High PvP Rules of engagement question

PvP Gameplay Center Warfare & Tactics
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Hello everyone,

If anyone would be willing to enlight me on a few points regarding the rules of engagement in high-sec space, as me and fellow corporations members faced issues tonight. Read what follows for the main lines of what happened.

As a mining fleet (and corp), we were mining ice (in high-sec) until a player shows up with his T3 cruiser (proteus). He then started to repeatedly ram our ships for no reason and tried to bait us into engaging him by looting one of our fresh rat wrecks (earning a suspect status) and throwing duels at our miners. We asked him why he was doing this and asked to stop. His answer was to wardec us right away…

As a deterent, we called in 2 of our battleship (scorp + rokh) players to guard our miners (2 orcas + 3 barges) for a few minutes and he eventually warped away and so did our battleships.

He came back 15 mins later with a cargo. As soon the cargo got within 4km of our fleet, a suicide fleet of his, jumped to engage us, thus triggering our defensive drones (and blue-flagging us in the process). As you’d expect, Concord showed up and destroyed them in a timely manner.

Their capsules managed to get out but our fleet didn’t suffered much damage besides losing 1 mining barge (covetor), so we decied to stay there as we were confident in our drone contingent (15+ T1/T2 drones). Less than a minute later, he shows up with his proteus again (now blue-flagged) and engage one of orcas (warp scrambled, etc) and despite having an absolute tons of drones on him, his shield went down but his armor never moved at all.

Both battleships eventually showed back up but it was too late to save the orca. Some more fighting occured but it’s not revelant to my main question which follows.

Since Concord never engaged when the player came back (despite being flagged as criminal) and attacked us again. Does it constitute a valid & fair tactic to use a suicide-gank fleet to blue-flag players for further engagement? Or does that constitute an exploit as it is a way to engage in high-sec PvP activities without being shot by Concord?

See this link : https://ccpcommunity1436997059.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/210554829-Known-Declared-Exploits
It is also considered an exploit to commit a criminal act and prevent ship loss to CONCORD by any means.

As for mistakes, we don’t need the long list of what we did wrong, we are aware that pvp activities are part of the learning curve and ok with it. Wrong fittings, tactics, allies management, leaving after the first wave, etc…

Sincere appologies for the poor english as it’s not my main language.
Regards.

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If he avoided CONCORD it is indeed an exploit, but he most likely did not. When his friends attacked, the Proteus pilot was with them, but did not shoot the Covetor. Since he was suspect (or perhaps went suspect again by stealing something like from the Covetor wreck), your defence fleet was able to shoot him, maybe even kill him, but doing so earns you a Limited Engagement timer with him (appears as a blue icon in the top left of your screen with the other timers). This allows him to continue the fight for 5 minutes and he went back to the station or wherever to get his Proteus and returned to kill you.

Very sneaky, but you could have avoided it by immediately docking up and waiting out the Limited Engagement timer. Or not shooting in the first place and let CONCORD deal with him so you don’t get a Limited Engagement timer. Or do what you did, but actually have a defence fleet on standby to rep the Orca and/or explode the lone Proteus.

TL,DR: The Proteus pilot never had a criminal flag, only ever a suspect flag. Thus CONCORD will not get involved.

More information of the Limited Engagement timer and the other ones can be found here:

https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Timers

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Kudos for putting up a fight. I hope there was GFs all round.

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Love it.

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Yeah OP, you can see that here. See, the kill mails of the two Covetors:


shows that the Proteus pilot which killed the Orca (see below) was not on the killmail.

That means that he never committed a criminal act, only his fleet mates did. Your fleet shot him while he was suspect during or shortly after the suicide gank thus earning the Limited Engagement flag. He then went and switched ships to continue the fight.

I know you said you don’t want advice, but you can use the security lock to prevent that from happening. If your safety is set to ‘green’ you won’t be able to shoot suspect (or criminal) ships. Might not be as fun, but it would prevent such mishaps in the future.

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As above, you don’t blue flag unless you fight back / start the fight. They will of course come back for more asap if they’re looking for a fight and you have just given them ‘permission’ to do so. You’ve essentially accepted a duel that lasts for the duration of the timer.

Blue flagging is what some people want to happen. A good example was when I fired at a suspect in a Venture outside a trade hub the other day. I had a feeling I knew what would happen next. Sure enough he quickly docked and came out of the trade hub in a Talos. I was expecting that so my warp kicking in was the last thing he saw.

Blue flagging people is one of a suite of baiting techniques designed to trap people into High Sec fights that they otherwise wouldn’t want to take part in.

Staying put was your main mistake. Once you were blue flagged you should have relocated / docked and waited out the blue flag.

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@Black_Pedro
Thing is I had my safety set to ‘Green’ as I always do for high-sec activities. I don’t do PvP with my mining characters to avoid the mistake of forgetting said safety setting to ‘Yellow/Red’.

Nonetheless, drones engaged combat despite being set to ‘Green’. It looks like I will change my way of using drones and keep them stored until required for rats to avoid any other issues with them.

@Sindara_T_Soni
You are right about the fleet staying put as being the main issue.

I’ll also add that having both of our battleships away when the engagement started was also another issue on our side. That alone most likely would have bought us enough time to evacuate the mining fleet. I’d rather lose 500m worth of battleships than nearly 1 billion worth of mining equipement.

At the end of the day, he got what he wanted which is salt, lot of it from our side. Worst is we can’t do much for at least a week in terms of mining (for isk recovery) because of the wardec he started on us. To make this even nastier, he threatened to keep the war active until we pay him a ridiculous ransom.

We’ll prolly pack our starbase, disband the corp and reform in a new one to bypass the wardec. Not going to be much of a problem for us as a 5 players corp.

Thanks again for all answers and advices.
Regards.

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Thank YOU for your well written, rational post.

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Ummm. I could very well be wrong cus safety always on Red, but i think green safety allows you to shoot suspects. Green would prevent anything that makes YOU a suspect but still allow limited engagements (shooting a suspect).

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Correct.

Green is for your safety, so that you don’t become the Suspect / Criminal. In all circumstances where shooting them is allowed, because they are the Suspect / Criminal, a Green setting prevents nothing.

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I stand corrected then. Shows you how long it has been since I used the green setting. :wink:

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You’ve used the green setting? :scream:

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As Keno wrote, your green setting doesn’t stop you fighting, it only stops you doing anything that would earn you a suspect/criminal timer.

But if someone else is suspect, you are able to agress them and engage in a limited engagement.

Limited timers are between 2 players, so the Orcas drones must have engaged the proteus pilot when he was in the industrial and suspect.

Additionally, even when set to aggressive, drones won’t automatically attack unless someone shoots you first. The only way they will attack someone that hasn’t aggressed you, is if you directly order them to.

Since the proteus pilot never went criminal, but was suspect, it was likely a misclick, mistake or just not quite understanding the mechanics by the Orca, because it must have attacked the industrial deliberately.

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One thing not touched upon… Were your drones set to passive or aggressive? My guess… Your drones were set to aggressive, so they would engage rats without needing you to lock the rat and tell the drones to engage.

Once the drones were Triggered, they would engage any hostile valid target, including the returning proteus as attacking him would not be a criminal act.

I could be wrong here, but this may be a bit of recording puzzle. If you worry, keep your drones set to passive and only send them to attack the targets you want to attack.

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So good if true :facepalm: I’m going to try this.

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This is quite interesting. How did he get the proteus pilot blue flagged?

Im almost positive the orca pilot engaged him first. Perhaps feeling confident in his two battleship friends?

It is possible that the game simply glitched and blueflagged him. This isnt unheard of and happens often during goonswarms burn jita event. (Along woth concord attacking random people for no reason.)

The orca is reimbursable at that point. It doesnt necessarily mean he was using an exploit either. He just noticed the orca went blue and took advantage of it.

Of course he may also know an exploit.

I would submit a ticket. CCP has logs where they can see if the orca aggressed. If he didnt he shouldnt have been blue flagged and will get reimbursed. If he did… Well then there is how it happened.

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I agree in theory the orca had to have attacked the proteus to allow the proteus the right to shoot. If the orca did not aggress, petition CCP.

However, there use to be an unintended consequence when Mobil depots were first released and crime watch was still being tweaked. I could shoot your mobile depot, allowing you to attack me. If your drones were set to aggressive, they would attack without your direct command, letting me attack you. This was fixed but I forget exactly how. It’s possible the fix was only made so drones don’t aggress on people shooting your mobile structure.

Still I could be barking up the wrong tree. Simple test,

Have 2 people in one corp, A and B. Have 1 person in a different corp, call him T.

Have T drop a can and launch drones set to aggressive. Have A steal the can. Have B fail attempt to suicide gank T. Once B is dead, see if T’s drones attack A automatically or not. If they do… Oh boy, could be an interesting ride. If the drones don’t aggress, the orca pilot did agress the proteus directly.

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Hmm. I need to go double check. I hope I’m wrong and Ayeipsia is correct.

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Three Large Transverse bulkead I rigs and a couple of Adaptive Invul II’s would have doubled your EHP.
Not sure if it would have changed the outcome, but would have bought you more time to put help on the field.

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Wouldn’t that cause neutral logi (suspect) to be aggressed by your own mate’s drones? Don’t think they work that way