Development Cycle Archive

"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... "

Umm - Covert Faction Scanners....

/declare ----but with timer before you can attack.

This would be good with some sort of timer before you could attack, but be attackable until then. If you get attacked then you can attack back.

This negates the issue of 'sneaking' up on someone since they will be able to see you but you won't be able to attack for a minute.

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Kona_Combine wrote:

Just thought of a little problem, altho 50m isnt that much, but this would allow say a Melee/Bounty Hunter/Commandotoo stand right next too their target go Overt, and get the first strike in. This would be very bad for the Rifleman population, but I am biased since I am a Rifleman.

Actually thisthing would kind of be bad for rifleman, someone could go overt while running at us, and all of a sudden you got 1 or more people closing in on you attacking. And since our accuracy sucks on moving targets we would be better off throwing rocks at them.

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Simple solution: If you rely on range to kill, don't hang around w/in 100 meters of the recruiter. That way, the closest somebody could declare and open up on you is 50m.

Without some way to do this, the recruiter is a very dangerous place to be for the defenders -- declare so you can fire back at the mob of recruiter-campers (all looking toward and tabbing at the place they know you have to declare), and you get blown away as soon as you declare. Ways to avoid this: don't declare, let the campers overrun your home turf.

With this new system, the campers have to be concerned that the guy next to him is gonna declare and open up on them for a few shots before being summarily executed by the rest of the campers. Ways to avoid this: don't camp the recruiter, focus on maintaining a front around the recruiter to retain control of the rest of the city.

I can sure tell you which way sounds more fun.

simple solution to that problem is allow people to go overt anywhere anytime with a 5 minute wait where they are red and freely attackable but cannot return fire till their 5 minutes have expired. that would prevent a bunch of rebels to sneak into a imperial stronghold and declare and start blasting away... same time frame to switch back to covert with the same rules. this would make switching VERY hazardous and totally prevent exploiting. switching shouldnt be done lightly. just slap a 300 second countdown timer in the HAM bar to show when ur time is up.

common sense is in short supply.

"Covert was included for the express ability of players participating in the GCW with the chance of no PvP."

No, it was not. Holocron (Mr. Koster) has already stated as much in other threads. They consider you as signed up for PvP at any time when you belong to a faction. Covert means nothing more than that, covert.

-Raystonn

I think that faction members of sufficient rank should be able to declare/undeclare themselves overt at will(with some kind of timer involved), as well as give overt status to lower ranking faction members while they, themselves, are overt. Someone who has spent the FP to be a Rebel or Imperial general should be able to declare themselves overt. You already outrank the recruiter, many times over. Some kind of timer, dependent on rank would also be great, it would reduce the exploit/ambush potential of this proposed system.

One of the best things about allowing high ranking faction members to declare themselves is that it would allow groups to go overt together in remote areas, if they had the proper members, thus giving faction rank some function worth having. I also think that the "suprise, I'm a (insert rank here) and I'm joining into this bloodbath" could be a nice addition to PVP.

The idea would make the recruiter campingvery difficult.

I'd write a macro like this:

/declareovert;

/flamesingle2

I like where this discussion is going...

Here's where I'm at based on ideas posted here.

1. We have just coverts and overts and no TEF's.

2. You can /declareOvert anywhere. As soon as you doa system message broadcasts locally that you have declared yourself a rebel or imperial.At the same time a 10 second timer starts before you get your overt status. During those 10 seconds you are still covert and no one can attack you and you can't attack anyone.

3. Once you are killed you lose your overt status and can't /declareOvert for 15 minutes.

4. When you want to go covert, you type /delareCovertanywhere but must wait 15 minutes for it to take effect.

The effects of these changes:

These changes would eliminate the first-shot no-support problems of the RTEF.

Ambushes would be announced and everyone has a 10 second window to take cover, equip armor, and ready their weapons.

15 minute wait to go overt after death would reduce the chance for people to clone and run to the recruiter to join back in the battle.

15 minutes to go covert would keep people from wanting to get killed to go covert.

I'd love these changes cause I'd seriously consider taking part in more PvP.

--Drox (Intrepid)

how about this idea since people do not like to travel overt....

1. make it so people can declare overt by themself OUTSIDE of city limits...

2. make certain cities be IMPERIAL or REBEL...for people to go overt they have to choose a home city based upon their faction...when they die they are FORCED to go back to that city (stop TEF style tatics) with MASSIVE wounds (even if they duel a person to die on purpose they should get wounds after all it is a battle and death needs consequences) and when people choose to go covert it should take one hour to do once they declare they are going covert.

3. If you die three times in an hour you can't declare overt for another hour.

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

^^^

Isnt that what the Jedi did in the end of "Attack of the Clones"?

Part of war is suprising the enemy. Covert Scanners and Minefields around an HQ or Battlefield would counter that, but it still should be a factor. I actually like that, add's some realism to it.

Personally I don't play PvP, but I do have a suggestion.

You know the "leave faction" command that gives an hour delay before kicking in?

How about you go to a recruiter to declare overt normally, thenadd a timer, like 2 min (less? longer?) before Overt kicks in. This will give the player time to move clear of "weaksuck spawn campers", but not long enough to abuse by moving mass groups safely to a potential strike zone. This would completely eliminate the Spawn Camp Ginks because there's no weakness to exploit.

Just input from the outside.

/declareOvert would be a command that supports the role-playing aspect of the GCW; as many have mentioned, one should be able to declare one's allegiance at any time (given suffcient Faction Points) in proximity to a ranking member of the faction (PC or NPC). At the time of declaration, one can declare Covert or Overt. One can also /declare Overt from Covert at any time. However, I would add in this new feature: When someone declares Overt, they cannot recind their allegiance and become Covert. An Overt may annul their allegience totally from the faction, in which case they lose all faction points, ranks,and perks. This would not only minimize the "ambush" issue, it would also make sense in the overarching story--if one leaves the Rebellion or Empire as an active Overt supporter, one really leaves that world behind. If one wants to join again, one has to work one's way back into the faction.

Now you may have an occasional "ambush" of new faction members, but this might actually have story value--if you saw a firefight between the Empire and Rebellion and you felt very strongly about one side or the other, you could join the faction and support your ideals.

My 2 cents.

Holocron

Are we getting any TEF indicator? Are the factional-TEF rules of engagement lightening up at all?

Here's the problem. One person declares overt, then groups with others.

Then the first fires on someone of the opposite faction, who returns fire. All group members have TEF on that faction member. (fine so far)

Then the other members of the group *can* attack the solo faction member, and unless that guy has friends grouped with him noone can help him by firing on the larger group.


The solution I'd gladly support would be when a covert person fires on an overt that they have a visible TEF indicator AND they get TEF from everyone overt in the faction that they're firing on.

This does not make them overt, but makes them vulnerable to attack from overts and simmilarly TEF'd people.

The "move in armies of safe people to the location of a fight, and have them all go overt at once and ambush" problem is happening NOW, except that they're still covert.