Help: Suggestion for space safe zones and pirates!

OK, like most going into space I get really annoyed that a pirate can stand in safe zone and once you leave safe zone he can fly behind you and shoot you in the back before you can turn around and shoot him. This is a flaw with safe zones.

But if you think of it logically, why would pirates be able to wait in the safe zone? They are wanted by the police or whoever enforces laws in our universe.

My suggestion would to have some sort of "police drones" or "police turrets" that fly around or are positioned in safe zones and if a ship is flagged as a pirate the drones would shoot at the pirate thus making the pirate not able to wait in the safe zones. They would have a delay so any pirate would still be able to use space stations, and maybe they would do small damage. They would mainly act as a deterrent to pirates waiting in safe zones for nubs to leave and then follow them with an advantage.

Other games already have this mechanism. Look at Grand Theft Auto for example, if you start killing people you are flagged and any police will try to arrest you.

There are a lot of improvements needed in space but this one would help a lot.

jak said:

OK, like most going into space I get really annoyed that a pirate can stand in safe zone and once you leave safe zone he can fly behind you and shoot you in the back before you can turn around and shoot him. This is a flaw with safe zones.

But if you think of it logically, why would pirates be able to wait in the safe zone? They are wanted by the police or whoever enforces laws in our universe.

My suggestion would to have some sort of "police drones" or "police turrets" that fly around or are positioned in safe zones and if a ship is flagged as a pirate the drones would shoot at the pirate thus making the pirate not able to wait in the safe zones. They would have a delay so any pirate would still be able to use space stations, and maybe they would do small damage. They would mainly act as a deterrent to pirates waiting in safe zones for nubs to leave and then follow them with an advantage.

Other games already have this mechanism. Look at Grand Theft Auto for example, if you start killing people you are flagged and any police will try to arrest you.

There are a lot of improvements needed in space but this one would help a lot.

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Each player can detect, if a pirate is hiding in the safe zone.

ah camping the spawn point.

Not a lot you could do about it other than avoid entering space when any other ship is near you.

MA could implement a cool down after entering pvp space so that you're still invulnerable for a while and this time is reduced depending on the karma of the ship. So, in theory, pirate ships would get less time when leaving a safe zone and following someone out, unless it's another pirate, would be very dangerous for them as they'd be vulnerable but the ship they're following wouldn't be.

Doubt it would be popular though. Or just make space non-pvp and have special areas for it just like planet side. A gas nebula for space mining that's pvp for instance.

B.U.M.P. We need more votes!!!!!

no more macro aim so you want MA to shoot & aim for you?

Safe zone camping wasn't a problem until MA made the zone 1/4 the size and greatly expanded the distance between planets.

You used to be able to fly for a min or two in safe space. This allowed you to go all sorts of directions and the pirates were forced to follow you and miss potentially bigger targets leaving or let you go on your way.

Now all they have to do is switch to the passenger seat and wait, no cost and very easy to see the whole zone.

Suspect this thread will go in the wishlist section, to live with among it's brothers and sisters... As suggested in some of those threads, and in other forums for certain other planet partners, there is already in game a work around for getting your stuff moved between planets... it costs a little, but it works as the system is now...

put your lootables on auction at a very high price....

if someone pays that price, great....

if not, get your butt to another planet you want to be on...

after the auction has ended pick the option to pay the transport fee for safe delivery to the planet where you are.

That won't stop pirates from camping the safe zone like some used to do planetside, but it will allow you to get stacks moved if you need em moved.

Calypso ss seems to be where pirates park most often. Some reports are in that they do camp other planet ss safe zones too, but not nearly as often, and definitely not 24/7 every day of the week.

Camping spawn zones solely to pvp the same avatar over and over is against eula and tos, so if you see it report that shit... Can't find the thread at the moment, but many years ago there was someone that did similar planetside on Calypso, waiting random tps all over Amethera just to pvp n00bs coming out of the revive or tps... I think there was actually several pages to a thread involving that for a while... In space the same thing is happening quite frequently.

What they should do about the situation imho is like you say, a bit of a 'policing' mechanism... At the moment if you are planetside and want to enter a radiated pvp zone you have to pay a toxic shot to enter... Perhaps a similar, but opposite type of mechanism should be put in to place for piracy for the opposite reason... Create a 'neutral zone' around the outside of each ss 'safe zone' that is a bubble similar to the safe zone, but much wider than the safe zone itself... If a ship has killed another in space make it so that they cannot enter or stay in that 'neutral zone' without first waiting for a 24 hour countdown timer after their last kill, or until they go all the way to one of the non-planet revives in space somewhere to pay for something similar to a toxic shot that would allow them to reenter that 'neutral zone'... make it so that it's not something you can carry in inventory though, they'd have to actually go all the way there first before they could enter any neutral zone again...

or do something else, more interesting... some pirates post in various threads about how 'boring' their profession is... Make it interesting for them in various ways... perhaps after they kill a ship or avatar in space they get automatically dumped in to a solo instance that 'looks like' where they just where in space but is really just a solo instance similar to the batsim where they have to run a gauntlet of police pvp cruisers to get back in to regular space at the end of that instance... make it very challenging, costly, and time consuming, or at least long enough that it'll give whoever they just killed a lengthy time to revive, get back in to space outside of the ss and be on the run in regular space before that same pirate can kill them again at the same location since the pirate will be in that instance. Some post somewhere said that it's Mindark's goal to get as many avatars in to instances on a server as possible to help fix lag... doing an solo instance after pvp in space could be one solution for that type of thing so space doesn't get laggy like other planets do from time to time, and it will keep regular space from getting too crowded by a bunch of police ai that would just slow down the server.

Something else that might be interesting is if Mindark made it so that if you do die in space at the hands of a pirate, instead of auto reviving at the nearest ss, Mindark gave you the option to revive at one of the other revives on other ss in game with a pull down menu, and a payment option as to which one you'd like to revive at... they already sort of have that functionality in game when a server is down somewhere on a planet,or an event is going on on the LA you are in and you don't have a ticket, that allows you to spawn at another revive other than the nearest one... Do similar in space, but give participant the option as to where they get revived at...

Who knows, maybe the 'deep tokens' will let you do something like that?

Also, give all tp chips ability to jump to other planets... but pay a higher fee for teleporting that far out or something...

All we would need is safe zone being safe only for neutral/good karma ships. Any bad karma ships would have no safe zone benefit and could be fired upon - let's say when you fire at them, you loose your safe status too for 60seconds but still first shot is yours. That would make camping a bit harder and these guys would be easy target. Some other MMOs implement it in that way - PKer are just not safe in non-pvp for some period of time.

Easiest fix would be extending safe zone a bit so it's harder to track ships leaving in all directions.


Still, i don't think current state is so bad. I can leave without being shot in freaking sleip if I want to with pirates around. Ppl who get shot are either impatient or don't know how. Few rules here:
- go incognito when traveling space, while incognito others can't pull your status bar from nearby FL list, that make it harder for them to spot you and they can't select your ship from FL alone
- in safe zone you can still see others in nearby FL list. If you see somebody here then don't leave safe zone, wait for that list to be empty. Other ppl in that list are potential pirates, especially if they in incognito. It also doesn't matter if you don't see any red arrows around, pirate can hide their bad karma by switching to passenger seat.
- don't leave on default altitude. Go sharply up or down, less ppl on non-standard altitiude/z-coord.
- if pirates around, just move to edge of safe zone on high/low z-coord and switch to passenger seat. Go watch some movie While you watching your movie pirates have more "interesting" time since they have to constantly monitor your position (while you have fun watching movie without any attention to the game). Yet they have to track other targets + nobody can focus on you constantly for few hours. After the movie wait till you see nobody on nearby FL and leave. Nobody should care about you after so much time.
- no sure everybody knows it but window to enter a planet is actually very very wide, you don't have to go to destination SS to enter the planet. Yet again use non-standard z-coord like +1000 or -1000 - you can fly relatively safely even over caly SS on this alt. But don't fly to SS, you can enter the planet on whole sector width, if you zoom space map, you can see sector borders - map texture is not consistent on edges. If you do that correctly you can enter the planet 2AUs from SS easily. No way you will find a pirate that far away from SS + it saves some fuel.
- do not carry much loot of course, if you carry few K ped then MS become cheap option. I think who suffers most from pirates are noob who can't affort MS with their few hundred ped loot stacks + it's plain annoying for other even if they do not carry anything.
- and of course try not to use sleip, quad price is still lower than basic laster amp and last very very long. You gain the benefit on same speed as pirates so they have to stay very close to you if they want to catch you in pvp. But don't be so sure of it, there are speed exploits that make it possible to catch a ship with same speed so all of above still apply.

I guess we could make pirates lives way worse just by educating others how to move around SS. No game changes needed

Daimon Frey said:

- no sure everybody knows it but window to enter a planet is actually very very wide,

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Really good point. I think it works similar to planetside, where if you are over 50% closer to a revive you get pulled in to that one if you log out. Use that trick all the time when in space to get to to the next ss without having to get into the ss itself with finicky piloting skills. Just make sure you are 'close enough' to not get pulled back to some random outpost in space.

Also, flying at oddball times helps since pirates are sleeping... When I used to work graveyard ship I'd do most space travel after my shift got over in the wee hours of the morning on a weekday.

Missing poll option: It's a honeypot. This is a roleplaying game and MA wanted to create a stereotypical douchebag role which those naturally inclined can adopt like getting stuck a tag on their backs for everybody but themselves to see. A strike of genius one might say, if it wasn't for the consequences to the whole.

As to OP's suggestions, per MA's past responses to complaints it is to be concluded that their intention was for the players to pick up the ball, to create a police force of sorts on their own expense. It hasn't worked, only produced a very small number of heavily fortified motherships. Yet don't expect them to step in and play "good government" which corrects its own decisions. Human pride is much stronger than reason. The recommendations for risk mitigation given above are all good and that's what we're given to work with. Nobody is forced to like it, people just direct their spending accordingly. If this doesn't lead to hurting the company at all, not even seeing what better ways exist after all the input from a passionate playerbase, then the only way is to give some serious thought to what an "investment" really is.

One option MA has is to spawn you at the Planet border in PVP instead of at the Space Station. Also, let warp vessels do summons while in PVP (on the same server).

Makes the job harder for the pirates to find you (much larger area) and even if they do get a kill it will be harder to TT the loot in a fast manner. They also don't have anywhere to run if they are losing the fight.

Oh, as for the police idea? I don't trust MA to not fuck it up. They would need to change how Karma works and also make it so the color indicators mean something real instead of today where they just mean your karma is different that the other person's.

mastermesh said:

or do something else, more interesting... some pirates post in various threads about how 'boring' their profession is... Make it interesting for them in various ways... perhaps after they kill a ship or avatar in space they get automatically dumped in to a solo instance that 'looks like' where they just where in space but is really just a solo instance similar to the batsim where they have to run a gauntlet of police pvp cruisers to get back in to regular space at the end of that instance... make it very challenging, costly, and time consuming, or at least long enough that it'll give whoever they just killed a lengthy time to revive, get back in to space outside of the ss and be on the run in regular space before that same pirate can kill them again at the same location since the pirate will be in that instance.

Click to expand...

This could be entertaining. Each pirate who participates in the instance needs increasingly higher 'decoy dispenser' profession as notoriety increases. Instead of decoys in the instance, the decoys turn into 'box of doughnuts'

What you are describing is the current EVE Online mechanisms.

In any case, I do agree. Aggression towards others in space should result in some sort of timer or something.

The ideal timer would be a 'Shared Loot' timer, say 5 minutes. This would mean all other pirates are free to attack them and will get shared loot based on damage inflicted.

I think that would balance things out a little. In other words, let the other pirates do the policing.

Think about it, if you are a pirate, would you prefer to shoot down someone who may or may not have loot, or would you rather shoot down a pirate who has just looted a victim?

The worst part is MA seemingly expects us to 'police' it ourselves with zero benefit. I'm not going to go up there and kill pirates out of the goodness of my heart while wasting real money and getting nothing back for it.

Wouldn't do anything anyhow when they have nothing to lose, they just repair and come back out while you waste your time doing something unproductive.