The new and improved invis pop ambush

[Bach]

There seems to be a lot of drama lately regarding and old tactic that has returned in a slightly new form. The Invisible pop out ambush.  We used to have pages of threads complaining about players popping out of ports and battles to gank others that couldn't see them coming. This lead to a bunch of anti-gank rules changes and so forth so new players, that didn't under stand the mechanics, had a chance to avoid it.

Well it's back. Today players use a look out alt of the target nation and use two different nations in the attack group. The attack group can generate a battle between themselves they have no intention of fighting. This then generates an invisible safe space to hide in the ocean anywhere they want it placed for up to 90min at a time.  When the look out sees a patrol fleet the ambushers stay safe in their private instance and it sails right past them. If the lookout sees a target, usually a noob that doesn't realize the lookout isn't really on his team, they pop out. ONLY today the anti revenge fleet mechanic also gives them super intercept speed and invisibility. Makes it almost impossible to escape them as they likely appear right on top of the target due to increased anti-revenge speed. So thus is the new meta gaming gank tactic.

Suggestion: Make the open ocean "cross swords" persistent for the whole battle and have them turn color to RED whenever a players inside can exit the battle but hasn't.

As much as I hate messing with other players ability to ambush, the new player drama from falling victim to what they tend to view as an exploit is unfortunately very high.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Bach

[Prater]

There is an easier method that doesn't remove the necessary revenge fleet protection.  Make the no attack and can't join timers longer. 

[Bach]

They are pretty long now though. Doing sequential battles is tricky on coasts as ships can almost already hop from port to port protected.

I do see you point though on the value of the anti-revenge mechanic. I amended the suggestion to just be persistent cross swords that turn red for a warning signal to those on the OW.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Bach

[Sir Texas Sir]

I have to agree with this, for all the drama and bitching about Pirates using Pirate vs Pirate battles to do something like this there has been a lot of nationals doing this lately.   I think Prater has a good point make the  attack timer or join longer so folks can't pop out of these battles and join another that they where hidden from.  Basically the hide in battle has replaced the hide in port and now folks have super warp speed to zip to the target and get them.

 

While not on the same topic something we notice last night was that if you have a smuggler flag and another nation tags you it makes them a pirate battle.  So say a French with smuggler is tagged by a Dane.  It has a Pirate Smuggler vs Dane fight.  Pirates are forced to only join the Pirate Smuggler side and not pick which.   Now if the Same French attacks the Dane it's a French vs Dane and we can pick sides.  I think it's time smuggler flag gets it's old mechanics back if the battles are going to be like this.  Treated like pirates while you have the flag on and any one even your own nation can attack you. 

Either way pirates should be able to pick the side they want to join no matter if it's a pirate or national in the fight.  Maybe I don't like that pirate and feel like being a good privateer and help the national out in the fight instead.

[Hethwill]

We are back to the same beach as long ago, believe it or not this ain't new. This is by NA test standards quite "ancient".

The hamsters keep running the wheels and we bouncing the same systems again and again. And no sooner we will be going through the *gulp* positional join circle all over again

With the new improved coastal areas and reinforcements, please just please let us return to the most interesting RoE tried - the large circle what we see is what we get.

Re-introduce Signal perk equal to reinforcements always open. Defender has the opportunity to either use the Reinforcements or wait for someone to see the Signal.

 

[Raekur]

How about this as a twist, if someone exits a battle and is invisible then all ships within visible range are also invisible to just him until his timer expires. While this will not remove the scout it will make it a lot harder for someone exiting a battle to plot a proper intercept course to the new target. 

[Prater]

1 hour ago, Peter Goldman said:

RoE but not giant circle (giant circle that we had in past or bigger?), pulling everything in sight would be annoying. Agree with rules what see what we get, Any ship in sight of battle can join for let's say 5 minutes. 

Agreed with signaling too.

5 minutes is way too long, we already did that, and 5 minutes away is out of sight.  What should happen is this: you attack, it creates a battle.  You click on the battle, you join. Everyone outside the original circle is placed in the battle according to time.  If you join 30 seconds late, you start out 1000m from the attacker and defender.  1 minute late, 2000m.  2 minutes late, 4000m.  3 minutes late, 6000m.  Or if you want, 4 minutes 8km, 5 minutes 10km.

[Koltes]

10 hours ago, Bach said:

There seems to be a lot of drama lately regarding and old tactic that has returned in a slightly new form. The Invisible pop out ambush.  We used to have pages of threads complaining about players popping out of ports and battles to gank others that couldn't see them coming. This lead to a bunch of anti-gank rules changes and so forth so new players, that didn't under stand the mechanics, had a chance to avoid it.

Well it's back. Today players use a look out alt of the target nation and use two different nations in the attack group. The attack group can generate a battle between themselves they have no intention of fighting. This then generates an invisible safe space to hide in the ocean anywhere they want it placed for up to 90min at a time.  When the look out sees a patrol fleet the ambushers stay safe in their private instance and it sails right past them. If the lookout sees a target, usually a noob that doesn't realize the lookout isn't really on his team, they pop out. ONLY today the anti revenge fleet mechanic also gives them super intercept speed and invisibility. Makes it almost impossible to escape them as they likely appear right on top of the target due to increased anti-revenge speed. So thus is the new meta gaming gank tactic.

Suggestion: Make the open ocean "cross swords" persistent for the whole battle and have them turn color to RED whenever a players inside can exit the battle but hasn't.

As much as I hate messing with other players ability to ambush, the new player drama from falling victim to what they tend to view as an exploit is unfortunately very high.

I agree with the opinion, just not sure if I agree with the solution.
I still believe that all artificial invisibility and speed mods needs to go.
But if we don't want to change too much, and players still want to avoid revenge gankers there should be 3 things done.

There is a simple solution that would work without changing ROE much at all.
1. For this repair timers needs to be increased to 30 mins and be independent from each other or used only once like it used to be so repairing sails every 10 mins doesn't happen.
2. Player needs to earn the invisibility and speed buff exit in the battle itself by increasing distance between him and pursuers to 1,250 meter (distance where they cannot be tagged anymore). This gives them the "Slip Away" button with invisibility and speed buff representing the fact that he already covered enough distance in the battle to disappear from the radar.
3. On ANY exit from a battle there should have 3 minutes no Attack no Join timer.

This method does not grant free Get out of Jail card. It needs to be earned in the battle, but still sorts the revenge fleet. It removes hiding in battles ambushes and ninja ganking
 

10 hours ago, Prater said:

There is an easier method that doesn't remove the necessary revenge fleet protection.  Make the no attack and can't join timers longer. 

Perfect! 3 min no join timer so players can't ambush exit battle and join near by battles ninja ganking. Done

 

10 hours ago, The Red Duke said:

With the new improved coastal areas and reinforcements, please just please let us return to the most interesting RoE tried - the large circle what we see is what we get.

Re-introduce Signal perk equal to reinforcements always open. Defender has the opportunity to either use the Reinforcements or wait for someone to see the Signal.

That ROE was just awful. It works great for Red Duke or Koltes who hunts solo or in small groups, but it works horribly for players who are defending their home waters and trying to chase and corner one target. If they get separated even slightly (still within the visibility range) they can't join battle. Thanks, but no thanks.

 

8 hours ago, Raekur said:

How about this as a twist, if someone exits a battle and is invisible then all ships within visible range are also invisible to just him until his timer expires. While this will not remove the scout it will make it a lot harder for someone exiting a battle to plot a proper intercept course to the new target. 

I like that too. On top of 3 minutes of No Attack, No Join add blindness

 

3 hours ago, Peter Goldman said:

RoE but not giant circle (giant circle that we had in past or bigger?), pulling everything in sight would be annoying. Agree with rules what see what we get, Any ship in sight of battle can join for let's say 5 minutes. 

Agreed with signaling too.

Exactly! On top inability to chase and cut off running intruders of your home waters it also pulls every man and his dog all around. That annoyed the crap out of me. You just can't tag anything without bringing half of the server AI population with you

Edited August 5, 2017 by koltes

[Liq]

8 hours ago, The Red Duke said:

Re-introduce Signal perk equal to reinforcements always open. Defender has the opportunity to either use the Reinforcements or wait for someone to see the Signal.

 

+1

[Prater]

29 minutes ago, Peter Goldman said:

We had 5 minutes and other timers, but none of them had a rule of being in sight of the battle. 

They can't do in sight of the battle though.  That is what they have said in the past.  If we do the time = more distance method the time doesn't really matter, 5 minutes could be fine.  I think it is a work around though for not being able to do "in sight of" for joining.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Prater

[Prater]

5 minutes ago, Peter Goldman said:

Sure they can do "in sighg of", it's up to codding.

You'd possibly have to loop through every ship on the server and check their coordinates...(i.e. a lot of resources).  Maybe there is something easier where they could check visibility, but they said doing it wasn't feasible the last we requested it. 

5 minutes ago, Peter Goldman said:

But all ships in battle change their position, sometimes several ships go in all directions, sometimes ships stay in the center of battle. That would be a total luck and lottery where reinforcements would join. 

The distances I mentioned above won't matter at the times I give above, they shouldn't make it a lottery of where reinforcements join.  A ship in battle won't be able to travel those distances in the up to 5 minute timers.

Edited August 4, 2017 by Prater

[Christendom]

Just bring back the teleport to nearest freetown option after battle.  I hated it, but I still think it's was the most fair approach.  To regulate it, give the person a cooldown of a couple hours.  If they get tagged again and don't have it up, OW they go. 

The invisibility and increased speed is kinda BS.  

Edited August 5, 2017 by Christendom

[Koltes]

1 hour ago, Christendom said:

Just bring back the teleport to nearest freetown option after battle.  I hated it, but I still think it's was the most fair approach.  To regulate it, give the person a cooldown of a couple hours.  If they get tagged again and don't have it up, OW they go. 

The invisibility and increased speed is kinda BS.  

No more than the teleport. In fact if they are able to run away in battle (increase distance to 1,250 outside tagging range) then its actually quite appropriate for them to sail away from the battle instance. At the end of the day they have already sailed away from where they entered the battle. Why should they spawn back in the same location if he is on the other side of the island.

Else remove invisibility and speed mode, but make exit battle not where the entry was, but where the relative location is in the battle.

Teleport is to OP Exit card, while proposed method keep player on the water and he is still needs to get home bypassing defenders that might be spread around.

Edited August 5, 2017 by koltes

[Guest]

I think the devs mentioned that they dropped the idea of persistent cutlasses because, well,  your entire view of the ocean would be filled with them which would look horrendous. Not to mention that it allows visibility of all missions taking place, allowing for easy camping to catch people outside of it.

[Bach]

I can deal with the ocean outside the home port being filled with cutlasses.  That is more a function of missions being to close to home ports anyway.  

I prefer game fixes that allow players to make choices and adjust their play to solve their own problems.  Hard coded mechanics, no matter how well intended, often just lead to secondary problems. Like the anti-revenge speed/invis mechanic being used as a gank tool that we are talking about now.  Increasing join timers till everyone on half the map gets in, teleports at ends of battles become transportation tools and positional exits become hidden movement methods.  

Simply let us see the battle, see the color red change to know players in it are not engaged in combat and then let us choose if we risk it or not. These are things we should be able to see on the OS anyway for realism.  Spotters in the ports would see the x6 ships anchored off the port. They would know if they are engaged in combat or not.

 

Edited August 5, 2017 by Bach

[Archaos]

21 minutes ago, Bach said:

I can deal with the ocean outside the home port being filled with cutlasses.  That is more a function of missions being to close to home ports anyway.  

I prefer game fixes that allow players to make choices and adjust their play to solve their own problems.  Hard coded mechanics, no matter how well intended, often just lead to secondary problems. Like the anti-revenge speed/invis mechanic being used as a gank tool that we are talking about now.  Increasing join timers till everyone on half the map gets in, teleports at ends of battles become transportation tools and positional exits become hidden movement methods.  

Simply let us see the battle, see the color red change to know players in it are not engaged in combat and then let us choose if we risk it or not. These are things we should be able to see on the OS anyway for realism.  Spotters in the ports would see the x6 ships anchored off the port. They would know if they are engaged in combat or not.

 

But wont that lead to another gank issue, where someone else then camps the crossed swords waiting for you to come out.

[Bach]

30 minutes ago, Archaos said:

But wont that lead to another gank issue, where someone else then camps the crossed swords waiting for you to come out.

The anti-revenge fleet mechanics still takes care of that.  You can camp the battle but they are still coming out of it invisible and at extremely high speed.  A camp is really just a revenge fleet.