New players that are attacked by pirates in nation space often ask why they will suffer a penalty for defending themselves. To quote a recent example: "so how is it that you can shoot at me, but when I defend myself it tells me tostop shooting you or there'll be a UIT penalty".

And really, should it be this way? Now don't get me wrong, I support nation space piracy. But I also support a trader defending themselves.

This problem is exaggerated by pirates that game the system. The pirate may have very high faction standing, pick on noobs with low standing, and may be able to get high end trade ships to work their standing back up fast. The noob on the other hand is a noob, and significantly disadvantaged at every angle. Fighting in a noob ship against a pirate in a high end fighting ship, risking a much more severe faction penalty than the pirate, that they would then take much longer to recover from than the pirate.

Even if the noob wins, they lost. This is just too much disadvantage. It is tantamount to saying that the factions actively support piracy of noobs, based on standing. And worse, it is saying that the factions expect the noob to lay down and die, on threat of faction penalty.

As a number one priority, players attacked in nation space should be allowed to defend themselves without penalty. This is more important than cracking down on pirates or making it harder to recover lost standing. Self defense is a basic tenant of every cultured civilization, and vo factions are presenting themselves as unsophisticated, uncultured, and/or barbaric. It just looks too stupid to be believable. It makes the game look like it was just not thought through with any real foresight.

The problem is determining "self-defense" in a meaningful way that cannot be trivially exploited by any pirate, who will then have carte blanche to destroy newbies without any repercussions at all. For instance, by ramming newbies, or flying into the path of the shots of a newbie firing on a bot.

I'm open to suggestions on this, but on a technical level it has always been a challenging thing to differentiate without potentially making the problem worse.

At least as it stands right now, the newbie issue amounts to a lack of timely and meaningful reaction by the "authorities of the local faction", as well as a lack of lengthy-enough repercussions to discourage repeat offenses. These are issues I can and will address.

But the more fundamental issue of determining self-defense in a twitch-game is challenging in ways that I'm not entirely sure I can address without adding new issues that make the "solution" worse than the "problem".

Yep tricky topic imo too

Perhaps the station could detect the noobs levels vs the offenders levels and not only faction standing

For example something like this:
Any level 8+ that shoots a level 2 or maybe level 3 in nation space that has much more harsh reaction from the guards and quicker perhaps.

This way at least the noob can practice his dodging and running and hopefully the guards will show up quickly enough for them to save themself

I'm not sure what else can really be done to protect new players either but harsher penalties to them does not sound just right either.

Or if new player is hauling > then 1/2 load of cargo and is shot along side of the fact the levels comparison and faction comparisons

Anyhow just one more idea I'm sure you already mixed this up a bit.
Happy coding

Perhaps an early stage change to the mechanism would be to have some specific security personnel launch or arrive that speaks to the issue in sector chat by addressing the perceived aggressor and informing them that pursuing such behavior will result in them being attacked.

Rather than only flashing a message for the attacker to see, the defender will also be aware that what is going on is not tolerated.

There is still the issue of detecting appropriately aggressive behavior, and dealing with multiple attackers. What would be the appropriate scaling for multiple aggressive individuals, and how do you make the security personnel enough of a threat to make it a deterrent? Right now, some players are able to attack players with little threat from security forces.

The obvious way to handle this is to have the security cheat. Have them fly ships that are faster and more responsive with weapons that deal more damage than player-attainable equivalents.

But, as Incarnate already mentioned, this doesn't really answer the issue of detecting self-defense.

"At least as it stands right now, the newbie issue amounts to a lack of timely and meaningful reaction by the "authorities of the local faction", as well as a lack of lengthy-enough repercussions to discourage repeat offenses. These are issues I can and will address."

you are assuming that the noob lost. if the noob kills the pirate, they may face a fate worse than if they had lost.

it would be frustrating if a pirate intentionally got shot, say by stalking a collector hunter, but even in this case, the noob can figure out he got gamed, and figure out how to avoid it. In this case, if he wins, he still suffers, but at least an extra step is added to the "gaming" process, that a noob can see, and possibly even avoid. noobs firing guns are at risk. noobs traveling trade lanes less so.

I hate to suggest an anti pk setting, but you could actually have new player start with a setting that they can not damage other players, until damaged by that player first.

i understand that solving this may not be easy. but it is important. penalizing self defense, particularly during a players development phase, in the players development arena, can potentially get that player really bent out of shape. I have a fairly thick skin, often play games where I am significantly disadvantaged, and even so, had I suffered this situation early enough in my introduction, I would have seriously considered cancelling my account on the spot.

edit: this isn't really about protecting the noob from destruction. it is about protecting the noob from faction loss, or even the appearance of such a threat.

you are assuming that the noob lost. if the noob kills the pirate, they may face a fate worse than if they had lost.

Well, there are things we can do, like handling faction loss differently if someone has a "record" of PKs in nation space and is also KoS. But we have to be careful here too, or a clever pirate will still trick newbies into doing something to inflict temp KoS on themelves and then you're back where you started.. murder without any ramification at all.

Plus, people will still create low-level alts just for the purpose of haranguing newbies. So this will only mitigate higher-level characters who have a "record" of bad behaviour.

Anyway, there are a lot of things we can do to mitigate the current situation, and make it less of a problem. Eliminating the issue entirely is probably impossible (barring closing the game to new accounts and forcing all our current population to each playing a single character forever). But, I'm all for a blend of stuff that makes things "good enough".

I am not asking for a perfect solution.

Yes I can make new characters all day long, hunt noobs to all ends of the galaxy, and then make another character. But I won't be flying a valk and I won't have perfect faction standing. The noob might actually have a chance.

I am asking for a limit of worst case scenarios. A pirate/griefer, that is hunting noobs, in the noobs home territory, where the pirate is high level, using high end equipment, and has high faction standing. The main issue here is not that the noob be safe or even feel safe, or even that the pirate be punished. The issue here is that the noob is allowed to respond with force, and in doing so, not face serious faction sanctions.

We can reasonably expect the noob to die. This is not at all the issue. Did the noob get to fight back? Did the noob get to shoot at the pirate? Did the noob feel like they put up a good fight? Or failing to put up a good fight this time, resolving to put up a good fight next time? Dying or not, does the noob feel like they gained from the experience, or do they end up feeling helpless and frustrated without recourse other than logging off?

Some people are just not up to it. But the current situation would frustrate even the most stubborn noob. Especially if after time and again battling the aggressor, they actually kill the pirate and suffer standing loss. It would just be too much insult added to injury. It could cripple a noob's advancement, both in terms of game play, and in their interest in playing the game.

In another thread, I suggested that to even target and fire on a faction friendly player would make the aggressor faction temp kos. Realistically, a faction should respond with a strike force at this point. I also suggested a player controlled switch that would prevent a player from firing on a faction friendly target. If a noob can not fire on a faction friendly target (without figuring out how to turn off the switch), and the noob can not be fired on without the aggressor forfeiting their faction protected status, then there are very limited ways to actually cause a noob to lose standing.

The noob probably still ends up dead. The pirate probably still gets away. The facts have not radically changed.

but the perception is worlds apart from:
"we don't really care if that pirates kills you, but you better not kill that pirate, or else".

There's a marshal bot in UIT space, he doesn't need to actually fly to the sector he can contact the player
"Are you under attack (yes/no)"
to one being attacked "cease fire for investigation"
one under attack or perhaps someone playing a trick: "yes"
msg to agressor "stop or you will face faction penalties"

if they stop, that's that however:

if another shot/hit from the aggressor to defender is registered, the player will face faction hits if they kill the pilot and then:

Marshall to defender "defend yourself while a unit is dispatched" and then a small SF or even just one ship is dispatched"
OR:
If a shot from the defender to the aggressor is registered they will face faction hits on kill and the reverse will happen:
Marshall to supposed aggressor "defend yourself while a unit is dispatched"

The player chat interactions with the Marshall are all possible because there are chat handlers in the mission system but the devs might need to do a little work on the shot/hit trigger detection

This scenario allows for the newbie to be notified if they are an aggressor (by being tricked) to stop firing and if the rat engages them during this transaction then the flag would switch so this would catch both scenarios. Of course the pirate will probably still succeed most of the time but hopefully in some cases the newbie may defend themselves legally and the pirate would be chased around a bit by SF/police perhaps giving the newb a chance to escape.

It still isn't perfect but it is a faaar step above the current situation

1+ spence

CrazySpence, newbies already have enough trouble with channel chat, and now you want them to know how to quickly respond to a PM from an NPC with an extremely long name while possibly taking fire? My suggestion above would be far simpler and give new players a better sense that there is at least some protection available. If the aggression happens in a non-station monitored sector, then it would be neat if a strike force is dispatched from the nearest station to provide aid, though at the speed of normal travel. Also, as I suggested, strike force should be flying ships more capable than are available to players.

Inc, one way to determine who is the aggressor is to determine what a ship's target is at the time the weapon is fired along with the timestamp of the shot. A simple 2-layer filter would be able to determine who fired on whom first. This eliminates the pirate jumping in between the noob at the intended target to establish "defending oneself." I would however have to think more about it, given that mines don't fit into this paradigm, and we would want a rule which covered mines as well as direct fire weapons and missiles.

Keller: Then they just need to fire on newbies without targeting, which isn't difficult. Anything like that basically just introduces a new "game" for the griefers.. "I can hunt newbies if.. (I get in the way when they're hunting bots, I fire on them without targeting, etc)".

I think the best option for the near term is the kind of factional / KoS / PK "mitigation" stuff I already have planned. It won't be any kind of absolute, but it will improve the situation.

Why not just SERIOUSLY enforce the NFZ? Currently, the NFZ's are a bit of a joke, easily "managed" by experienced players. As it stands, the game recognises if you fire a shot inside the NFZ, and issues a warning. Simply make it so if a second shot is fired, the firing party is ganked by LOTS of actually threatening guards? Like a dozen of them. Hell, despite my aversion to "magic NPC's", I'd even make them invincible. Or better still, the guards that emerge to tackle the aggressor simply drop nothing if destroyed, but destroying one causes two more to spawn.

I realise this would only help a newb in the NFZ, but given VO's pvp policy, I think thats as it should be. If the pirate follows a newb to a non-station sector, and attacks them there, well, thats a risk you take leaving the NFZ. I understand DE was refering to monitored sectors in general, rather than NFZ's, but seriously, how is a sector monitored if there is no faction personel there to monitor it in the first place?

If a sector is monitored, there should be a clear, ARMED faction presence, such as the turrets at nation-space WH sectors. Otherwise, it should not be monitored.

Faille.

So a pirate shoots around a newbie, never hitting them, and the newbie, believing s/he is under attack, fires back and is shot down? Perhaps there could be a special emphasis in the new tutorials about not shooting back in NFZs.

Instead of blanket increasing the ability of all SF, perhaps it would make more sense to make those in nation space significantly stronger, but scale down the response to a violation as you head closer to grey, allowing for the fun there used to be during station battles. I'm not sure about invincible, but close to it may be a good idea for Dau, Itan, and Sol II stations; nation specific ships with uber stats? Corvus and some of the other factions might not respond at all unless the person fired upon is high standing.

I also think less sectors should be monitored. It's logistically improbable for nations to monitor and guard so many sectors; guard wormholes and stations, and leave everything else to the wild. Make space less safe and let newbies know (many, many times) that there are no promises outside stations and wormholes.

+1 Faille
+1 Tarenty

I pretty much aggree there, but the guards should engage for simply firing a weapon (after a warning for the first shot fired, as we all occasionaly miss-click), not "hitting" someone. Its a "NO FIRE ZONE", not a "NO HITTING OTHER SHIPS ZONE".

I definatly agree that less sectors should be monitored, or at least if they ARE monitored, have some form of faction presence. Idealy, it'd be awesome if guards could patrol commonly used sectors (such as roid sectors), and those sectors became monitored only while the guards were there, but that's probably pushing things at this stage.

Faille.

The number of monitored sectors is not overly abundant, if anything the number of turrets is too abundant, especially in UIT space. However, just because a sector is monitored does not mean that it needs to have guards in presence at all times. As an example, cities could be considered to be station sectors. They are considered to be guarded and police/security will respond relatively quickly to an issue. Rural areas could then be considered to be monitored sectors. They are controlled and watched by a faction, but the response times are going to be lower. Just make it so that when aggression is detected/reported in a monitored sector a few strike force are dispatched from the nearest station to the sector in question.

I see your point, druagath, but when I lose standing for killing "Mr PoS" in a sector that is "monitored" but has only me and "Mr PoS" present, who the hell is there to monitor it?

For that matter, when I boom a few moths in B-8, and the rest jump away, why do the rest not report it?

I can commit blatant murder in an unmonitored secter, regardless of witnesses, without consequences, but if I simply defend myself from a localy admired/PoS aggressor in a monitored sector, I can be pinged, despite the lack of witnesses.

The current system for "un/monitored" sectors feels abitrary and contrived, because it makes no sense, and is coupled with an unbalanced pvp/local standing penalty.

Faille.

I am suggesting, and started this thread by suggesting, that there be a mechanism to allow a noob to defend themselves. Such a mechanism would not be a complete solution of the faction pirate problem, but only deal with a specific aspect of that problem.

Inc has plans for "factional / KoS / PK "mitigation" stuff". My suggestion is not a replacement for that stuff. It is supplemental.

Inc's objections are constantly "but there are ways around that", and that is true, but even forcing a pirate to get around it could help slow them down, empower the noob, or at least change the perception of affairs.

I am asking for a mechanism, by which the noob is entitled to defend themselves, without threat of faction loss.

You can shoot at someone without a weapons lock. It is a handicap. It's isn't a big enough handicap, but it is still a handicap.

Let us consider the following theoretical conditions:

New characters start with a "weapons safety" setting that will not allow them to fire a weapon without a faction hostile target selected. Some vets will tend to turn this off, at their own risk. If they are vet enough to turn it off, they are vet enough to deal with the risks.
If you damage someone while the "weapons safety" setting is off, you are instant temp kos.
If you damage someone while the "weapons safety" setting is on, you are given a warning, three times in a row. The forth time, you are temp kos.

Now a pirate can still game this system. But at what cost? To damage someone with the "weapons safety" setting on means that there must be at least one hostile target in sector. If a noob keeps their "weapons safety" setting on, they get at least three warnings. They can see the pirate is trying to get shot, and they can leave the sector.

It isn't a perfect system. It may still need refinement. But it is hard to game, without a noob seeing signs of gaming. Even if a noob dies to this, they can review their logs and see where they went wrong. It would be very hard to game an alert noob multiple times.

While I agree with your premise, DE, your soloution seems needlessly complex, and doesn't change the issue of magic reporting in monitored sectors vs complete ambivalence in unmonitored sectors.

Lets ignore the un/monitored sector issue for a second though. If the standing loss occured for simply hitting the admired player (or the ship they were a gunner in???) rather than killing, it would be a simple fix for the "newb baiting" issue. Sure, one could fire around a newb without hitting them in an attempt to bait them, but a simple warning message should the newb return fire and hit the aggressor(like the one you get if you blatt off a few shots in a NFZ) should alleviate that issue. Any newb who disregards a warning from the game itself is in fact not a newb, but a noob, and deserves what they get.

This also means should the aggressor accidentaly hit the newb while trying to lure them into attacking, they would also get the warning, while a second hit would ping them with the appropriate faction hit.

Assuming the sector was monitored. By magic space gremlins.

Faille.