Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Current mechanics:
- Pirate shoots at Innocent Honorable Solo PvP'er in lowsec.
- If in range of sentry guns, they start shooting at Pirate.
- Pirate warps away.
- Pirate can now freely engage Innocent Honorable Solo PvP'ers ships in lowsec until his suspect flag goes away.

This means that, theoretically, the Pirate can freely engage Innocent Honorable Solo PvP'er in lowsec from downtime to downtime.

This is Bad.

"Getting Agressed" should not have any disadvantage other than Log-Off Timer and potentially losing HP/ship. "Agressing" should not have any advantage other than adding a Log-Off Timer and potentially removing HP/debuffing/killing the target in the immediate engagement.

Alternatively, if this is seen as Good Gameplay, unhide the list of characters that you can agress freely, and same for the target.

Addendum: Make lowsec sentries less lazy

But anyone who is suspect or criminal can be freely engaged, by anyone.

It's already obvious who can be engaged, because it shows in local and in the overview.

I'm not quite understanding what the issue is. Honorable solo pvper can engage the other guy back at anytime while he is flagged.

You shouldn't get a limited engagement unless you shoot the pirate back. And when the pirate leaves that limited engagement should only last a few minutes. The pirate shouldn't be able to extend that limited engagement timer unless he shoots you again before it expires.

Sentries will not shoot the pirate if he warps off and back however. Not unless he gets a new suspect timer. I think.

That's my understanding anyways. Are you saying hes extending a limited engagement by other means?

He doesn't get the actual Limited Engagement Timer, but effectively it's the same as long as any further agression happens in lowsec. Once a player has gone suspect on a target, he can keep doing suspect level agressions on the same target without sentry intervention until the suspect timer runs out. And, as you probably know, it is not hard to keep a suspect timer going.
This is the meat of the problem:

"Agressing" should not confer any advantage other than adding a Log-Off Timer and potentially removing HP/debuffing/killing the target in the immediate engagement.

Please state your opinion on that. A simple right/wrong would suffice.

No, I want sentries to engage me if my target has not shot back - unlike how the game works now.

No, he's saying that what you just described CAN be done now, and he doesn't think it should.

I'm not super up on LS sentry mechanics, but from what the OP said, the following happens:

Alice illegally shoots Bob on a gate. Alice gets a suspect timer and sentry aggro, and warps off.

Bob chills on the gate because he's AFK or something, whatever. Bob doesn't matter, here.

Ten minutes later (or an hour, so long as Alice constantly reupped her suspect timer), Alice warps back and, again, illegally shoots at Bob. Alice does NOT get sentry aggro again, so long as Alice has continuously maintained that suspect flag.

Bob would probably expect the sentries to have his back at this point, but it sounds like they won't, if the OP is accurate.

Provided that all works as described, it does sound a little screwy. vOv

It doesn't work that way as far as I'm aware, but I'm going to go test this now to see.

If it works that way, the OP has a point.

My current understanding is the sentries would engage again, after 15 minutes from the original act.

Sure, but that's the old, pre-crimewatch, system. As a former (and possibly future) pirate and lowsec PVP'er, I can say that that system was awful. It was supposed to give victims some time to retaliate or whatever, but that pretty much never happened, and could easily be countered by docking and waiting out the 15 minute timer. More or less locking pirates and wannabe's (such as myself) into systems for 15 minutes is pretty ****** gameplay IMO. Maybe it could be okay with a shorter timer (say, 5 minutes?), but that's a different issue - an imbalance rather than the outright brokenness I want fixed here.

It's also not all lowsec PVP where "punishment" is really necessary, as a lot of lowsec PVP is more or less consensual. In those cases, even the suspect flag is a bit much tbh. If you add sentries to that specific mix, it gets pretty dumb.

I get it now guys. Thanks for the schooling. 10 years and still much to learn. When I'm in LS (which is spotty based on wh connections) I just shoot and don't really pay attention to the mechanics.

It's amusing (ironic) that over the years as CCP has added the safety system and all the various timers to make Eve safer for those of a certain disposition, and there has always been a way to turn the 'safe mechanics' on those who they were placed to protect.

Searching the memory banks, there used to be a similar thing with shooting wrecks in HS to extend timers.


Now that I have been schooled on what is what in this I'm still disappointed by the thread. What I am getting now is that a guy want's to sit on a LS gate and is not happy that the gate guns aren't always on his side every time a baddie shows up.


Keeping a 15 minute timer active all day long is a lot of work and isn't something one can do without actively playing the game. If a guy is putting in the EFFORT to maintain the timer - I'm not really seeing a problem with REWARDing him with 'no gate guns' while engaging targets he's WORKED to keep that way.

If he's keeping a timer - go get him!

While this is a an issue I have with the current mechanics, I consider it a seperate issue. Adding a 5 minute sentry timer would fix this.