Forums » Suggestions
Make turret riders not affect standing hits
During a casual player organized event in Dau, pirates decided to crash the event, which is their prerogative. However, one Serco pirate was using an Atlas with an apparently AFK UIT character in the turret. After a few kills it became apparent what the character's purpose was, to trigger stronger factional repercussions on the participants that were defending their group. This seems to be a bit of an exploit, because effectively one pilot is now inflicting double (or more) factional penalties.
Suggestion: Don't have turret operator kills count for faction standing calculations.
Beyond, the above bad-faith scenario, I can think of a few good-faith scenarios and want to explore the ramifications on them.
* Case 1: Pilot and turret operator are both willing combatants. Ideally players in this scenario should be more focused on the satisfaction of combat victory, rather than standings. So single hit vs double hit is arguable either way, and single hit would work.
* Case 2: Pilot is willing combatant, turret operator is unwilling combatant. In this case, the pilot may be more concerned about victory, while the turret operator is more concerned about discouraging the aggressor. While you could argue double hit would make sense, the bigger issue would probably be why the pilot wants to fight and the operator doesn't, and single hit wouldn't really change this dynamic.
* Case 3: Pilot and turret operator are both unwilling combatants. This is the one case where a double factional hit is pretty clear cut as the best approach. An aggressor antagonizing two players should face double the repercussions.
Overall, there are some good-faith scenarios where a double factional hit would make sense, however, they seem to be uncommon, from my personal experience in the game. Especially compared with how easy it is to artificially create the initially mentioned scenario for the express purpose of increasing standing hits.
Some other thoughts:
* If people are multi-boxing for turret operators or turret bots, then it's one player being impacted.
* I think there is an argument that capships could be an exception, since capship destruction is a more intentional and significant act.
* I would avoid any sort of activity based system (ie no faction repercussions if the turret operator is not doing anything) because that is possible to script around.
Suggestion: Don't have turret operator kills count for faction standing calculations.
Beyond, the above bad-faith scenario, I can think of a few good-faith scenarios and want to explore the ramifications on them.
* Case 1: Pilot and turret operator are both willing combatants. Ideally players in this scenario should be more focused on the satisfaction of combat victory, rather than standings. So single hit vs double hit is arguable either way, and single hit would work.
* Case 2: Pilot is willing combatant, turret operator is unwilling combatant. In this case, the pilot may be more concerned about victory, while the turret operator is more concerned about discouraging the aggressor. While you could argue double hit would make sense, the bigger issue would probably be why the pilot wants to fight and the operator doesn't, and single hit wouldn't really change this dynamic.
* Case 3: Pilot and turret operator are both unwilling combatants. This is the one case where a double factional hit is pretty clear cut as the best approach. An aggressor antagonizing two players should face double the repercussions.
Overall, there are some good-faith scenarios where a double factional hit would make sense, however, they seem to be uncommon, from my personal experience in the game. Especially compared with how easy it is to artificially create the initially mentioned scenario for the express purpose of increasing standing hits.
Some other thoughts:
* If people are multi-boxing for turret operators or turret bots, then it's one player being impacted.
* I think there is an argument that capships could be an exception, since capship destruction is a more intentional and significant act.
* I would avoid any sort of activity based system (ie no faction repercussions if the turret operator is not doing anything) because that is possible to script around.
Sounds suspiciously like what happened to me a while back, also in Dau