Crime & Punishment

Let me preface the post with this: I'm not sure whether this is the correct forum to post to, but it seemed to fit well enough at the time of posting. If I need to take it elsewhere, let me know.

So then: Suspect mechanics. Particularly in lowsec when shooting people. How do they work? I'm a nullsec resident who's seeking to mess with opponents in their staging - which happens to be in lowsec. I've noticed, however that the suspect mechanics don't quite work how I thought they would.

How I think they work at the moment:

Pirate Blackbeard shoots non-flashy civilian John. Blackbeard gets a suspect timer, loses a bit of sec status and, if it was doing so within range of NPC sentry guns, he will take fire from them. Either John jumps out, docks up or warps away - whatever. I'm interested in Blackbeard in this situation. Blackbeard can warp off and come back to start shooting John again and he will renew his Suspect timer but he will neither decrease his sec status again nor draw fire from the sentries.

Now - that last bit strikes me as odd. If I'm Blackbeard in this scenario I could just take a ship, shoot at a cyno ship or whatever, warp off, come back, reship to an insta-Tornado and sit there to blap everyone who undocks with impunity? Well, at least until something undocks that can blow my ship up. But John might want some help from the sentries killing me since John is being a PVP victim in this case.


Am I getting this right? If so, do you think the Suspect mechanics work as intended at the moment?

From a logical perspective, no.
From a game play perspective, yes.

the reason he can warp away, come back ad freely engage is because Blackbeard has an engagement timer with john, as seen with the blue circle in the top right corner with the others. this means that whomever he has the blue circle against, he can engage within the time period without taking fire from guns after he has come back. i think that's how it works. correct me if i'm wrong.

For the post below, assume all pilots are in losec and not of bad sec status.

What you're seeing is the result of two separate mechanics at play:

First, sentry guns don't respond to the suspect flag. They react to the act of becoming suspect flagged by shooting at another player while on-grid with the sentry guns. You can steal loot or shoot at players elsewhere, warp to a grid with sentry guns, and they'll leave you alone.

Second, if you have an active capsuleer logoff timer for aggressing a player, re-aggressing them renews the flag. But since you were already flagged, you do not "become" suspect by shooting the other player, so the sentry guns don't shoot at you.

So, yes, you can shoot at someone on-grid with sentry guns, warp off, and warp back and keep shooting (if they haven't left) and the sentry guns will leave you alone.

This is all independent of limited engagement timers, podding, criminal flags, etc.

I am roughly 90% certain that's how it works. I will eat the appropriate crow if I am wrong.