Suspect & Criminal Timers vs Limited Engagement

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

Very simple change.

If a player becomes a suspect, by any means, then anyone who has safeties turned down to yellow can engage them without warnings, and they receive the limited engagement timer.

If they have green safeties, they will receive the warning that engaging that player will give them the limited engagement timer, and the suspect will be able to fight back without any CONCORD intervention.

Now, for the main change.

If a suspect player does another suspect action before their suspect timer runs out, they will become a criminal, and anyone, even with green safeties, can engage them without receiving an engagement timer.

Same system of getting two yellow cards gives you a red one, and you are out.

This limited engagement mechanic only serves as some cheap bait for new and unsuspecting players, as suspects can simply come back with a properly fitted PvP ship after dying in something silly and inexpensive, like a corvette.

It’s also a prime tool for harassment, with criminals being able to shoot MTUs and loot them without the victim, who knows better not to engage them, being able to defend their possessions.

With this system, shooting an MTU would give the first suspect timer, and looting it afterwards would make the player a criminal, requiring some extra effort of getting a thief buddy to help you out commiting crimes, or the risk of having to GTFO before the victim gets back at you.

Makes no sense for a thief to come rob me, and then follow me around waiting to rob me again without any form of police coming to deal with them, and if I decide to punch them in the face, the police will do nothing even if they stab me in public, because “that’s a limited engagement and stuff”.

2

You are thinking about this wrong. CONCORD doesn’t care about theft. They do care about capsuleer-on-capsuleer violence so they will look the other way if you have a legitimate beef with someone who steals from you, or you agree to a duel, or use a kill right to get some vengence, but they aren’t there to protect your MTU. You have to do that.

The suspect timer is like them just saying, “ok jackass, we aren’t protecting you anymore - you are on you own”. If you go pick a fight with a suspect, why should CONCORD get involved? They will protect you if you are attacked unprovoked, but if you go start a fight by shooting a suspect? That’s on you.

You are responsible for defending they structures you deploy in space, not the NPCs. If you don’t want to be “robbed”, stop leaving stuff in space. The game is purposely designed so these assets are at risk and can serve as mechanisms for escalation. If you don’t want to escalate, either don’t deploy stuff or don’t escalate when the other guy makes the first move and goes suspect. Simple.

3 Likes
3

Of course, and that’s why players who shoot it down only become suspects, instead of criminals, with same going for looting containers.

My proposal is for the suspect timer to actually matter for the aggressor side, so they can’t simply keep doing suspicious activity in HIGH SEC EMPIRE SPACE while going unpunished.

If you keep looting owned wrecks now for example, you just keep refreshing your suspect timer, which is pretty dumb, instead of it escalating properly due to you not being " just a suspect" anymore, but an actual criminal.

Do suspicious activity once and you become a suspect, and get put on watch.

Do it twice, and CONCORD gets confirmation of your crime, so you gotta leave before the police gets there to shoot you down.

The reason why there’s no engagement with suspects and criminals is because the system is flawed, and favors the agressor side way too much.

Well, on the same manner, or perhaps much worse, is someone ramdonly shooting you and becoming criminals, and if you engage them to fight back, you still get an engagement timer.

This pretty much makes it a “forced duel” system if a player decides on defending themselves from the attacker, instead of waiting out until CONCORD arrives.

Even if a fleet of catalysts shows up to take down a single battleshipin high sec, if the battleship pilot choses to engage them, then the gankers can simply show up in actual battleships to shoot the poor victim down.

Has just too many benefits for the attacking side than the attacked, not even having a proper reason to defend themselves, if the attackers can just return and “legitimately kill you”.

4

Evading CONCORD whilst criminally flagged in high-sec is an exploit, so your proposal effectively makes follow-up Suspect offences a death-sentence. Far from a “very simple change”, if you ask me.

If you feel that there isn’t enough punishment for high-sec Suspects, the game gives you the agency to issue that punishment yourself.

5

I do agree that simply making a criminal unable to warp away because of the timer is dumb, so the criminal should have the option of escaping available.

As a plus, CONCORD should be able to engage them only if they pop up in a “public location” that players can warp to, so if they warp away to a deadspace safe spot, they are safe from the CONCORD at the very least, but not from anyone trying to probe them down.

If you mean the bounty system, it’s not active anymore, so…

In the first place, it was also a badly abused and meaningless system, so it ended working mostly as bragging rights for having a big bounty on you.

6

Now this getting quite complex, isn’t it?

As it stands, Criminal-flagged players are CONCORDed in high-sec with no chance of escape. Nice and simple mechanic. But your proposition is now expanding that to some Criminal-flagged players who have committed 2 consecutive Suspect offences can now evade CONCORD, but not in a very loosely defined ‘public space’.

Do you see how it’s becoming more complex than it needs to be?

No, I don’t mean the bounty system. I mean you getting in your combat ship and dispensing your own punishment to those stealing your stuff or shooting your MTUs. The game already gives you the means and the initiative, I’m just not seeing the need for these complex mechanics you’re proposing.

7

Criminals being allowed to warp away if they don’t have any ECM on them isn’t that complex to understand, is it?

As for “public warp spots” I do agree was just me rambling about.

IMO, if NPC pirates are able to establish deadspace combat sites that need to be scanned down, then criminals should also have the ability to run away to a safe spot away from any celestials(public warp spots) and hide from the police, while being at the mercy from people hunting them down, which requires some effort, just like scanning combat sites down.

Although they will be able to warp away, they won’t be able to jump and run away to another system, as warping to a stargate will be a death sentence, as you mentioned.

Simply having your warp core not respond is really lazy, instead of requiring proper ECM to lock you down in place.

To make this more complex, and fix another issue, players with limited engagement timers will be unable to dock up, as station owners will want nothing to do with capsuleers in conflict.

So, if you “agreed to fight” with someone, you can’t just run away and dock up to safety, but if you still choose to warp to a safe spot, the opponent is still able to try and scan you down.

Finally, just because something is complex doesn’t make it bad.

I only made it more complex to try and improve my inital concept idea, which I believe is now much better thanks to the points you have raised.

8

No because that means concord will appear and kill them.

That’s the price of using an MTU. You have to defend it.

If you don’t like it, use a noctis.

Hi-sec doesn’t mean what you think it means.

It’s just more secure than low sec. It is not really secure in itself. You are still expected to defend yourself. All areas in eve are pvp areas.

9

Anyone can warp away if they have ECM on them, so yes, I am having trouble understanding this.

Okay, I think you need to brush up on the mechanics in play here before you tie yourself up in more knots.

10

Already adressed this point.

Currently criminals are unable to warp away for “lore reasons”.

Just requires criminals to be able to warp away, and being unable to warp away requires proepr ECM modules, isntead of “lore reasons”.

That’s fine, but there’s no reason as for why I have to agree to a 5 minute duel with a suspect for it, is there?

This doesn’t give a reason as to why criminals are jsut able to come back after their deaths to try to kill me off again until they manage to do it.

Worst of all, they can return in a bigger and better ship than mine and engage me without CONCORD intervention, so that’s just ridiculous.

11

If a player receives a Criminal Timer in high security space (or jump into high security space with an active criminal timer acquired elsewhere), they will not be able to initiate warp, or jump through a stargate and CONCORD will spawn and attack them, gate/station sentry guns will fire upon the criminal, and any player may fire on the pilot without penalty. Any jettisoned wrecks or containers will be automatically abandoned, allowing any other player to take from them without penalty.

I’m certainly not very knowledgeable to how exactly the mechanic works.

Does CONCORD actually spawn on the criminal spot, or do they still take the time to warp to the criminal location?

Afaik, you become unable to warp after getting a criminal timer, as that’s what’s written in the explanation.

12

They take time, depending on the sec-status of the system. From ~20 seconds in 0.5, to ~6 seconds in 0.9/1.0.

Yes that’s right; that’s because the CONCORD ships warp scramble you. They also ECM you, but that’s not what jams your warp drive - ECM jams your targeting.

Hmm, I noticed. I’d suggest having a go on the other side - be the suicide ganker, the MTU hunter, the loot thief. Experience having the Suspect and Criminal flags yourself, and you might see the flaws in your proposal first-hand.

13

No. Because CONCORD will still chase them.

The whole point of a criminal timer is CONCORD response. What you’re suggesting is an entire revamp of the crimewatch.

Suspect is sufficient for what you want.

Yes there is. That is indeed the whole point.

You cannot expect to open fire on the MTU hunter and he not be able to defend themselves.

The timer is set long enough for a fight to happen.

The server can’t tell the difference between a fight thats over and a fight that has a short break because someone pulled range. So the server allows 5 minutes window before declaring a fight over.

This is something you learn. And why having tackle in a fight is as much about your own safety as it is about getting a kill.

1 Like
14

Well, that makes this even simpler.

I thought that players would just be unable to warp away for whatever reason in high sec, like a system wide scrambler or the like, and evading this rule was the exploit.

If criminals are able to warp away as long as they aren’t scrambled, then they should be able to hide in a safe spot away from celestials without CONCORD ebing able to track/pinpoint them, leaving further engagement to players.

Why is this a bad thing…?

Bounty and killright system are alreayd “temporarily disabled” because of how badly implemented they were, so I see no reason as to why not improve the whole system.

That’s not the issue here.

The issue is me managing to kill them off, BUT THEY RETURN TO TRY AGAIN!

If I agree to one duel, that’s fine if the duel ends when I win the fight, but there’s no “win” condition here, and you are open to battle for the entire timer duration, which afaik, doesn’t reset when one of the players die.

15

It’s not a bad thing. And if you propose an entirely new crimewatch system I’ll probably be there. But it’s clear that this wasn’t what you were aiming for in this thread. It was clear you simply didn’t understand what the criminal timer was designed to do.

Some people don’t consider a fight over after the first loss. Or even the second.

Your expectation as to what a duel/fight should be may be different to someone elses. For example it sounds like this guy didn’t feel like the fight was over. Clearly.

The server however has to create conditions that encompasses every conceivable definition of a ‘fight’. So it gives you a 5 minute timer that resets everytime players shoot eachother.

If you want to fight to end, dock up or otherwise avoid your opponent until the timer expires.

16

So I’m unable to play if I don’t want to be harassed by one guy…?

If I shoot and engage them, they can come back in a fully fitted battleship after losing in a frigate, so I’m actually forced to STOP WHATEVER I’M DOING and entertain that agressor for as long as they want…?

Doesn’t sound fun at all for the victim who isn’t insterested in the PvP side of Eve.

17

EVE is a PvP game. If you object that strongly to the possibility of being engaged in PvP then play a different game.

18

My only objection is an “unlimited engagement” after engaging them only once.

If a pilot isn’t a suspect or a criminal, I’d see no reason to shoot them any further.

So yeah, probably make it so upon death combat timers are reset, if that isn’t a thing already.

19

And you have yet to provide any problem with the current situation, other than the fact that you want people to stop shooting at you.

1 Like
20

There’s a five minute limit to the “Limited Engagement Timer”. So after shooting them, dock up for five minutes and you’re fine.