When a player kills a convoy bot, takes the cargo, and returns the cargo to the same nation whose bot they killed, they (AFAIK) gain more standing from the delivery than they lose from the killing of the transport. This is a major flaw. If I found someone stealing cargo from mmy shipments and bringing it to me expecting a boost in standing and a cash payoff, I'd be telling them to go to hell as well as dropping their standing well below -600.

Fix: *IF* you kill a convoy bot, take its cargo, and proceed to take the cargo to the same nation as the bot, your character a) loses heavy standing, (Hey, thanks for bringing the cargo back, but you stole it from our transports in the first place, so no reward for you.) and fines the player whatever cash they may have made in selling the cargo.
If you retrieve cargo of a nation's convoy and bring it to that nation, in order to receive standing and/or credits, you must have not killed the transport that your cargo came from. (Thanks! We appreciate your retrieving the cargo for us. Take a tip!)

This should prevent the problem of the UIT players killing serco transports and then selling the cargo to Catequil.

I knew this thread was back here somewhere :P

This remains a MAJOR problem with CtC. In fact, CtC doesn't even exist right now. It's more like CYOC -- Capture Your Own Cargo: blow up your own transports and deliver the cargo yourself in the bellies of uncatchable Centurions.

I realize this is a natural result of the convoys being almost impossible to defend right now. See these threads for a discussion of the armor and speed problems with the convoy -
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8339
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/8496

That said, blowing up your own convoy is still unacceptable. It completely destroys the game of CtC. I think Celkan was on the right track with a solution.

(1) If you destroy your own convoy, you receive an 800 point standing loss, sufficient to bring a default standing down to pure neutral and a neutral standing down to KOS. You shouldn't get more than one chance at being a traitor.

(2) If you try to deliver the resulting cargo at the same nation's station, instead of a reward you receive a 300 point standing loss and a fine worth double what you would have sold the cargo for -- no matter who you are. That is, you don't have to be the one who shot the convoy to get smacked by this penalty (to prevent people "taking one for the team"). If you can't pay the fine, you take an additional faction standing hit (to prevent people intentionally going in broke).

Furthermore, I suggest such "tainted" cargo should be worth bonus points if it is brought back to the opposing nation's station.

The point of these measures is to remove every worthwhile reason to destroy your own convoy -- there should be no bonuses, only penalties.

How do you distinguish between an "own destroyed" convoy and a convoy destroyed by enemy attackers?
Should I be penalized 300 faction points for recovering Serco cargo?
-:sigma.SB

I don't think it would be too hard to track whether a Serco destroyed the Serco convoy. There's quite a lot of ways that the disposition of cargo could be tracked. The really sticky situation is when a UIT and a Serco/Itani work together to destroy a nation's own convoy and deliver its cargo themselves.

If a UIT destroys the convoy, it's impossible to tell who s/he is working for. In that case, the delivery penalty wouldn't apply. The UIT pilot would take a -500 faction hit with the nation to whom the convoy belongs.

One more rule: If an enemy nation has possession of the cargo at any time, the delivery penalty is cancelled.

Any other situation should follow the rules I stated. If you find yourself "unfairly" penalized you should take it up with your compatriots who think blowing up their own convoy is OK.

wylfing, the only way a serco can blow up a serco convoy is if he/she is allready KOS with serco. you cant shoot members of your own team.

Too all uit players who do that: Boo .. don't do it! it's unfair. :P

I'm actually of two minds on this. On the one hand, with defending being several orders of magnitude more difficult than attacking, it does seem awfully unfair to attack a convoy with the sole intent to return its cargo to the nation it belongs to in the first place.

On the other hand though, from a Role-Playing perspective I actually don't see this as necessarily being wrong. Now, if 'good' members of a nation (read: not Shape ;) were able to do this, then I would have a problem with that, but since this situation really only applies to UIT, I'm willing to let them decide how they want to play their character. If they want to role-play a strongly allied character (like mr_spuck seems to), then it wouldn't fit (in my mind) for them to attack their ally's convoy, and that's cool with me. But if they want to play a semi-legitimate pirate, who's only in CtC for the reward, and wants as much reward for as little work as possible, and so attacks any convoy & delivers to the closest nation, then that's cool with me too. (Well, out-of-character, anyway. You try that with a convoy I'm escorting & I'll do my best to blast you.)

In response to "If I found someone stealing cargo from my shipments and bringing it to me expecting a boost in standing and a cash payoff, I'd be telling them to go to hell as well as dropping their standing well below -600", I'd say it would depend on the situation. If it were a business situation, with the objective of making money, then I would agree with that. But CtC is not a business, it's a military effort to collect supplies needed to manufacture weapons. The one and only thing they care about is how many supplies were delivered, so I don't see it as something that they'd necessarily look too closely at where the supplies came from, they'd just be glad that they got them.

What about having a CTC convoy mission. In which a Player flys the convoy..?

I feel that it would always be taken if there was someone online, and it would make defending it much easyier.

Although you'd need a way to prevent them taking different courses. Say they are unable to set there destination and WH's are only one way.

"Spellcast"
Below -599 we can say your KOS

so between -1 and -599 you could kill your own nation convoy.

am i right?

_____________

In Game : Ayn Eziert
Group : |The Hawks| member http://thehawks.free.fr/
Guild : Serco Armed Force |SAF| member

"KAos_nyrb"
What about having a CTC convoy mission. In which a Player flys the convoy..?
I feel that it would always be taken if there was someone online, and it would make defending it much easyier.
***

The rewards (Neutron MK III) is supposed to give a reason.
BUT it's attract only PvPers.

_____________

In Game : Ayn Eziert
Group : |The Hawks| member http://thehawks.free.fr/
Guild : Serco Armed Force |SAF| member

The player-controlled convoy mission would RAPIDLY turn into Serco veterans filling their Valent Marauders and infiniboosting outta there and an Itani noob trying to do it in a Wraith MkI...
-:sigma.SB

What if you were forced into an AI ship? Say a Milanar Transport? Or dare I ask Hive Queen?

sort of nya, but your math skills need some work.

below -599 is -600, then -601, then -602, etc.

so between -1000 and -600 a serco can kill the transport, however they cannot then deliver the cargo to serco space, because the defbots will kill them.

I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking of how a Serco in good standing would have trouble shooting the convoy. The precise loophole is to get a high-ranking UIT member of the SAF to kill the convoy for you. Thanks, mr_spuck.

In light of that, the faction hit and the "taintedness" of the cargo should be based on the killer's faction standing (rather than nation). That'd also solve the abuse of pumping up faction so you can hunt the convoy in its home space.

I'm sure it will still be abused, because some people can't stand to play a game fairly. But it will be a step in the right direction.

*Spellcast*
sort of nya, but your math skills need some work.

below -599 is -600, then -601, then -602, etc.

so between -1000 and -600 a serco can kill the transport, however they cannot then deliver the cargo to serco space, because the defbots will kill them

_____________

LOL sorry but did i say below -599 you cannot kill convoy?
i say below 0 (between -1 and -599) you can kill the convoy w/o being KOS.

remembered you post :

*Speelcast*
wylfing, the only way a serco can blow up a serco convoy is if he/she is allready KOS with serco. you cant shoot members of your own team.

Actually, the only UIT that have killed the Serco convoy and delivered to serco got put on my personal KOS sheet, and the said UIT was not, and probably will never be a member of SAF.

Accusing people without proof (which im 100% the devs know didnt happen *server logs* anyone?) is just plain lame.

We had a certain fellow known as Yukinari once. He tried just that, killing Serco convoy, hoarding it and selling to the highest bidder.

He ended up on my to-kill list as well, as I found the practice dishonourable.

Touchy!

mr_spuck hinted that he had been killing the Serco convoy. I echoed that hint. Lame, indeed.

It's great that some Serco police this themselves, but it remains an exploit. -10 faction isn't enough to deter anyone.

Umm, when did mr_spuck hint at that? I seem to remember him saying "Boo .. don't do it! it's unfair." Looking at last weeks scoreboard, mr_spuck returned 229 Itani units, and 46 Serco units. I see it as very likely those 46 Serco units were from other people killing the convoy & him grabbing it after the fact.

I just wish I was on at the same time as mr_spuck, so I could blow him up... ;)

If a high Serco standing UIT kills the convoy, and a Serco then delivers the cargo, the Serco gets a faction hit?
*EXPLOIT*: Itani-sided UIT gets high Serco standing and spaces the convoy. That cargo can never be delivered to Serco space again.
-:sigma.SB