Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Declaring overt
Larathorn wrote:
My opinion, make it so you can declare Overt anywhere, anytime. To become Covert you have to go back to the recruiter and wait an hour. There is no reason that I should have to be within 50m to put on my uniform or flash my military ID and fight for my ideals.
That would let you move in armies of safe people to the location of a fight, and have them all go overt at once and ambush...
-Raph Koster,
We are more or less Militia. I dont wear an imperial ID tag or badge on my collar while covert. So I should be able to stroll into town unnoticed, I should be able to walk up to the first overt rebel I see and start shooting. They should be wondering why a nonalignedExpert BH is walking up to them while they are overt. Now after my first shot, I would be an Overt and only able to go covert again the way any overt would have to...
Since I would be covert up to the point of combat, Icouldn'tuse faction pets in the battle, so If it was a big raid, this would notbe the way to go.This would be a check and balance of the system.
As it is now, If I want in on the action and I am not near a recruiter (different city or otherside of town), I have to heal somone and wait for the Combat Medic or Commando to attack me and almost kill me to get involved. I could ask to get in the group, but why should I have to slow my allies down or locate the leader of the group to get in. They are fighting. They dont have time to stop and group with me, and if they do have time, they dont need the help. This would also solve the problem where a small group of overts in a town, surrounded by coverts are run over by the enemy. What covert would risk a heal to get incapped a second later, and what group of 5 overts would risk running into the opposing factions town to "take it over". Get real, 5 or 10 overts should not be able to take over a city, and the home team should have the ablility to walk up to an overt and start the battle to clean their town of the enemy.
allowing HIGH ranked OVERT players would add ALOT more depth to the pvp. covert members of the enemy faction might actually have to scout around and look for these high ranking officers that are 'overt-sing' the enemies against them.
I mean it makes sense. high ranking officers are the ones walking around with a big target on their head. This would go very nicely with visible rank tags for overts (maybe even some sort of icons or rank insignas in the target box too).
Just imagine a few overt officers leading their troops to the battlefield then letting them declare there, or if they get ambushed on the way there and the overt officers getting cut down first. Fun stuff
If you want to keep it on the recruiter, that's fine, if you want to make it anywhere, that's fine as well. The heart of the matter is that its ridiculous that I can die in a city that's being attacked and within one minute of my demise I'm cloned up and fighting again. A TIMER OF SOME SORT UPON OVERT DEATH IS LOGICAL AND NECESSARY. Otherwise fights are only resolved with boredom or wounds, both of which are a ridiculous end.
People wait ten minutes to get on a shuttle and no time to go cap somebody after they die. A strange priority set in my book. Also,if you get the chance to put more incentive on battlefields, like say listing them on the map and putting shuttleports to them, you might not have this crap going on in the city. Do with it what you will, I'm merely a plebian carrying the torch of reason.
Here's my idea:
Make it so that players can declare overt while intheir house if they have declared residence there.This would be a tactical way to go overt near an enemy controlled city. But, there needs to be some way of limiting this because players may abuse this by fighting, then when they get killed, they clone in the city they died in, run back to their house, and declare resisdency again, and get right back to fighting.
Perhaps make it so that you set a timer, for example, 30 minutes, so that players must wait to declare overt again. But, also, maybe you need to get a terminal for your home that you can get your faction recruiter for x-number of faction points that you need in order to declare overt.
So these would be the requirements -
- Must have declared residence
- Must have an overt faction terminal in house (30 minute timer before each use)
And possible another requirement would be that you need to be at a certain rank in order to declare. Therefore, adding more purpose to player faction "ranks."
Anyone like the idea?
Sounds fine to me. I like it because I'm always afraid of hitting the "I would like to resign" which doesn't have the same kind of confirmation that we have when giving up skills.
You could always just add more recruiters...
I think its a good idea and glad to see revenge tef is going away
Dieing should mean something
Raystonn wrote:
Hello Holocron/Mr. Koster,
Thank you for starting this thread. I have been pondering some ideas along this very topic some time. I will provide a summary now. I hope for your comments if you find them interesting, so I can expound and provide more detail.
This is how I would model the overt/covert system:
First off, everyone who belongs to a faction starts off covert. When you attackan overt member of the opposing faction or heal an overt member of your own faction, an optional dialog appears warning you and asking for confirmation. This dialog tells you that you will become overt if you choose to continue the action. Once you learn how the system works and feel comfortable you can disable this confirmation box under the Options dialog. Going from overt back to covert is adequate currently, so the system we have now can remain.
I can hear your response now: "That would let you move in armies of safe people to the location of a fight, and have them all go overt at once and ambush..."
Yes, it would. This is why we have covert detection units. However, this is not quite enough. Higher-ranking members of a faction should be given the abilityto detect covert members of the opposing faction over time. For example, say a covert Imperial is standing around in a Rebel base with a mixture of covert and overt Rebels present. Any overt or covert Rebel can use the Radial menu to attempt to assess the membership status of any non-purple player, that is any player not showing up as being in their own faction. This analysis works once every 60 seconds. The chance of success is directly relative to the rank of the person performing the analysis. It starts off as 0% at the lowest rank and can work its way to maybe 33% once you achieve the highest rank. If a covert person is performing such an analysis and discovers someone to be an enemy, they get another optional Dialog. This dialog informs the player that they can choose to report the enemy or ignore his findings. If he reports it, both he and the enemy become overt immediately. Otherwise, nothing happens. This dialog is skipped if the person doing the analysis is already overt.
This would have the effect of making it impossible for an enemy agent to remain in your base for any lengthy period of time without being discovered. Since you must be actively analyzed, you will remain hidden until someone bothers to check you out and succeeds.Failure of the analysis should look the same as an analysis on a true neutral player. Then you will not know if that person is really neutral or you are merely failing your check. This opens up further possibilities of allowing for espionage and covert skills in some professions. Perhaps the Image Designer could even help here with a temporary buff that increases the chances of your evading detection.
There are many possibilities here. The only thing people might complain about is that they are not 100% safe from PvP if they are a covert member of a faction. You and I both know it was never intended that they be safe in that situation, but they still complain none-the-less. We would need to drill into people's heads once and for all that covert does not mean no-PvP, it just means a reduced chance of it.
Comments?
-Raystonn
Nooo thankyou!
The Covert Detectors that are in the game are too much already!
Any more given capability will kill any and all PvE GCW in this game.
I am sure that you could careless about that, but there are LOTS of players that want NOTHING to do with PvP, yet want to participate in the GCW.
That was one of the reasons Covert was implemented in the first place!
And before all you PvPrs one star this post, remember the Poll taken earler where the vast MAJORITY of player play PvE.
Lets not kill the GCW for them.
I like the idea. There are other considerations, too, that should extend the command.
For one thing, the permanet installations need to be far more heavily guarded and have covert detectors installed. That installation on top of the Bestine hill is tiny. Too many times rebels have walked up unmolested, only to suddenly somehow go overt (grouped buddy declaring in Anchorhead?) and opening fire. Where are the NPC defenders in cases like these? In contrast, Anchorhead should be surrounded by rebel spec-ops camps. Something like a stronghold should be possible in the game.
As for PC HQs, well, it should be possible to supress the enemy. Enemies approaching should trigger a notification to the PA of the person that owns the base.
I also agree that declared officers should be able to declare those below them.
This is really just a patch to issues with the whole TEF system, revenge-TEF, and group TEF. There should only be Overt, Temporary Overt, and Covert. Replace the TEF system with a temporary overt status. Do anything that would normall set a TEF flag, and you get marked overt for 5 minutes. You go red to all enemy overts, and they are all attackable by you. Group overt should only work within a certain distance of the true overt, and should mark the group as overt, giving group members the choice to go overt or be disbanded upon resurrection or when someone in the group goes overt.
Do whatever it takes to put an end to situations where A can shoot B but B can't shoot A.
Declaring overt within 50 meters of a recruiter/HQ...good idea
Delcaring Overt anywhere...bad idea (return of the RTEF and we just got rid of it)
UNLESS
Declaring overt anywhere meets the same criteria as placing an extractor, not in cities, not around other structures (like trying to place a house)....especially not inside structures....
IF you allow to declare overt IN a structure, this will allow the PET exploit: person sits in house and sicks his pets on the enemy, who warp to them, while the pet controller is safe in a house or structure.
Allow "Colonel" or officers to promote....
1 - creates a mechanism for GCW participants to reward (at least trigger the reward) and congratulate folks on their efforts on behalf of their faction.
2 - creates a value add ...and thus at least some incentive to obtain 'ranks'
Yes, it would. Also, trees are made of wood and "Oklahoma" has two a's.
Holocron wrote:
Larathorn wrote:
My opinion, make it so you can declare Overt anywhere, anytime. To become Covert you have to go back to the recruiter and wait an hour. There is no reason that I should have to be within 50m to put on my uniform or flash my military ID and fight for my ideals.
That would let you move in armies of safe people to the location of a fight, and have them all go overt at once and ambush...
Also might as well have a /declareCovert option too with teh same range.
Otherwise i dont really see any problem, i lvoe the idea. I hate using the conver menu to declare.
KStarfire
I'm going to converse with Rayston's mostly brilliant suggestion.
However, even as a member of a faction, sometimes I want to get out and explore the Universe.
Let me propose that Rayston's ability for high ranking factional members occur in specific Battleground cities (Eg: The Rebel Base on Rori, and the Imperial Base on Talus), as well as all player cities and/or bases.
It does not work out in the wild, nor does it work in most static cities, for the time when a Rebel Group is heading out to explore the Warrens (they shouldn't be griefed just for meeting Imperials on the way).
-Tre