' Wrote:I doubt that exactly YOUR shields must be down, because sometimes it may be unfair.
I may buzz around cruiser and let my shields down plenty of times, but I never shot at this cruiser. Am I engaged?
Yes you are
Edit: Ninja'd! It doesn't matter if you fire or not. You need to be careful when docking to get out of a fight. It is easy to miss the exact level your shield is at, and if your attacker takes you shield marginally below 50% then you have been engaged. I've had this used against me before when I was avoiding a large number of enemy ships.
A bomber engages a gunboat/larger ship, it manages to shoot down the larger ship's shields below 50% but in the meantime lose too much b/b maybe all of them so he can't get close again to the other one without getting shot down. So he decides to stay out of weapon range, neither of them can really hurt the other one since the larger ship cant chase down a ship with a "better" thruster. What can the large ship do in this situation? It cant kill the bomber since its out of range, but in case he decides to leave or dock because of another reason, it can't enter the system in the next 4 hours and the bomber won.
In this case lets assume no reinforcements will come.
That is true, yes. Basically when you dock, you are considered fleeing.
You cannot really dock, restock, undock, give bots, dock back, blah blah blah.
If you're in group that's been engaged, you are engaged as well.
This situation is extremely important for small freighter cargo snatchers for example. If police can't really harm him below 50% shield, he should be able to escape in badlands and return within 4 hours.
The situation can reflect as well on light fighter being attacked by cruiser. Keep your distance and cruise away.
In my opinion, when shields of one of guys who involved in fight are lowered to 50% then all guys around are becoming "engaged" and if one of them, who never fire a single shot and his shields never got damaged, docking - its fleening. I mean that after damaging one ship the fight is starting, no free docks\undocks from that moment. But if you in your LF chased by gazzilion gb's cruisers fighters\bombers and have a luck to dock without damage - you'r not fleed, feel free to join the fight later. IMO. Of couse i mean if you flyes alone in LF and didint engage guys who chased you.
Little example.
4 rouge pilots with HF's pirating a lane and LABC is shown up. So, that LABC sayng something very impressive like "engaging red" and start pewpew into pirates. They are up on cruise and get away without getting a single hit and head to the different place. In that situation they are not beeing engaged and labc didnt engage someone really. That was not a fight after all.
Quote: But the other guy RP'd and all and say ENGAGING....
RP and ENGAGING in one sentence. Ouch that hurts.
Stick to the rule of 50% shield dropped, regardless if its yours or the enemies.
If one of your groupmembers, or "friendly/allied" ships clsoe by attacks the enemy and drops his shield below 50%, all bystanders and onlookers are fair targets as well.
If the bystanders just move on without interfering they are not directly engaged in the fight.
I think sharing bots and bats tags the bystanders as active combatants and if they run further than 10k, they are fleeing the scene.
If two ships cant kill each other its a simple "The cleverer give in" and leaves the fight, if both cant agree on the "Its a draw" thingy.