I've been lurking around and reading about these exploits and all this horrible mess that's been going on with my game... I figured I'd offer one suggestion to remedy part of the spam-and-sprint™ technique.

When jumping, I would offer to place a timer bar that starts after initiating the jump, make it last, oh, 5 seconds maybe (this would be subject to post-test tuning). After the jump is initiated, all controlls must be undisturbed, or this timer will be interrupted, and the jump canceled, like a log-off timer.

Another catch about it, if you're fired upon, this timer will 'back up' a few notches. I've seen this implimented with a few other MMORPGs with certian potentially-overpowered spells or abilities.

This ~5 second jump timer might also allow the devs to impliment some cool graphical effect that occurs while someone's jumping. I could see the exhast thrusters emmiting some bright light or maybe causing the hull itself to glow and appear to de-materialize.

My hope with this would be to force a runner to turn around and fight his opponent if that player managed to land a hit, or find another way to escape. Running would end up taking much more time than just soaking it up and letting your opponent have his deserved kill.

With this implimented, I would see a problem for traders that really do just want to escape. Yet, those players should be fine as long as they have an infini-boost, you could just get out of the attacker's range before jumping.

On WH jumps... I don't think they should be quite the same.. People SHOULD be able to use WH's to escape to some extent, just not as easily as they are now. One should be vulnerable while passing through a wormhole.

I've been thinking about maybe having a successful hit temporarily interrupt one's booster to remedy the spam-and-sprint™ tactic. I do see some problems with this as well. Maybe you all can post some imput on that.

so basically, once you jump, not only do you have NO control for 5 seconds, but potentially longer if your shot at!!

I'd have to say NO, and this is not a new idea Apex, you really read all the posts????

That would make it impossible for me to ever enter Serco space. In 5 seconds, the defbots certainly would catch up to you, even if you were 1200m ahead of them. And it's not worth it to kill them, since they just keep coming, and it's damn hard to kill the seekers. They have an odd little bug where my autoaim lags on the wrong side of them (it wants me to shoot behind where they are, never mind where they will be), and shooting them without autoaim is difficult.

I'll say it before Spellcast can...

3 Seconds! Three!

i dont like it because if you are badly damaged you are skrewed

johnhawl218: No I don't have time to read every post, and after 15 minutes of scanning I don't find a post that similar.. I don't have to comb through every suggestion to find this one.

SpaceMan3: OF COURSE! If you're badly damage you're screwed! I'm glad you understand! People at 5% health should probably have a VERY hard time escaping their attacker.

Roguelazer: Yes, escaping the strike forces would be nearly impossible, but I see that as a problem with the strike forces, not the proposed jump system. We all know that those Aerna seekers are just insane... If you're not at full-boost and have a huge gain on those missles, you're dead... Something should be done about that just to make it more reasonable but that's not what this post is about.

Well, how about a modification of Apex's idea:

Time might be too long, but that could just be an issue of trial-and-error balancing.

Instead of no control input for 5 seconds, when hitting jump, the game locks your controls on whatever you were doing last for 5 seconds while running a "charging" animation so that people know that if they want to kill you, they'd better do it quick. This has the advantage that if you're turboing, you stay turboing, but if you want to do the "combat save" of fighting to near death and jumping at the last moment, you'll be a sitting duck.

BAD IDEA, NOT WORTH TESTING

I'd actually have to agree with johnhawl218 here. It would pretty much make it impossible for traders to escape pirates. Yes, as it is now it's much to easy for traders to escape pirates, but it should be made more difficult, not impossible.

CrippledPidgeon: your suggestion isn't bad, but it wouldn't change much. Most runners just lay on the boost anyway, so letting someone boost would kind of negate the concept. 5 seconds may be too long, that's why I said you'd have to test it, maybe even 1-2 seconds wouldn't be bad. BUT, even if you could lay on the turbo it would keep people from kiting others into the 3000m area and taping the jump key as soon as combat got too hot.

Johnhawl218/Beolach: Trading would NOT be impossible with this intervention, I would NOT want WH jumps to behave this way. The only change I suggested to WH jumps would be to make the player vulnerable while jumping.

There are also other factors about trade run escapes that would make this a crippling blow, and alot of these are problems anyway.

a big problem for escaping traders:

a Trader that has no infini-boost but has a heavy battery suffers greatly because a WH jump sucks every bit of the battery... Then the heavy batt user is really screwed because he has not enough juice to escape to a safe distance. Jumps should have a certain energy requirement, probably a full fast charge batt worth.

I still only see this as making it more difficult, not impossible.. Concussion mines are good stuff, they can protect you pretty well if you're being chased from behind. These weapons SHOULD be used or even REQUIRED for a trade run through pirate-infested space.

Last time I traded, I had to go through intra-system jumps, as well as inter-system wormhole warps. I kinda don't want my routes to be limited to stations on both sides of a WH.

there is a reason that you are invulnerable during wh jumps, it's TOO easy to kill someone when they are jumping, and making it easier is a BAD idea.

John, once the jump animation begins, you're invulnerable. The idea is to add a bit of animation before the jump where you're not invulnerable to give a few seconds warning (to other players) that you're going to jump.

It doesn't affect traders cuz they're going to be generally infiniboosting anyway, and bagging a fully healthy trader is nearly impossible in 3-5 seconds, especially if they're flying a moth. However, a fighter at 5% would be vulnerable, especially since his controls would be locked to a single vector (so strafe rolling while jumping is impossible. You'd just end up strafing in a straight line)

But if you combine this with missiles that can catch ships at boost ( http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9080 ), then it'll give a little edge to people who want to get that kill and deny the run. And for runners, it means that they'd have to plan farther in advance when they want to run. They can't just turn tail the second things look bad for them, because a quick reacting pilot could bag them, but it does still leave the option open. Another plus to the missile idea is that since the target must remain in a cone extending from the nose of the firing ship until it hits, it leaves the launcher relatively vulnerable during the period because his ability to dodge is reduced as he has to keep his aim.

I think that the new missiles (please read the suggestion thread to which I've linked, because these missiles wouldn't be a miracle weapon) coupled with the pre-jump animation would reduce the ability to "panic run" (ie. run when you hit 5% and decide to bug out), but wouldn't necessarily hinder "support run" using a missile boat to launch into a multi-ship furball, and leaving when empty.

CP I don't think a persuer needs any more time, I dont' think running is an issue, so ALL these lame "fixes" are not needed IMO, just wasting your time talking about it all. I'd rather hear what the devs have in mind if anything at all, would settle the argument once and for all.

@Devs…
IS running something that needs to be fixed or is it a viable tactic that needs to be preserved.

Every other MMORPG that I've played makes it perfectly clear that if the content gets to hairy, run to save your life. Here, the "community" calls you a runner for trying to preserve your life. And no where is it writen that you must give a kill to another player simply because they are the better pilot.

Things that, in my opinion, make things more interesting:

1. Slow down turbo speeds across the board. http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11040

2. Make ships vulnerable when jumping

3. Add specific energy requirements for batteries (so the farther you jump, the more the battery is drained), as well as ships for jumping (so, certain ships have more efficient engines than others and can therefore go farther per jump), so transports can go farther per jump, but give light ships more of a speed bonus over transports at the same time in terms of maximum speed.

4. Move wormholes into/closer to the asteroid fields. Maybe not the center, but *into* them. Asteroids shouldn't necessarily be in the jumping area, but they should at the very least be closer to it.

5. Make a "required speed" range that you have to be flying at in order to jump. Probably about 2/3 of top speed w/o turbo.

6. 1-3 (or more) second jump timer depending on ship type. Some ships should be able to jump very quickly, while others not so fast.

7. Make the 'jump timer' take longer if you're taking damage, like what Apex was suggesting in his first post.

Are you guys actually reading the suggestions, or is this just a kneejerk reaction?

This not about "ending running as a viable tactic."

This is about how people can run, but allow the other player to have more of an effect on whether the runner is successful or not.

As it is now, it's very difficult for the chasing player to catch a person who's running. Rockets can go faster that 200m/s, but at turbo, they're nearly impossible to aim. Same with guns. I think I've only been killed once at turbo with guns, and that's just because I was heavy and nearly dead, and the other person was flying a light IBG.

So what would happen if we made it so when you hit the activate button to jump, your controls are locked for 4 seconds? If you're turboing, you keep turboing, if you're strafing left , you keep strafing left. The only thing is if you're rolling, the rolling stops. Well, for traders, this means that they have to add an extra 4 seconds to each jump. Oh noes. If you're a combat pilot who jumps in, launches rockets and missiles, as a support role, then again, you just need to add an extra 4 seconds to each jump. Woe is me. What about people who fight inside wormhole perimeters and when it looks like they're about to die, they hit jump so they're invulnerable, and keep jumping back and forth until runner and chaser end up on opposite sides of the hole and then run. Well, then their risk of dying would be very high indeed, because they'd be a sitting duck for a couple seconds. What about someone who boosts away to run? Well if we had missiles that go faster than boost, then the chaser has a short chance to launch the missile and try to bag the runner. It's possible that they could miss, or it's possible that they could hit.

Now it wouldn't be impossible to run, as I've shown, just that now the other player has a slightly higher chance of stopping them. Running wouldn't go away, just that it would require a bit more thought. "Am I far enough away that the missile won't reach me?" "Should I jump now, or can I wait a second more?" "If I decide to boost away, will the other player be carrying long range missiles?" If anything, it becomes more of a tactic because a player would have to keep track of more than just where they were (in the wormhole, or outside the 3000m mark), but they'd also have to consider how quick the other player would be to react. Maybe they'd have to hold onto that last sunflare in hopes that its detonation would shake up the target enough to give them the time they need to jump out.

johnhawl: I thought I made it clear a few days ago when you were telling someone to "shove it", that we *do* think running is too easy. You then suggested a tracking device, which I still think is a neat idea, and it solves the same problem even if you don't want to call it "running". I don't know whether we'll wind up implementing it, but it isn't something we could have done this week, and John decided that we would take a break from making new content this week to fix some of the problems that are making the game less fun for people.

The fact of the matter is, we're about to do a release that makes some minor changes toward the goal of making running more difficult (not impossible! we're keeping the desires of traders in mind). If it turns out we went too far, I'm sure we'll re-adjust things, but I suspect we haven't yet gone far enough.

We've also fixed the NFZ-no-perm-faction-loss bug and made some other changes/bugfixes. I'll let John or the updater log give you the details, whichever comes first:)

I'm rooting for john, but my money's on the updater log.

Well then I think you devs are just as bad as the rest of these whiners, running is not an issue, they simply are personally offended when someone runs away from them. That has nothing to do with mechanics of the game, and the fact that it was respected alpha/beta players that boycotted the game to get you to do it makes the change even worse. What a waste of time, you've all got your heads up your asses.

What respected alpha/beta player boycotted the game?
Aside from the ones that went quietly, without making a wild scene about the "injustices" and their own double standards?