Yeah, but the available weaponry and ships prevent them from being overly dangerous.

Besides, if its an experienced player starting a new character, they are no different in VO than a noob ... same levels and cash. So it makes no difference.

Jack makes some sense, if his idea needs a bit of refining. Exile can be seen as a blessing by some, a time to not log into that character by others, and an inconvenience by the rest. It is something that, by and large, can be ignored or worked around. A hefty fine and sanction may be the way to go.

What about bot forgiveness?

Your flying around one of your nations HAC's, and accidentally hit it. Does it go hostile? Do you become KOS? For how long?

Also, you accidentally FF kill one of your nations ships. Do you have a different marker? Do you get automatically forgiven? Is it just a faction penalty?

My thoughts on this.

Marker on bot kills only if you do more than 50% of the damage it took to kill them.

Different marker, that takes longer (10) to get you deported, and expires quicker (one week)

Temporary in sector KOS only if you do 30% to death damage on the ship.

Basic faction hit.

I think it's important to point out here that it's not the killing of friendlies that should be worried about. It's the killing of newb friendlies.

Ghost makes a point. But first, we need to define when a player is a noob. Perhaps level 2/2/2/? (AKA, has finished tutorials)

I once popped a newb in Dau in order to get a free paid vacation to Corvus-land and nuke my standing all in one go. Shooting up a newb made me feel a little bad though, when all I wanted was to become an honest pirate. I think it might deter some friendly kills if there was a method of consensual deportation to grey space, and all the penalties that follow, etc.

If a newbie, after even all the warnings he/she is given about not shooting friendlies still persists, then the newbie is a danger to others anyways, and that kind of person would probably fare better in grey space anyways.

Smittens brought up the point that hotkeys (and even enter) should definitely not be a part of the forgiveness system. In that, I totally agree. Measures should be taken to prevent accidently clicking the wrong choice, and stuff, methinks.

A neat little trick I like to pull on my pirate alt is to fire a volley at swarms at someone, and then quickly dock before they hit. Missiles obviously ought to trigger a FF reaction the moment they're fired at a specified target.

The idea of having weapons power up/down is one with great possibilities. Perhaps, for example, it'd be an offense for someone who's not a newbie, or basically someone with Complete Flight Status to enter a newbie training sector with their guns ready to fire.

For that matter, it'd make pirating a lot easier. It would give pirates a lever to use when 'negotiating'. As it is, I have to maneuver into a situation where the trader is at my mercy, which usually means bringing the ship's armour down to about 5%, and then hailing my offer to spare them. As you might imagine, this results in plenty of miscommunications. If weapons, and maybe even thrusters or the ability to jump sectors could be powered up/down, I might be able to use a more lenient threat like so...

"That was just a warning shot. Now power down your weapons and turbo, or you'll get thirty more like it."

Basically, players would have a means of surrendering.

Edit: Also, it's make 'accidently' shooting someone a more difficult case to argue, since if you can't keep your trigger finger from twitching, then you should have kept your guns off around friendlies.

You are perfectly capable of defending yourself ghost. How about I come on up to Itani space while your not online. I'll leave the newbs alone, and just kill misc traders and such. Since we are only protecting newbs, the traders shouldn't mind so much not having the same protections. or would you care to reconsider?

Penalty systems may include both real time and ingame time requirements. example: 1 day real time, 1 hour ingame. so you have to actually spend some limited time in game dealing with the penalty, and the victim is also afforded a certain period of worry free game play.

Do not make this game too safe. Fear is a major draw to some players. They will not log into a game where they feel too safe. They will simply seek the danger somewhere else.

... Or they'll just go to Deneb/Grey space.

Another idea ... how about some community service ... a mission you have to do to pay your penalty. Like an escort, or mineral scout ... something mundane, yet still playable.

Indeed, Ghost. Most non-newbie pilots are well aware of who is a friendly and who isn't during a skirmish, and if they fuck up and kill a teammate by accident, well, I suspect they'd probably be forgiven.

Ooo, real time character penalty. I likes, Roda.

Roda: Traders should not have the same protections that newbs have. Why? Because they're not newbs. Trading is not a safe occupation. There are no completely safe occupations in this game. There's no reason for traders to have some special protection that everyone else doesn't have. There are in-game protections that they should be able to use within the immersion of the game. Hire player escorts, trade in groups, or devs have long been talking about bot escorts. Either way, provide your own safety.

If you go up into Itani space and start blasting traders, assuming Inc sets up the Strike Forces and wormhole/station turrets, then they should be able to inflict a strong enough consequence along with the corresponding faction hit. With a new low faction/exile, it should be a while before you're able to go blasting traders again. So maybe 1 trader loses a ship and a cargo load before the Strike Force can respond. That's the way things work. Police aren't there to protect you before the crime happens. But assuming the offending party gets a big faction hit, the trader won't have to worry about repeatedly having the same thing happen.

I want to reiterate though that the real key to defending newbs is beefing nation space defences. It should be impossible for an Itani to get into Serco space or vice versa. There should be defensive turrets waiting at key wormholes. Either that or it should at least require a lot of effort. Players KOS with a faction should not be able to sit around and pop traders in that faction's space.

In response to the killing of newbs in order to get deported and become a pirate, why not make "pirate" a selectable faction? Players wouldn't necessarily have to be aligned with Corvus, but they could be unaligned.

My comments:

1) Generally the proposals look good.

2) If friendly-fire protection is to be removed, remove it totally. Group/guild protection makes no sense to me. From a role-play point of view, pilots flying ships equipped with deadly weapons should be responsible for their shots. If anything, the consequences of shooting up your squadron-mates and guild-comrades should be *more* severe, not less. Keep your fingers off the trigger until you're ready to fire, and keep your muzzle pointed in a safe direction.

3) I don't like the "deportation" idea; it feels very "game-y" and unrealistic from a role-play point of view. Exile offenders to Corvus with whatever ship they happen to have active and freeze their assets until they get their standing back. That would simulate their getting over the border in their underpants, one jump ahead of the police.

4) Somebody earlier in the thread suggested that the proposals sounded harsh. I think the devs are leaning over backwards to be lenient. There's essentially a "kill three friendlies a fortnight" deal here. Not damage with an accidental nudge of the trigger (still bad IMHO), but *kill*. What possible legitimate and lawful reason (in role-play) could there be for shooting up friendly pilots in good standing? If anything, I think the penalties should be stiffer. There is ample scope in VO for people with a taste for Quake-style random PK destruction (duelling, fighting in grey space).

5) Somebody suggested making the friendly-fire feature toggle-able: "just in case you REALLY want to blast another player." Very bad idea. If you want to behave like a psycho, you should face the consequences. Take it outside for a duel.

5) There's been a lot of emphasis on protecting newbies in this thread. That's a legitimate concern, but what I want to see is a strengthening of role-playing in the game. At the moment there are just not enough "consequences" whether it's choosing a nation, or being a law-abiding citizen, or behaving like a criminal psychopath.

Ghost said:

"the real key to defending newbs is beefing nation space defences"

He's right, absolutely right. If you want to protect new players, do it with a cloud of flak. Floating wormhole turrents, station turrents, regular strike force patrols, capships at wormholes, you name it; thats the ticket to protecting newbs. Naturally, even the best defenses have to be beatable, and thats where the penalties come in.

You'll never completely stop newb killing without some artificial limitation. The current system doesn't, and the new system won't either.

For the record, I am opposed to monetary penalties and group/guild friendly fire exceptions.

Corvus, being the black market and all, should sell pretty much anything, special nation/faction ships and weapons included. The prices and standing requirements should be in line with the equipment purchased. A Valk, for instance, should cost several times it's Itani space price, and require the highest standing. Natually, anything above Corvus neutral should make you unwelcome anywhere outside of grey only factions (Corvus, XX, Tung, Aeolus, & Ineubis).

I'll read this and let you know what I think after finals are over this week.

Improved nation space defenses are a given. Just to establish that, so we don't spend a lot of other posts on it :). I didn't cover that in the stuff I posted, but it is covered in stuff I.. haven't yet.

suggestion of "filing criminal charges":

scenario 1:

a group of pirates enter uit space. they are defined as pirates, because they are currently listed as exiled from uit. they manage to enter uit space and reach a worm hole and strike a convoy. the convoy has a group of players serving as escorts, and a battle begins.

a pirate receives damage from both his own group and the escort group and is destroyed. uit not only doesn't bother to offer him any options to charge anyone with anything, they pass out bonus points to all non pirates that did damage him.

a player serving as escort receives damage from all players involved (it was a bloody mess it was) and is destroyed. uit offers him a list of every player that damaged him. beside each players name is an option to charge him with a crime against uit, or dismiss the charge. there are also several options at the top: charge all, default, dismiss all, and done. default sets all players that where legally in uit space to dismiss, and sets all intruder players to charge. the screen starts with the default settings for all players listed. hitting escape selects "dismiss all" and "done". hitting enter accepts the currently displayed selections. at no time during the selection process is there any option for chat with any player, or even be able to see any chat. the escort pilot finds the default selections perfectly suitable for his purposes, so he hits enter and returns to game play.

No. Don't give Corvus nation ships. I'd imagine they're rare enough and strictly monitored NOT to fall into the hands of enemies, let alone pirates who'd barter it off to enemies for the right price.

The answer is to make Corvus much more unique and make it's factional ships, the Vulturius and the Marauder Mercenary, either completely new independent ships (Hey, even pirate Corps have R&D) or beef the current ships to fill the Warthog Territorial Defender role: Very fast, very high acceleration but at the price of very high drain. Great for chasing within a single sector or even system, sure to catch it's foe.

What is in place to prevent friendly-friendly harssment?

Newb A
Vet B.

Both are high ranking UIT players, Vet B is maxed out. Vet B is a bit of an asshole, following Newb A into Botting land, armed with a bus and a lowbie weapon. Since Newb A is new, they don't know what goes on when the player B starts blasting and conciously misses Newb A.

Newb A retaliates, of course. Worth noting is that in this case, B has never yet landed a shot on A, just faked an attack.

B gets hit, proceeds to instantly get blasted from the sky, marking A as a KoS to UIT.

Ouch?

Or the "Near exploding bus" exploit, perhaps? (Ram a 1% bus at someone and make them get the kill)

Another issue I was musing about. Post-duel deaths. Duels didn't expend Swarms/Seekers last I saw. So, Doing a /duel on someone, fighting a bit, waiting until they fire seekers/rockets, and then forfeiting, taking a hit instantly (hit+death if so) and thus flagging them as agressors?

Don't say "never duel in monitored space" cause that will be abused by some.