Making NFZs more consistant - I understand and even agree with why that should occur, given the simplicity in explaining the behavior for newer/non-english pilots as well as the more generational(?) shift towards the less combative players i've seen, but I *really* don't like it on a personal level...

I'd much rather be rewarding pilots for preparing for danger appropriately and giving them an out when its clear they need it, without blanket-covering stations in general.

But whether that's actually for the best.... ughhhh.

Player X kills player Y again while evading small strike force, tkos extends, strike force increases in strength either by numbers or weaponry, etc.

But, none of that really prevents the individual from camping the newbie, as you said before.

The nature of the game is that "more NPCs" doesn't necessarily make them harder to avoid.

I can certainly make horrifying cheater beam-weapon station guards (or turrets) that fry your ass immediately, but at that point it's hardly better than just having a NFZ where you can't shoot in the first place.

I'd much rather be rewarding pilots for preparing for danger appropriately and giving them an out when its clear they need it, without blanket-covering stations in general.

But whether that's actually for the best.... ughhhh.

I agree with both sentiments. I was never a fan of having NFZs lock-out all weapons (obviously, since it wasn't like that for decades), but it's kind of an "ugh" scenario about what's actually "for the best" and most-effective and doesn't require a lot of complex communication to the user.

I can certainly make horrifying cheater beam-weapon station guards (or turrets) that fry your ass immediately, but at that point it's hardly better than just having a NFZ where you can't shoot in the first place.

It’s hardly better but it’s still better in my opinion (if you felt you “had” to change something in grayspace). At least at that point you could make a measured decision to go down in order to kill your target.

Not that I want either, especially in grayspace, but you put a gun to my head I’ll choose that over the magical weapon deactivation field (that is gameable in its own awful ways).

Since we are not going the education route, then instead of magic weapons killing offenders in grey space NFZs have a system that tracks how many times a player kills other players in the nfz. Once a thresh hold is met, the offender can't dock anywhere; not even in corvus. And if the offender dies, not even corvus will let them undock, until a cool down period is completed. Make that cool down period sufficiently painful, and game time only, and the problem will fix itself over time.

I'm thinking a new player maybe gets a fixed number of escapes in a training mission... the escapes are essentially a teleport to their capitol station. Possibly reaching a certain number of player kills makes them expire.

Maybe add a transport to home nation mission or something at corvus stations, much like the dau/Geria mission? Then noobs can simply poof back to dau or sol2 or itan.

I agree that transports and fixed escapes and other things are options, but they do need to be articulated to the player long before they actually "need" them, otherwise they'll never realize it's an option.

For the most part, I find that general-case solutions that are consistent and self-explanatory are best. That means stuff like:

- If transports are available, they're available to everyone.
- If NFZs have a particular behaviour, they're like they everywhere.
- If station turrets are astoundingly lethal to NFZ violation kills, they should probably always be like that.

Again, I'm not actually saying we should change the NFZ behaviour in grayspace, I'm just saying that, for the most part, having general-purpose concepts that address problems tend to be a lot easier and less inclined towards confusion or bugs, than having kinda "weird, special-case solutions" that do things like "detect that N PvP kills has happened to character under Y level, blah blah".

Again, I'm not actually saying we should change the NFZ behaviour in grayspace, I'm just saying that, for the most part, having general-purpose concepts that address problems tend to be a lot easier

1) Remove NFZs in greyspace.
2) Before pilots leave the training sector, they are given a lesson on emergency site to site transport procedures (and the downsides. There should be downsides).

I'm starting to think the only real solution to station camping, that would have the least impact on gameplay, is to have a mission that takes you back to the capitol of your nation. Do it like you do the Deneb warp where your ship doesn't travel with you. Have a timer on the mission and also a warning that it could happen again if you go back before the timer runs out.

The timer should be long enough to discourage repeated fast travel for lucrative trades, hauling commodities, etc. And the mission should stress enough how if you go back you are in danger of the same thing happening again, but this time you might get stuck.

Another option would be making station camping a reportable offense, but that could cause a lot of overhead. For instance if someone is attacking a station and to defend it you start camping them at their launch station to bide some time.