death fluffy how does not getting any money for dieing on a escort mission make no sense? you failed in your job to protect the voy just because you already get penalized for only going 50 percent of the route from sedina to latos doesn't mean its ok to just stop half way and get blasted to bits.

and about implimenting that and players making sure they don't die. well thats kind of the point genius. Out of all the penalties being suggested i think not being paid for dieing is the least harsh suggested so far.

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.

/me smacks Restayvien over the head with a large dictionary.

Look up the word escort. Actually, hang on, I'll do it for you.

Noun:
Escort (plural escorts)

1. A body of armed men to attend a person of distinction for the sake of affording safety when on a journey; one who conducts some one as an attendant; a guard, as of prisoners on a march; also, a body of persons, attending as a mark of respect or honor; -- applied to movements on land, as convoy is to movements at sea.

If you are incapable of "affording safety" to your convoy, you should not be running escorts, and should most certainly not get paid for them.

Peytros, please keep up with the conversation you initiated so I won't have to go Lecter on your ass. Your arguement was to penalize people who run the XX voys through b8, and stop off for pvp rather than continuing with the voy by canceling their pay if they die. If players don't get paid if they die, they will simply wait to engage in combat until their voy has docked. Many players including yourself have proven just how easy it is in VO to not die.

Your suggestion discourages players from actually attempting to defend a voy.

My suggestion from long ago was to reduce the payment for a voy to a standard fee per wh. The real reward comes from kills made in defense of a voy.

and if they don't stay and deffend their voy ill gladly kill off the moths which should make the reward less also since you weren't doing your job, hence discouraging running away from your voy that is being attacked.

First you want to eliminate any reward for having died during the mission- particularly those nasty players who stop off in b8 to collect half a reward to pay for their pvp. Thus creating a situation where the player has an incentive to not take risks.

Now you expect them to take those risks to protect their reward.

1) If you were a pirate, you should be attacking the voy anyway.
2) The player should still be defending the voy.
3) If the player loses their reward, they still haven't lost anything meaningful. They can always catch another one at the next station.
4) Eliminating partial pay for dying during the mission still discourages taking risks.

Pey... you're idea is pretty much dumb (Death Fluffy pretty much spelled it out). Let's move on.

I like the idea Death Fluffy was peddling earlier. Here's the quote:
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)

Of course, I still think there should be some punishment for letting a voy member get killed aside from just not getting as high a payout. Then again, that's just me. Also worth exploring if DF's idea is exploitable.

i cannot honestly believe you think you a player should still be paid for dying while on a escort mission. dying means you failed at your job or escorting the voy.

its fairly simple death fluffy and atice i don't know why you can't grasp it if i was the issuing faction i expect you to escort the voy to their final destintion if you die you don't get paid if a certain number of ships do not make it to the final destination you don't get paid. how is this unfair to anyone?

and just for clarity atice isn't this your thread and aren't you asking for more finacial risk? im pretty sure my suggestions aren't hurting anyones pocketbooks by making them actually work for their credits

Ok. Then apply it to every other aspect of VO. If you die, you fail hive skirmish. If you die, you fail border skirmish or patrol. If you die, you fail beginner or advanced combat practice.

I'm inclined to believe that DF and Atice are arguing against peytros not because they disagree with his arguments but because he is peytros.

Your job as a convoy escort is to fly with the convoy from point A to point B, protecting it from anything that might be trying to attack it.

By definition, you have failed if you
a) die,
b) do not accompany the convoy over its entire flight path, or
c) allow any of the convoy members to die

The mission script should reflect this. In addition, failing an escort mission should involve a significant faction loss (several dozen faction points, at least). Even better would be the option to pay for the lost goods in order to mitigate the faction loss.

Anyway, I think we can all agree that we need to do something about the escort missions. They currently serve as a nearly-infinite supply of free money which carries absolutely no risk.

Also, to those who would whine about how they need an infinite supply of free money to support their PVP habits: I am involved in PVP at least 80% of the time that I am logged in, and I use (relatively) expensive, top-model ships. I do not do much trade and I definitely don't do escort missions, as I refuse to partake in any exploits. If I can do it as a well-hated pirate, then there is absolutely no excuse for a well-loved vigilante or nationalist pilot to need free money to pay for their pvp.

i cannot honestly believe you think you a player should still be paid for dying while on a escort mission. dying means you failed at your job or escorting the voy.

If you die, and the voy survives, then your sacrifice was valuable to the voy. If a Secret Service agent jumps in front of a bullet to save the President... has he failed even if he dies? No. In fact, he is rewarded greatly for his service (payment to the family, memorials, etc).

Ladron, as much as the peypey annoys me, I don't argue for the sake of arguing.

If you don't accompany the convoy over it's entire flight path due to death or other circumstances, then you still provided escort over part of the path (assuming the convoy was not damaged), which is worth some reward.
if you allow a convoy member to die, then you have failed (or rather partially failed, as you still should provide escort to the remaining members), but there should be some incentive to continue escorting the voy. I proposed that that incentive be that you would lose less money. DF proposed that that incentive be to keep standing with the faction you are escorting. Either way, you shouldn't just lose the escort, you should have an incentive to finish it (and finish it well).

And Ladron... you get your money from either Guild sources or from pirating. That's not an option for many (if not most) people. I agree escorts should be fixed to be more meaningful than redic easy money, but pilots should still be well-compensated for their time (given the stipulations mentioned earlier in the thread).

you get your money ... from pirating. That's not an option for many (if not most) people.

Uh, piracy of NPC voys can turn out several million credits an hour (voy frequency and contents depending, but that's a decent average) and is really quite easy, even for fairly new players. After you take out your first moth heavy that's full of free Sunflares you can sell right there in Odia, I promise that you'll have a big fucking smile on your face.

Making a living off PC-only piracy is an entirely different matter, but one can make very decent money just pirating voys. And that's solo -- working in a 2-3 man team will greatly increase the returns, assuming a high enough voy flow.

PC-only piracy can also be profitable enough to live off, but limited number of players passing through grey at the moment makes this option somewhat boring - depending on your timezone you may have to play the entire day to collect a million credits.

Lecter, I meant with regards to "morals" or RP, not with regards to capability.

ladron,

My arguement is that eliminating partial reward to players who die is a discouragement to players who want to take the missions seriously and run them through risky areas and defend them. Granted there isn't a lot of that happening, I think think that their are better solutions to make push players into actually defending their voys.

What Peytros wants will only encourage players to run voys and not bother to defend them and I think it communicates an unhealthy message.

If I die defending a voy and by dying some or all of the voy make it to the station, then I have done my job, and my heirs (which in VO can be interpreted as my next incarnation) deserve some compensation for my heroism. If I ignore a voy and do not defend it either from pirates or bots (which I do often because who am I to argue with freebies), then I am a coward and deserve stiff financial and faction penalties.

Escort missions are a combat mission. The rate of pay IS going to go away once the economic changes are in place. The ONLY reason it still pays as well as it does, is to pacify players who enjoy the combat aspect of VO, but do not want to have to trade or mine to be able to afford it. If you apply Pey's concept across the board to all combat missions, they all become unplayable.

It is true that on my main character I make my money from piracy. However, at some point in time, I have played characters who were miners, traders, and nationalist military pilots. I have always been able to make plenty of money for ships in my line of work, without resorting to escort missions.

Now that you've moved beyond merely shouting down peytros and actually presented the reasons that you don't think a pilot's death should prevent him from collecting the reward from an escort, I partially agree with you. However, I still think that a player should not receive any monetary compensation for an escort mission if even one of the ships he is escorting dies.

I think this incorporates most of the things that each of us wanted to see in the actual solution (though I may have misunderstood your priorities):
Perhaps if completely failing an escort mission (all ships in the convoy die) gives a large faction reduction, then a partial failure (e.g. half of the ships die) then the faction reduction could be adjusted accordingly. The faction reduction should be proportional to either the number of ships in the convoy or the value of the goods they are carrying, possibly with a per-faction scaling factor (Xang-Xi might not care as much as Serco, or something).

The matter of ridiculously high compensations for all escort missions is a separate issue, and should be addressed, but not in this thread.

I still think that a player should not receive any monetary compensation for an escort mission if even one of the ships he is escorting dies.

Not too bright, are you? Or maybe you just don't care about the safety of the convoy?

Or is there some other way you're proposing to keep me from abandoning the 3 moths and two centuars full of cargo, after one atlas bites it in a storm?

The faction penalty isn't going to do it -- if it's high enough, I just won't take escorts. And adding faction risk means you have to re-price the escort services, since the pilot has more skin in the game. Before it was just a graduated reward based on cargo delivered, plus whatever ship I fly to escort. Now the taking on of an escort mission puts X points of faction standing on the line -- more risk means priceier escort services.

Actually, I presented mostly the same reasons in shouting down Peytros. His arguement was based on real situations I'm sure where people run voys between Latos and Sedina and stop in b8 for pvp- while getting paid. Certainly this is a problem. However, his solution and then double standard was just a bit too absurd for my temper.

Your comments are worth discussing. I disagree with canceling compensation if 'any' ship dies. It 'should' be impossible to know in advance what level of danger a particular convoy may face before heading out. Implement this and you can get players that make a career of knocking off the atlas so players don't get paid.

As far as faction loss, again, due to the lack of foresight, I'm hesitant to agree to this unless the entire voy is lost- and then only a small faction loss, say 25 to 50 points. Perhaps this could be offset by paying a fine equal to the value of the ships and cost of cargo. I would be willing to accept a faction loss of 2-5 points per ship lost up to the entire voy.

This is because there are a number of players who are quite capable of taking out an entire regular sized voy single handedly (something that even at my best I could not do), and if in a group very easily.

Anyway, this isn't as coherent as I would like, but I'm in a bit of a rush.

Perhaps the first step would be to have both players and npcs exit storms from the same point. Until that occurs defending the voy and managing to keep pace with it is a moot point.

As a more lateral thought why does escorting a voy over part of its route and getting a proportionate reward upset folk so much ? The monetary rewards are not all that large in nation space, and so variable as to be considered a dubious bonus in grey space. In RL I regularly put together jobs where the rewards are split between various contractors based on notional effort applied. Why should vo be different ?

With regard to faction loss I apply my original point. If a voy loses members in an "unmonitored" sector and you wish to apply a faction loss to the escorter then it would be logical that the voy reports back the details of the attacker and applies a similar faction hit whether that is an npc or a player.

Now that would be fine with me, applying the same rules to both those who escort and those who attack voys seems reasonably balanced.

how was my suggestion absurd? you where the one applying it to hive skirmish and boarder patrol missions which are both very different then escort missions. faction loss is not the way to fix this because it is incrediby easy for me to ignore the person shooting at me and kill the voy atlas in a few shots.

say you lose two taurs or one moth then you fail the mission

and ecka the reason it upsets people is that people continually die while "escorting" voys into b8 and make a profit on it. I mean come on you wanna die and still make a profit? how meaningless is death in this game going to get?

If a voy loses members in an "unmonitored" sector and you wish to apply a faction loss to the escorter then it would be logical that the voy reports back the details of the attacker and applies a similar faction hit whether that is an npc or a player.

You're not thinking too hard, though I suspect it's deliberate.

The difference is pretty clear: to dock the escort for failing to protect the ships, all the faction needs to know is info available in monitored sectors (who's working for them, and who made it to the station at the end). Penalizing the attacker, however, involves stuff that occured in unmonitored space. Pilots in VO don't "report back" about anything--dislike it all you want, but that's how unmonitored space is set up.

Your approach leads to some funny possibilities, though. Let's say there's a POS Serco [TGFT] escorting a Bio-Com voy, and I (also a POS Serco, with good Bio-Com standing, too) attack the voy in Sedina. POS Serco [TGFT] kills me (no friendly fire in Grey) while defending the convoy, after I kill one of the Bio-Com moths. The surviving convoy members dock at a Corvus station.

Under your logic, [TGFT] loses standing because he took a Bio-Com mission and failed it; I lose standing with Bio-Com because it's reported I killed their moth in unmonitored space. But wait, as long as we're reporting on actions taken in unmonitored space, shouldn't [TGFT] lose some Serco standing for killing me, a POS Serco pilot? Surely that, too, gets reported.