PaKettle: My apologies. I have had people just sit there and not answer before and then log off. You never told me you were going to pay. I will try to be less "grief-ish" in later encounters.

Fusion I did not have a problem with your conduct, but I was a bit surprised by your ability to remain there afterwards...

The initial boom was as much my fault as yours since I was distracted by my control problems and didnt see the hail in time.... Once I sorted my problems out we had us a good ol' time in VO fashion :)

The situation could have been a lot worse however had I been a noob and unable to fight back And you desired to truly grief me. Clearly the strike force was ineffective....

I was trying to avoid naming individuals since this is about balancing the game play and not merely a grudge match. Perhaps you could tell your side of how you managed to remain so Incarnate can even things up a bit for everyone or is that a secret? I suspect he may want to recreate the situation so he can determine how serious the problem is. I am sure even you realise that killing someone inside the NFZ should be an extremely risky activity...

BTW limiting top speed based on ship mass would also be a way to help balance things out IE a fully loaded moth might be limited to 30 while an empty moth could reach 55. This might also even the scales up a bit for the light fighter ships as well.

Death Fluffy: I have been repairing some newbies in the front of the station and even in training sectors so they probably mean hits from a repairing module. :)

Ok let me just say most people in VO are great it is the few arse holes who mess it up for the rest. Killing anyone below a level 3 for sport is not great for your game unless they agree to PVP. I have been playing along with my friends for many years. If you do not do something soon you will loose the people who can afford to play any where. We are not kids and we do have good jobs most of us are professionals. We do this to relax and have fun. Lets face it your game is not the most advanced scoring and graphics wise. So you have to draw people so they can get addicted to the game. Getting killed all the time while you trying to advance by people who are not skilled enough to kill people with their same ratings, but would rather show their skill set by killing newbies! This will not advance the game at all. I can tell you now you just lost 8 people since that was my group and they want to move on. So Good Luck and that was 80.00 a month you just lost from development for your game.

hahahaha

15 years you say?

this takes me back.

back six months...

Strangely enuff the polite pirates are back :)
The strike forces seem effective so long as faction standing doesnt become an issue.

If the devs can come up with a noob killing penalty that fits in I would say good enough...

Some of the pirates do feel there is not enough traffic thru grey space now so perhaps the better paying missions should go there... fair is fair...

A bit of a clear up there: I did NOT remain every time. I warped out and in again each time the SF decided I was something to shoot at.

I am one of the 8 that Diealot mentioned. I have had a problem with a couple of players with vastly overpowering weaponry attacking me. I have been playing online games since the old bulletin board days.
Last week I was minding my own business when I entered a sector and noticed 3 UIT ships 4000+ meters away. I am Serco, so I didn't expect any problem. I was just about to hit the wormhole when suddenly 4 sets of swarm missles are all around me. I checked the distance and the other ships were all still 4000+ meters away. I was blown up very quickly of course since I did not have a chance even to jump into the wormhole. I still don't know how he could have fired those missles that far away and have them all hit at the same time with me running at 200 m/s. That pretty much did it for me. There have been several very helpful people on VO and I am grateful to them. However, the 2 or 3 guys that are seeking out new players who cannot have the firepower they have are ruining the game for us noobs. With the missles I have to be within about 600 or 700 meters when I fire if I hope to get any hits at all. I had a guy attack me without provocation or any hailing and when I fired back with my missles he just outran them, which I was unable to do. The game seemed fun for the most part, except for a few jerks.

hahahahahahahahahaha

Pointman: When newbs don't have a reasonably safe area to learn how to control their ship, mine, fight, etc, without constantly being hunted down by vastly higher ranked players, the newbs will find a new game!! No newbs means no VO eventually.

PAMALOT: oh.

Incarnate has said they are working on a newbie system for such learning experiences. Hopefully that will solve many of these problems.

@ PAMALOT: That swarm thing sounds extremely strange. As far as I know there is no weapon in VO that can travel over 4km (not even capitol gauss, which is only on capitol ships; do the turret missiles travel that far?). Were you in a sector with turrets, and did the faction who owned the turrets not like you? Unless you were mistaken about your distance from the players, that is the only thing I can think of that might have happened. There are no player-usable weapons that can do what you described, so it is possible you ran afoul of some of the machinery put in place to PROTECT newbs for some reason, but we would have to know more about the specifics to be sure.

There were several other incidents tonight as well. Three noobs were pirated and killed when they didnt pay quick enough. The pirates do have valid reasons to be quick but it is causing problems and noobs are going to be slow responding.

Let me rephrase my suggestion/idea a bit better and perhaps everyone might like it:

First, the pirate gets a lock and sends a piracy demand perhaps in the form of :

/pirate %target% money message

This would open up a box like the kill forgiveness box in the targetted players hud. It would display the pirates message/terms and give three options to choose for say 15 seconds and finally time out.

Pay - linked to givemoney in the demanded amount
Duel - Same as duel accept command
Reject - Default answer in the event of timeout

The duel box would allow a fight with no penalty to either party reducing accidental KOS and standing issues for both players.

Reject would mean all the normal penalties would apply to both parties. All bets would be off. Run or fight as desired.

To help assuage fears of people logging off I would suggest that logoff be disabled while the box is displayed.

The advantage for the pirates is quicker responses,fewer grudges and maybe even tracking of pirate standings like cargo gathered,money paid and even "pirate PVP" results.

For the rest of us it provides formal (hard to miss) notice and an easy way to respond making piracy a semi-legit part of the community.(mob protection racket)

I am not suggesting this as a punishment for pirates but rather as a way for them to be a part of the VO community without harming the game as a whole.

Comments?

diqrtvpe: I am not sure which sector I was in. I have a good standing with UIT and was only transiting on a trading mission. There was no warning, nor was there a hail of any type. I had transited back and forth through the area a number of times in the nights prior to the attack and had never been attacked or approached. I was watching the distance from the 3 ships simply because there were 3 ships together. The missles looked and behaved like some type of swarm missles. I was using targetless to keep tabs on where the ships were. I am not sure whether I was in Initros or Arta Caertes (I am not sure of the spelling on that one), and I was enroute to Pyronis. I hope that helps a little.

Sounds like stacked flares or jackhammers, but 4k is still out of their effective range, especially if the firing platform was sitting still.

Mmmm, yes, the ability to open up a dialog box on my target's screen at will. Sounds like fun to me!
Who wouldn't want a spare second or two to pound rockets up some newbs ass while he tries to figure out what the fuck this new thing to click on is?

And those that do will suffer the full standing loss genka. But then thats just player killing and not piracy...