Please, I need to understand better what was done silently, the new Rules of Engagement:

All national sectors, except WH and stations, are no longer monitored. Seems a major change in RoE without a clear announcement.

What does it result? Can someone kill anyone there without consequences to standing? And now only nation space's WH and stations are protected?

Nation space has always been WH's and stations. There has never been some God watching every single sector of nation space spanking people who fight.

Some of the newb bot areas are probably monitored too. It says when you click the sector in navigation.

Precisely why pirates love ion storms. And yes, capital system sectors are monitored.

Umm. We removed FF from everything except Capitols. I'm not aware of any changes in monitored/guarded status in Nation territory (or anywhere else). If something has changed, please let me know.

Alloh doesn't comprehend the prior context well enough to know (I'll leave alone his complete inability to articulate what he does know) what, if anything, has changed.

Capitol systems are entirely Guarded, as far as I know. If a bad guy shows up anywhere in them, the strike force is deployed.

Guarded = Strike force shows up to kill anyone Hated with the given faction.
Monitored = Factional impact for actions taken in location.
Un-Monitored = Nothing, you're on your own.

Stations are usually Guarded, not just Monitored. Again, if there's been some sort of change, let us know.

Capitol systems are entirely Guarded, as far as I know. If a bad guy shows up anywhere in them, the strike force is deployed.



Please, please tell me you are kidding. Is this like the Goddamn Metana wormhole thing?

For everyone's information (apparently including the Devs): empty sectors, even in capitol systems, are and have been ever since at least 2005... unmonitored. There are, however, lots of guarded noob botting roid sectors in Capitol systems.

I opened a ticket on 01/08/07 to change that, as part of the then-push for the Faction changes and the staged removal of FF, which included:

"In the interest of protecting newbies, stations in initial Capitol systems, and potentially the systems in general (wormhole areas, etc) should be reworked with greater emphasis on automated defense against KoS enemies. This would include the old-style turrets around stations, defensive batteries near wormholes, all sectors being flagged Guarded..." (blah blah, goes on to talk about strike force design).

The ticket was assigned to a short-term milestone on 09/25/08 and marked fixed on 11/17/08. I'm sure it was in the MOTD changelog from that time too.

I don't personally spend a lot of time in empty Capitol sectors, so no, I never noticed that it was missing. And yes, it is entirely possible for us to implement something, and have it go awry, or have it be negated by some other database fiddling later that we didn't realize would step on previous changes, etc. We're human, and we don't have a Q/A department.

Occasionally I also make design decisions that are outside of the originally written ticket, and aren't back-propagated into our records, which I then forget about. In this case, it might have been interactions with the mission system (which uses the empty sectors).. destruction of certain mission ships becoming problematic with a fully Guarded system. I don't know, I don't remember.

hrmm about 2 months ago i was able to hide out in empty sectors in dau just fine.

I'm not sure of the exact date, I guess you can look up when the last time I killed a hive queen was. It was a day or so before that.

Don't take my genuine shock too personally - I'm mainly surprised you guys don't spend more time in your creation just for kicks: VO is fun, and you guys can play it more or less however you like. But you seem not to do so aside from the occasional SuperBus vs. all in B-8 and, consequentially, are sometimes unbelievably unaware of how it works (see, e.g., Metana and Nyrius wormholes for a period of some three years). Obviously you know how the back-end of VO works better than anyone, but this is something that hovering over any one of the majority of nav map sectors would reveal.

I don't think I've actually read any of the data on the nav map since like 2004. Oh, I use it fairly often, I was on production for several hours last week, and jumping around capitol systems on a semi-incognito alt (with the map), but I'm "too close" to it in some ways. Focused on whatever I happen to be doing at the time, to get something done.

Plus, keep in mind that it's only specific play styles, like pirates, to whom this sort of thing will be more self-evident. It's not just about whether the information is available, but who has an imperative need to pay attention to that information.

I've actually scheduled more time on my to-do list to actually play the game, starting some new alts from scratch. But I don't always get that opportunity, as critically useful as it is. I was pushing 80 hour weeks through most of March and early April.. it was all I could do to just get the hell away from my computer for awhile to stay sane. Everything's a tradeoff..

Fair enough.

But consider this when out playing: Pirates and other similar play styles will always tend to push at the areas of the game that most trouble others when they aren't right.

Join [CHRN], Inc. VO will thank you - and you'll love it :D

yea we tend to find alot of broken things due to our playstyle, wich often involves alot of thinking out of the box on skirting rules and such.

At current a strike force only follows you to those empty sectors if they are in a sector you warped from to it so when you do a scattered multi nav jump into several empty sectors and then lose them they stop following.

Which tbh makes sense, police aren't magical gods. If your intent was magical gods then I must say it isn't working.

Maybe I am wrong, but seems to me that all nation space was monitored before last FF related change, and it isn't no longer. Or at least that is what HUD says.

Even many nation sectors were not showing what bots it contained.

That is my doubt: What are valid rules now?
-WH/Station sectors are monitored. What about the remaining sectors, in capitol and non-capitol systems?

and the staged removal of FF? Staged? ok...

hmm you've given me an idea. To the suggestion forum!

Alloh only certain sectors were ever monitored usually those in capital sectors. also all nation stations and wh locations were monitored.

Alloh: Staged, yes. First we removed it from a couple of systems, then all of grayspace, then everywhere except for Capitol systems. Several.. stages. Mostly to test pre-existing gameplay balance and older mechanics that might have been upset by FF removal.

Just because a sector is not monitored, does not make it free of faction penalty. If a sector is marked as uit, and you kill a uit admired player in it, you will suffer standing loss. I have not personally verified this since the ff changes.

Well, actually, that's exactly what unmonitored means. That if you kill someone you won't suffer a faction penalty.

It's also possible that we have the wrong descriptions in the nav map data, heh.