If a trader being escorted on an escort mission is killed, the mission taker should be financially responsible for the loss of cargo.

Wrong: The Escort force just doesn't get paid. Do not penalize failed effort. Reward it if it succeeds.

i could see your reputation getting hurt if you promise to protect a convoy and they all die.

I'm with Toshiro. However, a player should not be able to fly ahead of the voy and offer absolutely no protection to it and still collect full pay.

Agreed, deliberate abandonment should be penalized. This would only work with PCs, for obvious reasons. And if somebody does not pay only because s/he is a miser (despite an escort's effort), word will go round and the person in question will not get any mor help.

Do not penalize failed effort. Reward it if it succeeds.

I want to live in your world Tosh. Sounds... cushy.

Monetary penalties don't really make much sense, but there should definitely be a big faction hit associated with loosing most or all of the convoy ships. Even better would be a system by which factions would keep track of your proficiency as an escort pilot and stop offering you missions after you've lost a few convoys, but that would likely require the implementation of several additional mechanics.

If the faction is keeping track of an escorter who loses ships to hive or piracy in unmonitored space then logically that faction would keep track of any other player who kills their voys in unmonitored space and act accordingly.

Ok, seems a good idea to me.

@Snax:

Your ad hominem notwithstanding, I should perhaps have clarified my opinion. I meant monetary penalties when I said that I wouldn't want those. I was always imagining this to be a business relation between two players, where more intangible things like integrity and skill can be rewarded with more than just a semblance of fairness (or not, but that's a different story).

My point is, escort missions aren't that hard if you don't meet enemies which can take out your sheep in a determined manner. If you do meet pirates, the difficulty of the mission is multiplied. Would that factor into penalties?

I just see a lot of dev work used (and possible strife added to the game) on something which is essentially a very minor issue when it comes to NPC-offered missions and a non-issue when two (or more) PC are involved.

Simple: get rid of the "percent of the reward based on attendance" thing and just fail the mission for anyone who abandons the convoy even for an instant. I think that the "financial risk" you're looking for is when the player actually owns the convoy, which has been suggested god knows how many times... but hey, that's because it's a good idea.

Personally, I'm actually tired of traders taking escort missions and then abandoning them... sometimes even letting pirates shoot the convoys down right in front of them. This is the sport of grey. Stop the exploiting.

Noes! I like personally like taking my non escort escorting missions and earning monies for doing nothing. Silly people.

Actually, after 2+ years of making arguments against the payment method of escorts, I have come to realize that I have been wrong. Because regardless of whether the player actually stays with or even attempts a defense of a voy, it gets the player out of the station and flying through space for some healthy exercise. And thats whats more important. The aerobic conditioning of the player base really needs a boost. So leave escort missions alone. Nay De-de-de-de-de-de-de-de nerf them so players can get the full aerobic benefit.

Simple: get rid of the "percent of the reward based on attendance" thing and just fail the mission for anyone who abandons the convoy even for an instant.

That's problematic because, while abandoning your voy is indeed poor effort and shouldn't be rewarded, jumping ahead, or scouting ahead, is often not only a good idea, but completely necessary for the success of the mission.

My point is, escort missions aren't that hard if you don't meet enemies which can take out your sheep in a determined manner. If you do meet pirates, the difficulty of the mission is multiplied. Would that factor into penalties?

You're not being paid for the chance that the voy might not run into trouble. You are being paid the fee for the explicit fact that there might be trouble. If you think the fee isn't high enough to take into account the risk associated with PC characters attaking your voys, that's a different story.

Personally, I would prefer more robust voy controls before any further penalties were put in place. The ability to tell the voy to chill whilst you scout ahead, for starters, would be nice. The ability to redirect the voy, even better. I would think that these tools alone would probably stop many people from abandoning their voys, simply because there's actually a chance to protect them.

You give me the tools to do that, Gav, and I'll use it to start herding voys into a nice easy kill zone.

the one major fix that should be easy to impliment should be if you die you get no money for doing the mission. this would stop people from hanging out in b8 and exploiting XX voys through b8.

That makes absolutely no sense Peytros. Implement that and players just make sure they don't die. Easy enough. They are already being "penalized" because by not going the entire route, they only get partial payment.

More realistically, how about if you lose an entire voy, that faction no longer trusts you to protect their interests and

1) refuses to offer escort missions either permanently or until trust has been restored or

2) make the payment for doing an escort based on level of trust so a highly trusted player gets the 320,000 to 400,000 (though I'm certain that once the economy is finished (soon) this will once again be nerfed) and a player who has never done missions or escorts for said faction would get the 8,000cr runs- gradually increasing as trust builds (kills defending other voys)

That (#2) sounds good to me.

You give me the tools to do that, Gav, and I'll use it to start herding voys into a nice easy kill zone.

Shhhh!!!

Seriously though, yeah, it would need a bit more consideration to be sure. I think the proper implementation of a faction system that makes sense, and something like Fluffy's #2's... er, something like Fluffy's second idea would probably nip that issue in the bud.

Can't PC's attack convoys? The penalties shouldn't be too harsh - otherwise a more powerful/experienced player can come along, wipe out a newb and his convoy and basically the new player is screwed because he looses money, any cargo he was carrying, his ship, and then has less potential for earning money because he looses standing.

Griefer's field day... :-/

Of course, players ttacking a specific convoy should not be allowed to do any escort duty for that faction, regardless of whether the attack was carried out in monitored or unmonitored space...

I feel this thread could be merged (if that were possible) with the other faction system redux threads.