This thread is about who gets credit for a PKs, having been robbed of quite a few recently. I think that the "last shot to hit gets kill" system isn't really cutting it in terms of describing who's actually doing a lot of the work in the battle, at least when fighting in a place like B-8.

I think we should have a system that gives the PK to the person who did the most damage to the player that got killed (which means that if you did 50% or more damage, you would get the PK once they died. You would NOT get a PK for doing 50% or more. I say this to eliminate potential confusion), and other players that do at least 15% damage get an "assist point". In order to be workable, there would have to be a few "rules" to this system:

1. Person who got the kill has to be within 3000m of the person whom they are recieving credit for killing. If said person is not within 3000m or in that system, then the person who did the 2nd most damage gets it, and so on.

2. If you do 15% or more damage, you get an assist point for the kill. The character who is damaged has to actually be killed to get the point

3. If a person finishes a duel, and is hurt below 50% (the point where the other person would get the kill), someone who in turn kills this person can only get an assist. All's fair after the person jumps out though.

XP Considerations:

I’ve also got a few XP considerations. This may be giving too much, but that’s what additional suggestions are for.
Person who gets the kill gets XP according to the following:

Variables:
Person's combat piloting licence who is killed = X
Person's combat piloting licence who kills X = Y
Person's combat piloting licence who gets an assist: Z

How XP is determined:
XP for person who gets the kill: (X*100)-(25*Y)/X+200
XP for person who gets an assist: (X*50)-(25*Z)/X+100

Explanation:
This way, if a low level player manages to kill a much higher level player, then they get more XP, because they did something that was more difficult with worse weapons. Also, people who are higher levels than the people they kill, up to a certain point.

You should notice that you get next to no XP for killing someone who is level 0, and level 0 people get the most XP, assuming that they manage to kill higher level players.

Here are a few examples using my system:

Person (lvl 9) shoots down person2 (lvl 10), gets 1072 exp toward combat piloting
Person 3 (lvl 11) gets assist on person 2 (lvl 10), gets 627 XP

Think it’s too much? Think this could end up working? Hack it to bits, but I don’t think we get enough XP for each combat kill right now, particularly when people swoop in at the last moment after you've had a hard battle to take your hard-earned kill.

but why should it be dependable on solely levels?

as you prolly know, levels aren't everything. I have seen people that have a high combat level and can't even kill a fly in amatter of speech, while people with low levels (alts) being able to kill higher levels easier.

At least make it scaling on pks and then make combat have an influence.

in my opinion beating smeone who has 2000 pks but is only combat level 8 is far more worth hten killing a person with 0 pks and level 14 combat. And naturally deaths should also be taken into account (!= issues)

Yeah, you're right. I'll figure something out with regards to PKs...though I don't think it should scale on deaths, because oftentimes people (in order to ferry ships from Itani ships to Sedina) use the /explode command to travel back. So, this would be seriously skewed if we used deaths, methinks. In fact, if it lowered the amount of XP gotten from you, I can imagine people going around /exploding in freebusses to keep people from wanting to kill them.

Alright, I've changed the formula about to be as follows:

Variables:
Number of PKs by Player who gets shot down: U
Number of PKs by Player who shoots player down: P
Number of PKs by Player who gets assist: L
Person's combat piloting licence who is killed = X
Person's combat piloting licence who kills X = Y
Person's combat piloting licence who gets an assist = Z

How XP is determined:
XP for person who gets the kill: (X*100)-(25*Y)+((U*20)-P)/2
XP for person who gets an assist: (X*50)-(12.5*Z)+((U*10)-L)/2

Under this system, you can get XP for killing a Level 0 player who has more than a couple PKs, and you don't loose very much XP if you do. Having tested this formula vigorously, I can say that the most amount of XP that you can loose within reason is about 800, and that's at *very high* levels and PKs, and killing a complete newb...though I don't know that that's a good thing. I'd reccomend making up for it with the faction system.

One potential problem with my formula, is that if a newb kills an extremely veteran player, they could end up with about 6k in XP, but I don't see too much of this happening. However, it could let people with friends who are willing to let them kill 'em for XP to get alts to decent levels quickly. However, I'd argue that this would be:
1. Pretty rare, as it's a pain to let somebody kill you "just because"
2. A waste of time, since experienced players know how to fight anyways, and could get a new character at high levels quickly anyways.

Edit: for those of you who want to check me on this, I've put this online: http://homepage.mac.com/dimpfinator/.Public/Combat.xls

Cheers

Wouldn't it make more sense to use the player's duel stats then their number of player kills in such a formula? Since that should be a better indication of how good a player is.

I don't really think that the duel stats are a great indicator of this, because some people have far more experience, and are far better pilots than the new people, but they take on much harder pilots and lose. While I can see the logic in using Duel stats that accurately describe skill, I just don't think that that's what is going on. Also, some players don't really duel, and the PKs can show how decent a person really is at PvP. Duel stats only take a small part of fighting into consideration.

Harry,

like I said if you do a /explode it gets registered as an issue in stead of a death. Which by default can be filtered out if wanted/needed.Which could also help in balancing the formula, aka reduce the worth of a pk.

eg : person with 10 pks but 1000 deaths(real) is probably less experienced then someone with 200 pks and 10 deaths.

I'd like to tank my duel rating like n00b in order to get more experience for my real PK's.

Oh, wait, I already suck at 581. Perhaps that's why no one wants to duel me. If I win I tank their rating. Ahhh well.

So I'm all for making the duel rating part of the formula. I'll get more XP for my non-duel kills since everyone (basiaclly) is higher than me in the duel rating. Eeeexcellent!

Rogue, I didn't understand what you meant by (!=issues) in the first place, and I also took into consideration that the game has probably not been taking into account /explode deaths versus normal deaths. So, if somebody who can verify that the game has been keeping track of that, I'll modify it again.

I'm not saying it does, but it shouldn't be that hard :D since it already registers such a death as an issue within the game.

eg: try to do a /explode and then read the logfile. It will say in my case for instance Renegade ++RIP++ has issues.

Otherwise it is Harry Seldon destroyed Renegade ++RIP++.

And the way I intended is that it could have an effect not that it should have, but in the case of it being easy/semi easy to code.

PS: != is codinglanguage for different, just as == means equal to. I wrongly presumed everybody knew that, therefore my apologies.

cheers

I know what != means, just as ==, but I wasn't sure 'bout what you meant by that, as I've had the game display that when I *didn't* /explode. Just last night, in fact.

One more thing: logfiles can be easy to fudge, and since we've already got people with hundreds of deaths, if we can't find a way to figure out a history of real deaths vs non-real deaths on a server-side log, then I don't see the point in including it now, as it would simply reflect how much ferrying people are doing rather than how skilled they are.

You get an issue if the cause for the death can't be found, this can be a /explode or a smash into a roid/ capital ship, killing yourselve with splashdamage, etc which you normally anyway don't want to register as a pure death...

Besides you could easilly start out everybody at the same level aka 0. The people that die a lot will come out of it eventually. Especially if you really want to make it in a good representation of skill/luck + XPgain

Besides you could easilly start out everybody at the same level aka 0. The people that die a lot will come out of it eventually. Especially if you really want to make it in a good representation of skill/luck + XPgain

I really don't think most people would be all that happy being kicked back down to Lvl 0, and unless you made most ships available from lvl 3 combat or so, and instead have ships availability decided on faction standing, people would probably end up giving Guild a bad rep elsewhere. Also, what about all the ships people have stockpiled?

In short, I don't think it's fair to restart people from lvl 0. Maybe resetting their PK and Death counters would work, but I dunno.

I meant at deaths 0.

Oh, heh. I'll think about it, try to put something together, etc. :P