Clarification on "New" Rules of Engagement

HWS Get Support
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Hey there,

I just wanted to share some of my thoughts on the new rules of engagement/get some clarification on some things.

DSH has been established on the Gold Planet for a while now and have had a “we want to fight for ownership of this planet” sort of attitude towards anyone else who we come across. With the new rules of engagement, this is no longer a possibility without risk of being losing structures, items, being jailed, etc. As Hunters, we should now only attack Pirates and Lawless folks on sight, unless we have a bounty. I have a few concerns with that, I’ll go through them here:

  • We can’t attack other Hunters on sight, so, we’re just forced to allow any other Hunter faction that comes to Gold to build up bases/turrets as they please, and then they can just get a bounty on us and start shooting at us? This seems unfair. I really feel like we should be allowed to defend the Gold Planet as our territory to the fullest of our extent. DSH has never sat in Trader Orbit trying to camp traders, but if a Trader comes to Gold Planet, look out! Now we apparently can’t do that anymore? This leads into my next concern…

  • We can’t attack Traders on sight or without a bounty, so we are required to just allow any Trader that comes to Gold Planet to build up bases/turrets/resources as they please. Then, those Traders can use all of those resources to place bounties on us and wipe us off Gold Planet. This again seems unfair.

  • You might think “well, go Pirate then if you just want to pew pew everyone.” Well, even as a pirate, you are not supposed to completely wipe people. You are supposed to focus the core and steal their stuff, and then leave them alone. This again is not conducive to territorial war and leads into more issues like in the above points.

  • It’s not easy to see who you’re attacking. Even harder if they’re in a vessel. Say we have a bounty on someone who is a Hunter. We attack a ship from someone in their faction, and it turns out it’s not them. Now we have a warning against us because we attacked a target we didn’t have a bounty on… how are we going to deal with stuff like this?

  • Mining on Gold is dangerous for DSH too. There are turrets everywhere outside of our zone of control. We are just never supposed to go to these places after someone from a Faction that we cannot attack sets up turrets there? This again seems unfair.

  • Along the same lines of the above point, it’s not always clear whose base you’re attacking until you get too close, and then you’re dead. I generally don’t know whose base I’m attacking unless that person speaks up in Global Chat. This would make it really hard to hunt someone down for a bounty, or to determine if it’s even a base that we can attack. How do we deal with something like this?

I would love the idea of having to fight with the HWS Police if we did not follow the Rules of Engagement, but it’s not just fighting them. They have the ability to take your stuff, structures, jail you, etc. This sort of punishment makes it cross over from “law” to “rule” 100%. If you can end up with the same punishment as someone who is intentionally draining ammo, then it’s not just an RP law.

Taking all of this into consideration, you might say “well, go Lawless then!”. There’s one huge problem with this. Lawless is basically designed to be punishing so that you want to join a faction. The biggest problem with Lawless as a viable option is the death tax. Without doing fresh starts constantly, the death tax eventually gets so high that you wouldn’t be able to keep any credits. Fresh start as a possible option is great, but as something you would regularly have to do, it’s very harsh. This would be a lot more balanced in my opinion if Lawless had a flat fee for dying, rather than having to eventually reset because the cost of death is so high.

For anyone who is still with me (as in still reading), maybe you’re thinking “Well, if you don’t like it, leave!” and, I understand where you’re coming from there. It does sound like I’m complaining a lot, and I really don’t mean to. I really love the community here. I enjoy helping people, I enjoy answering questions, I just also really enjoy PvP. Maybe some people don’t agree, but DSH has tried to be as grief free as possible. We never camp people, we offer to help people if they are stuck, we just want to try to control our territory.

Thank you for reading. I’m interested in hearing other people’s thoughts on this is well.

Edit: Adding another question based on something that just happened. BQH attacked us even though we are Hunters. They claim to have a bounty. What sort of proof do they need of that? If they don’t have proof, we just go report them then? And okay, so now BQH has hit us. We declare war on BQH. Is that all fine? Or do we just have to deal with their attacks while they try to collect their bounty and we can’t do anything?

Edit 2: Just to be 100% clear, we don’t want to stay Hunters and be able to do all of the things we mentioned here. Now that we are enforcing rules of engagement, we know that a change has to be made. We have changed our behaviour in the last few days. We haven’t been attacking anyone other than Lawless or Pirates on sight, and have been more actively seeking bounties. We understand that if we want to continue our old operations, we need to be Lawless or Pirate. This post is to point out concerns I have for the future of the Hunter Role, to point out how Lawless is truly the role we would have to go with, and suggesting ways to make that a viable role. I’m not expecting changes to be made. I love the community here, and I’ll be happy to follow all rules and laws in place. At the same time I will continue to share thoughts I have about these rules and laws and share any suggestions I have that I think may make certain roles more viable (such as the flat death tax for lawless to prevent needing to use fresh start as a regular game mechanic). Thank you for reading.

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Hunters are not soldiers, setting up large scale bases on planets to hoard its resources is unfair to new players and certainly does not follow the behavior of a bounty hunter.

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One of the first things I said was that as Hunters, our style of operations are no longer really possible without repercussions due to how the rules of engagement are being enforced. We will most likely be switching to Lawless or Pirate so that we can continue to play with the same style as much as possible. At the same time, I have all of the concerns I mentioned.

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i understand your concern, In this situation what i would say is that our intention for bounty hunters is that their role would not be one that was looking to own a planet in a way that would prevent the other factions that are neutral to BH from entering without being engaged (Trader/Alliiance). The current game mechanics mean that anyone other than your faction members will be shot down if they come to close, WIth the next update coming the draw distance is increased so this will cut out a lot of confusion with, ‘who are they’? If someone was thinking about becoming a hunter but really liked the idea of being a dominate force and owning a planet to scare off everyone else i would say BH is not the role for them.

Yes you would be expected to do that, in theory you would be impartial to them coming to the planet and going about their business. It’s not in a BH nature to be king of hill. They have a code and unlike pirates/lawless who think everyone and anyone is an enemy, a BH would think…if they don’t bother me i wont bother them (unless contracted). BH are not the bad guys, They want business after all…would you trust a BH who claims a planet open to all as their own, who would happily kill anyone who steps into their self proclaimed planet…where is the code/respect there. BH have thier own planet already :slight_smile:

This one is a story aspect that will need to be altered. It is hard to say ‘just wipe the core’ when people design to try and make it one of the last things gone. (at which point no BA/CV is standing anyway) We will look at getting this adjusted.

Like i mentioned this is being increased with the coming patch, again with the game mechanics accidents will still happen…it’s down to you guys to be like, ‘woops, i better back off’ If the other player doesn’t after you have made a clear intent to…then record and report the crime.

Our intention here is basically, Traders, Hunters should not be looking to set up massive defense bases on planets. It doesn’t fit the purpose and role of what they are. Again referring to the actual game mechanics there isnt a lot we can do to stop…still waiting for the Alliance tab option ;). If you were to take out a Trader base on a PVP planet for example as it was blocking your path to gold…that’s not an issue.

1st, the Trader shouldn’t have ground bases like that on PVP unless they are temp (defense against pirates) and they should expect it to be gone when they leave.

2nd, The player cannot control who the turrets shoot, Unless the bases was getting in the way of a factions ‘mission’ or was pirate/lawless’ consider leaving it to conform with the story.

Covered with the update soon.

I can of course not cover everything and all situations, i dont have the time and to be honest no matter what there will always be flaws in the system.

Best advice i can give to anyone with concerns about the possibility of breaking a laws, Just play on the safe side and go Pirate/Lawless…The factions are their to offer the ability of role play, It will never be totally black and white so sorry for that but if either we try to create and overall, role play environment or non at all. Either way a section of players will be unhappy.

If another Hunter faction was willing to take on its own kind, Then civil war is totally an thing. Most hunters respect the code. Those that don’t might find themselves with a lot of Hunter enemy

Based on feedback like this, and the fact i was a Hunter as my play style, i can totally relate the the concerns and we will try make it so hunter is a more desirable option :wink:

Alot of these scenario also translates to Alliance and Trader also…with the new law system you could argue Lawless and Pirates have it easy, but that is kind of the outcome we wanted. We want less people crying, If everyone was a lawless no one would cry…becuase we could say, no rules. I believe people would also get bored a lot quicker and some people arent interested in PVP at all. We want to cater for all peoples play styles :slight_smile:

Hopefully this answers some of what you were after :slight_smile:

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Thank you Achilles. I really appreciate the time you put into this.

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Thanks for the discussion and Achilles taking the time into it. A lot was answered already but some points from me:

First of all the current roles and guidelines are not set to stone. Depending on feedback and the way the game can change we also change stuff.

Independent of the intentions and already answered stuff the biggest issue you have robob is to have stationary wars?
A good indicator of my plans are the supply packages. If you look closer you see that no one except Alliance and Lawless are meant for this way because they don’t have a supply at all - I know :wink:

To be honest I am not fully satisfied with the Alliance faction and will improve the Bounty Hunter faction.
The Alliance needs more courage and strength. If we had a fully working Alliance we wouldn’t need the HWS Police. So we need to rework their benefits / pitfalls.
Bounty Hunter are more and more going in the right direction but still are too in-transparency so I want to create a Bounty Hunter “Job Board” where people can see / accept / decline contracts.
After my vacation a lot is going on with HWS :slight_smile:

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Here are my thoughts -

Alliance - they need to be more active in what they do, I think this means they need to be spending their time in PVP space.

Maybe, the only gain RP while spending time in PVP Space/Planet? There’s not a lot that they can do in PVE space per say.

Bounty Hunters - some form of job board would be ugood, maybe some NPC can hand out contracts based on injustices that Admin sees?

People attacking Traders/People being rude/abusive in chat/hunting pirates.

Pirates - traditionally were the type to capture people and then steal their booty, they wouldn’t always kill their captives. Maybe if there was a way for Pirates to spawn a ‘shame craft’ so their victim can warp home without their booty?

This way if you die and don’t have home set, the pirates can spawn a shame ship for their poor victims.

I think Lawless should be evolved into something more interesting, like a true Marauder class, the sort that destroys everything, like the vikings of ancient days.

Just a few ideas, I know it’s kind of stale days for Bounty Hunters right now, unless you magically come up with a bounty for all of your enemies.

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Something I think should be implemented right away is the ‘Bounty Board’

If you are a BH, you must post your Bounty on the forum before you go hunting or perhaps you have to message a member of the Police before you attack.

This means if some random hunter feels like causing trouble, they will get punished because they didn’t notify the authorities of their bounty first. I think with the current enforcement of rules there is no way to prove that BH actually have a contract, so an unethical BH could hide behind that.

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I lead a very small Alliance faction. We are one scared to expand as to not be robbed. With that said I look back to REX’s post.

I believe I get the faction system or the idea there of and will see if I can put it out here. One Faction targeting of same faction should be disabled unless you are lawless or pirate. I do not know how but it must be done. You can get 2 alliance to engage an enemy when you will shoot your own faction in the process. Alliance should have a over ride and be able to fight any. Alliance are the police. Bounty hunters have stations and out of the way outposts not planetary bases. Alliance should have the bases and run the defense of those bases with trader and hunter assistance. With that said a Trader should get the fact that they must support the faction process. Example: If Alliance spends all day digging in the dirt how much time can they patrol and defend you? There should also be code added for an actual bounty in game. Hunter takes said bounty and the core of the target bounty become targetable by the holder of the bounty. All traders, Alliance, and hunters should be able to make there way to ATM bases sponsored and defended by Alliance .

In the Idea of RP I would say the following:

  1. Traders should form close bonds with Alliance factions.
  2. Fund and assist them where possible as you build your financial empire.
  3. Build your lavished Headquarters to show your financial domination.
  4. Use that wealth funneled through hunters to bring down corp competition. (If they are dead they aren’t mining gold and you are. Plus rep lose to impact taxes.)
  5. The rest seams easy Alliance police, pirates/lawless do bad things and Hunters horde credits of the backs of espionage.
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[quote=“Ranzeth, post:12, topic:2049”]
Maybe, the only gain RP while spending time in PVP Space/Planet? There’s not a lot that they can do in PVE space per say.
[/quote]What about the support people who are in PVE? That buillt bases and send resources through the market to people who are in PVP? Besides, if you even spend 5% of your time in gold planet for PVP-purpose then that is considered a lot, unless you live there. Just measure how much time you actually spend pvp-ing in this game compared to building ships and farming resources / servicing miners for it and doing random silly stuff. But this role should be performed by traders but I only feel this is done within factions.

The guide says that hunters have no ethos. So basically a hunter is a pirate + bounties. No ethos = do whatever you want. And they hunt for profit which makes sense. But hunting can also be done without contracts (just attacking traders to steal their ships for profit) or mining gold or whatever. The guide describes them as greedy people who just want profit and more profit, which is basically a corporation which = evil and they will kill anyone to get it.

I believe that the problem with alliance to secure the galaxy is (I am alliance) that we are not big enough and the members that we do have are not active enough to take on all those pirates. And I believe that my alliance faction is the largest one. But we can’t compare to SWP alone… On top of that some of us also get police work. Working together with traders and other alliance is hard because we will shoot each other and it’s hard to see who is who in combat when things get messy. SWP is simply bigger (and way richer) in terms of activity and therefor shall always win when span over enough reallife-time. The alliance might win a battle but it is instantly overshadowed a few hours later by the number of pirates.

Also the “never shoot first” for alliance is a bit weird if you clearly see that the other guy is a pirate in a large brick CV or something. Obviously you shoot first before he opens fire (if he didn’t already). Also you don’t want him to get away he is a ‘criminal’ anyway. Just shoot it the pirates won’t mind anyway they love it :smiley:

@gargonus
I agree traders should fund the alliance to fight the pirates and possible even combat together with them (traders in the backline) and pay hunters to assist the alliance during combat. Traders are supposed to be filthy rich so in theory they should dominate the universe… But I do not feel that the game is ready for any of this. We need alliance features.

Some missing features (which each faction can set for another faction including default settings):

  • Determine for each other faction what your alliance with them is
  • Customizable display color in radar per faction with a default color (like traders could be green, hunters yellow, pirates red, etc)
  • Can they see the location of all of your faction ships and perhaps even in the ‘B-menu’?
  • Can they use your cargo boxes/stations/constructors/etc?
  • Will turrets consider them as friendly or as enemies?
  • Will turrets consider them as enemies if they shot us recently (required for hunters)?
  • Send each other aid in terms of resources including a history so you can see what faction donated how much.
  • Bank account / OCD that is for all of the alliance (also with history to prevent abuse) that the alliance can use to fund ships.
  • Are they allowed to visit your planet?
  • Extra chat tab/window for chat with other allied factions.
  • Etc.
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The overwhelming majority of my time is spent

  1. PvPing
  2. Repairing my ship due to damage sustained during to PvP
  3. Designing new ships in creative

Less than 10% of my time is spent gathering resources.

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Are you alliance or pirate?

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Pirate but we see significantly more action than alliance and still manage to keep ourselves in ships without too much overhead.

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I know that pirates are constantly in pvp space and looking for a fight. But I feel that most people who want to PVP simply join Pirates instead of Alliance. Thus most and perhaps the best people for PVP will be pirates. Also less restrictions on PVP (shoot anything you want whenever you want).

I see most of the alliance servicing miners, flying randomly, going to the market, making houses, shooting my drones, whatever. I for example do not even fly PVP ships when doing these things because when I bug out I rather lose a tiny ship instead. Changing the RP gain to pvp space only for Alliance would just cause me to live in very deep space instead of on the planet. It increases travel time and makes it even more unlikely for me to PVP.
Also it’s just a pain when warping and having to make sure my turrets are turned off in case of a trader or whatever that is also warping at the same time…

Besides why would I PVP knowing that I will lose anyway. Pirates kick our butts and probably have bigger numbers and we get penalized for dying in PVP and there is no upside to it. Yeah okay for fun so once in a while perhaps.

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That mentality is precisely why alliance on NA is a huge joke. I’m not sure how anyone expects alliance to defend traders if alliance spends all their time servicing their autominers in PvE space.

So far the only non-pirate faction to actually try to fight us in space is SFT. Why are the traders doing more fighting than the alliance that’s supposed to protect them?

At a certain point just go trader if you want to circlejerk about resources on a PvE planet.

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I’m on EU and we are (in my opinion) all a huge joke there as well. Didn’t know NA had the same problem.

We have a few good/active PVP alliance/trader members but they are by far the minority. If I played just for PVP I would be a pirate no question about it. I would never join the alliance.

But how do we get those people to join the alliance? Alliance has better perks but the guideline restrictions are a no-no for most PVPers I guess.

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I’m not sure what the point of the current incarnation of the alliance scan ability is.

Alliance need something better than the 15km scan since they have much tighter engagement rules than pirates who can executed unrestricted warfare.

I’m wondering if it would be possible to change the scan to show how many pirates are online and in system. It would be completely worthless in homeworld, of course, but for other systems where the population is lower it would help hunt down any pirates doing things like camping trader world.

At the moment the alliance faction is completely ineffective and, on NA, the least competent in PvP by far. I am wondering if it’s just because they have no practice.

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I agree with some things said but we are trailing off into pirates where they have bad perks but massive benefits for those bad perks. Like they can shoot and loot anyone any time they feel like it. What we have here is a issue (no offence) gamers mentality and motivation. I Have been in several fights already and won them all. I am alliance, and say pirates just have the numbers or brake the rules. Like 2 Cv’s park at a spawn in and start hammering you the moment you jump in. This is why turrets need to be smarter. I need to be weapons hot at all times with a FoF system that keeps my turrets from smoking traders. I also need my turrets to follow my lead as a Alliance to over ride this feature.
Example: If I see a trader faction hammering down another trader I need to be able to step in and fire on the targets guilty and not those trying to run for their life.

I like the role-play aspect a ton but see many problems with it. Like rule barkers should ultimately be forced lawless or pirate. (maybe a point system like archage)
People go pirate because pirates are in the boat together for the most part and Alliance requires other factions to fund them for it to work properly. If I am Alliance and I dig all my own ore and make all my own credits why would I need traders or care to help them?
As I view it trader is more of a casual do what I want player. I can pvp some mine some and build giant dodads some. For this privilege a trader needs to fund a standing army that attempts to insure a galaxy for them to tralala in.
Alliance people should go read the rule carefully and not be sidetracked by its translation into English.(no offence admins lol)

  1. It says do not shot first unless where applicable. As alliance I can light up a pirate or lawless the moment I am in range.
  2. Pirate and Lawless openly join that faction stating that 1 is correct. Their intent is to subvert the law and there by are openly the enemy of the police.
    Basically for the faction system to work yes there needs to be some coding done and things put in place to help but ultimately it is the player whom has to abandon the single player solo mindset. You the player are taking on a role that has duties and should pick the one that most fits your social mindset.
    This is what was meant when the HWS Police post said "If the factions where working properly there would be no need of this"
    The Alliance are the police and you the citizen don’t get why your police force is in shambles and can’t protect you from the evil pirate scourge.