The Mining Madness Scavenger Hunt of Death

Summary: The MMSHOD is an in-game Vendetta Online® event based on massive PvP – the point is to accumulate player kills while achieving the primary goal of extracting 120 cu's of a certain ore in a sector. The mining provides the structure for the event, but the real fun is in the combat.

Who Can Play: Anyone with combat license level 4 or higher can participate. (No lower-level players, please. We don't want people LOSING combat XP...)

Entry Fee: The entry fee is 100,000 cr per player, or alternatively a single team can have their entry fee sent in together by one player or multiple players, as long as the amount ante'd up comes out to 100,000 per player. This fee must be paid to the referee before the event can start.

The Teams: Out of necessity, teams must be split up between nations: A Red team, a Blue team and a Gold team. There MUST be the same number of players on each team.

The Referee: There is one referee required for this event. The referee must be able to obtain a Behemoth-class ship from the station in the sector where the event takes place. The referee must be a neutral party, and CANNOT be a team member.

The Game Proceeds in this Manner:
1. An event will be scheduled for a specific time, and posted on the Role Playing section of the Vendetta-Online Forums.
The three nations have (HOPEFULLY) worked out their teams beforehand.
2. The referee will be ingame at least 15 minutes before gametime, and will make his way as quietly as possible to the sector where the event takes place.
3. At the designated gametime, the referee makes an announcement on Channel 100 regarding the location of the event. 10 Minutes are given to all teams to arrive.
4. The three nations' teams show up in the sector.
5. All teams home at the station located in THAT sector, and gather as close to the station as possible. NO FIRING. Forming groups for each team is encouraged.
6. 10 minutes after the initial announcement, the event begins with the announcement of the ore required. From this point on, firing is allowed. (Weapons Free)
7. All teams begin scouting for the ore in the roid fields, at least 2000 m away from the station. (Mining inside a NFZ is forbidden during this game) Mine 120cu's of the ore, while trying to avoid dying.
8. Gather 120 cu of the required ore and bring it back to the referee. Before you can present the ore, one person on the team must "tag" the referee. (Run into him, as gently as possible...) At this point, the referee announces that a team is presenting their ore. All of the team members get in close to the referee and space their cargo. The referee picks up the cargo and if the required 120cu of ore fills the referee's Behemoth cargo hold, that team is the winner. If not, the ore is forfeit and the team must go to RE-collect more of the ore, while the referee sells the ore and adds the total of the profits to the "pot".
9. The game must take at LEAST 10 minutes. There can be no winner until 10 minutes have elapsed.
10. Winner takes all. The winning team is awarded the sum total of the credits ante'd up by all the players, plus any money made from the referee selling ore that did not meet the 120 cu requirement from other teams. The referee divvies up the amount by the number of players on the winning team and doles out the monetary award individually.

Game Rules:
1. Players CANNOT leave the sector. (The referee will have verbose logging turned up so he/she can see if anyone enters or leaves) If you leave the sector you are disqualified. If you ignore your disqualification and come back anyway, your entire team is disqualified, and your money is forfeit.
2. No one can enter the sector. The station will effectively be quarantined, any players entering will be asked to leave. NO Spectators will be allowed. If additional members of a nation show up and do NOT leave, their nation's team will be eliminated from contention. (Excepting individuals who are hated by their own nations.) If you leave and re-enter the sector you are disqualified. If you ignore your disqualification and come back anyway, your entire team is disqualified, and your money is forfeit.
3. Players MUST be homed in the local station. Stationkilling is ALLOWED, but only after the kind of ore is announced. HOWEVER, since you cannot leave the sector and you won't be able to dock if you stationkill, this tactic is STRONGLY discouraged. Unless you like dodging Aerna Seekers and Strike Force pilots for the entire game. You may die from the bots and respawn in the station, but remember that repeated stationkills will lower your standing.
4. Killing NPC bots (Traders, marshals, station guards, etc.) is allowed, but once again beware of stationkilling.
5. Mining inside the NFZ (No-Fire-Zone) is not allowed. You MUST find your ore outside the NFZ. Those who mine in an NFZ are warned ONCE, and then disqualified if they ignore the warning for more than 30 seconds. If you ignore your disqualification and continue to mine, your entire team is disqualified, and your money is forfeit.
6. Any ship loadouts are allowed. You can bring whatever ship loadout you want to the start of the game, but keep in mind that you will most likely die at LEAST once, and you will have to make due with whatever is offered in the station where the game is being played.
7. Your ships MUST have empty cargo holds when you start the game. No bringing different types of ore to get head starts. (If this is abused, we will make everyone show up in Centurion Mk 1's to start from here on out, and then get new ships at the local station.)
8. You cannot stockpile the ore at stations across grayspace in order to cheat. The 10-minute minimum timeframe of the game somewhat defeats this strategy, but there is no known way to circumvent this cheap tactic. Just don't do it.
9. If two teams are CLOSE in their 120cu announcements, the first team to "tag" the referee gets first dibs on the counting. Keep the teams separate when counting, we don't want to get confused as to who's ore is who's.
10. Ore must be presented all at once. When a referee is "tagged", all team members must approach to within 100 m of the referee and stop moving. These team members are NOT to be fired upon by other teams.

That's it. Comments/Suggestions welcomed. Is this something that could be done this Sunday (June 5th?) say, around 10 PM GMT, 4 PM US Central time? We'll Beta test it then, perhaps with a limited number of players.

Excellent LeberMac! Well-planned and detailed! Will require good coordination from all Team Members. Looking forward to participating.

well i have two things to say

1 it seems to me unfair to block a sector for the length of the game, what if someone needs to go there for their mission? perhaps having more refs that follow players not participating in the game, to make sure they dont try anything "funny"

2 combat level 4 requiered? WAAAHHH i cant play!!!

You forgot to set a time for the event, man! that will also help people who want to do this to step forward.

LeberMac, I usually get the time zones screwed up, but I think that 10:00 p.m. GMT is 5:00 p.m. Central Daylight Time.

Sadly being a weekend, I'll prolly not be able to attend, but saw something in your rules that may be a bit hard to control, and that is the delivery of the cargo. If there is a team of say 4 players, how are they going to hold on to 120cu of cargo? What if the team isn't able to buy a moth at that station? I would suggest having 3 refs (if possible) one for each team in a moth, and have the team drop off what cargo they have to their ref and the first ref to hit 120 broadcasts the winner. The refs could color their moths according to the nation they are refereeing for to keep confusion down. That way it won't be just a moth or centaur convention.

Just a suggestion to make it a bit easier...

kernel.panic

Oooh yeah - that'l be 5PM central.

Due to several reasons we aborted the Beta Test earlier this night.
UIT had good participation. Serco had none, Itani had one.
We figured we could just do a test run anyway. However, we learned quickly that extremely high-standing individuals are protected SECTOR-WIDE, and you are not issued a warning more than once.

So, suffice it to say that the Xang-Xi strikeforce won the match. Several players suffered large faction hits.

The next time we'll do this in an open asteroid sector without stations or bots. We'll have to modify the rules a bit.

Stay tuned.

With a match in 1 roid sector and 1 station sector, an idea would be to put 1 referee in the roid sector and 1 in the station sector that only check that a player who warps out actually warps to the station and back.

No shooting in the station sector.

it would be usefull to have an ircbot that tracks the warps between the two sectors, anyone who takes more then 10 or 20 seconds to make the warp is disqualified.

"However, we learned quickly that extremely high-standing individuals are protected SECTOR-WIDE, and you are not issued a warning more than once."

lol

You guys never played capture-the-cargo? or attacked a pirate in Itani space? And here is an additional tip: unless they fixed the bug (but is it one?), the only place where you take a faction penalty is outside the NFZ.

Thank you Sun for that constructive comment. Hehe.
Well yeah I play CtC infrequently, but everyone was a little mystified. No warnings appeared for some players, some players had warnings but you could kill them outside the NFZ, and some players gave you negative standing no matter where you killed them in-sector.

Quoting Adam Sandler from "The Wedding Singer"
"Again, things you could have told me YESTERDAY!!!"

Yesterday? It has been known for months and reported many many times on this forum. An example: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/7572#89584
To recap once more: if you kill an admired player in monitored space (even wormhole or roid sectors re nation standing), you get a penalty; but, unless they fixed it, you get no permanent penalty for player kills in a NFZ.

GREAT idea! I can't wait to play! Just a quick question though, how do you tell if everyone is mining outside the NFZ?

[Edit] Hey, could you arrange one this Saturday, 8pm gametime?

I am currently re-evaluating the viability of this event. We'll go through another test soon, perhaps the weekend of June 18-19?

I need to find a way to make this fun, deadly, hair-raising and cheat-proof.