The game can’t tell the difference, but the game designer sure can. An accidental bump is a momentary thing, it doesn’t keep repeating over and over and over again. That kind of thing only happens when you’re deliberately trying to bump a ship. And so it’s entirely reasonable to say that, from a design point of view, extended bumping is always an aggressive act and any counter should be designed with this fact in mind. And the aggressor should not be allowed to hide behind “but its an accident” to oppose a proposed change.
But it also shouldn’t be balanced so that solo play is not reasonable. A freighter being more vulnerable without an escort is fine. A freighter being completely helpless without a web alt is absurd. That’s why the ideal solution is one that enables the bumping target to warp out eventually, not immediately. You can still bump to delay warp and a ship with a web assist still has an advantage in escaping the short-term bump, but you can’t hold a target indefinitely without any possible counter just because “EVE isn’t a solo game”.
Imagine this scenario: you have a large fleet tightly anchored on their FC. The FC gives the order to warp warp warp, and instead of aligning, the fleet all approaches the FC, gets “bumped” by a large number of other ships, and suddenly can enter warp from any direction, allowing the entire fleet to insta-warp without having been aligned first.
This is an absurd scenario. By the time you get everyone to turn towards the FC, approach with sufficient speed to get a bump, and accelerate back to warp speed you could have just clicked “warp” normally and been in warp faster. There would be no realistic scenario where a mechanic like this can be abused in any useful way.
Okay then, what limit constitutes “aggressive” bumping? 10 bumps? 20 bumps? Or do you measure it by a certain distance? Or a certain speed imposed? Or the direction you’re bumping someone?
All of those are arbitrary limits, and I’ve always held that arbitrary limits are bad game design.
(To your credit, I wasn’t explicit here. It’s the definition of “aggressive” bumping that isn’t inherently obvious, not being able to identify it once it’s defined. Apologies for that.)
Pretty much all capital ships (and yes, freighters are capital ships) are designed around non-solo gameplay. They either need a second pilot to light a cyno to activate their jump drive, or they’re balanced around either needing, or being, supporting ships. I don’t think it’s unreasonable or inconsistent with existing game balance to have solo capital ships be in great peril when flying unsupported.
If you think my example is absurd, I’d like to point you to the “Boosh Raven” fleet doctrine. If players will do that, and use it to great effect, then they will most certainly abuse the proposed bumping mechanic as I laid out.
From a game design point of view, anything more than one bump (considering a sequence of several bumps in a second or two on an undock point to be one instance of bumping) or occurring at high speed. If you aren’t deliberately trying to bump a target then you aren’t going to hit them and then aim to come back and hit them again, and you’re almost certainly not going to be flying at high speed with precise enough aim to bump.
(Now, this doesn’t mean that all aggressive bumping is a problem, but let’s not pretend that we can’t tell the difference between a deliberate attempt to bump a ship and the coincidental bumping of a bunch of ships on the Jita undock point.)
I don’t think it’s unreasonable or inconsistent with existing game balance to have solo capital ships be in great peril when flying unsupported.
It is when you’re talking about highsec.
If you think my example is absurd, I’d like to point you to the “Boosh Raven” fleet doctrine. If players will do that , and use it to great effect, then they will most certainly abuse the proposed bumping mechanic as I laid out.
I honestly have no idea why you think this is relevant. A fleet doctrine that rewards precise coordination with extreme on-grid maneuverability has nothing to do with a hypothetical idea that you could coordinate a mass bump that takes longer than just aligning out normally.
I meant there is no feasible solution that includes Concord (like flagging or stuff), which you supported in your first paragraph.
I agree a freighter pilot shouldn’t even get into this situation. Ganking is part of the game and of course freighter pilots must have risk to justify their gains. I have an issue with prolongated bumps that take 60+ minutes over thousands of kilometers. As it is once the bumping has started - mind you: a diligent freighter pilot shouldn’t even get into this situation in the first place - there is not much that can be done. And that is made possible by a mechanism that does not require a module, can not be countered by a module and has no consequence in hisec even though aggressive actions should have a consequence in hisec.
The fact that logging off has been proposed as a remedy shows there is something broken.
I have no issues with bumping to keep a target in place for a short time to get the gankers on grid.
I’m the first to admit that flying billions worth of freight without scouting/webbing must be punished. But being bumped for extended periods without any visible effort to gank ships on grid is ridiculous.
Thank you for bringing up an argument that has nothing to do with freighters.
I wonder if that would really happen as I was under the impression that fleets should already be aligned before the order to warp comes.
I also thought this would be realistic.
I think the following sentences do not aim at the issue but at the people talking here, but I still feel the need to answer.
I’m indirectly suggesting a timeframe, which can be discussed … ok, I’m declaring 60+ minutes is not an acceptable timeframe.
A right which CODE claims since ever by saying miners, freighters, anybody must be on the helm or be regarded as bots and be ganked. Not an issue here per se but it should work both ways.
A fifteen minute timeframe for getting bumped when at the keyboard is acceptable. When he’s not at the keyboard it doesn’t matter anyway. People who solely use autopilot do not deserve to be saved. The fifteen minute time-frame comes from CCP themselves, who believe that fifteen minute timeouts, where a player is incapable of doing anything in a ship, is acceptable.
I wasn’t trying to say that you can’t tell the difference, only that any differentiation would be arbitrary and I strongly feel that arbitrary is bad design.
Why not exactly? I can use game mechanics in pretty much any other instance to hold an unarmed, unescorted target indefinitely without killing them if I want to, why should bumping be any different?
CCP’s stance on this has always been clear: bumping to prevent warp is a valid use of game mechanics, even in Hisec (so long as it doesn’t cross over into the territory of harassment). Before anything even remotely like this ever gets implemented, that core view of the dev team needs to change first.
Good luck with that.
I’m specifically talking about using the proposed idea to enhance mobility of a fleet. Instead of having to fight aligned to a ping spot, the fleet could be heading wherever they want, maneuvering however they want, and so long as they were in tight formation could just suddenly all approach their anchor, bump off of everyone in the fleet at once, and then warp instantly in any direction. Tell me that’s not broken.
A set maximum would make sure not every ship in your scenario enters warp, as they would have vectors all over the place some would still be beyond the widened tolerance vector.
It’s only arbitrary if you ignore the obvious reality. Do you genuinely believe that a player pointing their ship directly at a ship attempting to warp, ramming it at full speed, and then turning back to repeat it as soon as they bounce off is just accidentally bumping? Of course not. It’s clearly an aggressive act with the intent of keeping the target from warping. And there’s nothing arbitrary about that acknowledgement.
Because unresolved stalemates are boring and bad design. It’s especially true when the only reason you have an unresolved stalemate at all is because the game mechanics can’t currently detect that an aggressive act (bumping a target to prevent it from warping) is an aggressive act and flag it like any other aggressive act in highsec. If you were using a warp disruptor to stop the ship from escaping CONCORD would arrive shortly and one way or the other your attack will be concluded.
Also, in pretty much any other instance you don’t have this long drawn-out stalemate. Outside of highsec you just kill the freighter.
“This is not a bannable offense” and “this is good game design that should remain as it is now” are not the same thing. An action doesn’t have to be an exploit to be identified as bad design and changed, plenty of things in EVE have changed even though before the change they were declared a valid use of game mechanics.
It’s not broken. Pivoting to face the anchor and accelerate to ramming speed is going to take as long as just aligning and warping out normally, you aren’t saving any time here. And if your fleet is all heading in random directions you aren’t going to end up with a coordinated bump ball. Travel time to return to the anchor is going to be longer than a conventional align and warp escape, and your scattered ships are going to arrive at different times and different levels of bumping. Your hypothetical scenario is a non-issue.
I’m going to be mildly yet annoyingly pedantic for a moment to highlight why I think changes to bumping mechanics will ultimately involve arbitrary changes:
You just implied that only ships going into warp get bumped aggressively. Will ships not actively warping receive the same protection from bumping? For that matter, would stationary ships be included, or only moving ones?
When bumping a moving target, it’s not uncommon to manually navigate a course, especially if you are approaching perpendicular to your target’s current motion. Will manually navigated bumps count, and how, mathematically, will the game client determine which ones count and which ones don’t?
If manually-piloted bumps count, will the servers be able to handle the load of suddenly having to do extra calculations on every single ship velocity vector relative to the position of every other ship on-grid? (I realize that “server load” arguments are fundamentally flawed from a design standpoint, but they do certainly impact how realistic a potential change can be.)
When you have to get into this level of detail to resolve an issue that is easily avoidable by flying capital ships as they were intended (i.e. not solo), that raises a huge red flag for me.
Which gets back to my earlier point about arbitrary. What exactly is ramming speed? How far do you have to accelerate for it to count as a bump? Does it only count as a bump if you hit “approach”, or do any collisions count? If you’re in a tight fleet and you have a ship with a large model as your anchor, you could get potentially massive numbers of bumps within a second or two if you don’t get the algorithm determining who is bumping whom just right.
While I stand by my concerns about arbitrary game design and potential abuse, these are both excellent points. Well stated.
For the record, I’m not opposed to the idea of how prolonged bumping impacts entering warp. But I haven’t seen any implementations that are better as a whole than we have currently (this one included) and I don’t see CCP as having the desire or will to change it even if one existed.
EDIT: Another situation to consider that came to mind after your “unresolved stalemate” comment is this: bumping ships that you’re actively shooting at away from a stargate or wormhole or station dock range so that they can avoid being shot at. Would you consider this to be valid/good game design, and if so, how would you change the situation with unlimited bumping of freighters in hisec without changing this?
I do not propose the game to identify who is being aggressive.
I do not propose a timer.
Both have been discussed in other threads.
I do propose to widen the warp entry vector tolerance with each bump for both objects involved.
I propose these parameters
the tolerance is widened by 4° per bump
there is a timer that resets the tolerance back to standard if no bumps occur for 60 seconds
there is a maximum tolerance of 120°
I believe this would make it possible for a ship being bumped to enter warp to an emergency destination if the pilot is at the keyboard.
Do you think this would work? Perhaps with another set of parameters?
The possible exploit mentioned by @Bronson_Hughes is hard to pull off for subcaps if the tolerance vector is maxed at e.g. 120° because a fleet bumping its FC would have vectors all over the place and statistically speaking at 120° only a third of the fleet would enter warp this way.
FCs will always be bumped, no idea how that would fix/fry our fleets - guess you’d have to figure out a solution for this. And for freighters, maybe have parameters: tolerance increment: 1 degree / timer: 25s / max tolerance: 60 degrees / for 0.5 systems (propose more for other sec).
I feel like this iteration is much less exploitable in the manner I described. Good job accomodating that.
But will this really help ships being repeatedly bumped? Keep in mind that the vector alignment that matters is a ship’s velocity and it’s warp destination, not its heading. Once you get a slow ship going fast enough in the wrong direction, it’s still a long time before said ship can get into warp because it’s got to slow down first. This would make it harder for bumpers for sure, but they could still hold a target indefinitely.
Ultimately I stand by my position that the best way to handle bumping is to avoid being bumped in the first place; don’t fly vulnerable ships solo.
Let’s say I’m being bumped in a direction that’s 200° from my original destination and I’m going at 300% of my maximum speed.
If my proposal is implemented, can I select an new warp destination within (widened) tolerance of my actual vector and enter warp immediately? You say I have to decelerate first. I didn’t realize that.
My last reply was assuming the ship was still attempting to warp to the original destination. You only have to decelerate if you are still warping towards your original destination. Even under current mechanics, if you pick a new destination within 15 degrees of your current velocity vector there’s no need to slow down even if you’re going well above your maximum velocity. (i.e. there is no “maximum speed” cutoff for entering warp, just a minimum speed and an alignment.)
Since my intention is not to reward autopilots but to give players actually piloting their ship a means to end permabumping, selecting a new “emergency” destination was kind of implied, sorry for not spelling that out.
25s seems to be too short. A freighter being bumped needs about 2 minutes to realign. A 60s timer already gives a bumper leeway in handling his maneuvers.
Can we agree on a maximum tolerance of 90° and 2°/bump? It would take 38 bumps to reach maximum aperture this way.
I like the idea of different maximums for different sec.
How about you just not suck. Ships that are bumped are generally ships that are “gankable”. Ships that are not “gankable” are not bumped. So what you need to do is figure out that divide between “gankable” and “not gankable”. Shouldn’t be hard to do with some basic assumptions in terms of CONCORD response, DPS for the gank fleet, your freighter’s defenses, etc.
Coming and whining for special dispensation is discrimination. Stop being a bigot.
