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+--- Thread: Clarification on attacking low-level characters (/showthread.php?tid=116990)
Clarification on attacking low-level characters - Trogdor - 06-23-2014
A recent sanction involved (to simplify) the destruction of a low-level ship because they had looted a codename.
Quote:Characters of level 29 and below or ships using a Recruit ID may not be attacked unless they:
Attack first by draining the shield down to 50% or firing a cruise disruptor.
Are at the scene of a battle and refuse to leave when told to leave.
Take an active part in a roleplay interaction.
Possess a codename (Class 9) weapon.
Attack a player base.
From the wording of the sanction, I got the idea that the primary reason behind the sanction was that the aggressor and victim shared an ID, and the secondary reason was a lack of roleplay.
First of all, I guess I was under the impression that low-level characters exist outside of roleplay (hence why you aren't normally allowed to shoot them) and therefore one would not need to attempt to roleplay with them before engaging if they met one of the above criteria.
But I'm also wondering about the apparent primary offense here: that the aggressor killed a ship sharing the same ID. If one must take the target's ID into consideration, then what is the point of the "Possesses a codename" exemption? According to this sanction, It seems one would have to be a pirate, or a member of a faction hostile to the lowbie's, to utilize this exemption.
What if he had fulfilled one of the other criteria, such as a LN-ID'd lowbie snub CD-spamming another LN? Are you not supposed to destroy the lowbie because ordinarily you wouldn't be allowed to attack another LN?
I thought the point of these lowbie-attack parameters was to discourage exploiting the protections afforded by being low level (and just exploiting /restarts in general), but that sounds like exactly what happened here.
TL,DR: If I had been in that particular situation, I probably would've done the same thing.
RE: Clarification on attacking low-level characters - Sath - 06-23-2014
As the one who was sanctioned for that, I do deserve that. I knew that I would be sanctioned and I didnt care much about that, since, at that time, frustration got the better of me.
It feels so bad, when, for 6 days I would go and wait besides the wreck, only to find it looted by some restart shuttle who will be standing there. I would try to make a deal inRP, and those restart shuttles would usually nod at everything, and after the server restart, they would just loot it and fly away. I didnt shoot them at that time, because they were of the same ID. After 6 days of similar things, when I finally was alone besides the wreck, I shot it, and a nearby NPC looted it.
I was killing the NPC, while this restart shuttle came out of nowhere and was following that NPC very closely. When the NPC was blasted, this restart shuttle who was quite all the time, looted that stuff. And, I was arsed enough, to give no frak about RP or whatsoever at that moment. Since you know, all the waiting and OORP stuff by those restart shuttles.
I rightly deserve the punishment, but I am not even mad at that I lost the 4 codes and some extra codes I had in that ship, and I dont find it guilty at shooting that tiny little scum. I get sanctioned or not or even lose stuff because of that, is something apart from my frustration at that moment. From then on, I started making restart shuttles to hunt codes )))) .
Regarding the rules, the restart shuttles for code hunting provide no RP (the normal ships that are used for long, and not only just code hunting provide some kind of RP in that place). The whole code hunting is now a OORP process, and it can be classified under, "making new characters to make money" rule. Because, they are created, and once the codename is looted, they are deleted.
I tried to do the good guy part, by providing some RP in my ships (AU8 VHFs, or freighters) whenever I see a group of people waiting for a codename. But things doesnt usally go that way, do they? So I am now code hunting by creating new characters just for that purpose, cause frak RP.
Until or unless they change the code hunting mechanism, these kind of problems will keep on coming out of nowhere.
RE: Clarification on attacking low-level characters - tothebonezone - 06-23-2014
And you would've probably been sanctioned and reported.
The rule there is to protect sub-30s from established characters, until they pick up a codename.
Outcast shooting an outcast without warning is pretty much sanction material.
Not that the guy didn't have it coming, I would've happily murdered him too just so he didn't get it.
DELETE - SnakThree - 06-23-2014
DELETE
RE: Clarification on attacking low-level characters - Trogdor - 06-24-2014
The whole thing is kind of cancerous. I mean, on one hand you want to encourage people to explore space so that they find these things, and be rewarded for doing so with equipment that's better than what is normally available on the market. But on the other hand, then everybody wants it, everybody eventually gets it, and the 'exotic, advanced technology' becomes the new normal.
Worse, things have evolved in such a way that you can acquire this technology without any inrp justification. You don't have to get it yourself, you can buy it from someone else. You don't have to roleplay with that individual. You don't even have to leave home, you can just trade in conn. So what do you do when someone asks you, inrp, where did you get that technology? You can't even say "Uh... I found it." In many cases it doesn't really make sense for people to have them. Should rank and file house police and military be equipped with experimental prototypes? I think it would make more sense to say no, but instead, just have their regular gear be a cut above the regular gear of other, lesser groups.
Putting them on npc bases won't help. Will it really sink that much money out of the economy, when so many people already have what they want? One could argue that this would only hurt new players who don't have them yet. How do you make something that plunders the wallet of the rich, and doesn't create an insurmountable hurdle for new players?
In order to fix these problems and return to a state where things are somewhat believable, you'd have to do something drastic, like put technerfs on every codename that prevent them from being used by house police/military, or prevent faction A from using codes that are looted deep in enemy faction B's territory. And you'd have to disable equipment trading in Connecticut. So that when someone asks you inrp where you got that, you can honestly answer them "I found them on a wreck while I was patrolling [system in my zoi]", or at least "I bought them from someone [somewhere within my zoi]."
But, the equipment market subforum used to be inRP, so there must have been a good reason why it was made into a non-roleplaying forum.
Maybe along with restricting them from house lawfuls and restricting them by ZOI, we should rebalance them such that they're only as good as house guns, and everybody else's normal guns are weaker. You want to be as powerful as a house military ship, you need to hunt down rare prototypes.
I don't know. It might be better (it would certainly be easier) to just remove wrecks altogether, deprecate any existing codes, and just go with normal guns that can be bought from bases. If you want codenames, SRP for them.
But we're getting off the subject that I requested clarification on.. hopefully we'll get some sort of official response on the matter, and not just the 'what' but also the 'why'.
RE: Clarification on attacking low-level characters - Protton - 06-24-2014
Code hunting like that should be sanctionable. I would add a server rule saying:
Logging off in space at the following locations is sanctionable:
Near wrecks containing code names.
In mining fields.
etc.
It is anoying and it does not make any inRP sense to just wait there, floating. It destroys the RP. It should be in the rules.
RE: Clarification on attacking low-level characters - Blodwyn O'Driscoll - 06-24-2014
Aye, removing equipment trading in conn would be nice, for it's a totally oorp thing.
Furthermore, it would also fix a part of the problem with theses restarts shuttles, so they will have to fly to where they should be trading it.