Cargo still available after destruction [Legacy]

[Vice]

Here is how I am framing the design of this system. Please read through it and let me know what you think. For those interested, I may have a test build available later today so you can try it in action.

All of these factors apply to multiplayer (single player will restore exclusively based on the save game data):

- The system is designed to run independently of the save game conditions if cargo contents change since the last save. This way, the latest cargo contents are part of the new protection and restoration system, even if the player didn't save recently. The player can still save at any time to update their save game profile for the latest cargo data and reset the restoration option.

- If the player is destroyed by another human player and their cargo bay has contents in it, the data is saved to a separate temporary system to give the player a chance to restore it.

- If the player jettisons their cargo bay, the data is also saved to a separate temporary system to give the player a chance to restore it if they are later destroyed.

- In the prompt screen after the player is destroyed, if there were contents in the cargo bay, the player will be given the option to pay a fee to restore the cargo they had at the time they were destroyed. The fee is about 50% of the original value of the cargo at the time.

- If the player refuses to pay the restoration fee, the cargo bay will be empty when they respawn. If they pay the fee, the cargo bay will contain what they had when they were destroyed.

- The restoration option will only apply if the player is destroyed by another human player or they jettison their cargo bay and are later destroyed before they have a chance to save their progress.

- This won't be 100% effective at preventing exploits per se (nothing really can be), but it should make it much more difficult and impractical to try and get around the protections to duplicate cargo.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

"............................."

Sounds good to me, granted it doesn't completely fix the exploit as suggested but it sure would make it impractical, no matter how many times you attempt to trade cargo using the dupe bug you will end up paying 50% every time to get your original cargo back so any profits gained greatly reduced to the point that only top-tier cargo would be worth the fee. Seems it could work. I presume its 50% of cargo's value, however how do we get the value when its always changing.. would it not be better to get the worth of the contents from the average commodity price data and use that as the base percentile to calculate the final fee.


Then again I am not sure how exactly the fee is calculated currently. May I also suggest adding some sort of detection algorithm to determine if the death is reasonably considered premeditated pvp, have a check or something which calculates the dmg percentile to determine if the average dmg dealt leading to the players death was caused by another player.

Otherwise I can see a sort of DOTA style grief happening where a player waits to ambush another player who has been fighting npc and just comes in for the final blow. With a check in place you could tell if most of the dmg was done by a player or self/npc in which case it would prevent accidental friendly fire deaths triggering the system. Unless you think ultimately in order to cover any situation and minimize the abuse of the system its better to just leave it how you have it now.





[Edited on 2/5/2016 by Misunderstood Wookie]

[Vice]

Cargo restore value is determined at time and location of loss. Indeed, if someone wanted to try and waste their time trying to exploit the system, they'd likely wind up making less than if they'd just played the game to earn credits (the 50% rate seems to put it in that range).

Some checks are in place for various damage sources and rates. If an friendly fire incident occurs (say a friendly inflicts quite a bit of damage accidently), they can always leave the cargo there for their allied ship to pick up. Or retrieve it for them and trade it back to them. Friendly conditions will retain their cargo spawn and trade options.

Some additional design principles/objectives (based on changelog notes I'm working on):

- New cargo restoration option added to respawn menu in multiplayer to allow a player who is destroyed by another human player to restore their cargo for a fee.
- Cargo no longer spawns from destroyed human piloted ships when caused by collision/environment events
- Jettisoning cargo no longer attempts to auto-save, now handled by the new cargo restoration option.
- Self-destructing in multiplayer now does not spawn cargo from destroyed player.

The test build is ready, so anyone who would like to give it a try, please send me a quick e-mail and I'll provide the download info. Also, to support this new system, these two new lines have been added to the text.dat file:

2803=Pay Fee to Restore Cargo
2804=Restore Cargo Fee:

And a new text.dat file is included with the test build with these lines added.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

I would test it but don't have anyone to test with. Though it seems you have covered all the major bases here and probably acquired a few less cpu ticks wasted on cargo events where they aren't really needed. I think someone with more experience playing should test it, I liked the concept of this game so much that Overhaul Project mod you probably have seen pop up around here I spent day one of buying this game making that and have not actually left the start sectors yet :P

Just been following the threads to learn things about this game while I develop.

[Bodega]

Ships killed in PvP will still drop their cargo for the pirate to pick up? Hence why you said it would still be exploitable but at a cost now. Well I like it. It's a good balance. It makes combat still fun. I know when I was fighting Miaz the other day it was fun because I died about 30 times but really didn't have to worry. If I lost my equipment each time I wouldn't fight at all. This may make it a bit more balanced in that regard. Thanks Vice.

[MiaZ]

Ships killed in PvP will still drop their cargo for the pirate to pick up? Hence why you said it would still be exploitable but at a cost now. Well I like it. It's a good balance. It makes combat still fun. I know when I was fighting Miaz the other day it was fun because I died about 30 times but really didn't have to worry. If I lost my equipment each time I wouldn't fight at all. This may make it a bit more balanced in that regard. Thanks Vice.

30 times must be a big exaggeration or it was somebody else using my pilot name.

Anyway... I thought that this applied only to cargo?
If I lost my installed equipment every time I lost in pvp it would turn me off Pvp very fast.

[Edited on 2-5-2016 by MiaZ]

[Vice]

This system is only for cargo, you will continue to keep whatever equipment you have through respawns (equipment doesn't spawn externally from your ship when you're destroyed anyway like cargo does, so it doesn't have the same exploit potential).

[Bodega]

Ships killed in PvP will still drop their cargo for the pirate to pick up? Hence why you said it would still be exploitable but at a cost now. Well I like it. It's a good balance. It makes combat still fun. I know when I was fighting Miaz the other day it was fun because I died about 30 times but really didn't have to worry. If I lost my equipment each time I wouldn't fight at all. This may make it a bit more balanced in that regard. Thanks Vice.

30 times must be a big exaggeration or it was somebody else using my pilot name.

Anyway... I thought that this applied only to cargo?
If I lost my installed equipment every time I lost in pvp it would turn me off Pvp very fast.

[Edited on 2-5-2016 by MiaZ]

Ok, maybe more like 10 times
I went to redo my frame, but it took me forever to config something I was remotely happy with. Just means I need to go and work on my mil rank and frames. So much to do...And yeah, I think it is only cargo, but your equipment can be destroyed. I'm gonna go soon for a bit but we can test it.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Can I If I may propose an extension to your plan vice that does not have to be included in the initial fix but something worth considering. Could you maybe make it so players can opt to choose what to pay for to get back? like separate commodities from unequipped equipment . I read that the rest of the posts and some people talk about carrying gear they keep in cargo for the off chance it is needed, if this is the case could we maybe pay just for those item or pay for everything.

If that seems silly maybe we could get actual cargo SLOT insurance and pay insurance per slot which turns the slot a certain colour when insured and these items get replaced while the fee just recovers commodities not gear.

I'm okay with the current road map it was just an afterthought.

[Vice]

Selective restoring might remove some of the 'all or nothing' risk factor that sounds appealing to include. At 50%, the cost should be practical if someone really wants what they had in their cargo bay back.

That said though, this will cover equipment stored in cargo bays also, not just commodities. Anything in the cargo bay will be included in the restoration option.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

Fair call, was just a suggestion. Was thinking the possible use for a loadout to quickly equip sets of items carried in cargo and figured it might interesting but thats a whole other thing.

I like the plan currently and I am okay with the set fee to replace the cargo.

[MiaZ]

Ok I gave this a little test today .
Seems to be working as expected.

As a miner I wouldn't mind paying half the cost for my cargo back
and as a pirate I wouldn't feel so bad blasting a miner into space dust : ) (only kidding I would'nt do that).




[Edited on 2-5-2016 by MiaZ]

[matchbox2022]

you blasted me pretty good when you guys came into our new home!

[MiaZ]

you blasted me pretty good when you guys came into our new home!

Yes but we did not attack first.. we are just doing a peaceful reconnaissance mission to see what was so interesting about that uncharted space there ; )

[Iron man]

you blasted me pretty good when you guys came into our new home!

Yes but we did not attack first.. we are just doing a peaceful reconnaissance mission to see what was so interesting about that uncharted space there ; )

Im confirming the cargo working pretty good in the test session.
For this little fight yes this was a reconnaissance mission

Get ready .....

[Vice]

An interesting point has come up regarding this feature:

Would you rather the cargo restoration system restore cargo you last had saved in your profile? Or would you rather it restore what was in your cargo bay at the time of destruction? Here is why this is an important factor. If cargo is destroyed before your ship is destroyed, the system won't recover the lost cargo. That means you would lose whatever got destroyed before your ship was destroyed.

If the game restores your cargo from the last save event, then it means you can get back all of what you had then. But it also means that if you hadn't saved for a while, some of the new stuff in your cargo bay since the last save would not be restored. But this option at least puts the control of the restore point in the hands of the player.

I'm considering changing the system for the latter option after gathering some feedback on the test build. What do you think?

[Bodega]

I think it should also be the latter. I adds a bit of suspense to the game, if you've been mining for a few minutes and are attacked and killed you lose that cargo. It makes it that more imperative to get to a station, or make sure you're safe and save/build a hangar module.

Also, with some of the mining beams, and a good engineer it's not that hard to replace the cargo should you die. As you and I discussed, I tested twice this morning with another player and neither time did the cargo drop or were we presented with the option to recover, which makes me think that our cargo was destroyed when we were killed. When my save game loaded I had the cargo again.

I vote for the latter.

[DaveK]

An interesting point has come up regarding this feature:

Would you rather the cargo restoration system restore cargo you last had saved in your profile? Or would you rather it restore what was in your cargo bay at the time of destruction? Here is why this is an important factor. If cargo is destroyed before your ship is destroyed, the system won't recover the lost cargo. That means you would lose whatever got destroyed before your ship was destroyed.

If the game restores your cargo from the last save event, then it means you can get back all of what you had then. But it also means that if you hadn't saved for a while, some of the new stuff in your cargo bay since the last save would not be restored. But this option at least puts the control of the restore point in the hands of the player.

I'm considering changing the system for the latter option after gathering some feedback on the test build. What do you think?

If on;y real life was so forgiving!

Is the restore system going to appear in an update soon? If not I'm interested in trying/testing it. As a useless combat pilot I see the dreaded list of destroyed equipment quite often! I'm really interested in seeing how it impacts my play.

[Vice]

Yes, I'm putting together a new test build now, I'll send you the details. I am holding the next update for possibly including these changes as they are proving to be working well overall and provide a fairly good solution to the exploit concern.

[Bodega]

DaveK, I'll test with you. I tested the current BETA and am interested in the new one. I've been discussing some of the outcomes with Vice and will be available later to test. Send me a U2U or jump on the discord server, how ever you want to coordinate.

[Vice]

E-mails sent with the download details. Aside from restoring the cargo from the last save, the only other functional change in this build is that the auto-saving when jettisoning is now fully operational to prevent that approach to trying to exploit the cargo system.

[matchbox2022]

That one was probably the biggest use of it I saw and could reproduce at will. So thanks
I'll give that build the old copy paste / install

Mind if I can get a copy of 1.0148 somewhere?
Or should I try gamershell?

[Edited on 2-6-2016 by matchbox2022]

[Vice]

If you need a specific direct download link, send me a quick e-mail.

[Misunderstood Wookie]

I also would prefer the later option for the save point, if it were up to me though I would have the later option as default for SP and MP but create an optional HARDCORE gamemode where the only method of saving at all was at the station, personally on a server I would use I would use the hardcore version as it's more immersive to go somewhere to save then save anywhere.

Also because I still have no real good idea how the restore point even works I just presume if I didn't use fuel to save or didn't dock at a station it never saves. so for me vices option to restore all but require player to manually save more often really won't effect me much, as I am always expecting if I die I lost everything since last save.