I would go test on SiSi, but access isn’t working out good enough right now.
Scenario:
Two groups at war start fighting
Group A: Leshaks and Domis
Group B: Machs and Guardians
A couple of the Guardians have killrights
Group A, while between fights, undocks catalysts on neutral alts and activates the killrights and starts shooting the Guardians
At this point, no concern. The other logi have to stand by and watch the Guardians die, because they would be third-party at that point.
However:
A character from Group A warps in and starts shooting the Guardians
Can the other Guardians now start repping because there is a war target involved, or will they still be CONCORDed for interfering as a third-party against the neutral alts?
Activating kill rights makes someone a suspect for 15 minutes. I don’t think concord would do anything to interfere with aggression against or logi for a suspect. I could be wrong. That’s a pretty strange and unique scenario though. You should test it out with alts in a mutual war and let us know how the mechanics work.
If a logi reps the suspect (who is being engaged by the catalysts), that logi will be CONCORDed. Neutral reps is a criminal offence. That part isn’t in question.
The question is, is it still criminal for the other Logi, if a wartarget warps in an engages, while the suspect Guardian is being engaged by the catalysts.
Okay, neutral assistance only applies when the person in question is not a member of the same corp or alliance. See the April Changes - Removal Of Neutral Assitance section of this dev blog (Feb 2019) for a source.
So, the way it should work when in the same corp or alliance: activating a kill right will make the Guardian in question go suspect. The other logi can only rep them if they turn their safeties yellow, which will make them go suspect as well. The addition of a valid war target changes nothing. It’s the suspect flag and logi safeties which determine whether or not other logi can rep/cap transfer with suspect ships.
Ways to deal with this:
Have your FC/Logi Anchor tell logi before fights to (1) set safeties to green, (2) cap around any logi that goes suspect as if they had died, and (3) leave any yellow flashy fleetmates to their own devices.
Have everyone set their safeties to yellow, so that they can continue to rep/cap chain with anyone that might go flashy for whatever reason. Just be aware that the suspect flag will spread like a virus, and make everyone in fleet a valid target to everyone in highsec.
Always remind members to turn their safeties off of red to avoid any surprise concord parties.
No. They need to be red, because neutral logi is a criminal offence.
That part isn’t in question. If the other logi rep (with a red safety), while the suspect logi is being engaged by the catalysts, CONCORD will kill the other logi.
Do you know this for certain (ie. from experience)?
That’s what I want to know. Will the logi still be CONCORDed for repping their corp mate, if a wartarget starts to engage the suspect logi, while that suspect logi is already being engaged by the catalysts?
Being flashy is irrelevant. It’s that being a suspect, allows the catalysts to engage. If they are engaged, having safety to yellow will stop the chaining and repping.
Okay,
Neutral logi is only a concordable offense under a specific set of circumstances (taken from the dev blog I previously linked)-
Target:
is involved in a war (including normal wars or FW)
does not share a corp/alliance (or FW side if the war in question is the FW war) with the assistor
is engaged in PVP (has a capsuleer logoff timer)
Is in highsec
I have flown logi in highsec since the changes in the dev blog. If someone had a kill right activated on them, we either all set safeties to yellow and continued repping/cap chaining with him, or left him to his own devices. If we all had our safeties set to yellow, this caused the suspect flag to spread to other pilots, but no one got concorded. So, unless the rules were changed again (I cannot find a dev blog stating so), this is how it still works.
Once again, make sure that no one has red safeties to avoid surprise concord parties.
On throwing valid war targets into the mix:
Hell if I know. I know that people have gone flashy while in fleet fights against war targets, but I can’t say for certain whether or not they were being simultaneously being attacked by a neut who activated a kill right and an activate war target. That being said, I find it doubtful that suspect/criminal flages would fail to transfer to those offering remote assistance under any circumstances. If there is a set of circumstances under which that can happen, it is probably unintended by the devs and/or considered an exploit.
On yellow flashies
If someone has a suspect timer, your can rep them, but only if you also set your safety to yellow. This will cause the suspect flag to spread to you. If your safety is set to green, it will prevent you from rendering remote assistance.
Also, just in case it wasn’t clear, yellow flashy and suspect flag are the same thing.
The guardians, afaik, can continue repping the suspect; but they in turn go suspect, allowing anyone to shoot them.
Ive not tried this though so i could be wrong.
Okay, you’re right about being concorded. You can send reps when they are suspect by turning safety to yellow, but as soon as they are engaged and pick up a limited engagement timer, reps will decycle (doesn’t matter if you’re in the same corp/alliance or not).
I didn’t test about a war target then coming in, however, I doubt that CCP would design it so that changed anything (i.e. logi could then start repping) -well, unless they threw away the lesson they learned from crimewatch v1. In this GDC lecture on Crimewatch, CCP Greyscale discusses why “Special Casing” was terrible. So, unless they lost their institutional memory of why special casing was bad and started doing it again, once a ship picks up that limited engagement timer, that’s it -no more logi support under any circumstances until the limited engagement flag is gone.
In short, I doubt that the guardians would be able to start repping because a war target got involved (or under any other circumstances).
The truth is that it’s impossible to predict this based solely on the “documentation” currently available, which vaguely states only what happens when the pilot being assisted is at war OR is in a limited engagement for some other reason, but it doesn’t provide the actual set of rules that govern how this works in the general case now. In particular, nowhere is it documented (nor can it be inferred) what happens when the pilot being assisted is both at war AND in a limited engagement with a third party for some other reason.
My guess is that not allowing interference with a pilot in a limited engagement with someone else would take precedence and the other logis would still have to set safety to red and be CONCORDed in order to rep the suspect being attacked by a third party, even if a war target is now also involved.
The reason I believe that’s the case is that the principle governing the changes was to forbid neutral interference in all cases, and the lack of a proper detailed explanation is partly the result of how complex the engagement rules are in high sec, but I haven’t tried it myself and hence I don’t really know either.