I think this idea is wrongheaded. Bumping should not do damage to the ships. I think it would be more meaningful if bumping damaged clone implants. Just like a minor fender-bender car accident in real life can badly damage the human occupants, even if the car is effectively undamaged.
The impact forces involved with bumping would be enough to damage the capsuleer, even considering that they are suspended in goo.
Can’t you just hear it?
Aura: “capsuleer, your high grade crystal omega implant has been destroyed due to an impact with another vessel.”
The only change I would make it that bumping has no effect on a ship entering warp, so a ship would still be able to align and warp in the same time frame, even if bumped
Do you have any idea what would happen to a frigate sized ship that tried to “bump” a Titan class vessel in zero gravity?
You’re a hard core ganker (and there’s a legend you were born off the back of a turnip truck) - so call bumping fun, a great mechanic, anything but “realistic”.
It is, it’s just one that has never been declared as such, and has thus become accepted as a “normal” part of gameplay over the years. There are other examples too, both that have been addressed and deemed exploits after many years of regular use, and some that have never been addressed.
We’ve talked about it before. Anything that doesn’t have a viable method of counter-play and wasn’t particularly designed as such (e.g. covert cloaking devices) is effectively an exploit.
It does: don’t all be in super tanky carebear killers but also bring an intie. Beyond that there are lots of situations that don’t have a viable counter play, none of those are exploits.
Also, CCP themselves declared it a valid mechanic when they put it back in the game when they inadvertently changed it while changing something else. From memory ECM worked for the full duration even if you cloaked up during it, they wanted to change that and by accident also made cloak/mwd impossible. After realizing this they changed it so that cloak/mwd worked again within a few days. Sounds to me like CCP declared it to NOT be an exploit.
Your “exploit” is no different from some carebaar going “hacks”.
Your definition of “exploit” relies entirely on whether or not it is labeled as such by the authorities, and not whether or not the action in question has the characteristics and functionality of an exploit. Meaning that an action can become an exploit literally overnight if the authorities deem it as such, despite a lack of any mechanical changes to it.
It’s kind of like speed limits. We have speed limits in order to prevent the endangerment of human lives, enforced by our criminal justice systems. But speed limits didn’t always exist, and there was a time you could blast your coupe down the road at whatever speed you wanted. Fundamentally, you weren’t endangering human lives any less before signs were put on the road, and you got tickets for not adhering to them.
When you say something like this, it sounds like you’re speaking solely from theory, and not from practice.
