Warfare & Tactics

They don't directly affect the ships that their fleet members fight against, no. So I don't see how anyone can claim they belong on killmails of ships which they did not directly affect. They passively help their fleet members. It would make more sense to put them on the lossmails of the fleet members they are boosting, but to put them on killmails of ships which they had no direct effect on is silly.

They are misrepresented, and here's why,

A kill is a kill. But the way killmails work currently, you take one kill, and you have to multiply that kill by the amount of people who whor'ed on it, so that every single killmailwhore gets a "kill", while in reality there was only one kill.

So you take a single kill. And let's say 50 guys contributed to it. That automatically gets turned into 50 separate kills, according to the killboards, because every single one of those players who contributed to the kill (but didn't actually get the kill), technically gets the kill in terms of the killboard. It's actually quite sickening.

I won't argue that "any contribution, no matter how minor is useful." No rational player will deny this. But this absolutely does not mean that every single guy who whor's on a killmail should get it registered as a "kill" for his killboard statistics.

There are ways to reward and acknowledge a player's contributions to a kill without actually rewarding him with a kill. Simply put, you shouldn't get over 1,000 kills on your killboard simply because you did 1% of the damage on a thousand different killmails. A minor recognition of your participation in said killmails, however, would of course be acceptable.

So we should put spy alts, , covert ops alts and anything else that may have a minor passive effect on a battle onto killmails too, then, right?

No, it is misrepresenting, because that's the way the killboards view it. If all the players are aware of the fact then there is no reason to keep it the way it is. It's simply a tool to build up blob-F1-players's killboard statistics.

I think the idea is to put icon's of the links on those handing out blows on the killmail.

There is a lot they could do with enhancing killmail data, depending on how it would affect performance.

Under the assumption that the killmail can theoretically be a delayed process run on a report from the game logs, it should be possible to add a number of items:

• like a timestamp for each pilot's first agression
• -ve HP damage for Logi that tried to save the target (wouldn't it be great to analyse Logi data?),
• all ewar types used on the targets loss
• timestamp for the first warp disrupt/scram/interdiction
• booster affects (drugs)
• gang link markers

I'm no engineer so I cannot comment on the practical stuff but for enhancing gameplay analysis and bragging rights, a lot could be added to enhance kill mail and battle report data.

Current km's and killboards do not a story tell, not even close.

Thats some crazy slippery slope fallacy there mate.

If you are performing a direct role in a fight (which includes boosters and logistics), then its a fair consideration to mention them on killmails. I understand you have a stupid idea of what killboards should be, i just dont understand your motivation.

Killmails and killboards are completely separate entities and need to be treated as such.

However, it's pretty unfair to expect anyone to develop a killboard that is a better story teller than the current crop when the killmails are so restricted.

In addition, I'd be surprised if you've never been involved in a nice kill that took a very inventive cov-ops probing tackler to land the prey before the rest of a fleet blobbed it and did more than 1% damage. You can start filtering out single aspects and loose much of the story.

One of the skills I would celebrate most is the art of catching a target. They might not do any damage (eg: first interdictor on the field on a supercap kill).

You can tell the story without lying about it, though. The killboards state that Random Player got a kill while in the actual game all he did was tracking disrupt the target for two seconds while somebody else got the kill. To say that the player who tracking disrupted him for two seconds got the kill is an outright lie, but that's what the killboards say, all of the time.

You can still show who contributed to the kill. Just don't give them a "kill" on their statistics that they didn't get.

You don't have to remove any of the information from the killmail. I never once said that.

What you can do is give players a "kill" on their killboard when they were the one who in fact got the kill. But not when they whored on the kill with some electronic module.

Why are you replying to me? i already gave that exact example of how killboards could be imporved.

I think ares wants the total kills to represent final blows rather than kills participated in. If thats all then whatver. Seems like something someone who already puts too much credence into killboards would worry about. Also seems like a lot of fleet roles would never get a final blow so kill totals would only really represent those who only fly dps who might never get a final blow should other roles not be fulfilled.