The rules of engagement for Logies and other remote assistants is messed up royally. Let me explain why: Adam is landing on a gate where he sees Betty (who isn't in the same corp) fighting with Charlie. Adam chooses to help Betty. What will happen to Adam depends on his ship type:
As you can see, sometimes Adam has unfair advantage in logi ship, sometimes he has an unfair disadvantage. Unfortunately Adam is disadvantaged when he plays "properly" engaging a legal target and advantaged when he "abuses": Betty baits a war target and then wins with neutral logi help if no one is around to shoot Adam.
I've figured out a fix that can't be abused and allows logi to engage with the very same rules as DPS:
Until this, or other fix is implemented, larger corps have advantage over groups of equal size but not in the same corp, as repping allies gets you suspect. Therefore merging corps have serious advantages over having alliances in highsec. This also means, that if BNI would move to highsec they'd be unstoppable and could take all the highsec POCOs with ease.
Serving Goons totally worked for this slave.
An interesting update about Lemmings: an alliance mail announced a Russian speaking fleet. It is a great idea to put non-English speaking corps in Lemmings, due to their small-gang nature. A large fleet must speak the same language, but in Lemmings nothing stops you to work with only a small group who speaks your language.
| Adam flies DPS (so shoots Charlie) | Adam flies Logi (so reps Betty) | |
| Charlie is legal target of Adam | Limited engagement from Charlie to Adam | Adam becomes suspect |
| Charlie is not legal target of Adam | Adam gets Concorded | Adam becomes suspect |
As you can see, sometimes Adam has unfair advantage in logi ship, sometimes he has an unfair disadvantage. Unfortunately Adam is disadvantaged when he plays "properly" engaging a legal target and advantaged when he "abuses": Betty baits a war target and then wins with neutral logi help if no one is around to shoot Adam.
I've figured out a fix that can't be abused and allows logi to engage with the very same rules as DPS:
- These rules affect only highsec, as in lowsec you don't go GCC for shooting ships and pods don't shoot back, so nothing to rep.
- When Charlie shoots Betty, a limited engagement is created for Betty against Charlie, every time, even if Betty is suicide ganker or at war with Charlie or Betty shot first or anything. This doesn't change the Betty-Charlie relations, it's merely redundant in 1v1 (if one had right to shoot the other, the limited engagement gives nothing, if had no right, GCC is 15 mins, so the limited engagement expires first).
- If Adam reps Betty, he is undoing the damage of those who are damaging Betty, therefore he is engaging these pilots. They are listed as limited engagements for Betty because of #2.
- When Adam activates his reps on Betty, a check is performed on the limited engagement list of Betty. This case the list only has Charlie.
- If Charlie is a legal target for Adam, then repping Betty creates a limited engagement between Charlie and Adam.
- If Charlie is not a legal target for Adam, then repping Betty gets Adam Concorded (the rep module doesn't activate if Adam has safety other than red).
Until this, or other fix is implemented, larger corps have advantage over groups of equal size but not in the same corp, as repping allies gets you suspect. Therefore merging corps have serious advantages over having alliances in highsec. This also means, that if BNI would move to highsec they'd be unstoppable and could take all the highsec POCOs with ease.
Serving Goons totally worked for this slave.
An interesting update about Lemmings: an alliance mail announced a Russian speaking fleet. It is a great idea to put non-English speaking corps in Lemmings, due to their small-gang nature. A large fleet must speak the same language, but in Lemmings nothing stops you to work with only a small group who speaks your language.
5 comments:
Actually, Adam's always at a disadvantage. If Charlie's a legit war target, he goes suspect, and that means anyone, even people not involved in the Betty/Charlie conflict, can activate his suspect timer and blow him up.
If Charlie's not a legit war target, then Adam still gets a suspect timer, and people who are not involved in the Betty/Charlie conflict can blow him up in perfect safety. Better cannot help him. Nobody can help him, or they get suspect flags as well.
He can't fight back, he can't rep himself, and he can't be repped without spreading the cooties. Yes, he's in a place where people are usually not allowed to farm killmails... does this mean he's safe? No, this means - because he was dumb enough to forget he'd go suspect - he's being sloppy. And if he's being sloppy, you can bet your last isk that someone will want to take advantage of that, and get a free killmail on a ship that can't fight back.
He is dead, period.
wrong low sec plenty of reason to rep the pod, A: the pod is being shot at and you want to save it. B: the pod is being held so everyone can join the fun but you need to rep it because some dip wipe activates guns on it or their drones attack it.
It's perhaps a symptom of the problem, but if my corporation is fighting a group that has been known to bring neutral logi, we will bring a lot of neutral friends in ECM ships to counteract them. I don't personally like having to do that, but at least it is counterable but only if you're expecting it.
How would this impact a neutral repping a poco?
Let's assume the case where Betty has 153 limited engagements. Before you can rep Betty, you have to check all 153 limited engagements, to see if they are all legal targets for you to engage; and if you make a mistake on any of these 153 targets, you will be concorded? This is not a reasonable requirement for logi.
Your argument in response might be that setting your safety to a setting other than red will prevent you from being concorded, and indeed prevent you from repping Betty at all in this situation. I don't believe that CCP will make a change that will make using the safety switch mandatory for efficient gameplay; I seem to recall them saying they wouldn't do such a thing. I don't remember where that is, I do remember where they specifically indicated that they've made a design decision not to implement a system like your suggestion:
"To solve this, we still require a form of A-B flagging. However this will be heavily limited in application, and won't be propagated via assistance chains like the existing aggression flags are. This is where we introduce the concept of a Limited Engagement."
From the dev blog: http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/73443
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