Assembly Hall

With all the upcoming changes regarding aggression and flagging, I want to toss this idea out. I posted it in another thread, but the more I think about it the more I want to see it.

As I understand it, once CrimeWatch goes live there will be 15 minute times for the suspect and criminal flags. I'm proposing to take that timer and multiply it by a system's security status. Flipping a can in a 0.5 system would get you just 7 1/2 minutes of suspect flagging instead of the full 15. Piracy in a 0.1 would result in just 90 seconds of flagging, where you would get 6 minutes in a 0.4.

This would help blur the lines between high and lowsec, and make those sec levels matter for more than NPC spawns.

Yeah, that's something that crossed my mind, but I didn't really feel the need to include it. I was going for short and sweet :)


My expectation would be that both lowsec piracy and highsec ganking would naturally migrate toward the lower-sec systems because the penalties are lighter there. With a shorter GCC timer in 0.5s, gankers could reship sooner. If some variation on the hotly-debated sentry guns changes comes about, lowsec gate camps would be more viable in the lower sec systems. I don't really see a downside...but them I'm not looking at it from the perspective of the carebear who would just as soon see gankers get podded by concord and such.

Doing otherwise would probably be a nightmare for the devs and runs contrary to my vision of how it should work, so...yes.



The impact it would have on highsec ganking is that you could gank in a 0.5 twice as frequently as you could in a 1.0. I don't expect any adjustments would need to be made.


That really depends on things like sentry gun mechanics. If Greyscale's sentries come into play along with CrimeWatch, then we really do need a mechanic that will shorten the duration of the suspect flag the further you get from secure space.

Remember that you can ALWAYS shoot a pirate with a -5 sec status, and that if they've recently killed you, you have kill rights on them and can engage them anywhere. The suspect and criminal flags are intended to allow everyone to shoot you without losing their own sec status.



A long time ago I posted an idea for creating Concord "deputy" players and corporations where they would be alerted to local GCC events as beacons on their overview. I would imagine that's similar to your idea.

From the current state, the impact is you can suicide gank twice as frequently in 0.5 systems than currently.... This is a big boon to suicide ganking (although that's not a bad thing necessarily).



I'm not referring to pirates. Imagine I'm a suicide ganker that makes a living ganking industrials traveling through Niarja (0.5). With your change, I can now gank twice as often, since my GCC & aggression timers are now 7.5m instead of 15m.

I'm suggesting, that your GCC (which controls concord response) gets reduced to 7.5m, but your suspect timer (which allows other players to shoot you) is increased to 30 m (extreme example). Now, I can go suicide ganking again very quickly (after 7.5ish m becuase that's when my GCC ends), but I must fear some good Samaritan Player that tries to thwart my operation by attacking me before I can gank another industrial (which they could do as long as I have the suspect flag).

There are two things I'm not very certain of:
1.) For Lowsec: Gate & station gun mechanics. Currently, when you go GCC, you get attacked by gate and station guns. But when you go GCC, you also gain an NPC aggression timer to the gate gun owners. Gate and Station guns will automatically shoot you whenever you get near them until BOTH the GCC timer and NPC aggression timer ends. Whenever the guns do shoot at you, you're NPC timer is renewed, and sometimes your GCC timer is also renew (i think). I'm not sure how these timers are changing with the new crimewatch system. What I hope for, is that gate guns only fire at you while you have a GCC flag, but will leave you alone when you have the suspect flag. This way, a short GCC timer means you only have to worry about station guns and gate guns for a short period of time, and a long suspect timer means good Samaritans can freely aggress you for an extended period of time! I want to enhance player on player violence, which this is directly doing!!! I am not certain how GCC & suspect timers will be renewed, and that's also an important thing to consider.

2.) For Highsec: Player Aggression timers vs GCC timers. Imagine I'm a miner in a belt. A Talos lands and attempts to suicide gang me. I deploy EC drones which jam out the Talos,which then dies to concord. The Talos currently gets a 15 minute GCC timer for his actions, meaning if he boards a spaceship within highsec during that window, concord will spawn and blow him up. You want to reduce this timer to 7.5 minutes in a 0.5 system. However, there is another timer of major concern here! Because I aggressed the talos with EC drones, I have a 15 minute agression timer with the Talos Pilot. So, with the GCC changes, 8 minutes later that pilot can be back in a new talos in space hunting me down. If he finds me before my 15 minute agression timer ends, he can LEGALLY shoot me without concord intervention because of the timer I have for defending myself. This loophole needs to be closed!! I'm under the impression that a major point in changing crimewatch is to reduce the "who can shoot at who branching crazy timers madness" that is currently crimewatch. I'm very uncertain how the new crimewatch system will deal with defensive timers (i.e. How/when can the talos pilot return fire.) This could be a simple change of reducing the "return fire" timer to the same length of the GCC, but I don't fully understand the new system yet.



Again, it's not so much as GCC events that I care about, as much as Suspect Events. GCC gets handled by concord and gate guns. Suspect events should be handled by players... I've read/heard/thought/discussed overview beacons to allow SPAM to chase down such pilots, but I haven't seen anything that seemed appropriately balanced.

I think it's a rather terrible idea that sentry guns will shoot you for taking stuff that has been jettisoned into space. I'm against CrimeWatch, but CCP doggedly insists upon it, so I'm making the best of a bad situation by trying to temper it.

This is my understanding of crimewatch, although I could be wrong:

1.) If I take from a can that isn't mine, I gain a suspect flag (for stealing, a minor criminal act). WIth a suspect flag, EVERYONE can legally shoot me. If they shoot me, I can shoot them back. If the person I'm returning fire on has logistics support, I'm S.O.L., as I cannot shoot their logi pilot, meaning I'm at a big disadvantage when I've gone suspect (which is the tade-off for stealing the loot). If I rep a player with a suspect flag, I gain the suspect flag.

*edit* I've read the minutes on sentry gun aggro. I don't think sentries or NPC's should get involved in suspect fights. I also don't think it's acceptable for gate guns to be able to kill triaged carriers within 5 minutes. However, CCP clearly said these were not set in stone, and would be discussed at an upcoming date/forum.

2.) If I illegally shoot another player, I gain a criminal flag (like GCC) and a suspect flag. The criminal flag means that gate & station guns shoot me, Navy's attack, and concord will deathray me. In general, shooting anything that is not yours or your corps is illegal with the following exceptions: You have a wardec, you have killrights, they are currently flagged as a suspect, or you are defending your ship from their aggression. If you assist (rep) a ciminally flagged player, you become criminally flagged.

I'm sure I'm leaving something off, but I don't understand how this is terrible? Perhaps I need to go read some dev post I missed, in which case please point me in that direction!