt from rapid expansion into space.
Space is hostile.
Air itself costs money.
TANSTAAFL!
Hence, landing pad loitering is punishable by laser death grids. Hence slightest infractions are deemed hostile.
This is not Star Trek where to "boldly go where no-one has gone before" you don't worry about fuel, wear and tear (heh I anticipate many forum threads on this!), jump distances, Star types (heck most stellar phenomenon don't enter into it! How come in this game we learn about the star types and in Star Trek, they wouldn't know a brown dwarf from a gas giant??). I don't want the game dumbed down just so we can "make it so".
I want the gritty and hard pioneering/burgeoning space setting.
When I make Elite, I want to achieve something.
Not some auto aiming, FF off, auto docking, bounty sharing, "press this button to make me a profit" trading computer exercise.
And no, it's not about a happy medium/striking a balance because "it's a game". It's about the game staying true to it's values and it's internal logic....
You can't dumb down Bridge to trumps just because it's a game and supposed to be fun.
But I guess we'll just have to differ about what kind of space sim/background we think it is.
Here in the states, there is/was a television show based on bounty hunters racing each other to claim bounties. Not sure if still on.
The BH that brought the culprit to justice got the cash. They shared nothing. And if the police showed up to bring the culprit in, all the BHs lost.
Seems like FD got it right, IMHO.
*bzzt* design decision *bzzt bzzt* in real life *bzzt* bounty hunter tv show stuff. thereby everything working as intended.
I will describe situation from another point of view as I haven't seen anyone taking on the problem from such an angle.
How it looks like now?
You wander around extraction sites to protect miners and look for bounty opportunities. You find a single pirate in a Cobra opening fire on miners. You engage and start chewing NPC pirate's shields and hull down, police is there as well.
During the fight, you accidentally ricochet of police's shields, no real harm done.
All of a sudden, police stops engaging dangerous criminal with 20k bounty on his head, giving you 200cr fine and engaging you. Now it is the pirate and police against you.
I'm really sorry but I cannot agree this is a logical, acceptable situation. The bad guy just opened fire on an innocent miner and yet the police chooses to let him go, with his huge bounty on his head he didn't gain for helping elder ladies cross the road, and wants to punish you instead. The same guy that stood up against bullies to help mining ships escape with their lives. Ridiculous.
There needs to be a margin error so that NPCs don't zeal in just as soon as you tickle their hulls.
To be fair and honest though, this change may create another problem.
What about players deliberately targeting law enforcing ships? If there is such a buffer, they gain few seconds to wear NPCs shields down and it is an advantage people will abuse.
I never saw lone police ship in extraction zones so their numbers may compensate that. What's your thought?
How it looks like now?
You wander around extraction sites to protect miners and look for bounty opportunities. You find a single pirate in a Cobra opening fire on miners. You engage and start chewing NPC pirate's shields and hull down, police is there as well.
During the fight, you accidentally ricochet of police's shields, no real harm done.
All of a sudden, police stops engaging dangerous criminal with 20k bounty on his head, giving you 200cr fine and engaging you. Now it is the pirate and police against you.
I'm really sorry but I cannot agree this is a logical, acceptable situation. The bad guy just opened fire on an innocent miner and yet the police chooses to let him go, with his huge bounty on his head he didn't gain for helping elder ladies cross the road, and wants to punish you instead. The same guy that stood up against bullies to help mining ships escape with their lives. Ridiculous.
There needs to be a margin error so that NPCs don't zeal in just as soon as you tickle their hulls.
To be fair and honest though, this change may create another problem.
What about players deliberately targeting law enforcing ships? If there is such a buffer, they gain few seconds to wear NPCs shields down and it is an advantage people will abuse.
I never saw lone police ship in extraction zones so their numbers may compensate that. What's your thought?
1. Watch radar more.... I've learned the hard way for this, and had a 34k bounty on my head for a fed flying in front of my beam. By resulting scans by authority craft and space stations on my way to pay off the fine. I also now dock fast and silent if I have a bounty.
2. Ahh, design descision... Right if that's it i'll stick with it, and my work around.... my work around consisting of (depending on hull of the ship) depleting to very low levels, initiate a multicannon reload (wastage if necessary) and allow full recharge of beam (occasional hits), then at the critical moment, full power to weapons and unload the full arsenal to take the remaining hull..... This is if I have NPC/PC assistance.
Much better. Thanks. Always wondered how that option works.