Yes, please do take FF off. Mass combat is far trickier and fun when you can blast your own buddies.

I completely agree - FF needs to go, at least to some extent. I like Cunjo's idea.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11490?page=2#136417

LeberMac, icbm1987 is talking about MadDog (which is the Inner Sphere's designation for a Clan Vulture from the Mechwarrior/Battletech universe, previously run by FASA, now owned by WizKids and Fantasy Productions).

Without FF, I think that the dangers and the risk of space would heighten. No longer staying safe by only flying around your space and mining/trading/botting; you would have to fear REAL pirates. Pirates who don't care about boundaries and have their own agenda.

Yes, pretty please, Devs, remove FF so we can gun FF down. Is this something we can hope for, or is friendly fire here to stay?

On a side note, I'd prefer if friendly fire went completely, without compromise. Full realism. The only aspect I could see staying behind would be proximity weapon not exploding when close to nation members, as this could be explained in-game (friendly energy signatures not triggering proximity alert). Other than that, I'd like the friendly fire rules to be fully realistic, with no safeguards or limitations in game mechanics.

Celery, not really, as pirates who preyed on their own nation members would very quickly lose standing and become like the normal pirates around today.

I'm pretty sure celery intended that note on heightened dangers to be a good thing about removing FF. At least, that's how I took it... more dangerous space == more fun space, in my mind.

yeah i wanna kill more sercs than just n00b

Hey guys. FYI that I've read this and I'm on board with removing friendly fire (always a hack at best), but not until I can guarantee the safety of newbies via other mechanisms. Like, for instance, creating a mutual no-damage rule for characters above and below a certain level threshold (like say, 1 or 2) who stay within their intial home system. Leave the system and all bets are off. Yadda yadda. But, I haven't had a chance to fully think all this through yet.

So, I'm ok with removing FF, but I don't want to just dump it immediately, without considering some repurcussions and making sure mechanisms are in place to do what FF was originally intended to do (and we have since outgrown).

I'm a little bogged down in UI/ReArch/economy stuff right this instant. But nuking FF and fixing the faction system are both on my short-term to-do list.

Woot for teh Devs!

Wonderful, incarnate! My thanks! (And probably a lot of other people's gratitude as well)

I've but one wish then... if you implement other mechanism to prevent newbies from tasting that no-oxygen vacuum, please, have them be in-game punishments and safeguards! (Severe faction loss, strike forces, perhaps a complete ban from all stations in that system etc.) Any mechanical limitations in VO (unable to shoot at newbies in their home system) would still feel out of place and possibly damage immersion, even if much less than the current FF rules do today.

I dislike damaging immersion as well, and I'll do what I can. Our capabilities, as far as using NPCs, are greatly increasing. But.. having a complex reaction/balancing system means a lot of possibilities for exploitation and such. Still, I would like to do something in-context if at all reasonably.. possible. We'll see.

What about if you made it so that if they left say three or four core systems they became unsafe, but if they remained in the core systems they were safe via station guards and maybe later station turrets.

This way space would still be dangerous, and people could still attack the out skirts of nations space as well as grey space, but the n00bs would be safe in the heavily patrolled nation sectors.

me thinks about how funny NPC hogs with swarms would be.