No If you wanna do High Level Content you gotta be able to risk for it. There should be Full on PVP in the UZ and other high level content gals.

Other than that I am totally ok with everything here. Maybe now SS can be a lil more fun

It all sounds good EXCEPT the instant towing thing. I've already found a way to explot it. Example:

You're an FC, possibly a middie or lowbie, and some random SD griefer in a Panther pops in and takes out your slaves, then leaves you to die to the AI that you can't fight back against because your slaves are back in EF Sanct or wherever they're set to go when they die. Then, the griefer only has to poke your ship enough to get your shields low enough for an AI to kill you. Since the instant-tow isn't affected by being killed by an AI, he can then continue to camp your ship, waiting until you get back in to poke you some more, then leaving you to die to the AI again.

At some point you run out of GG and your gear drops, which he can then scoop after 10 seconds or so, rinse and repeat. You can't fight back against him because you're just some lowbie with a crummy shield, no or minimal weapons, and your slaves are far away and (at the time) unrecoverable.


On a seperate note, there should be an option to auto-tow anyway. As some have said, the player that has been killed may want to fight back, and there is also the PvP/PvB factor in wars, declaired or otherwise. I wouldn't want to be in the middle of a gal siege and have my ship taken out from under me and sent 20 warps away because one of the bases decided to turn its fire in my direction.

I can see a workaround for declaired wars, but what if neither team has officially declaired wars and are just having, say, opening-uni skermishes (which happen often) or light skermishes over one or two border gals. Teams don't full-on declare war over one or two border gals, it's too costly and the bugs in the agro/hate system aren't completely worked out yet, causing even further problems.

What TCGM said. Extend it to your slaves as well.

What TCGM said. Extend it to your slaves as well.

I may just be old and old fashioned, but I really hate the idea of players being able to do DGs with no risk of pvp. Back in the old days, you learned to be a good "citizen" of SS by learning to wait your turn in DGs, not scoop the other guy's loot, etc. If you didn't mind your manners, you got zapped. Such an enormous non-pvp area is going to do nothing but breed rude players who can camp out there and not face any consequences for scamming on trades, being rude, or anything else. Right now, scammers quickly become KOS and learn their lesson. Not so with this system.

I know you're going for simple, but look at all the exploits pirates can currently use with EF protected space - running there to hide and charge up, or even parking an MCed Shm there to autoheal them during a fight. At least in EF protected space, you can still kill them if you're willing to take the cop aggro and lose a gg of your own in the process. With this system,you will face the unintended consequence of giving sanctuary to pirates and scammers as well as pacifists.

As for the towing, I absolutely love the fact that if you got autotowed upon death you would be completely out of the fight for awhile, unable to spy on the other team in your spirit or see what's going on at all. Unfortunately, as everyone has pointed out, the system is way too full of complications from slaves, drones, etc., to be the "simple" solution you were looking for.

Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't your main's level a little low for you to make this kind of argument? There's already no PvP in Olympus, which is good because no one wants to hamstring their squad with PvP-oriented characters.

I think there are clear issues with the teleportation system when slaves or drones are involved. DragonGod's point where someone can cause a player to be ganked by AI repeatedly is pretty serious. I think it's clear that you should have the option of teleporting whenever you are killed, regardless whether it was a player who dealt the final blow. Likewise, slaves should go into stasis normally when killed and then teleport with your main ship if it is killed and you choose to teleport.

Naturally, there will be no option to teleport out of instances. I will recommend again that teleportation should have some nontrivial cost (scaling with level perhaps but definitely not with size or weight of ship, nor with number of slaves/drones simultaneously teleported), and that a cut of the cost could perhaps be paid to the player who got the kill if there is one.

Myrtok, if a player earns a bad reputation and is then confined to the EF-layer for it, that's plenty punishment I would say. There's only so much content you can do without ever visiting a player shop or venturing into perilous space.

I don't like auto towing simply because it will make PvB/BvB almost impossible. Getting past base range without dying at least once either means you have the player strength to PvB and not bother with bases or the gal simply sucks and still does not require BvB.

I also never saw it the way TP does. Having a layer 100% unpvpable might have a some what detrimental effect on the playerbase. If this is institued I would suggest a kickout on DGs in order to avoid the inevitable boss camping of good DGs in an area which you cannot fight over it.

The idea of making team HQs tow bases is fantastic.

So,
No to auto towing
Yes to HQ towing
Be very careful with the no PvP area and listen to the reservations on it.

I guess if we made the towing optional, that would be less of a departure from the current system, so maybe better that way. Someone suggested in chat that the towing shouldn't be when you get killed, but when you attempt to get back into your ship a dialog pops up with whether or not you want a tow. The advantage of this is that you don't have to leave a "yes/no" dialog open while you decide if you want to tow. You can watch the battle play out and direct your slaves, and then when you've decided, you can hop in and tow or not. The other thing I was thinking along these lines was with slaves, we can have two options for them when they get back into yellow stasis, which would be "leave stasis" and "leave stasis and tow".

I'm not sure if we want to offer the choice to tow to a player not killed in PvP. I suppose for consistency we should, but maybe if you weren't killed in PvP, you should have to pay money, but that's kind of exploitable if you just get your friend to PK you for a free tow.

Also, if you've taken some damage from a player and some from an AI, that would still count as dying in PvP.

I agree that the idea that people can escape to safe space is a troubling one. What would people think if anyone who PvP's is not allowed into non-PvP space or instances for 5 minutes (or some other duration)? Yes, in the long run, you could ninja someone today and hide in PvE space tomorrow, but if people are after you, that's still a huge portion of the game that will be quite treacherous or unpassable to KOS people.

My concerns were pretty much addressed with the choice of whether to tow or not.

You still need to consider the camping of EF space DGs. I understand it can be tolerated atm due to the fact that someone can always resort to PvP to claim a DG but if there is no PvP in EF space and the DF goes all the way up to DF300 then there are bound to be some nice bosses in there which can be camped at no risk.

Camping in general is a lame counter productive game mechanic but camping with no risk is even worse.

If at all possible i would liek to see the old lay out of the universe put in to place as well as the new... a mix between the layer jumping central colomn
and the outer rim layer jumps. this gives 2 benefits. 1 a team can easily control 1 area of space and not have to travel back to or through enemy space. that may be around the central nerve. and it allows less pvp pirating to occure as early in the universe there was immense amounts of piracy as the PVP combaters learned a easy way to stlak there prey from one central area.... its basicly catalizing the non pvp who would prefer a "backdoor" into leveling space. this would also make things for trade between w1-2-and 3 a lot more efficient and smooth. other than that i would liek a higehr DF ef w1 space tahts protected thats a grand idea. woudl be nice to make some profit without having to spend all of that money in GG and security. i feel bad for the pirates and mid level players though.... they wont be able to scam a lower level into buying a decent item for a increased price. Ex. shield and energy caps wich drom commonly from dg's in df 150-250 wich typically market between 50 - 600 m can now be mroe manageable to a f2p or low level both in price decrease and in the abilit for them to make moremoney safely. and easily come back to protection. at the cost of being able to build bases in w1 of course.... if that is what yer getting at.

I think the idea is shaping up, and appreciate that you are listening to player concerns.

I propose PvP be allowed in the boss levels of DGs!

I would say ideally DG's or at least the last level of DG's would be instanced, but that's not really possible right now. I agree it's a problem, though if two of you are fighting over a boss in a non-PvP place, that could get really annoying. I'm willing to posit that the advantages of the change overall would outweigh this negative until we can get to DG instancing. Unless anyone else has a suggestion? PvP on DG level doesn't really work, I don't think, because then you'd just get PKers hiding in the boss level of a DG waiting for people to gank.