[alphabet]

Nah, for minor infractions they should be given a popup window that has the ticket and the amount they have to pay. They can choose to pay it or not. If not, the ai police goes weapons hot. If they do, then the pilots threat goes back to 0 and the ai police continues on its way.

Pilots should NOT be escorted to unreg for minor infractions. I can just see the pirates outside the gate..
"Ohh lookie, here comes another one!" *licks chops*

[TexMurphy]

True alph a ticket is better.

Though I really dont see why unreg would be camped to shoot offenders. Escorting out of faction space might as well be from sol into oct space. Just get the fook out of our space you bastard.

so minor a ticket bigger infractions but not KOS escort out of faction space.

[Liet]

So if I try to civ someone stripping from Outpost, he can call the police on me? If someone curses out me and Octavia, I'm not allowed to kill him like my RP demands?

I don't like the AI police idea. It's inflexible, and is just a shield to hide behind.

Back in early retail, if you were worried about being civved, you joined a big squad. That's why large squads had a combat wing and a supply wing. Can someone tell me why we need AI police?

[Eraser55]

you can kill the ai police after you killed him.

[TexMurphy]

Theoretically any kind of mechanism is a shield to hide behind.

I totally hear you Liet and I really do agree that it has to be possible to self police in Jumpgate. Id hate stuff like pvp chip or non pvp sectors. These are the worst kind of non flexible protection tools one can find.

But lets face it how many percent of civ rips are self policing and how many percent are unprovoked attacks?

Idealy we just remove all tags and everyone is treated equally and everyone is a target 24/7. Problem with tags is that they give a false sence of security.

The false sence of security results in people thinking "By flying civ it means I want to be left alone", we all know one cant think like that in Jumpgate but people do and then they get cived, whine and eventually quit.

From a business point of view I would guess that more people have quite over the actions of civ rippers then over the actions of lamers who deserve to be civ ripped. Hence if "protecting innocent/dumb pilots" has to be put up "against ability to self police" in a design discussion the dev company is always gonna pick business first. Business in this case would be the first honestly I cant see any other way. Too many people have quite because they got cived.

Id view this as a damage controll discussion. Instead of arguing whats best from my game play perspective I can only debate whats the least bad alterantive.

If the alternatives are a) pvp chip, b) non-pvp sectors or c) AI police then Iam definatly behind the c) alternative because it at least leaves SOME flexibility.

Tex

[Liet]

Bah, I just love the idea of self policing. It's part of what made Jumpgate great for me. The thought of Jumpgate with a hard PvP switch or AI police or 21m bounties (which there are now) depresses me... a Jumpgate like that isn't worth playing. Seriously.

[Tim]

Well sure, Leit.. the game works great for PvP folks (such as yourself, clearly). it's the new folks and the non-PvP-oriented folks that are looking for some support.

The community defiantly has the tools to police itself. It's the will that is lacking.

After all.. it's the 'community' that needs to be policed.

If one's RP calls for the shooting of civ's, great. But certainly we all agree that having an RP doesn't mean there should be no consequences for your actions. Ask GrimGriz about the consequences of a mining RP, for instance.

Lots of RP's involve going up against difficult, sometimes even impossible situations. Perhaps RP's involving downing a civ should also be one of them.

Course, i'm probably wrong. Again. Ask the wife, she'll tell you.

[Duodecimal]

I'm siding with Tim.

In my estimation, "Self-Policing" probably has as much blame as dated graphics for people getting excited about hitting 50+ people online at once. There's a population of players who play more or less in Sim mode due to access to resources. Then there's the population of players who seem to disappear after a couple weeks.

Here comes the part where I get crucified.

I used to think that meaningful death was important. It took me a while to realize why I dislike undocking so much the few times I come on to play. Not the threat from pirates, but the threat of splashing my ship. Inconvenience is not fun. I'd probably hate petalling or speeding into the dockpit more than getting shot down, but the end result is the same in both cases.

If we're going to hold onto more than a few score active players after a year or so, we're going to have to make death less punishing.

In Warcraft, the worst that happens is a corpse run and a 10% armor value repair cost once you get around to it. In lower levels, you never even need to pay for repairs since you replace equipment so frequently. And deaths caused by PvP carry no 10% equipment repair penalty, only wear-and-tear.

That's not quite an option in a space sim -- your ship blows up, and your ship is your body. So, you'll have to lose your ship and equipment when you die.

In the "economy" post I made elsewhere, I argue for assigned ships and equipment for people starting out, suitable for running missions, with new ships provided as you gain faction standing and get access to more missions. All the way up to high-end ships. You won't have to worry about farming up more equipment, the stock gear wouldn't be horrid unlike in the current incarnation of Jumpgate. You just don't get to upgrade the ships since you don't own them.

That's one way with dealing with the cost of self-policing. The other is following a PvP model similar to that on normal servers of Warcraft, updated so that it'd make sense in Jumpgate. I don't care what the arguments are, if you're shooting down someone who does not want to be involved in interfaction warfare, you're contributing to the loss of that subscriber. There's a reason PvP servers in Warcraft cater to a small fraction of the player base, and why population imbalance is such a problem on those servers.

My proposal for "safezones" ties into the beacon system.

Beacons in faction space prevent weapon locks on civilian-flagged ships. Those looking for fights would use 'different frequencies' for their targetting systems so that they can fire on non-civilian flagged ships.

In faction space, the default state of beacons is faction-tuned. Outside of faction space, beacons can be tuned to any faction but will eventually go detuned.

The difference between Warcraft "zones" and jumpgate's sectors would be that the beacons are PvP objectives. After taking down the police guard on a beacon, an electronic warfare ship can scramble the beacon, a process taking X amount of time and that also triggers a faction announcement that the sector is under attack. Once the beacon is scrambled, all ships in the sector are vulnerable to attack. The EM ship must in some way be continuously or periodically interacting with the beacon to keep it from being restored by default. Otherwise, after X+Y period of time, faction control is restored.

So, in short, all faction sectors with unscrambled beacons are 'safezones' for non-pvp pilots, but flagged combat can still take place in there.

Unlike EVE (where you're instaganked via Condordokken) and Warcraft (non-flagged players show up as "invalid target"), combat isn't point-and-click in Jumpgate. If a civilian player is hit by player attacks in faction space, it simply passes through them. This prevents non-flagged players from blocking attacks while also preventing any other penalties that might otherwise be put on the attackers by griefers getting in the way of their gunfire.

[GrimGriz]

Originally Posted by Liet

Bah, I just love the idea of self policing. It's part of what made Jumpgate great for me. The thought of Jumpgate with a hard PvP switch or AI police or 21m bounties (which there are now) depresses me... a Jumpgate like that isn't worth playing. Seriously.

This is part of the reason I'm such a tenacious advocate for mining and hauling ships to be redesigned to exist in a galaxy at war. If they are capable of surviving an incident via skill (by either running, surviving til help arrives, or fighting back a single attacker) you will virtually eliminate the need for artificial "civ" protection (such as tags or safezones).

Assuming I don't get enough support from the community or ND is too stuck to the notion that half the playerbase should be defenseless, I had this idea:

IF the beacon is tuned in regulated space in a sector with a TUNED beacon, the beacon reads the jumpdrive signature of the criminal and sends a signal to the gates not to let him jump. To leave, he must fly to the beacon and *interface* with it, (like fishing in WoW, with a meter until the action is complete) that would take a minute or 2. He's hacking into the beacon and overriding the lockout command or something...This would give the local goodguys (AI or player) time to come deal with the situation.

Mind you, it do no good in a situation where it was 1 civripper and a squad full of buddies.

[Tstrike3]

I am siding with Liet

There are tools for the community to police itself. It goes back to my discussion about knowing your environment. Carebear Jumpgate and you take its "bite". You defang Jumpgate and you will definitely drive away a lot of folks.

Jumpgate is supposed to be dangerous and the current bounty systems makes things really tough on the criminals. I think that is a good thing.

Insert AI into the mix and I can just hear the screams of AI exploitation that is too common as someone alluded to earlier in this thread.

Here is what I fail to understand. Are some protectionist advocates suggesting that the Jumpgate community isn't smart enough to outthink or outwit aggressors? Is this what is being compensated here?

Are you guys simply saying that if a pirate does his/her homework, you are incapable of doing the same?

Hmm....

[GrimGriz]

Hey, me and duo posted using beacons at the same time. I may not be as smart as him, but at least I think along similar lines sometimes.

Tstrike, most everyone here can deal with Jumpgate the way it was. We're trying to figure out how to make a Jumpgate that actually has players.

[Duodecimal]

Originally Posted by Tstrike3