There are also situations where you don't know that they're trying to log out on you, for example after they say "don't kill me, I'll pay!" and then you wait for them to comply.

This is why the counter gets bumped up to 30s by hails.

Last time I checked, if you kill the game to quit instantly, it DOES leave your ship floating for some time before the server actually takes you out of the sector. I know I've come back to a severely damaged Trident when the game locked up on my phone a few times.

Somebody with 2 accounts want to test this and time it?

I'm going to suggest something else while trying to stay on topic. what about a combat/threat mode. like in most games, you can be "in combat" and not allowed to do certain things. the uses for this can extend beyond this issue, but this is not a hijacking.

when "in combat", logoff takes 5 minutes.

Arf, go record a video of yourself doing 1,000,000 points of damage over the course of 40 seconds. When you can pull that off, your argument will have merit. (And no, the "well, you should fight capships in a group!" counter does not let you off the hook. A mere 40 seconds is not enough time to allow the scout to notify his group and for them to arrive and deliver the damage.)

Even if you could deal out that much damage, or if we went with the "recently in combat" approach, it still doesn't help when you're trying to locate a ship that is perpetually logging in briefly outside targeting range to check who's in the sector, then logging out before you have time to act on its presence.

The OP solves all of the problems in one swoop, and furthermore allows the abolishment of the logout countdown, permitting instant logouts. I honestly can't see why anybody would complain.

EDIT: In case you missed it in the other thread Arf, repeat hails don't re-bump the counter. So you only get, at most, 40 seconds. I wasn't aware of this or I'd be agreeing with you, as it would solve everything as well - I'd be happy with infinite delay resets as a solution, though I think this one is cleaner. But just 40 seconds isn't enough time to distinguish between incompetency (or crappy phone keyboards) and stalling.

EDIT2: Yeah, I'll go see if I can measure the disconnect timeout.

My alt lasted for one minute after I killed its client. Didn't test an actual disconnect since they were both running from the same machine.

+1

But I feel that 15 minutes is too long. 30 seconds should be plenty of time to destroy any non-capital ship. If tridents need 15 minutes, that's a different discussion, but all ships shouldn't be made to persist for 15 minutes because of that. So then the only remaining question becomes how much time is needed to seek out and destroy a bot hiding 15km away.

I'm not sure I have the answer to that, but I'm thinking somewhere in the 1 to 5 minutes range should be an adequate amount of time. The problem with going any longer than 5 minutes is that it isn't really going to help to find and destroy bots floating in space because the bots will just change their routine and jump to an empty sector whenever a player comes within 5km radar range instead of logging off. Perhaps that's as good as killing them since they'd need human intervention to reposition themselves again, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone found a way to work around it. (EDIT: such as exploding, launching from the station, then turboing for some predefined duration)

One thing I don't like about this suggestion is that if implemented, then you'd eventually encounter ships just floating in space and have no way of knowing whether the player's client is disconnected or if they are simply AFK. Thus you could be sending them PMs but not know if they are receiving the message or not. Though I suppose a relatively simple fix should be to make the game reply with "%player% is not online" while still allowing for the unoccupied ship to be shot at.

One potential exploit I can think of with this suggestion is that if logoffs become instant in space, then someone could potentially shoot a finishing shot at someone then quickly log off before it hits to avoid a faction penalty. I don't like the idea of allowing for faction penalties while the client is disconnected because then there'd be no record in the errors.log, and it could confusing to try to figure out what happened.

So then the other option is to ensure that all of a player's energy shots, projectiles and mines get removed when the client is disconnected. I'm pretty sure this happens with swarms, but I'm not sure about the other cases. Plus, there could still be the possibility of happening to get a kill when timing the logoff perfectly, so for that reason it would probably be a good thing to keep the 10 second logoff timer as it is now (but no reason for the 30 second extension if the OP is implemented).

Yeah, five minutes would be enough to find and kill a bot. It's a pretty easy process.

Making a fully lua bot that returns to the appropriate distance would actually be pretty easy, since specific position doesn't really matter, just distance, and you can monitor distance to the wormhole via lua. But the point isn't to make the bots impossible. The point is just to let us shoot them down. Maybe we can't permanently kill them, but we can't permanently kill players either. Legally anyway.

I think you people get way too bent out of shape over people logging on you. Do you really need 15 minutes to kill some newb in a bus or atlas that is floating defenseless to boot? If you do I may as well mock you for being so pathetically incapable in combat.

Edit: I would also like to add the fact that if you think you should be given a free pass to kill a trident then what is the point in having bigger more powerful ships that require time and effort to build by yourself. If a trident owner needs to log out to escape death then they're the worst pilot I've ever heard of.

heh

Yay, strawmen!

In addition, make the login in space to be in a certain region, not in the exact point where you logged off. Like if you just jumped to that sector.

That suggestion deserves its own thread. Throw one up and I'll drop in some comments.

How is that strawman if that is whole reason why you want the login extended in this manner? Your original post was complaining about newbs logging off to avoid death. The fact that you want it 15 minutes is enough time to kill them 300 times. That wasn't so much of a guess, but rather killing someone defenselessly floating takes about 3 seconds after the first shot. Which makes me think the current standard of adding 30 seconds upon hail works just fine. If you can't handle that then you need combat lessons not a drastic feature added.

If you can't handle that then you need combat lessons not a drastic feature added.

Ad hominem.

One possible complication this suggestion may introduce involves a death occurring *after* a logout. I'm not sure how the game would handle this versus when a player loses his or her link; some missions use death as an event to trigger further events, and also logging out. Again, I'm not certain what this would do as far as gameplay is concerned, only pointing out this suggestion is probably more complex than it appears.

If it were anyone else making this argument I'd be saying the same thing.

It's just another way of saying "if one cannot handle that then one requires combat lessons", which is not ad hominem, but if you say that then guides poke fun at you for not being American.

Ad hominem is like, "your idea is stupid because you are stupid, and only stupid ideas can come from you, stupid".

I just disagree with the premise of this whole change. Rin is trying to sell us a change that effects multiple situations, but it isn't a serious issue in many of those situations except the bots. There are also plenty of different alternatives bot makers could try to get around it, leaving the change being for nothing.

There's a point where you're grasping at straws and as alloh points out, starting a race between guild software and a bunch of players to find ways to keep features and satisfy an ever complaining playerbase. There's a reason they don't do this, it's because once it starts it never stops, and it's a race 4 people cannot hope to win.

"How is that strawman if that is whole reason why you want the login extended in this manner?"

Because that isn't the reason. You have misunderstood. Probably my fault, I haven't been my clearest in this thread. Allow me to clarify:

Problem one: Not enough time to pirate (not kill) people without risk of them logging off. Since the game does not notify us when somebody is trying to log out, I have no way to know if the guy is trying to work out the /givemoney command (made more difficult when we have spaces in our names) and carefully counting the number of zeros and perhaps getting the name and the money swapped around, OR if he's just stalling for time while the logout counter ticks. Hailing them only boosts the delay once, and not by enough time. Currently the only surefire solution is to hit them with a single shot every eight seconds, which aborts the countdown. Very ugly, as it tends to scare them. Then they run and I have to kill them, and they get all pissy about being rushed. I would prefer to let them take their time, with the risk being that they call for backup or /explode, rather than outright cheating by logging off.

Problem two: Capships can disconnect, and just let their million points of armor soak up the damage for the minute they remain before the server decides they aren't coming back and removes the trident. IMO, that isn't enough time. Five minutes would be better. And don't give me any "well if they logged off, that means you win" bullcrap either - if they log off, they don't drop cargo. It's cheating, plain and simple.

Problem three: People can camp out beyond targeting range but within sensor range, and rapidly log in and out so that they can read the sector list without giving anybody adequate time to feel out the surface of their detection sphere so that they can be located and killed. It can be done, but it takes inordinate amounts of time.

I apologize if I wasn't clear enough earlier in the thread, but those are the three issues I have with the current logout/disconnect system. I think now you should be able to see why, when you said, "Do you really need 15 minutes to kill some newb in a bus or atlas that is floating defenseless to boot?", I called it a strawman.

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TRS: The arms race stuff was regarding detecting bots, not regarding fixing exploits in general. I'm not saying anything at all about detecting bots, because I fully agree it is too much of an uphill battle to be worth it. This is about simply fixing a minor exploit, with a solution that (despite your vague and overreacting rebuttals) would not negatively impact anybody except for those who are using the exploits. With the very minor and temporary exception of trident pilots, who would need to move to an empty sector before logging off when outside Latos. Big deal, cry me a river. If I ever visit Australia we can go rafting on it or something.

Yes, this came up at the same time as that silly botnet, but it's not about them. They're just one of the three facets. As you can see above, 2/3 of the problem cases involve normal players. What really prompted this thread was when I found out that you can only reset a person's logout timer once. I had always thought it could be reset multiple times. That, in conjunction with a third way to abuse logouts, led to this thread.

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Phaserlight: What TRS said re: ad hominems. "There is no problem; you are simply incompetent" is a valid debate tactic, whereas "You are incompetent, therefor we shouldn't listen to your argument" is not.

Surfing, never rafting, and we do that in the ocean despite the jellyfish, sharks, poisonous octopi and rough waves. Try to remember that before you insinuate that i'm going to cry over having to wait 5 minutes to logout.

Once a prey has stopped, i give it all the needed commands (either cargo drop or money gift), then i start the countdown, 1 blaster shot every 2-4s until they comply or go boom. If they try to flee or drift, they just receive a full volley of flares to end 'em suffering. I've found that a little stress do wonders.

I do not go after crapship, in my opinion they shouldnt be soloable as this suggestion seems requiring.

The only thing i found weird with the logoff command is that it is working even if your ship is not still. I think it should require you to bring your ship speed to zero to allow you to logoff. If your ship drift the command should abort.

This suggestion is removing the tridents' last resort of client-killing to escape destruction, not allowing them to be soloable.

Yes, well, I'm originally from deep within North America, where the closest thing we had to an ocean was Lake Superior, which had no big waves and stunk like fish. The closest I've been to surfing is snowboarding. Probably more dangerous for that matter. No real risk of drowning, but plenty of opportunity for blunt force trauma and twisted joints, and we had bears and wolves to make up for the lack of sharks and jellies. Oh, and hypothermia and frostbite. Depending where you go, also a risk of avalanche, but we didn't have big enough mountains for that to be an issue where I lived.