I just got spawncamped. This is about that.

THE PROBLEM:

Getting pirated in VO works on a risk/reward equation:
1. Pay the toll, yarr!
OR
2. Risk your ship and cargo and fight/flee - are you skilled enough to win/escape?

I recently got pirated, chose to flee, and got blown up. 'Darn, I guess this system is too dangerous right now - I'll go back to UIT space,' I though to myself. Annoyed, I respawned at my home station, just a few sectors away in the same system, and - met the same pirate, on their way back. You know what happens next: I got spawncamped.

The equation for getting spawncamped is different than getting pirated:
1. Pay the toll, yarr!
OR
2. Buy a powerful ship and try to fight or flee, spending credits to get this over with faster
OR
3. Buy a cheap ship (hello ec89, my old friend!), trying to escape (or fight, if you're crazy) through sheer persistence. This is cheaper, but drags out an already-painful experience.
OR
4. Wait for the station guards to take care of them. Go eat a sandwitch, I guess.
OR
5. Quit playing Vendetta Onlne for today

I have high ping (blue) and low pvp skill. So (2) is out, because that's just wasting credits for no reason. In my case, the guards were chasing the spawncamper for 15-20min and landed maybe two hits on them total. Clearly (4) wouldn't ever actually happen, at least for the station I was in. So I turned to (3) and spent about 15-20 lives trying to escape. It never happened; they were in a greyhound (can't outrun them) and as mentioned I suck at fighting. So (3) is out as well.

That leaves a choice between (1) pay the toll and (5) quit playing VO for the evening. This sucks; it's basically just bullying people off of VO for credits.

Eventually I did escape, discovering the secret option (6) purely by accident. While attempting to kill the spawncamper with homing missiles (spoiler: I got one hit. total.) one of my missiles randomly and accidentally struck a station guard, giving me temporary KoS for that faction, so when I got killed next I was shunted across the universe to a different station because I no longer was allowed to dock at my home station. I was left free, but also scratching my head for several minutes while I tried to figure out what had even happened.

THE SUGGESTION:

I propose that in the "set home" menu, there be a secondary option which will Set Home to some station in *a different system*. Maybe it could try your nation's capital first, then fall back to the capital of any major nation you can dock with. These stations are well-guarded and deep inside protected space, so spawncamping these will be fairly difficult. As long as the station is in *a different system*, it will be difficult for the spawncamper to follow and harass the spawncampee.

This is similar to option (6), but presented in a way that makes sense in-universe, and is more effective at getting you away from your spawncamper.

Since players generally set their home somewhere because that's where they're working, rehoming back to a nation capital is usually going to be a pretty solid inconvenience, and a one-way trip (can't set home back to where you were without travelling back there the old-fashioned way).

Pros:
- Spawncamping is largely eliminated, since players can just leave by Setting Home back to their nation's capital
- Other respawn behavior (for battles, station battles, duels, etc.) is unaffected, since this only changes anything when a player deliberatly sets home back to their nation's capital
- Newbies will no longer get trapped in grey without any chance of escape

Cons:
- Players could "teleport" from anywhere to their nation capital by setting home and exploding. However, this isn't a lot different than the current situation where a player can "teleport" from anywhere to their home station by setting home and exploding. In any case, they can't take their items or ship with them, so I can't see more exploits coming from this than the current system.
- Can't think of any others

What do you think? Are there pros/cons I missed? Is the existing option (6) sufficient as-is? Can this idea be improved? Do the pros outweight the cons? (Am I being too salty about this?)

Thanks for taking the time to read.

I think outwitting pirates is one of the more exciting aspects of the game. If killed while trading, I grab a weaponless centurion (to decrease weight for running) and take a circuitous route to the next best station for whatever I'm trying to achieve. I usually pre-plot a very circuitous route out of wherever I'm going in case the pirate is waiting there. I'll plot over potential storm systems too. I keep quiet until I feel safe.

Or you can just go get a sandwich - but where's the satisfaction in that?

True - and the thrill of evading a pirate is pretty great, just from the thrill of the chase. However, this suggestion is mostly about spawncamping: when you're pinned down in a particular station, with the spawncamper(s) just hanging right outside in the same sector to kill you. I can't really "route around" when the station exit is within 300m of the guy who wants me dead.

That's a good idea with the centurion though - I'll use that next time I encounter a (non-spawncamping) pirate on my routes. Thanks!

While I'd love to be able to set 2 or more spawn points- kinda sucks when you're in deneb and need to get back to latos, I'm not convinced that such would harm the overall game. Perhaps a limit to combat 5 for new players that returns them to their nations capital.

That said, don't forget #7. It's OK to ask for help. Someone might be in the area. Or given advice similar to whislers if not.

I have to disagree and give you something to consider.

You know of course that the thrill of evading pirates is pretty great... everyone gets excitement from that.

What you failed to consider is the thrill of the chase for the pirate. When playing a pirate character, a pilot often spends long bouts of boredom searching for people along common and secret routes. Lots of difficult decisions are in play..

what ship should I use? One that can catch people who are running away, or one that can fight a person that turns to face me.. or maybe something in between ??

What weapons should I use? Something that is heavy but will compensate for the many players with poor internet, or something that is light and allows me to maneuver better and avoid being shot?

When you finally find a player, you hope it is someone you can make headway with. Highly experienced players often turn to PvP with pirates, which can be fun but also can become boring and costly. The greatest thrill is catching an experienced player when they are weak or in their cap ship or XC and being able to overcome them. You get excited in the attempt.. even if you fail, you still have a lot of fun. Player piracy is the final entertainment in the game. Most players start doing this when the rest of the game becomes monotonous. It is the only unpredictable thing you can do in the game.

Why spawn camp a new player or a player who clearly can't escape you ask?

There is a lot of warnings first of all, about going into grey space. This is essentially "permission" to engage other players in combat by the developers.. whether voluntary or not. The consequences of making an error in the monitored areas of grey space is already very steep. It is next to impossible to regain standing with the small factions there if you tank your standings too low. No bot hunting will get it back like in nation space. The pirate player must manage this with great care, more so now than in the entire history of the game's development. I would not recommend making this worse than it already is. The pirate accrues a far greater cost than you do for the faction space violations. For this reason, once a pirate has committed to the point of firing on you in faction space.. they might as well extract as much thrill as is possible for the many hours of effort required to rebuild standing, or if it is tanked too low, the cost of never being able to enter that space to purchase anything or mine or do anything for the remainder of that character's life. You may be frustrated by it, but your cost is much lower and you can step away from the experience with the "thrill" of the interaction but also without losing anything even slightly comparable to what the pirate has lost.

Can you really not escape your spawn point?

Actually a pirate can never catch an escaping player that knows a few valid methods of escape. I'll do you the favor of contributing tone that is not mentioned by Whistler in his post above.

Buy the fastest ship you can afford, but make it a model with unlimited turbo like a hog2 or similar. Weapons optional but you accelerate faster without any. Set your nav to several zig zaggy sectors and do not go to a wormhole immediately... pirates always check the wormholes when they lose their target, some will choose one to wait at. Next, exit the station.. look on your radar at the location of the pirate. If they are close to the station then don't try to run... rather wait for them to be distanced out by the guards. You can move in and out of the station quickly to check this until they are distant. You have "spawn armor" when you first exit the station and it is just long enough to fly around to the station entry port without dying if need be. Finally make your move.. fly out in the opposite direction of the pirate's location. The "jump point" is actually arbitrary and you don't need to use the point that is on your screen. You only need to be 3000m away from all fixed objects and you can jump. If you run in the opposite direction, the pirate will either have to go way around the guarded perimeter to try and catch up (impossible) or risk flying right past the station. Either way, they will not likely catch up before you jump. They must be within 1000m of you when you jump or they cannot see where you jumped too. If they make it this close, your staggered nav path will save you. Jump through your staggered path as quickly as your battery will allow. The delay the pirate has plus time to get in range at each jump will increase every time until they can no longer keep up. This strategy is used by the most talented trade and manufacturing pilots in the game and it is effective. You can lose a pirate in your heavy XC this way. Go home at another station from another faction immediately if possible. The pirate probably won't want to tank yet another faction in his pursuit.

This is a thrilling escape adventure and you will have a lot of fun including the added thrill of victory when you actually escape. The pirate will likely goad you to try and provoke you back into the danger zone by calling you a coward or making many other provocative statements. Don't fall for it.. instead remain silent (taking away interest) or if you want to get them fired up to search harder for you now and later, you can of course goad them back by calling them a "failed pirate" and making jokes about how they couldn't catch you. After playing the game for some time, this will be the most fun you can have in the game.. no matter which side of the interaction you are on.

Another escape strategy enlists the help of a skilled/experienced pilot that arrives in a ship that you can ride in on the turret. Really talented players are often not engaged by pirates because they know how to use heavy ships against the smaller pirate pursuit vehicles. A behemoth with a gatling turret or gauss turret or similar that is being manned by another pilot in the rear is an absolute certain death to a pirate in pursuit. You can not chase someone effectively if you cannot fly in a straight line to catch up. Flying straight pretty much garauntees they will get hit.

I hope this all helps.. it is coming from a person that is a notorious pirate in the game. I know that in time you will fall in love with this aspect of the game and will feel differently.

This is a thrilling escape adventure and you will have a lot of fun including the added thrill of victory when you actually escape.

Part of the issue illustrated here is that newer players often don't know how to escape station camping, and this causes them frustration.. so they aren't really having fun.

There is also some history of some pirate/griefers exploiting this, in the sense that they were pursuing the frustration of their adversary more than the thrill of actually blowing them up in a gameplay-sense, which is definitely undesirable.

Whether we add further teleportation options or not, there is likely merit to having some process to better educate new players about what "escape" techniques are available.

While VO does intentionally support piracy and the concept of unaligned space, with increased risk therein, I've always thought station-camping was a bit "weak". It is more mitigated than it once was, in some ways (can't mine all the launch bays, or other inane things), but in general I'd be more interested in creating new "trap" / "hunting" mechanics and pirate gameplay for choke points out in space (wormholes, etc) than worrying too much about preserving the experience of blowing up frustrated and confused newbies outside the same station, over and over again.

Part of the issue illustrated here is that newer players often don't know how to escape station camping, and this causes them frustration.. so they aren't really having fun.

A potential solution to this would be have a training mission that deals with this at a separate training station (could be in the same sector as the training sector). Have a small station out near where the connie is. Before leaving the training sector, the player would have to pass this mission.

The training mission would send an aggressive npc after the player, then the mission would give that player a few ideas on how to evade the npc. Some reading and some interaction would take place.

This station could also train the new player about the nfz.

This mission would only be required for the first character on a new account.

I'm not sure teaching players to escape is the right solution here. Useful, yes, but not *the* solution. That is to say, I don't think getting stuck in a station, and being *required* to pass a trial of combat/flight skill, is/should be an intended part of the game. Especially not at the hands of someone who, as Incarnate pointed out, is likely being intentionally provacative (even if just as a part of the normal, expected RPing). For fun? Sure; that's battling. As a prerequisite to being allowed to play at all? Not fun.

My thoughts go like this: While VO is definitely focused on combat and PvP, devs have said in various places that they still want to support other playstyles, at least in a limited/conditional manner (eg. you can be a pure miner in your nation space and largely ignore pirates; you won't have the best stuff, but you can still totally play like that). Telling players (eg. through a mission) that it's their own responsibility to escape a seasoned pirate spawncamping them ... doesn't do that. It gates the the rest of the game behind a combat test: "get past the spawncamper".

Having a "Set home to Dau L-10" button would let a player escape most spawncamping, while also making it clear that they Messed Up And Exploded (because they actually exploded). It would allow non-pvp-ers (and people like me who are just bad at pvp) a way to keep playing, instead of having to end our play session entirely when we inadvisably home in a vulnerable station.

Edit: one way to think of this is "Should players who are bad at PvP be allowed to play the game?" (I'm exaggerating. A little.). If we say teaching people is the solution, then we are answering "no": you must have X amount of skill to continue playing (escape the spawncamper). I think the answer should be "yes", people who are bad at combat (even if they're really, really, unfixably bad at it) should be allowed to play, and make mistakes, and be punished in-game, *but continue playing*.

Any noob spawncamped should announce it on 100, the perp should be shamed.

We all float -
The NPC AI, especially when it comes to chasing, is pretty dysfunctional so I doubt any training mission can be designed which offers any meaningful training on how to escape station campers.

csgno1 - Anyone low enough to spawncamp newbs definitely will not be concerned in the slightest by shaming, and we all know players in that category.

I don't support the suggestion in the OP since it could just as easily be abused by vets who knew full well what they were getting into, as well as in cases where there is no actual station camping going on. What I will suggest as an alternative is progressive factional repurcussion systems in nation space that impose very high penalties on new players (as judged by licenses/in-game time), with penalties successively reducing as the player gains licenses/spends more time in-game. Greyspace can remain as it is, you signed up for all the bad stuff to happen when you set home there.

My concern with having a special mission to teach new player how to deal with the situation is that it could come across as giving a negative message about the game. While it's unfortunate that camping new players happens, I don't think it affects the vast majority.

While it's unfortunate that camping new players happens, I don't think it affects the vast majority.

It happens a lot more than vets seem to realize, and it scales drastically with game population (more people online, it happens a lot more often).

It has little evident blowback into the community, because the newbies just abandon the game in frustration, and no one knows them. But, I end up catching wind of it more than the community does. That's part of why we have the full-lockdown NFZs in factional space now.

So, to be clear, whether the OP's solution is the right path forward or not, this is a very real problem, and one that negatively impacts new player onboarding on a fairly frequent basis. It definitely reduces our retention of newbies and is net-negative for the community as a whole.

Again, I'm (obviously) not against piracy or hunting-style PvP in gray and the like, but the "shooting fish in a barrel" thing, just to gleefully frustrate or anger a random person, is not good.

A player that is repeatedly killing a newb (over 3 or 4 times) in station camping is not a pirate he's just a moron

But that's only my 2c

CN'B.

All of you guys write really well, (hat tip).
I do not consider myself new here, but I did learn from this thread.

I cannot pvp my way out of a wet sack, but my evading techniques are pretty good, and they are indeed fun when they are successful. Two things any newbie should know is that a pirate has to eat too, (piracy is allowed), and you can set multiple waypoints in your nav system, (evasion happens).

We were warned before entering Grey of what could happen. Any player In Grey space has no excuse for being camped. That being said, the easiest way out of being camped is to say on main chat, “This is no fun” and “I’m leaving to go play My Little Pony”, and then log out.
Of course, after you finish “smoking” that sandwich you log back in and more likely than not the pirate is long gone.

However, in the interest of growing the community, what if for newbies under combat 3, who have been killed (let’s say) 3 times in under 10 minutes by a non *npc, a pop-up box asks if you want to respawn In a capitol elsewhere. Maybe Grey space is excluded from this offer?

I do not know how to program, and I do not know if this would just be a time sink for the devs.

I have never pirated anyone, but what a great thrill factor it is for me knowing pirates are out there. If not for pirates we would be playing Grind-Fest Online – Not Vendetta Online.

Galactica Actual

GA++, though to prevent abuse if this system were implemented, it should only be useable a limited number of times (or once per some time frame, maybe), after which the "would you like to be moved" becomes "maybe its time to switch characters" or something along that line. Would that make sense?

I think station camping is pretty dumb. It's happened to me and I've done it as well. However, that was before warnings were issued while you are entering grey space, but it's still kind of a crap thing to do to players less skilled or without access to fast enough ships to escape.

I think a good solution would be to have an option to go back to your capitol or previously homed station up to a certain license level or just be able to be used a certain amount of times before it's forever disabled on your character. The mission text could Remind the player of the danger when entering grey space. This way it couldn't really be overly abused.

Luxen +1, that makes perfect sense.

I think such a system could be beneficial but it needs to have some sort of drawbacks or requirements to mitigate abuse, or else it'll just be abused vastly more than it'll be used genuinely.

I understand but disagree with Inevitable's license requirement, because many players hit high license levels while staying in nation/"safe" space. You could argue that that implies enough game time for the player to know better, but I think even a new player should know better when the game tells you how dangerous grayspace is. However, that's obviously not enough for a lot of people, so like I said, a suggestion like this has a place.

I think the game should also make some sort of effort to inform players of their options. It could:

1. Have some sort of first time sanity check if you get killed by the same player over and over in a short time, and tell you "hey you're getting wrecked a ton, you have x options". Obviously experienced players could disable it in the menus and you could have a "don't show me this again" option in the dialogue.
2. Have a mission which says "Stuck in a station due to other pilots? Here are your options!" and give you some info about what you can do. It would then unlock a mission that would allow you to teleport to your nation's capitol (or a friendly station preferably not in grayspace, if you're KOS with your home nation). It could have a very large cooldown. or one that grows exponentially.

I really think both should be implemented to a degree. A mission can use the existing game systems to accomplish what's being requested here. Splitting it into an "info" and "teleport" mission will allow a player to consider other options if they can really avoid whoever's station camping, and then choose to use the mission if they really have exhausted their options. However, it being a mission also gets tied up with the issue of many new players not knowing or thinking to look in the missions tab for information. Missions granting functionality that one typically wouldn't describe as "missions" means a new player realistically isn't going to find that mission in the first place. So, I think the victim will need to have some sort of message pushed to their display/game. A message in your chat window pointing to the mission is an absolute minimum, and realistically a dialogue that pops up would be best.

Not wanting to cause a kerfuffle, but another option is just to extend the current Nation Space NFZ weapon restrictions to grayspace.

That would likely curb station camping very simply, and make the game more consistent, and not require any of these mechanics around "training people to escape from other people who are dicks".

(No, this does not mean "Incarnate is definitely going to do this, the sky is falling", I'm just pointing it out for the discussion).

I don't believe the NFZ restrictions should extend to Greyspace. However, there are so little consequences to go with repeatedly offending within a 'guarded' sector. I understand violating NFZ gets you a TKOS, but you get a small to moderate strike force that is, honestly, evadable while still killing your target. It doesn't scale up, that I've seen. If you repeatedly kill them outside of the NFZ, and they do not have rep there, no consequences either..

The argument could be made to add consequences to repeat offenses in a guarded sector, unless said target is hated/disliked by that faction. On top of this, the stirke force should have some ramp up. Player X kills player Y in NFZ. 15 min tkos initiates, small strike force is dispatched. Player X kills player Y again while evading small strike force, tkos extends, strike force increases in strength either by numbers or weaponry, etc.