Anti-Fragging Problem

[wetrat]

While I've never had your problem, and can't imagine ever having it, I must say killshooter is a bit silly. Many a time have I been fighting a toejamfire in a G10 or the like, and since I didn't get a quick kill, a few countrymen would decide to "help" me. And as luck would have it, they tend to arrive to "help" me when I finally get a decent gun solution on the turning bastid. I'll fire, only to have my tail taken off due to some stunninghunk jumping in front of me.

 It makes sense to have friendly fire disabled in the MA.. but to be killed yourself for hitting friendlies? I fail to see the point when the bullets could simply be absorbed and have no effect on anyone. At least there could be some sort of proximity for it... If you're within 1000 yards of an enemy and you hit a teammate, it won't kill you.. something like that.

[Dago]

Having killshooter on has a very specific advantage.  

It helps minimize "shoulder shooters".


Without the risk of damaging themselves, too many tards would saddle up behind  you and fire away over and through you trying to steal the con you have worked to get a position on.

When someone shoulder shoots over me now, I just nudge my aircraft into his bullet stream to discourage that behavior.  

dago

[Grizzly]

You say this happened repeatedly?

What I hate is that I not only get killed but the enemy gets a proxy kill on me, and the guy who I shot steals my kill. It and proxy kills are bad in many ways.

Originally posted by Zazen13
I don't want to be a ranter but I do have an issue with the Anti-fragging measures. Specifically in regard to a special situation. The other night I shot myself down repeatedly because of hitting a friendly. While this is incredibly unrealistic, I do see the need for adding some disinsentive to saturation spraying.

My problem occurred in an unusual way though, and one which I don't think the anti-fragging code does justice. Me and another were on the same bandit but we were occupying the same physical space. By that I mean we were exactly on top of one another 300 yards off the bandit's six. Well, I looked at every view , saw nothing, because he was right on top of me. So I fired...you can guess the rest..

My point is, if we are to be punished for hitting a friendly aircraft it is unfair to punish us for hitting an aircraft we cannot see with the tools the game provides. A reasonable way to fix this would be to program a minimum distance that the anti-fragging self-hit occurs, say 100 yards. If the friendly is below 100 yards just have him absord the rounds with some kind of text message or ambient sound that would indicate you are hitting a friendly. To shoot yourself down because you hit a friendly occupying your same physical space (very unrealistic situation) is kind of absurd. I am not a programmer but, this seems like it would be easy to fix and would lower the frustration level of the game for everyone who finds themselves in this similiarly unique situation.

Zazen

[Grizzly]

Voss, I don't think anyone advocates being able to kill a friendlies. I like the persona non grotta system in AW where you can kill a friendly, but you lose your ammo for a day (AW allowed three kills, one day of PNG for each kill).

This made people careful about jumping in front of another player and made players use care where they shoot. It also helped provide a good supply of goon drivers  =o)

Originally posted by GPreddy
Oh yeah this is good. Turn killshooter off so we can all kill each other before a kill gets stolen. In AW DOS we had the problem of a defector moving to a field under attack upping in an a26 and sitting off the skirt to kill the first 80 guys trying to defend it. How would you like that? Friendly midairs? Thank god ht put some thought into this one. The only way to safely launch from a field would be slotted departures and I dont think the dweebs would ever figure it out and you would still get killed. Bad idea. Twilight zone bullets?

[ALF]

Originally posted by Zazen13
Also, keep in mind, there are other ways of preventing fragging other than making the person shooting take damage. Just make the rounds get eaten into the twilight zone like they did in AW. If someone is in the way yer just wasting ammo. Taking damage because you are inadvertantly hitting a freindly aircraft is very unrealistic. AH is proud of it's realism factor, kind of suprises me this anti-fragging self kill codeis even in the game.

Zazen

There are a few big drawbacks to making friendly bullets "do nothing", not the least of which is it would make it commonplace for dweebs to shoot thru you to get at the bandit on the other side....this not only makes things unfair to the poor pursued soul, but it also places the person with position in the unenviable place of constantly checking his six because he sees tracers wizzing by, and isnt sure of its an enemy.

It also lends itself to gaming the game as people fire with reckless abandon.


In the many years I have played aces high (since the initial beta....wow its amazing how much has changed), I have killshootered myself a total of maybe 30 times....and thats a generous estimate.

[vorticon]

dont like ks??? get your 7 best buddies open a hth room turn off ks and hav a 4 on 4 match after that come back and well see how much your veiws have changed...

[Dead Man Flying]

Killshooter actually encourages the most realistic behavior of any anti-fragging regime.  Simply disabling it hardly acts as a disincentive to killing teammates either intentionally or accidentally, and spray and pray rules the day.  Allowing friendly planes to absorb the bullets without damage to oneself leads to further spray and pray or attempts to snipe kills from over the shoulders of friendlies who are closer to the target.

But killshooter?  Killshooter forces one to get in as close as possible, to utilize situational awareness, and to avoid shooting over the shoulders of friendly airplanes in front.  It forces gun discipline in a target rich environment.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[Kanth]

It may discourage you shooting towards any friendlies but it does nothing to discourage someone flying through someone else's bullet stream in order to be first in line by an inch to get the kill.

 You want to kill friendlies, no need to shoot at them, just fly thru their bullet stream while they are engaged.

 not a huge leap in logic.


 Just like the people who get kills on the nme by flying under them and then pulling up right in front of their nose causing collisions, then fly away no bullets spend with kill.

 both having killshooter on and off have someone paying for someone elses foolishness.

Having the bullets absorbed (not passing thru) only counts against the person spending them.

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by Kanth
It may discourage you shooting towards any friendlies but it does nothing to discourage someone flying through someone else's bullet stream in order to be first in line by an inch to get the kill.

[/B]

This is where the situational awareness part comes in.  Hitting someone in that situation isn't his fault... it's your own for not being aware of his position.

You want to kill friendlies, no need to shoot at them, just fly thru their bullet stream while they are engaged.

[/B]

Again, this is a situational awareness issue, and there are two ways to counter it.  The first is to always remain cognizant of friendly planes so they can't pull something like that.  The other is to engage enemies at as close a range as possible, minimizing the likelihood that anyone could jump in front of your guns.

not a huge leap in logic.

[/B]

But in all cases it's preferable to simply no killshooter at all.  And as it promotes increased situational awareness, ammo conservation, and real consequences for shooting at friendly planes, it's also more realistic.

both having killshooter on and off have someone paying for someone elses foolishness.

[/B]

I disagree.  With killshooter off, you're paying for someone else's foolishness.  With killshooter on, you're paying for your own.

-- Todd/Leviathn

[Dowding (Work)]

In two and a half years of play, I've been killshot twice.

[lazs2]

Hey.. we got suicide bombers who will suicide a CV or fuel at a field simply because they are frustrated by their lack of skill or they are simply attention starved... think what they woud do if there were no killshooter.   They could really get some attention then.
lazs

[Zazen13]

By bullets getting eaten I mean, they don't pass thru a friendly they get absorbed by him (they wouldn't pass thru), effectively wasting your ammunition, so there will be no 'shoulder' shooting. Also, an aware pilot can still jockey in front of a farther spraying friendly to block his shot if he so desires. The end result will be the same with less un-realism and frustration of the self-kill junk in there now, people will want to get the closest and have the best firing position or they risk wasting precious ammunition.

In a game frought with internet latency, warpers, and view restrictions that were not present in real life, being overly harsh with penalties of this nature detracts from the gaming experience, it does not enhance it. This is why AW switched from the PNG penalty to the simply absorbs bullets penalty, and never enabled mid-air collisions (not that I want AH to be like AW, but they had a valid point with regard to this issue).The person with the worst connection having a supreme advantage in a collision situation is a slightly off-topic example of why penalties of this nature don;t work over the internet very well. With this system there would be.

A) No fragging
B) No silly self-killing
C) No dis-insentive for realistic flying, just a new insentive (instead of plane damage to oneself, you lose ammunition).

Zazen

[MWHUN]

The only time killshooter worries me is when you are in a fighter trying to help clear a friendly buff formation's rear.  I tend to fly the typhoon so even 1 stray bullet can be detrimental to my health.  Most of the time I have to wait till I'm <200 out to take the shot while ensuring I don't frag myself.

Perhaps some modification for bombers could be made? I'm not sure how it would play out in the long run...

[Innominate]

Killshooter type systems are the best form of friendly-fire protection around.  They eliminate the un-checked fire of not having to worry about hitting friendlies, without offering the possiblity of people killing friendlies just to be jerks.

Killshooter as we have it isn't perfect.  I believe that any round that hits a friendly plane hits a certain spot on yours, the tail i think, no matter where you hit the friendly.  So only a couple of hits across a friendly which would do practicallly no damage to him, will kill you.  IMO a hit to a friendlies left wing should damage your left wing, a hit to the tail should damage the tail, etc.

While it would be nice if killshooter was applied better, it's a simple elegant solution to handling friendly fire.

[Dead Man Flying]

Originally posted by Zazen13
By bullets getting eaten I mean, they don't pass thru a friendly they get absorbed by him (they wouldn't pass thru), effectively wasting your ammunition, so there will be no 'shoulder' shooting. Also, an aware pilot can still jockey in front of a farther spraying friendly to block his shot if he so desires. The end result will be the same with less un-realism and frustration of the self-kill junk in there now, people will want to get the closest and have the best firing position or they risk wasting precious ammunition.

[/B]

I understand what you're saying, but you're incorrect that it won't create "over the shoulder" shooting and reward spray and pray tactics.  If there's a friendly 200 yards in front of you and an enemy plane 100 yards in front of him... why not just let loose with the ammo, kick rudders around a bit, and hope you score the kill shot?  If your bullets hit the friendly, they hit the friendly... no big deal.  Those that don't will hit the enemy, and voila! -- you get your kill.

Realistic?  Hardly.  The fact remains that killshooter teaches gunnery discipline whereas none of the other methods mentioned in this thread do.  As such an admittedly unrealistic game concession leads to realistic pilot behavior because there are real consequences for spray and pray or poor situational awareness.  This is a good thing!  

In a game frought with internet latency, warpers, and view restrictions that were not present in real life, being overly harsh with penalties of this nature detracts from the gaming experience, it does not enhance it.

[/B]

Assuming that we all suffer from Internet latency, warpers, and view restrictions, please explain to me why many of us haven't killshootered ourselves in almost a year?  I'll do it maybe twice a year tops, and each time I know it was my fault.  It's not that your connect is much worse than mine, or that my views are somehow less restrictive -- it's that many of us practice the sorts of tactics that minimize the possibility of killshootering ourselves.

-- Todd/Leviathn