-1

Mines are not the same as rockets/lasers, they already had the ability to detect a friendly and not detonate. They could even detect if someone was grouped with you to prevent accidental deaths. Mines are not just a weapon, but are an entity in their own right, they are NOT and NEVER HAVE BEEN the same as a stray bullet/rocket/laser. It actually makes sense that these devices with their own targeting know when not to deploy.

Using enemy fire against opponents should remain a thing, next thing you know wash will be crying that I got a group member to kill him because he flew too close to their rockets. If you cannot evade a strike force that is not even aiming at you then you just need to get better.

Im pointing out that if other exploits are getting fixed then they all should.

It is not an exploit or a bug.

Unguided projectiles' trajectories are neither an exploit nor a bug.

It's a bug. For the REALISM! folks, most law enforcement agents should have some idea of when to hold fire. I'd be in favor of waiting for the longer fix of improved NPC shooting logic. And it should not be perfect, just really good.

It's not a bug. If I was running from the police and they happened to open fire on me just as I grabbed an innocent passerby and used them as a shield, they would get shot. And in most circumstances; especially if I was firing back, would still try take further shots and call it "calculated risk".

I have no problem with AI becoming smarter and "holding fire" if they think they would hit an innocent, but that is a suggestion (and one that has about as much chance of being implemented as landing on planets). This is NOT a bug.

Anyway, this is a hard trick to pull off. It is not like any Tom, Dick or Harry can use this to kill anything that is present. It takes skill, it only works on targets that are large and slow, or pretty much stationary. People do not use this to kill newbs in busses. People use this against Behemoths and Tridents - so cut the crap.

+1 to what Yoda said.

Also, did you forget... "REALISM!!!"

Realism. You should look it up. If I am in the same car as a drug dealer when the police find his boot stuffed full of cocaine then I'm pretty sure they arrest me too. Regardless of my guilt. If you hang around with criminals you do get tarred with the same brush. Wake up and smell the coffee Wash!

Never heard of "guilty by association?"

Your analogy flawed, the correct one would be person A shoots at person B then sees a buddy walking down the road and picks him up. The person B then finds them together in the car and shoots both of them. So you are saying realistically that person B shouldnt be punished for killing person C who wasn't involved in the original atack?

No, my logic is not flawed. If someone gets in my car, I drive them into town so they can shoot people, I am as guilty as them. Simple. That "was" an exploit and was fixed.

What you made this thread about IS NOTHING LIKE THAT.

Yes. We all float is correct. THERE IS NO [removed] SOUND IN SPACE.

VO itself may be not realistic and I know that. So let me say that I am against every kind of magic that RUINS the fun.

Let me list a two magical things that ruin the fun:

- magical protection in capitol systems EVEN in unmonitored sectors
- not being able to drop Lmines in the NFZs

And the idea at hand would go on that list. To me it looks like a valid war strategy to lure the suicide bombers the station decided to stand in a ball of innocent ships. Their fault for using suicide bombers. Stations shoulda thought about it.

So either you suggest Seekers be removed completely or you live with it. But NO MORE magic that ruins all the fun please.

Sorry Seiger, but if you want mines to persist, you have to live with the no fire zone rules. They do persist now. They are not like the mines of old that disappeared when you died/left the sector. You shoud know that you can still drop them inside roids though... That bit really does help with lawgun farming.

"Is it fun to be killed in the NFZ when you can't defend yourself? Nope. End of story."

Not end of story. You cannot simply look at one side of an argument and conclude based on that. Perhaps it's not fun to die because NPCs are stupid, but it's also not fun to have a game with inconsistent, intuitive mechanics. When I see a glowing ball of death flying through space, I expect that glowing ball of death to damage whatever it hits. And when I have a group of enemies shooting at me, I expect that I should be able to maneuver so as to increase the risk of them damaging each other or somebody else. Not being able to do that is just as jarring as them stupidly firing at a friendly ship I'm fully obscured behind. So it's not just a simple "So and so isn't having fun, so do what they ask" problem.

Which is why I say address the actual problem of NPCs being stupid, rather than taking the easy way out and using shitty workarounds. For example, having the NPCs hold fire if they don't have a clear line-of-sight to their target would solve the bulk of the problem with very little computation (just do a ray-test every quarter-second or so). It certainly wouldn't be perfect, given that weapons have finite velocities and ships move, but it would prevent them firing when a ship is hiding behind a capship or large cargo ship, which is the main issue. And if the test is to a different random point on the target ship each time, that would automatically handle partial-cover scenarios in a realistic way (the more of the target that is obscured, the less frequently they'll attempt a shot).

Another heuristic would be to keep track of whether the NPC has accidentally hit a friendly within the last second or so and reduce fire rate accordingly. So if some rando flies through their line of fire and takes a little damage, the NPCs would pause for a moment before resuming fire, not unlike how real people might behave in that scenario. "Oh shit, I just hit that idiot! No, shake it off, got to stay focused on killing the bad guy! Resume fire!" It gives the friendly a moment to hopefully get away while reducing the total DPS dealt to them if they don't (since firing would happen in bursts separated by one second intervals).

All: As a reminder, Suggestions is a place for suggestions and civil discussions about them. Today in this thread I spent considerable time editing or deleting posts that were attacking, profane, or deliberately off-topic. I also thread muted repeat-offenders, who know better and should expect deletion rather than edits. Individuals who will not abide by the simple rules laid out in Incarnate's Be Nice post will not have a voice here.

My thanks and apologies for the disruption to everyone else.

Which is why I say address the actual problem of NPCs being stupid, rather than taking the easy way out and using shitty workarounds.

I agree that is the better solution. Whether or not it is possible / likely to be done is another question.

(Whistler: Do you consider the word "shitty" and "shit" less profane than "f**king" in regards to adjectives and exclamatories? I assume as much since you allowed pizzasgood to use the word...)

(I do consider "shitty" to be lesser on the profanity scale and did let it go in previous posts. That's certainly a bias on my part, but I could be more restrictive if Incarnate or our VO culture requested it. It should never be directed at someone. My preference is not to use it here, though.)

-1

It is pretty well established that it is realistic for cops to fire indiscriminately into a crowd of innocent people just so they can be the one to get the "bad guy"....so the current behavior which mirrors that is...as pointed out...not a bug. If a person is able to damage a ship to the point that they can maneuver their ship to cause the strike force crossfire to cause collateral damage, that is neither an exploit nor a bug....that is good flying. If you want more penalty on shooting but not killing in the NFZ, make that in its own suggestion.

Given the difficulty inherent in pulling this maneuver off, it seems from my perspective to be a non urgent issue. As such I believe it should be fixed by making the bots "less stupid". It may take longer, but be more realistic. The biggest problem I see with this, is the ability to "hide" from the strike force between other ships working in concert. Something that could be relativly easily setup with a bunch of 10 dollar kindle fire's running free to play.

Given the choice between a magic fix and making the bots smarter I would very much favor smarter bots. The AI's used in VO don't even rank as retarded. The algorithms used have been around since Pac-Man. As much as I enjoyed Incarnates last roid polish, It is long past time Guild created some AI worthy of the rest of the game.