Can anyone absolutely confirm that if you run into another player and explode on them, they do lose faction for the "kill"?

I know a lot of people are reporting this, but a look at the code shows it should require the killing party to be using a weapon, not a ship, otherwise it bypasses the faction change. We're also unable to reproduce the problem on the test server. So.. yes, if you *shoot* someone, there'll be a faction loss, but there shouldn't be any if someone simply runs into you and blows up on you, so to speak.

I'd appreciate it if people could confirm it one way or the other. Thanks.

Please respond to the existing bugs thread (cross posted for more attention):

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/11264

I never tried it on a player but have multiple times popped station guards that got stuck on a station by ramming them with a moth and never got a faction loss...

Have you guys tried it in monitored/unmonitored/guarded within nfz and outside NFZ?
EDIT: temp kos/not temp kos

EDIT: Anod yes .. I got a "me killed guard" message.

I once attacked a player inside Itani space, I was going to harras them by shooting them to 5% and flying away, they turned to shoot me and rammed straight into my ship, and they died - I did indeed take a faction hit, but it wasnt the -1100 points (or whatever) you usually drop by, it was more in the region of the -300 points for a sub faction kill. This was at a worm hole sector with no station. *note : he didnt intentionally ram me, he turned, and we just collided.

Myself and another player at one time were playing around each other and he got too close and bumped me, he got damage and I got the warning message that i was firing on a protected player..just as if i had shot him, luckily he didnt blow up but with the warning I got, I expect I would have taken a faction hit if he had. And this was outside the NFZ

Happened to me with a SF.
I was trying to dock a moth when one aerna seeker chasing another player bumped into me. Ive got temp KOS and lost standing with that faction. And was killed by SF naturally.

I've had it happen to me a few times. It's part of the wing bug bug I think.

Someone exploding on impact may be part of the "wingbugging" problem (which we do intend to fix Soon), but whether or not the surviving player in the collision has a faction-loss is completely unrelated.
Basically, there is a routine which applies faction loss whenever a player is killed in monitored space (including NFZs- we fixed that yesterday). It is meant to be bypassed if the "weapon" which killed the victim was of class ship, and this check appears to be working fine. We'll try to get it to happen again today, and we'll also be looking through the production-server logs to determine who was killed by what "weapon".
If anyone, who had this happen to you yesterday, could post in the bugs thread with their character name, the character who collided with you and exploded, the approximate time, and the sector, it would help us find it in the logs much more quickly. Or if you want to be even more helpful, you could try to reproduce it under control conditions (ie only 2 ppl in the sector and no firing), and post the same information in the bugs thread.

I did have this happen to me, although it was several months ago. I was in Serco space when Rathethas Bosarus (?) buzzed my moth. I don't rememer which ship he was in, but it might have been a vult. He hit my ship by mistake and exploded. I was at +999 Serco status and took a pretty substantial standing hit. I don't think it was 900 though.

If anyone wants to test, I'll be parked at Fenhall Mining (Azek I-4) today.

Ok no guns were used.

[Fri Aug 19 10:31:58 2005] 00ff00Combat -1200
[Fri Aug 19 10:31:58 2005] Dread Pirate Roberts destroyed Bissi Potelis
[Fri Aug 19 10:38:30 2005] 00ff00Combat -1200
[Fri Aug 19 10:38:30 2005] Dread Pirate Roberts destroyed Bissi Potelis

Free accounts can be fun. :D

How ever no faction was lost on either Bissi Potelis or Dread Pirate Roberts, how ever this test was all done with in the NFZ so that could have affected it.

It does how ever stand to reason that if Dread Pirate Roberts got credit for the kill in addition to XP loss then he could have also feasibly lost faction.

LOL poor Rath. Where's he gone, BTW?

I did it to some vet, don't remember who, but that was last winter. It took several splodes for it to kill him. I was under the impression that this was fixed so I never tried it again. I just remember they were pissed. :)

Thanks Borb! That confirms the same circumstances I tested yesterday. If you could try it outside an NFZ, that would be even more helpful (though I don't believe it should make a difference based on my reading of the code). The XP calculations are done elsewhere and are unaffected by the check for whether a ship-to-ship collision caused the kill.

Yeah I intend to take a closer look at it when I get more time I'll keep ya posted.

Didn't you quite playing?

hey...wasn't there something about ramming? if you hit someone then you got the damage? not them? that might be it...hmmm...

Miharu and I ran some tests in Edras I2 today in attempts to simulate the conditions existent when Arolte allegedly did X [I'm not rehashing it]. The conditions were a low % bus flown by a +999 itani pilot ramming into a laden Serco moth, in a WH itani station sector. While not exactly like the situation that I was told occured in GR O-3 yesterday (only substantive difference I can see is that the rammer was the same faction as the sector and the rammee was not; reversed from UIT ramming a Serco in a Serco sector), I think it was sufficiently similar to be a good experiment.

After repeated attempts with different lead up actions, all culminating in "Dr. Lecter destroyed Miharu." outside the NFZ of the station, only two things occured. (1) I was warned to cease fire as Miharu was Itani protected; (2) I receieved combat XP for killing Miharu. No faction loss was sustained by this method.

Hence, I think it is likely that this exploit did not occur (whether it was attempted only system logs could show) yesterday. However, it appears that one could lose some faction this way in the past, according to the posts here. I dunno.

Oh, FYI: the combat penalty CAN be exploited this way. When RRinB rammed into me, killing herself, the 1300xp penalty was applied.

The more i think about it.

I often mop up station guards and npc's while trading in my moth simply by ram killing them, I have got 1 or 2 player kills this way too, people shouldnt go afk and mine :P

The situation i described above is inacurate, I was already 0% health, I attacked an Itani, but I was trying to get him to shoot me, he was smart enough not to, but i shot him to 5% and exploded on him, then I took the faction hit (I really deserved it, I took the guy out in my splash) he did die, and i did get the kill :P he prolly got one too though....

I checked the RP story that I wrote based on my enounter with Rathethas. It happened in early March, and he was flying an SVG. Perhaps, as suggested above, it is connected with the Vulture wingbug. Is is possible that a wingbug is treated as the same as an attack with weapons?

Even if so, it wouldn't work in a bus. Unless you can wingbug a bus...

Broma-Ba Slick

On a related note, I experienced some wierdness dealing with ramming and busses the other day.

I was hanging around Sedina B8 in a free bus trying to get a bus war started when someone of a different faction decided to start ramming me with their maud. I expected to die quickly, and was surprised to discover that as long as I hit head on (even with us both turboing head on at full speed) I took absolutely no damage. On the one occassion I slightly missed, the other player scraped the top of the EC-88 and it took about 75% off the hull. That tells me there's something weird going on with the front of the EC-88.

oh noes! my dirty little secret for winning in ramming "fights" against n00b is revealed <.<