Is that the answer?
No, it wasnât. Honestly I donât know if ship collisions are needed, sure they add to realism/immersion, but personally Iâm more bothered by a lack of approach paths to gates. You just fly to any part of a gate, then your ship is magically flipped to be oriented with the gate and jumped to the gate opening. So, in the grand scheme I donât think ships not engaged in combat with each-other passing through each other is going to break everything. I could go either way on it.
Was answering your question that someone can answer it. 
Iâm not an ISD, Iâm not a mod, this isnât even my thread. This is just the Xth thread Iâve seen with everyone arguing back and forth about the big things, when itâs clear everyone isnât seeing the little things the same.
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I know. I was just sharing in the frustration. This and the unending wardec threads if turned into solid cheese could build a scale model of the earth.
In cheese.
But I am curious to know why it exists at all.
Would have to have a timer, like the warp away timer, but a timer to trigger a flag
I donât think three minutes are long enough
I could not hold a ship through bumping for even two minutes,
I would have to learn the skill, earn the equipment, and practice.
I think a 10 minute timer would be better.
Surely no one can say having a journey across star systems and light years held up for ten minutes greifing.
But yes if we could point/scram/web and only go suspect, the Jita undock would be⌠glorious⌠but probs not that balanced, I dunno.
It is currently the only way to interdict high value targets in high sec for a start, and the only way to hold a cap ship without a specific counter ship.
This thread explores options to either do away with it or not.
Do you think interdiction should be possible in high sec without instant concord? or would you prefer no bumping at all? Or a âwarp offâ timerâ, or changes to mechanics, or do you like the status quo?
Genuinely interested in your response.
As far as I am concerned the quality of the discussion, which is about high sec ganking in a way, has not yet resorted to name calling and personal attacks- for that alone I see it as a great success and meeting of minds, in a spaceship forum.
Well I guess that goes to the nature of High Sec.
See, I dont really think that its within the spirit of the EvE Universe to
a) Have freighters be invulnerable to piracy
b) There be no mechanic to disrupt trade
c) It be too easy to exploit the two above things
However, I think using a mechanic that seems to me to have been created to simply avoid the possibility of collisions to do this because it circumvents what is and is not legal through mechanical game means isnt good either.
I think my only (and I stress ONLY) problem with bumping comes down to the fact that it really just doesnt seem like how ships would interact. T suggest that the flopping around is somehow realistic ignores the fact that the freighterâs design is utterly ludicrous.
It ignores that a ship as small as a BS but with enough mass to stop a freighter is unlikely to be able to manuever any better.
And like I said, I dont have anything against the ACT of piracy against anyone, but it really just seems like there needs to be something more concrete in place.
BASICALLY
Is High Sec supposed to be secure for Eggers, or is it (like I always assumed) for its actual citizens?
When people complain about wardecs for example (not trying to derail, so please ignore if you like), they say its wrong that empires turn a blind eye and concord gets paid off.
They forget, the empires are not for us. They are for the little people who we burn up by the thousands each day when our crews ignite or when we run a mission.
The Enpires are probably glad that we capsuleers are fighting each other and not their weak ineffective populations of normies.
What has this to do with anything?
Well⌠if the Gate is ignoring the bump, then clearly they dont care, so really⌠either a rule is introduced to show they DO care about super freighters getting through, or remove CONCORD and get HS dwellers to actually set up something more effective than that joke Antiga.
Sorry this is probably very meandering, Ive had no coffee yet.
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Then let me rephrase here. Your process is off.
Youâre not going to get any kind of meaningful consensus out of the forums, and at least a basic sanity check of whether or not the problem is even solvable is important. You can determine the best possible state of the game according to some subset of players all you want, but if that state isnât achievable then the prior step is pretty pointless.
1 is a pointless question and 2 is kinda the wrong question. Iâve bumped people to help them and Iâve bumped them to mess with them, but generally speaking itâs pretty clearly a hostile act. Thatâs the use-case for 99% of bumping.
As for 2, there are very few ânecessaryâ game mechanics. Shooting, locking, warping, ect are necessary mechanics because theyâre things that you need for most of the other mechanics in the game to function. Things like ship bumping or missions or Citadels arenât ânecessaryâ, though there does need to be some kind of decision for what happens when two ships try to occupy the same space. The game functions better if two ships canât just fly through one another, because tracking gets weird if one ship is inside another.
Doing some kind of base sanity check on where your argument is headed saves everyone time and avoids asking questions that, at least on the forums amongst a fairly detailed and in-depth discussion of the mechanics, make it seem like youâre treating everyone like idiots.
Because the area around a station is not in any other way special and bumping near a station is one of those cases where bumping as a tactic has quite a lot of potential value. Trying to bump someone away from a docking ring before their aggression timer expires has a long and storied history in Eve, among other potential issues.
Everyone is thinking through the problem, weâre just skipping the questions that are either blindly obvious in their answer to anyone who knows the mechanics or skipping the stuff that no one is disagreeing on. No one is suggesting removing bumping so weâre not discussing that as an option because anyone with a reasonable depth of experience in PvP has at least one example where bumping as a mechanic has value.
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That sounds like an argument for not discussing anything at all on the forum.
Did you read the OP? Because thatâs exactly what it says. At least Iâm reading ânerfâ in this case as âget rid ofâ.
In the various bumping threads I have seen:
- Let ships pass through each other without bumping
- Ships should always bump into each other
- Ships should sometimes bump into each other
- Ships should bump into each other but only a limited number of times
- Bumping is hostile and the bumper should be flagged/CONCORDed
- Bumping is not hostile and the bumper shouldnât have any action against them
And many other base philosophical differences before you even get into the mechanics of how to enforce things. I donât think things are as clearly understood as you make them out to be.
But instead of working through things from the basics to the complex, everyone just posts a wall of text with their âsolutionâ without stating any premisses. Then it gets a wall of text rejecting it, sometimes disagreeing with the solution, but often disagreeing with the premises but not saying so.
Saying letâs step back and take things one step at a time isnât treating anyone like idiots, itâs just a good way to turn chaos into order.
If I were going to treat anyone like an idiot, I might say something about someone who addresses my hypothetical non-solutions as if they were given as actual solutions being one, but I wouldnât do that. (Just in case it isnât clear, Iâm making a joke, not actually trying to insult you⌠but maybe saying that is treating you like an idiot. 
)
I havenât made any suggestions about how to fix bumping, I only gave some hypothetical examples of what a solution could look like if we tried to get to it from the bottom up, instead of from the top down.
That being said, there is no game reason that bumping mechanics have to be the same in all cases and all parts of space or with all activities.
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Some actual ideas to mull over, not solutions.
- Does the bumping mechanic have to be the same in every sec space?
- If Jita undocks is the reason nothing will work to make bumping get a flag, can undocking have some sort of bumping immunity, or flagging immunity? (When you go through a gate you get a free cloakly, so it isnât like this is unreasonable.)
- Do approaching or leaving, stations, citadels, and gates have to all have the same bumping mechanics/flags?
- Does open space bumping have to have the same rules as bumping near structures?
Isnât this already the case? On undock, donât you have a 30 second timer during which your ship passes through other ships?
Never underestimate the player bases to take something you think is fool proof and screw you over six ways from Sunday with it. Never.
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Yes, I thought it was, yet the chorus of âJita undocking will turn into a blood-bathâ remains.
Maybe the cited problem is actually docking. Then it could be something like once you have given a dock command and are within X metres of the station you have bumping immunity. But, this is only if you are untargeted and without any flags. (Now we donât have Jita docking blood-baths and we still have a strategic way to keep someone from docking via bumping.)
The âJita undockâ is more a generalisation for all places where significant bumping can occur.
Specific to undocking, ships have a 30 second invulnerability where bumping doesnât affect them, as long as the ship does nothing other than continue as is, or stop. Any other movement or action breaks that invulnerability and then bumping occurs. While ships exit station at a slight angle to minimise the issues of bumping when ships align, Jita is one place where it can still occur because of the volume of movement.
Irrepective, problems would continue if bumping caused damage. Two straight forward ones:
-
Eventually, the invulnerability on undock has to end (manually, or after a set time). Being invulnerable forever is not something that is going to happen. So even if you increase the time or distance where there is an invulnerability, that only moves the point at which bumping can then occur, it doesnât remove the problem. If bumping can cause damage, then ganking shifts from bumping and then ganking, to get in front of the other ship and let them bump you. They bump, take damage and if you are good enough (and there are whole gank fleets good enough), the other ship explodes and you can loot. No criminal timers involved.
-
Autopilot is predictable. Land 15km off gate, in line from gate to gate and then slow boat to gate and jump. All that is then required is to line ships up in that 0 - 15km range and again, just wait for travelling ships to bump other ships as they slow boat to gate and then explode. Loot. No criminal timer. Big win for ganking.
Ideas around damage have been proposed over and over. Everytime, it takes just 30 seconds of thought to think of a dozen or more ways, that it would end up worse for the freighters, haulers, etc. than the current situation is.
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Like I said, never think that your fool proof scheme to stop activity X, will actually stop activity X. What will likely happen is the player base will come up with unique and interesting ways to use your idea to their advantage.
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This already exists. Stations have docking rings (generally, a sphere around the model of the station) that allow ships to dock, anytime they are inside that docking ring. That is the distance from the station. In game it measures as 0km, even though the ship model isnât exactly at 0 on the station. Itâs 0 to the docking ring.
This is never a problem for people that setup insta-dock bookmarks. They are simple and easy to create and anyone hauling or moving something they donât want to lose, can easily prevent ever being bumped off a dock.
The issue isnât the distance, itâs laziness. People donât set themselves bookmarks and then when they warp to 0, they land anywhere from 0 - 2.5km from that edge. Thatâs their fault and moving the docking ring out further wonât change that. Theyâll still be lazy and still land 0-2.5km away from any new boundary.
The tools already exist in game to deal with it when docking. Itâs not a lack of mechanics thatâs an issue with this. Itâs purely whether a player chooses to make use of the mechanics effectively, or potentially suffers the consequences of a poor choice.
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I didnât know this was a discussion about damage, I thought we were discussing flagging.
Letâs look at this another way. If Iâm targetted to enemy-X and shooting at them, and then my fleetmate-Y flies between us, does Y take damage from my projectile slugs? (Sure AoE weapons are different, but not the point here.) So if intention (targetting) makes a difference in shooting, why canât it make a difference in bumping?
- All bumping between player ships, requires targeting, the âapproachâ command, or a state of active hostilities. Outside of this, ships pass through each-other. With this all bumping would still be available, and would all be intentional, and flags could be properly set as to who is the aggressor and who is the victim. Fleetmates / corpies giving assistive bumps could be treated like logi for rules regarding flagging.
My point hasnât been about what the fix should be, but that looking at these threads it appears that people donât want any fixes, which either means people are looking at the problem wrong or they disagree with a base premisses (like if it is a problem or not) but just arenât saying it.
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My bad. We are 116 posts in. I read it above.
If itâs flagging, itâs no different though. Flag occurs â ship can be freely engaged. No criminal flag for the gankers, because the mechanics would be used so that the hauler/etc are seen as the ganker.
Flagging sits right alongside damage as an often suggested mechanic that would be far worse for the current âvictimsâ than the status quo is.
See, and this is exactly what Iâm referring to. This is why I asked the base question âis bumping hostile?â
Your reply was all about âa non-lazy pilot can avoid being bumped when dockingâ which true or not has nothing to do with the base issue. If bumping is hostile, if it is attacking someone then it needs to set the appropriate flags.
Itâs the same with the replies about having escorts and scouts etc. they are ways to avoid the problems of bumping, but not the problem that bumping is not handled correctly by the crimewatch system.
Yes, bumping in order to setup a gank is hostile.
I wasnât addressing the base question. I was addressing the specific suggestion, this one specifically:
But on the broader base issue, sure, Make bumping trigger a flag. The gankers will love it and haulers will hate it.
My take on this thread is that
a) bumping is a mechanic with uses beyond high sec interdiction
b) as a form of high sec interdiction it largely works- outlying cases CAN be dealt with by filing harassment petitions, but this does make extra work for GMs, and is exploitable
c) a simple warp off timer adds nothing to improve anyoneâs gameplay, and only adds a greater sense of urgency to the gank that will probably happen anyway
d) the idea I suggested, of allowing OTHER forms of interdiction in high sec, with suspect but not instant concordunken of interdictor- would allow the ânerfing of bumpingâ in high sec, but would also nerf it in other areas of the game where flags are not even an issue, and where it is a valuable mechanic.
Further- this idea would fundamentally change crimewatch and affect more than just ganking- I concede it is over kill and too over powered.
e) the problem with bumping causing damage has been explained very well above
f) the idea that bumping could have a timer, that signalled when a bump went from allowed to âsuspectâ with attendant flag for the bumper, and an ability for bumper to engage without limited engagement- is probably as exploitable for the ganker as gankee- it too may be OP. If the bumpees retaliation DID start a limited engagement, this would just open a new (and perhaps fun) way of baiting- but it would not really increase gameplay options for bumber or bumpee.
So, unless I have missed something obvious, it seems that the correct and best mechanic available is the one we currently have,
which relies on the adults playing this game to consider, before they file a âharrasmentâ petition because they have been held for 20, 30 or 40 minutes, whether the petition is justified, or if there could be in game reasons for the activity that do not constitute harassment, and to consider the issue they present to GMs when they file such a petition is not one that can be easily resolved.
I have also learnt that it is important you tank your ship appropriately, calculate your ehp relative to the value of your cargo, and use friends/alts to scout and assist when moving billions across always potentially hostile space.
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