Player Features and Ideas Discussion

CCP!
You promised everything would be easy with new crimewatch, but the rules of engagement in Lowsec are still a mess.
Although the consequences are now plainly visible through these nice icons, it is sometimes very complicated to foresee all the consequences of your actions.

I welped another fleet because well...
one ship commited a criminal act and got suspect
a fleet jumped in and attacked the suspect
the logi repped the suspect and got suspect too
then the enemy fleet could legally attack the two
and when the rest tried to help they were killed by sentry guns mostly.

It is simply not manageable if you have one fleet and the fleet members have different legal targets or may be engaged legally by different entities.

Imagine you have a mixed FW/non-FW fleet with some outlaws and some guys who have high sec wars. You go nuts!


I propose: Rules for fleet engagement

1. A fleet is a unit. You cannot aggress just one fleet member, only the whole fleet.
2. If anyone aggresses a fleet member for whatever reason, legal or not, ALL fleet members get a limited engagement flag and the fleet may defend itself as a whole.
3. This is OPTIONAL and can be activated by the FC. When activated, the fleet name will be displayed in every fleet member's character info.
(this is to give anyone a chance to notice that if he is going to shoot at that criminal there are 20 people in local chat who will be able to legally shoot back)

Example:
Fleet A meets fleet B. One member in fleet A aggresses one member in fleet B.
The whole fleet B may now fire back or assist legally.
But if anyone does (other than the target that was attacked directly), the whole fleet A also gets the limited engagements for those who joined the fight and both fleets may fight each other.

That way, a single member cannot draw a fleet into an engagement by commiting an offensive act - a fleet only gets the right to defend itself.

Sorry but can you clarify something:
You attacked a suspect in lowsec, and your logi repped him, making him also a suspect?
Then another fleet came in and did what you did, but had the sense to not rep their own targets...
Next to gate guns...

How hard is it to get the concept of, "If its flashing yellow or red its fair game. If its not, it isn't."?

Part of the fleet was suspect, part was not.
The incoming enemies engaged - of course - only the suspect ships, creating a situation where we could either just let them die OR help and then also get suspect.

This is not about "I want to shoot without consequences".
I have a problem when parts of my fleet may attack some target OR may be attacked legally while others may not.
The same happens when you have one pilot in a fleet who is in a high sec war or FW or outlaw and gets attacked.

You may say now: hah, your fault - don't mix these bad guys into your fleet. Yes, that would be a solution, but I for whatever reasons I sometimes just want to fly with some guys and there will always be someone who is problematic for some reason or another.

If your fighting in empire space, then this is simply something you will have to deal with.

If your going to mix pilots who are at war into a fleet with those who aren't, this is going to happen. That's your decision. If that's too much for you to deal with, don't do it.

If one of your fleetmates goes suspect, then its up to him to sort himself out. At least in low you have the option of assisting him and going suspect too. You can warp away from.gate guns and they won't shoot you when you return. You can dock up until the suspect timer runs down.
Those are tour choices.

If your pilots aren't willing to lose some sec status to help a fleetmate then they have no business being in a fleet. And if you have an issue with losing sec status for being an aggressor in lowsec, then you have no business being in lowsec.

As for your fleet agro idea, what's stopping the following situation:
A pilot goes up and becomes a suspect so he baits a target. When he gets agro the rest of your fleet warps in for the kill. Happy ganking...

In short, you can't have your cake and eat it.

And how are you going to distinguish your fleet in local, from everyone else's fleet in local. Especially in q hub with 2000 pilots, like Jita?

By fleet name. As I proposed in OP, the fleet name should be visible somewhere (e.g. character info). The same way you can tell that some people work together when they are in the same corporation/alliance.

Ans as for Jita. Yeah, true you would not be able to check all 2300 pilots there.
But that is no difference from now.
If I attack a war target in the Jita 4-4 undock perimeter, I simply have to be aware that some of the hundreds of ships in the system might be allied with my target, there might be a fleet booster around, some more targets might undock etc etc...

If I don't want that, I just don't attack people who are in a fleet when I am in Jita.