Currently, if you shoot a convoy anywhere other than its home territory, no one else cares. AI are not valued life in VO if they're not admired or above.

This is fine by me.

However, the fact that there are no repercussions for killing the most valuable ships that pass by seems wrong to me. Hitting a convoy should be reserved for those who don't care about their reputations, or who are so fast/powerful that no report of their wrongdoing ever makes it back to their home faction.

Thus, my suggestion is that you have to kill every ship in a convoy before they dock with their destination to keep from losing reputation. Survivors will keep track of every ship you've killed, and thus you will lose reputation as if you killed that many ships in a guarded sector of their faction.

Benefits: A much more engaging source of risk and reward when it comes to raiding convoys. A chase will ensue if you fail to kill a whole convoy, leading to a source of stress and fun as you hunt the survivors. Additional value to tri-KOS players.

Downsides: You can't make money as easily by killing valuable ships while paying no attention to the rest of their escort... unless you're tri-KOS, in which case you can kill them without consequence. The worst potential downside is that maybe a ship flies away and you don't have a way of tracking it before it gets to where it's going. If that seems unfair enough, maybe the convoys broadcast their destinations in sector or system chat, or make distress calls that players can see once they get attacked.

Anyway, I think this will add more depth and nuance to the game. You'll have to think before attacking profitable trade routes.

+1
I've suggested thing like this in the past regarding the warvoy ( https://vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/36735 ). I think this is a great mechanic. Those who wish to farm voys will have to be observant and thorough. And if they are not, standing loss does stink.

This doesn't really solve any problem. You can just pcb and kill the moth heavies on one alt where you don't care about sub-faction standings, and reap the rewards on your main. All it does is make it disproportionately hard for mobile players, who can't multi-box, while allowing PC players to continue doing so.

This could also be exploited by greifers. You can take an escort mission, thus becoming part of a convoy, and then get into a fight with another player and get yourself killed. When the convoy reaches its destination, the unwitting victim loses standings.

I don't understand this response.

First of all, it's like saying that rep hits and NFZs don't matter because you can farm LENBs on an alt and give them to a main. It's like saying you shouldn't lose rep for shooting allied ships because you could just bring in an alt to do it. You can subvert anything by making alts. That doesn't mean the game shouldn't try to encourage more dynamic behavior.

Also, subverting this would be a pain. I guarantee you most PC players do not multi-box, and even for those that do, it is a good amount of effort to set up. Making something a pain discourages a lot of players from subverting a mechanic, even when there are benefits to doing so. You can't stop game mechanics from being broken entirely, but you can push most players in the right direction.

You can just pcb and kill the moth heavies on one alt where you don't care about sub-faction standings, and reap the rewards on your main.

Question: does anyone really do that? It sounds like more trouble than its worth.

I don't see how this would make things hard for mobile users.

This could also be exploited by greifers[sic].
That is a lot of steps. But the convoy would know that you shot first. So no faction loss for the defender.

Question: does anyone really do that? It sounds like more trouble than its worth.

I always scan a moth heavy, pcb the one with good cargo, wait for the escort to leave the sector and then kill the moth. If I'm running multi-box then I can have an alt pick up the cargo, making it possible for me to continuously monitor the sector for good voys.

But the convoy would know that you shot first. So no faction loss for the defender.

Imagine the following scenario. I take an escort mission from Sedina L2 to say Sol ll B12. Then I let the voy go on its way, and instead of going with it I go to B8 and ask someone for pews. If you agree, I make it a point to get hit first, and also to get killed, although not fast enough to arouse suspicion mid-fight. That's not really hard. I die, convoy interprets it as you attacking me, when the convoy reaches the destination, you lose Xang Xi standing.

Not that tough to wait for a ship to sit at the wormhole, +shoot2, and alt-tab to a character for killing it. Not a lot of people might do that right now, but there's no need for it. More people will resort to it if the suggestion were implemented.

Not that tough to wait for a ship to sit at the wormhole, +shoot2, and alt-tab to a character for killing it.

I just tried this last night, the moth wouldn't stop moving. If i had put down my device and switched to another, i would have lost pcb lock. As long as they have this behavior, what you say wouldn't be an issue.

magine the following scenario.

I can't imagine this at all. You actually confused me, and I think you entering strawman territory.

The basis of this suggestion is fine. Don't shoot voys unless you are willing to kill everything. And you are cognizant of your surroundings. (people don't have to pvp in b8. they can choose an empty sector)

I always scan a moth heavy, pcb the one with good cargo, wait for the escort to leave the sector and then kill the moth.

Interesting. The escorts stay with the moths for me. As long as they do this, then you'd have to shoot them first, or risk them flying off and reporting. This makes things fun and exciting.

They sit still for me at WHs, I'll try it again since I haven't done it in a while.

Here https://youtu.be/fm67nG3uJfw

The voy stops at the wormhole, doesn't work for sector jumps.

The pcbed moth stops at a wormhole, while the escort goes ahead and jumps. Not during sector jumps within the system, in wormhole jumps. The escort just abandons the moth, the moth comes to a standstill and you have all the time in the world to kill it.

Sounds like firing a PCB at something should count as aggression...

Still doesn't solve the problem. You could do the pcbing and the killing, all on an alt, and still keep your standings intact while getting the loot.

This video shows how it can be done. Even if there were standing repurcussions, one could still do this on an alt where one doesn't care about standings, and simply pick up the cargo on their main. Gets much more convenient when multi-boxing, hence making it disproportionately hard on mobile players.

I still don't get this argument. Many aspects of the game are made easier by multi-boxing (or, much more commonly, by doing things cooperatively). That does not mean they should be removed. I also cannot imagine multi-boxing is a huge problem. Having looked into it, it is a huge clunky pain and not worth the edge case benefits. Even multi-instancing (which is what I think would be more common and what you're probably actually talking about) is a huge logistical nightmare.

And again, this would be simply solved by AI taking being PCB'd as an aggressive act, which it undoubtedly is.

Sid, I think you're getting too caught up on one possible 'exploit' and not looking at the suggestion as a whole. Does this make the game feel more real? Yes (a desirable thing). Does it make it harder to farm voys? Yes. Can it be worked around? Yes. Your case of two alts of the same person is, from the game's perspective, no different from two separate people working together. When you're judging the severity of an 'exploit' you need to look at how frequently you think it'll happen, and how severe the consequences will be.

So for your multi-boxing example, here's my perspective:
How frequently do you think it'll happen?: Only as often as multi-boxing already occurs. Running on two devices is easy to do but hard to do very well. Running multi-instances is harder to do but also hard to do very well. Farming convoys doesn't seem like a good enough reason to figure out multi-boxing on its own.
What is the severity of the 'exploit'?: A player avoids faction standing loss. This is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things; You're not impacting other players and you're not going to be breaking the economy with the loot/money from the convoys.

Your possible exploit of 'joining a convoy and then going off to get killed by someone you don't like in order to hurt their standings' is a much more interesting conversation.
How frequently do you think it'll happen?: It's as easy as starting a convoy mission, so probably pretty frequently.
What is the severity of the 'exploit'?: A player loses faction standing without warning. A negative impact that players can impose on other players with little effort. Misbehaving players can potentially grief by taking away another player's ability to fight back.

To this second possible exploit, is convoys treating the player like another ship in the convoy already how they are coded? This may not be a problem if they treat players separately, and seems fixable if they treat them like part of the voy.

For the original suggestion, I like the idea of making convoys feel more realistic. It's been immersion breaking for me too, when convoys will just abandon ships and ignore PCB fire. I think gameplay-wise, the impact of this change is voy hunting will be restricted to the following cases:
- Players who don't care about their standings
- Players with a capship, who can just use turrets to shoot ships down.
- Groups dedicated to ambushing convoys.

I think the big question for me is, is this change worth making voy hunting unapproachable for people that don't fall into those cases? I'm not sure. Right now, convoys are fulfilling the role of a pirate-RP PVE greyspace activity, and there's not really a replacement that currently exists. I'm also under the impression that they are a good source of credits, so making this source inaccessible to newer players (I'm assuming most newer players wouldn't fit the previous cases) is theoretically one more hurdle that will take a long time to get over.

I think I agree with ratt10's take here. YES, convoy hunting for credits and loot is relatively easy; i wouldn't mind seeing them respond to PCBs going forward, but given the size of most convoys I feel this would be an unneccesarily high jump in the skill floor needed to participate without overly messing with the rest of your gameplay.

I suppose I should also add that i'm NOT of the view that credits should be a scarce object that is difficult to obtain by any means; trading can be lucrative, but it is rather involved and takes a bit of time doing... "nothing". You're traversing between sectors slowly and that's it. Convoy hunting is somewhat less lucrative when solo, but provides actual action. As such, I'd much rather EVER bother with the latter option. When I inevitably get through my current wallet, given my limited time available, i'd rather engage in something fun, but if it's going to impact standing, It wouldn't be worth it, and I can guarantee that trading is not worth the time wasted in my view. It's just not a good match for me.

Now these are some good points.

>Your possible exploit of 'joining a convoy and then going off to get killed by someone you don't like in order to hurt their standings' is a much more interesting conversation.

I imagine it could pretty easily be treated as a squadron, not counting someone hostile unless they fired first. There's also the possibility that someone could go ahead of the convoy and troll for a fight, tricking the other player into hitting them first.

To fix that you could either:
a) make the player's dot on the radar a different color when they're part of a convoy (call it a transponder signal).
b) not make the convoy care about what it can't see. In essence, force the player to stay with the convoy, making it much more likely a player can notice that "hey this guy wants to only fight me for the minute or so this convoy is in sector".
or c) have some sort of message pop up when you attack someone grouped with a convoy, and not actually have any repercussions unless you kill them.

>Right now, convoys are fulfilling the role of a pirate-RP PVE greyspace activity, and there's not really a replacement that currently exists.
>When I inevitably get through my current wallet, given my limited time available, i'd rather engage in something fun, but if it's going to impact standing, It wouldn't be worth it

As to these comments, I agree that there should be something else for someone who wants to pirate without ever being seen to do alone. There are already much smaller convoys (with maybe four or five small ships at max, very feasible for a single player to kill if they do their work and track them from the launch point) but perhaps some solo AI traders could start flying around, too, risking their lives in gray for sweet payouts. Much like individual unrats I suggested a while back, they'd add some flavor and allow solo players in gray a chance to feel like they're getting something out of it, both risk and reward-wise.

But the point stands that it makes no sense that these guys would see their buddies die and not report who did it as soon as they get to their destination. Maybe Corvus, because Corvus doesn't value life at all and they will occasionally send out convoys. But otherwise I see it pretty much as a necessary change.

>I'm also under the impression that they are a good source of credits, so making this source inaccessible to newer players (I'm assuming most newer players wouldn't fit the previous cases) is theoretically one more hurdle that will take a long time to get over.
>I suppose I should also add that i'm NOT of the view that credits should be a scarce object that is difficult to obtain by any means

As for these, convoy hunting is far and away the most lucrative thing in the game. Much more lucrative than hunting leviathans or unrats (essentially the PvE endgame), more lucrative than trading, and much faster. Should it not stand to reason that it should be more difficult, or at least carry more risk? I think we could all agree that newer players would not attempt to solo the leviathan (or even do it at all without being swept into a larger group early on). And yet that is less rewarding.

Here we have something more rewarding, with essentially 0 risk, pretty much available to anyone at any time. I have had a terribly kitted ship but seen a BioCom behemoth heavy and managed to kill it without any planning or consequence. Even if I was to fail, nothing would happen to me.

For newer players, I think they can make money just fine. Starting from 0 you can trade (something low risk but with a decent reward) or kill hive. You can do these without leaving nation-space. I made my first 20 million (which is enough to set you up comfortably for a long time, even if you fight and die constantly) by just doing Hive skirmishes in storm sectors. I don't think money should be hard to come by, but even without convoys money is not hard to come by.

Convoys are insanely more rewarding, insanely vulnerable, and insanely fast to do. It stands to reason they should carry more risk.

edit: lol I forgot how to do quotes

+1

I especially like the idea of leave no survivors to tell of your misdeeds as being the only way to get away with it.

sorry, Hard/difficult was the wrong word, I meant that stockpiling credits is generally *tedious*, and that i'm extremely wary of anything that makes it more so.