The existing SF is already good enough at chasing and do a good enough job of killing people who actually stop to engage a target. Their problem is that we can use hit-and-run tactics with a wide turn radius and they'll almost never catch up to us (although sometimes the target can dock or jump while we're lining up for another pass, so engagements do sometimes get forced due to timing constraints).

So what needs to happen is to have the station also dispatch a pair of bodyguards for every friendly in the sector (up to some limit so that things don't get absurd when there are a dozen friendlies). What the guards would do would be to follow their assigned friendly around while attempting to shoot at any hostiles that get within range. They would not pursue the hostile -- that's the job of the normal SF team. Their mission is simply to stick to the friendly and provide suppressing fire anytime a hostile gets close.

In situations where there are too many friendlies to guard them all, the station should prioritize the ones who have the lowest levels and the ones who are in the biggest cargo ships. Also, this suggestion only applies to station sectors, not all monitored space.

-1 until npc's consider what is between them and their target before they shoot. Last thing I want near my xc is a npc 'guard'.

Wouldn't some kind of very accurate cannon/weapon on strategic parts of the station not near where ships exit and dock work for this and not clutter the sector with more unpredictable npcs? Maybe snipers on the stations that can aim with some kind of capitol rail gun turret (hmm, new trident turret, too)? Get too close to the station and pop!

How exactly does rail-gun turrets on station solve your problem of "unpredictable NPCs", though? An attacker would take advantage of the fact by positioning himself behind you lined up with the station. They still won't consider what's between them and the target.

I wouldn't mind seeing your XC turned to swiss cheese from accidental railgun shots, so +1!

+1

However I don't think it's necessary to dispatch bodyguards to every ship in the sector- only the one being attacked or at most only to the player characters who are admired or above if they have not been attacked and are not the attacker.

-1 until npc's consider what is between them and their target before they shoot. Last thing I want near my xc is a npc 'guard'.

Same logic here. I avoid station sectors with my Trident for this very reason. You're safer in a grey space wormhole than you are at a station NFZ because of the strike forces.

@joylessjoker ... I think what you describe could be possible but less likely since rails travel so much faster than a nuet 2 and they would fire less repetitively as well. Sporadic sniper shots would be harder to line up against a target than streams of nuet 2 fire.

I don't see this as a problem.

Sporadic sniper shots would be harder to line up against a target than streams of nuet 2 fire.

Not necessarily. NPCs only fire when they've got an autoaim lock, sorta like how autofire on tablets works. You can tell when the WTDs are going to launch flares by watching their nose in relation to how your ship is moving. It wouldn't be hard at all to keep your victim directly between you and the SF bot when they fire a rail. The shorter travel time makes it easier since they won't be leading as far ahead of your ship.

Just apply FF protection to the 'escorted' and provide that escort for a fee at the station.

The return of the FF protection... we had that a long time ago and it made perfect sense then.

You were not able to get damaged by your own nation PCs unless they were KOS but NPCs were always exempt from that rule and players did explode when accidentally hit by a friendly SF and if SF would run into your fire you'd get a temp KOS - just like now.

Devs have never been able to apply the FF protection from NPCs and I don't think they ever will.

We still have FF protection in nation capitols.

biretak: No. With turrets, the line between acceptable and unacceptable is too thin to find a happy medium ground. I don't think it's possible to get any more out of turrets than we already do without crossing that line. The Strike Force, on the other hand, has a lot more room to be made more effective without becoming too effective.

As for friendly fire, keep in mind that as stupid as NPCs are, an unescorted non-capital ship is still more likely to be killed by a pirate than one that is escorted by NPCs. This is the same as seatbelts -- yes, sometimes the seatbelt can make things worse, but it makes things better more often and is therefor a net benefit.

I don't really have a problem with giving strike-force NPCs magic guns that don't hurt the person they're set to defend, though, if that's easier for the devs/server than fixing the AI.


Regarding Keller's fee idea: Um, no. I'm not sure you're even on the same page here? I'm talking about having the SF do more to actively protect newbies in station sectors, rather than just chasing me around uselessly while I shoot at said newbies. Making the newbies hire them to do that makes no sense.

I think the risk of the bodyguards shooting the protected ship would be mitigated by 1) AI that directs the bodyguard to put themselves between the protected ship and the attacker and 2) the fact that the attacker still has to evade the pursuit ships.

It's okay, Pizza. Was just throwing that out there due the obvious drift in thread content. (been hoping for more things to spend money on in here. It's not like money's hard to make after all. If we DID have to buy them, it could be made commensurate to one's overall combat level, making it more expensive to hire escorts when you're more experienced; in fact, the idea of hiring escorts for any mission is something which has been discussed and belongs fully in another thread) Overall, I like the idea of escorts, and frankly even with the fact that NPC fire can be exploited to do harm to people, that tends to be more often with missiles than neut fire anyway, thus, as you stated, even imperfect NPC escorts are better than none.

As to your OP, anything which makes veteran players give pause, especially in the areas which are supposed to be a little safer at least, would be a good thing. That's not the same to save that capitol sectors (and to a lesser extent other station sectors) should completely safe; this is after all a game called "Vendetta", but giving new players at least a little breathing room is always a good thing. This is the same reason, I think there should be more guards overall in certain sectors. (like capitols and major faction "Capitol" stations)

Always WAS on the same page. (though I have a bad habit of reading a few pages ahead too; adding SF escorts in station sectors is a natural adjunct to the concept of escorts overall)