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Star Citizen - the Self Destruct Button
Erillion
Member EpicPosts: 10,329
in Star Citizen
Self destruct !
**** lights flashing *** audible countdown *** sirens howling ***
You know it from many of the Sci Fi movies.
It is currently a topic of intense discussion on SC forums. Some perceive it as the ultimate stick in the eye to hostiles, others see it as taking the ball and going home. Some want to wipe out hostile boarding parties with it and "take them with me". Some want to hit a ship with a data-spike missile, hack the ships system and remotely trigger the self destruct.
What in-game mechanisms to encourage or discourage its use would you like to see? How long should the timer be? Who should be able to stop it, and what should survive the explosion?
To give you an idea of the official position, here is a quote from CIG dev Matt Sherman:
**** lights flashing *** audible countdown *** sirens howling ***
You know it from many of the Sci Fi movies.
It is currently a topic of intense discussion on SC forums. Some perceive it as the ultimate stick in the eye to hostiles, others see it as taking the ball and going home. Some want to wipe out hostile boarding parties with it and "take them with me". Some want to hit a ship with a data-spike missile, hack the ships system and remotely trigger the self destruct.
What in-game mechanisms to encourage or discourage its use would you like to see? How long should the timer be? Who should be able to stop it, and what should survive the explosion?
To give you an idea of the official position, here is a quote from CIG dev Matt Sherman:
"Since something I said is being tossed around a lot, and without drudging up the surrounding logs of that statement which put things in more context, just going to step in and hopefully clarify a few things.
On the matter of..
"CIG Matt Sherman: You will NEVER be able to remotely trigger a self-destruct system on another ship from range."
What you will never be able to do is Trigger and Destroy another player through a DataSpike hack.
For the possibility of disarming or disabling a Self-Destruct, that would still be in the realm of what a DataSpike-attack could do.
Attacks through a DataSpike would not be able to cause any damage or destruction to a ship, be it a self-destruct, arming/over-ride weapons, etc. But they can absolutely disable these kinds of systems. Now, can they disable them in time, that should be the moment-to-moment question that drives the gameplay.
To people thinking self-destruct could be too free of a defense, don't panic. There will be a cost/benefit to everything. The current self-destruct timer in AC is not indicitive of what would be in the long-term. If someone you're fighting uses one, know it will be a measured defense, and not a get out of jail free card.
Regarding countdown-timers, this is where it gets to the 'long ways out' aspect of making this meaningful where we can start tuning what are the right minimum-timers to set. If an attacker can start a self-destruct, it's going to give the defenders fair warning and response. And if a ship Owner, not just the current pilot but who actually owns the ship, is using any sort of low/no-timer detonater, expect them to die in the blast as an implied requirement of use.
Last up, is that some of the choices and retrictions involving a self-destruct will be game-y to prevent real abuse and mis-use of the system, while keeping a very staple aspect of sci-fi ships in-place and hopefully adding something meaningful and intense to hostile boarding scenarios. Going down with the ship, sabotaging the enemy ship, cutting off a dead-man's switch; using a self-destruct will be a meaningful choice on all sides of an encounter. It won't be a defacto "I Win", nor will it be defacto "You Lose". "
For those with forum access:
https://forums.robertsspaceindustries.com/discussion/comment/5621563/#Comment_5621563
In my personal opinion self destruct should
a) never be instant
b) should be dramatic and cinematic like in the movies
c) should NEVER be triggered remotely through any means
d) should be stoppable (even by enemy boarding crews who come prepared)
e) should result in a loss of insurance coverage (including LTI, at least for that one event)
What do YOU think ?
Have fun
Comments
Though, I get the feeling that their design will change significantly in reality, like:
What happens if an attacking ship is connected at the time of detonation?
what is the blast radius per class of ship?
In the unlikely event that a by standing 3rd party is caught in the detonation what ramifications would be imposed on the detonating party?
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At some point in EVE Online suicide smart bombing (also a kind of "self destruct" in high security space ;-) at the Jita 4/4 starport exit became so endemic that CCP made an out-of-game rule against it.
Lets see if the same thing happens in SC and how CIG will deal with it.
Have fun
But why lose the insurance if you do it to destroy the invaders. The rest make sense.
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They did make it a lot harder though as they expanded the size of the station docking area. You cant smartbomb if the area of effect would hit the station, which is not calculated by the actual physical layout of the station, but by its docking range.
Self-destruct is something that should only be added after monitoring how ship capturing in persistent universe works. Then it could be used to balance the situation.
Now it's too early, now it's bound to add imbalance unless they have a god or some other omniscient being in their dev team.
Smartbombing in hisec is fine so long as you don't do it for the purpose of crashing the node. There was one guy who did a "Navy Megathron Giveaway" event. He broadcasted in local that he would eject from his Navy Mega, and the first pod to claim it got it as theirs. When he was surrounded by hundreds of pods, he then let the smartbombs loose, killed all of them, and watched as Concord showing up to kill him crashed the node.
Crashing the node is one of the ways to avoid getting killed by CONCORD.
Avoiding getting killed by CONCORD after ganking in high-sec by any means can get you banned by CCP.
People still kill n00bs when they undock just to annoy ... nothing has changed.
One still can reach out and touch people undocking from Jita 4/4 ... its just a question of price ;-)
Expanding the size of the Jita 4/4 station docking area helped against normal smartbombs, but not these:
Chelm's Modified Large EMP Smartbomb Range 10.5 km or
Draclira's Modified Large EMP Smartbomb Range 10.5 km
Afterwards one's rating will most likely be a big fat -10 and CONCORD will attack the malcontent anywhere in high sec.
And yes, i am familiar with "rules that go back to the early days". I was there ;-)
I remember the days of double micro warpdrive flying and off grid safepoints. The cruiser fleets, the very first player station and player Titan. I chased bits and pieces of the Jovian ambassador ... literally ;-)
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"Time for clearing up possible misinformation...
First off, I've been seeing some fears on how far wide this system will extend. Currently the EWar systems are being developed as an extension of the core ship-combat gameplay. It's not being made as some full-blown standalone activity where someone sitting on a planet is going to be scamming peoples ID's or stealing their property. That is not what is being built at all. You won't be wirelessly spoofing someones mobiglass and stealing their ships or draining their accounts. What highly skilled computer experts can do in real-life is both amazing and terrifying at once, but what we choose to implement in-game is not beholden to their capabilities.
Secondly, there very much will be counters and defenses against every possible EWar action, either through physical-player actions like missile evasion to prevent getting spiked, to ship-side counter systems to impede attacker progress and help provide alerts to the system where the spike has contacted the ship. I'm not trying to design a system which makes players feel helpless when confronted with EWar-actions. You may be unprepared in a situation, but you should not be completely defenseless. Not everyone is going to find engaging in this system enjoyable engage in actively, but it should never be something people dread to encounter at all if they find themselves on the recieving end of an attack.
Third, to clear up a bit more about the how/why of DataSpikes as being 'a thing' for EWar. Pilots in Star Citizen have incredible technology at their disposal, but these systems are not left carelessly exposed. To get any direct access to a ships systems, you need to open a direct channel to tap into. And that's exactly what the DataSpike does. It provides you an antenna to tap into the target and attack their systems. It's not an automated payload, it will have a lifespan-timer on impact, firing it through shields will reduce this timer. Yes, it's somewhat game-y, but it allows EWar actions to retain strong potency for the more complex-actions without drifting the mechanics into the realm of just 'stunlocking' someones ship through perpetual attacks.
Overall, the core intent with EWar systems is escalating potency through known-presence. The more 'undetectable' the action, the lower the possible damage the action could have. Comms/Sensor gameplay doesn't need a spiked target to have information being broadcast through a system, so listening isn't going to set off alarms. But anything that could actively disable a players ship or take control from them, that's something where you'll always have some warning before it happens to allow a response. Want to shut down a ship from your ship? They're going to see the missile indicator from the incoming DataSpike. Want a hack to have any possiblity of causing damage to a ship, either through hijacking weapons or overloading the power plants/etc? You will physically be on board that ship to cause that damage.
Hopefully this answers more questions than it raises. Keep in mind, these systems are a long, long ways out from implementation, so while the thread is good food for thought, don't risk over-thinking things too soon. As things take shape, we'll be sharing more information. "
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Some of the best features of eve online is you "can" 'go out and do what you want'.
Corp infiltration and cunning schemes is what make eve brim with possibilities and real danger.
Obviously this is not what they are going for and have opted to walk the type rope of "happy customers" vs "Science fiction Fan service".
"but it should never be something people dread to encounter at all if they find themselves on the receiving end of an attack"
"Overall, the core intent with EWar systems is escalating potency through known-presence. The more 'undetectable' the action, the lower the possible damage the action could have. "
In what reality would that scenario ever be good? Getting attacked = BAD trying to make it happy land for all parties is going to make it bad for everyone. Using more stealth and pre-preparation actually works against you? wtf.
I'm not saying give more power to gankers or anything along those lines, I'm just saying if people are going to go through the trouble of organizing something like a "ship siege" don't deprive them of their "Risk vs Reward" by having easy, over powered counter measures / defenses that defenders can employ to keep them out of any real risk/danger.
TSW - AoC - Aion - WOW - EVE - Fallen Earth - Co - Rift - || XNA C# Java Development