For my part, I always thought the whole "messaging people to extend their timer" thing was an ugly gameplay hack. But, at the time we didn't have the constructs in place to do logoff-ship-persistency very well.

I would rather ditch the hailing stuff entirely, and switch to a timed-persistency system, that works the same for everyone, everywhere, all the time and can be understood simply.

There are negative ramifications for people on unstable connections, like mobile. Like the possibility of a lot of newbies dying while trying to bot in some relatively-gentle collector sector in a Capitol system.

On the other hand, there may be options like.. having the Sector Daemon (controlling the persistent former-player ship) pick a random direction without obstructions, and then turbo flat-out in that direction (limited by the actual ship and equipment) until the persistency expires and the ship is removed. The pilot may be a bit confused when they come back to a different location, but their ship will be more likely to survive?

I'm not honestly sure how complicated that would be to do. NPCs can already obey powercell, engine and dynamic mass limitations, but there may be other factors in actually implementing it.

Anyway, something "generic" and universal related to persistency is probably better than hailing-based solutions to extend someone else's timer.

NPCs already obey...

Wait, they can disobey their ship's limitations?

If we configure them that way, sure?

I was only saying "they can" in the sense that that wasn't a problem from an implementation standpoint.

But, let's not wander off-topic..

Android users are likely to be botting by themselves. Why not add a player proximity timer that controls persistence? For example, set a X minute timer when they are in sector with a pilot. When they leave the sector, the timer starts counting down behind the scenes. If the encounter another player, the timer is reset. When they log off, their ship persists for as long as is left on the timer.

With the above behavior, they would disappear immediately if they were botting and somebody following them through sectors would ensure they can't just log off. It should also be a lot simpler than making them turbo off into space while they are not online.

Perhaps? But it's not a very general solution, and it makes the fundamental assumption of Android users are likely to be botting by themselves.

I would say that assumption is true.. right now. But it may not be true in a year's time. One goal of planned changes is to get players together at an earlier stage of the game (group missions, helping people find each other, etc).

Similarly, it still won't help players who happen to be botting in the same sector as another player, who is totally unrelated to them. Which is something that becomes more likely during a newbie-influx of scale (iOS "Feature", etc).

So basically, it becomes a solution the assumes the status quo doesn't change. I understand the reasons for the assumption, but I'd rather find something general enough to be robust for some time.

Also, it's easier to explain a single general situation to people, rather than something with a lot of "if/then" considerations. "You can logoff immediately.. if you're in a capitol system and if no one has messaged you recently and if no one happens to be playing in the same sector and if it isn't the second tuesday of the month and you're wearing a red shirt..".

If possible, I'd like to have one set of behaviour that works "well enough" everywhere.

Incarnate since your eye was on this thread -- can you speak to inter-sector logoffs (jumping and then logging off before entering new sector)? i.e. is there a way to force people attempting such a procedure to pop out in their destination sector in the proposed universal persistence you speak of?

Well, yes, the issue can definitely be addressed. We have complete control over the user's character and ship and everything else in this situation. There aren't any external factors here outside of our control. The "during sector jump" thing is probably just some dumb race condition issue that can be resolved.

Logging out to avoid being killed is lame by any standard however players getting overly upset about losing their kill need to take a moment and grow up as well....

Making the persistent ship turbo off in a random direction for 5 minutes is a pretty good compromise but I can think of much better game play issues that need dev time more then this.

separate "player" concerns from "character" concerns.
A"player" is a real person in real life.
A "character" is a strictly in game entity.

I think a "player" should be able to exit the game at any time.
I do not think that should mean the "character" should be able to exit the game at any time.

Few "players" worry about the mechanics, when their are no "players" around to observe it. When a "character" has not observed any "player" for 30 seconds or more, you can instant log off or whatever, with low probability that anyone will notice.

When a "player's character" ends up without a synchronized player, for whatever reason, it could behave as a bot. I would prefer that a prefix be added to the character's name for the duration of bot control.

I think that a bot should preferentially run for the nearest jump point, and jump to a station (if a high standing station is available, dock and log, or otherwise, jump empty sectors until it has avoided player contact for long enough to log in space.

Logging out to avoid being killed is lame by any standard however players getting overly upset about losing their kill need to take a moment and grow up as well....

I really hope this is directed at me, but if you see this thread as "overly upset", boy, have you been missing some rants. I do not care about "missing out" on 1 kill, I literally have 100,000's of player kills and reset my own characters enough that they do not even show on my stats. I do care about certain people using this "bug" (over and over) to avoid being killed in an online game, and then taking the moral high ground because they are 'the good guys'. Don't wanna lose that cargo? Fine, but do not abuse bugs to avoid this, and then claim you are the 'good guys'. Exploiters are the lowest of the low.

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Inc, if you could take some time to look into the 'logout during warp' issue, it would actually take away a lot of the need for this suggestion to even formulate. The main problem I have with it, is (without outside manipulation) only those with a bad connection can pull this off. Also if they log out quick enough, it is like they never warped, so a clever so-so can use this 'bug' to simply mis-lead an attacker into warping away, and then log right back on and continue whatever it is they were doing. (IE, they log out during the warp, then log back in to the sector they warped from, not to).

I will do my best to record any instances of this happening and will submit tickets each time, hopefully so will others as it is something that has become a bit of a problem.

No I was not entirely commenting about you - The whining has had a lot of history by a number of players.

Has it occurred to anyone that jumping transfers a lot of data and has plenty of potential for problems?
Granted there are players who would prefer to cowardly log off rather then be destroyed but these are really not players I choose to associate with.. Perhaps you might want to consider doing the same. They obviously have no real honor and are not worthy of your time and attention..

Ignoring them would be giving these cheaters exactly what they want -- to fly through space unmolested.

You sure about that? Most seem to be attention parasites in my opinion but admittedly its not my area of concern,,,,A good dose of alone time might change their minds and make them learn to lose with a touch of grace ... Just sayin.