We see a lot of arguments on this forum that come down to something like this:
Joe: "[Something about 1-1 fights or taking down hangars or whatever]"
Fred: "You're describing DA play, not MA; the MA isn't primarily for dueling."
Joe: "Have you been to the DA lately? It's the last place you can actually duel."
It's been said before that the solution of this should be to fix the DA rather than try to make the MA what the DA ought to be, and I certainly feel that way, but good suggestions as to how to do this are few and far between. Well, I don't know whether it's a good one, but here's my suggestion - please let me know what you think.
Why not have a functionality in the DA that makes it impossible to interrupt a duel? I can't imagine it would be much trouble from a technical standpoint, but hopefully someone can explain if it would be.
What happens is you fly around, see someone you want to fight (or meet someone in a prearranged place), and type the dot command .duel [CPID]. The nearest red plane's icon is boxed in just like friendlies are when you check 6. You can leave the box on him or toggle through any other red icons just like the check 6 function. When it's on the plane you want, a second or so later that player gets a message saying "You have been challenged to a duel. Do you accept?" The icon of the challenger will appear boxed to the challenged. If the challenged refuses, nothing happens. If he accepts, you stay red to each other, but you both become green to every other plane in the arena on all three sides, and every other plane becomes green to you. No one can jump in because they'd only killshoot themselves. This would last until one of you went to the tower. Alternately, there could be another dot command (also requiring that the other player accept) so that if one player chickens out and runs the other won't be stuck unable to fight anyone until the first player lands.
I can imagine all sorts of ways this could be abused in the MA, but it seems to me it would be a nice feature for the DA.
Comments, opinions, rotten vegetables?