Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Don on November 21, 2003, 12:51:26 PM
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I intend this post as a complaint about a much discussed aspect of the game: Killshooter:mad:
As you all prolly are aware, the conditions in the MA have been pretty poor this week with warps and dumps practically every day. With this in mind last night, I figured I would bore in closer to my target, instead of taking longer shots.
Now I am aware of the pro and con arguments of Killshooter, and agree (to a certain extent) that we must have some version of it). But I gotta say what happened to me last night was one of the worst aspects of it.
Me and my squadmates upped and headed to A3 under attack by Bish. There were a lot of low level fights which quickly turned into more of a furball but only spread out over broader area.
I took a few shots at nme a/c from 500 to 400 feet away, saw a few pings and the nme warped away. This happened again so I decided to change my approach. The next nme I targeted I made a point of getting in closer. I was flying an FWD9, and was able to get in real close in a hurry. I started registering hits from just inside of 400 feet, just short pulls on the trigger. I stopped firing and waited to get closer to be sure of my shots and kill.
I got in to about 275 feet and chopped throttle so as not to overshoot. At 250 feet I opened up with my cannon, just as I did, the last thing I saw was this a__wipe Rook countryman swoop in from over my right shoulder and fly directly in fron t of me to steal my kill. I had already pulled the trigger :( I didnt even have enough time to see who the other guy's handle, so's I could ream him over the radio from the tower :D
So okay, I know the reasoning behind the killshooter function but, in terms of gameplay, do we have a prevention for those who would engage the kind of blatant abuse of fair gameplay I just described ? That was a rhetorical question, there isn't any. Killshooter doesn't protect the participant who observes some sort of etiquette.
In my case, I wasn't spraying from 600 feet out, and made a point of getting in close; there wasn't any room for another attacker in between; that arse intended to dive in front and steal the kill regardless of what it would mean for me.
Yeah, we now have gamers in the game like that, yet we have a rule which didn't (possibly) consider that kind of mentality. Well its here now, and the more it happens, the more it will spread, thereby breaking down the fabric of the country versus system of gameplay, and perhaps ultimately, customer satisfaction.
Solution:
Hell, I don't have one, I don't own the game. But, I have thought of an adjustment to killshooter from the opposite perspective; let the kill stealer be penalized for taking hits; let him/her have to use eyes behind his/her back while saddling up and before taking a shot, instead of the person whop is saddled up after having worked for the position?
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Almost the exact thing happened to me the other night.
What used to happen occasionally (rarely) has become common place.
It would be nice to see KS turned off a couple nights a week, unannounced so you never know for sure if its on or off. Just once I would like to see the kill stealing dweebs take a load of .50's in the butt for thier efforts.
RTR
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RTR:
I hear ya man. Otw home tonight, I was thinking along similar lines but, why not enable limited harm done to a friendly; just enough to disable him so's he/she had to disengage and head home. Would give the person something to think about, and wouldn't punish the one who he/she tried to steal the kill from.
Hehe, what you suggest woulda worked yesterday for me too ;) I would have loved to have shot his arse down for doing that to me. At any rate, IMO the game is changing as are the players, so why not take another look at some of the practices and policies?
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Don,
Since the Friendly came in from your high right it is possible and perhaps even likely that he never saw you saddled up on the Con. Even if he did see you it is reasonable to assume that he considered your D9 likely to overshoot the Hurri. If the Con was pulling to the right it becomes almost certain that the Friendly never saw you since his belly would have been pointed right at you.
Did you call "Engaged" on the Hurricane over vox? Often when I'm in a multiple fighter fight I will call my engagements when I think there is even a reasonable chance that it is being pursued by more Friendlies.
The ones I hate are the ones who will fire over/under/around you. First since it scares the hell out of me to see bullets wizzing around my plane. My first instinct is to break since I consider myself to be under attack and I've lost a lot of kills because of this. However on the occasions that I know that there are no other NME cons in the area with possible gun solutions I'll slip into the friendlies bullet stream or toward it. It is quite gratifying to see a jerkoff friendly blast themselves out of the sky using this technique.
Last comment... the distances are measured in yards not feet. It is verifiable, known, and without question. A quick test can be performed by flying your aircraft at 8100' AGL over an NME airfield. You'll notice that lower than 8100' AGL NME AAA is firing at you. Above 8100' AGL it is not. 8100' or 2700 yards is the range of the AAA/37mm gun.
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Friendly bullets should have no effect on friendly planes.
Killshooter is retarded.
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A freindly HO's a bogie i was chasing the other night just as i fire ........
I died thru kill shooter..........
The bogie died...........
The HO'ing freindly lived (this time) and presumably got the kill...........
my bad :confused:
I know it's would be unpopular but I would love to see kill shooter off with loss of all perks if done 3 times in 24hours and PNG for the 4th time (or variations on that theme)
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Originally posted by Tilt
A freindly HO's a bogie i was chasing the other night just as i fire ........
I died thru kill shooter..........
The bogie died...........
The HO'ing freindly lived (this time) and presumably got the kill...........
my bad :confused:
I know it's would be unpopular but I would love to see kill shooter off with loss of all perks if done 3 times in 24hours and PNG for the 4th time (or variations on that theme)
Most of my killshooter deaths have come from trying to help some friendly buff driver. Sucks when the enema dood blows up before I let off the trigger :D.
BTW, in the same situation, yeah...I let of the trigger until the ho weenie passes. With luck, he blows himself up shooting me :)
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We really could use a "less than lethal" solution to killshooter. It should still be severe but not to the point of losing ones aircraft. OIO had suggested blackouts, good start. I'd suggest an actual pilot wound. It would give the pilot (in most situations) the oportunity to RTB. or just zero the bullet counter and make the individual re-arm/re-plane. I know these suggestions don't really protect against what Don experienced but atleast you don't get an instant free trip to the tower.
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Killshooter's greatest advantage is that it is lethal.
A two on one is which a friendly fire incident occurs becomes a one on one. Take that out and you have completely removed the concept of friendly fire.
As to the idioticly simple minded "Friendly bullets should have no effect on friendly planes" stupidity that gets bandied about, that would have such drasticly negative effects on the balance between the attackers and the defenders that it is impossible to predict how exactly devistatingly bad it would actually be. That it would be hugely negative to any concept of simulating air combat is blindingly obvious to anybody with a fragment of understanding how air combat works. You would change the defender's problem from having to evade the gun solutions of the enemy in the lead position into having to evade the guns of all his persurers and at the same time give the persurers the effective advantage of a shot gun, coving much more of the skiy with bullets. At least with killshooter anybody who wants to try that method risks pay the price for it, and so most players don't risk it.
Killshooter is not perfect by any means, but it is better than any of the proposed solutions put forth thus far.
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Most peoples complaint is that it's lethal to the wrong party. I think thats why some would like a less than lethal aproach. In some of the suggestions it does become a one on one Karnak. The other pilot is essentialy taken out of the fight but without killing him.
I don't expect KS will be changed anytime soon. Then again I don't know sqwat since I don't work at HTC.
Nothing wrong with a little discussion now and then, someday it may actually lead to an elegant solution, who knows.
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i'd like both shooter and shootee to take 10x damage.
:D
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No Jazz I don't think this was the case but, it is possible. I don't think so because I was working this guy, and had to get in close. He came in from above me off my right shoulder, and he came in hot. The situation had all the markings of intent. It should not have been up to me to call my shot; who does that anyway, especially in the heat of a fight?
>>Killshooter is not perfect by any means, but it is better than any of the proposed solutions put forth thus far<<
Karnak:
I agree, KS is not perfect, which is why I brought it up. That it is better than any of the proposed solutions is up for debate. I would argue that it is not better and, at the same time, I don't think that any of the solutions would do much better. Perhaps friendly bullets should hurt friendlies, and perhaps there ought to be a penalty, for the sake of ..ahem.. gameplay. As I said in my second post, at that moment, I would have loved to have shot that bastige outta the sky for doing what he did. In that instance, it was me who was punished and not him though. I would have willingly taken the hit for shooting him down, and as he floated to earth, I woulda cussed him up and down for being stupid
:D
I am aware of KS and try my damndest to avoid it. I do that, usually by being courteous. There are many others who do not. IMO, the game ought to have some facet that deals with them.
Herein lies the greatest imperfection of Killshooter; it doesn't.
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While not perfect, the PNG system in AW was a lot better than killshooter in AH. In AW if you were to shoot down 2 friendly aircraft within 24 hours you were unable to take off with any type of ordnance or ammo. And for every friendly kill above the initial two in the 24 hour period resulted in an additional 24 hours being tacked on to your PNG status. It did a pretty good job of getting rid of the griefers.
ack-ack
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Originally posted by Ack-Ack
While not perfect, the PNG system in AW was a lot better than killshooter in AH. In AW if you were to shoot down 2 friendly aircraft within 24 hours you were unable to take off with any type of ordnance or ammo. And for every friendly kill above the initial two in the 24 hour period resulted in an additional 24 hours being tacked on to your PNG status. It did a pretty good job of getting rid of the griefers.
This sounds like the best solution to me. Bullets work they do in RL, i.e. they damage the person in front of you. The person shooting stays alive, as in RL. But he is "court martialed". The longer-term incentives are correct, and the short term realism is also correct.
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Originally posted by Karnak
Killshooter's greatest advantage is that it is lethal.
A two on one is which a friendly fire incident occurs becomes a one on one. Take that out and you have completely removed the concept of friendly fire.
As to the idioticly simple minded "Friendly bullets should have no effect on friendly planes" stupidity that gets bandied about, that would have such drasticly negative effects on the balance between the attackers and the defenders that it is impossible to predict how exactly devistatingly bad it would actually be. That it would be hugely negative to any concept of simulating air combat is blindingly obvious to anybody with a fragment of understanding how air combat works. You would change the defender's problem from having to evade the gun solutions of the enemy in the lead position into having to evade the guns of all his persurers and at the same time give the persurers the effective advantage of a shot gun, coving much more of the skiy with bullets. At least with killshooter anybody who wants to try that method risks pay the price for it, and so most players don't risk it.
Killshooter is not perfect by any means, but it is better than any of the proposed solutions put forth thus far.
You mean kinda like they already have it in the bombers and the auto ack:aok
And then the friendly planes should not be able to fly through
each other!
Like I have siad before there are severale things in this game that prevent It from being a SIM.
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Originally posted by Ack-Ack
In AW if you were to shoot down 2 friendly aircraft within 24 hours you were unable to take off with any type of ordnance or ammo.
Except troops and supplies.
Infact as you know AW dropped PNG in favour of Kill shooter (which many questioned) but it also had such system reports as
"you are shooting at a freindly"
"you have shot down an Ally"
and it penalised points scoring (as if any one cared)
AH has the somewhat more valuable perk points it could subtract.
It could also add the system status report...........
"Goober1 shot down a freindly"
I think a multi pronged approach could be adopted.
1. Prevention. Lesson the lethality of freindly hits. (some figure that reduces the 1 ping freindly kill)
2. Penalty. Deduct perk points for freindly hits. (not just for freindly kills but for each and every hit) PNG for multiple kills.
3. Shame. System report announcing freindly kills.
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Karnak is 100% right.
Killshooter works, and with wonders, too.
So why change it? How often does one meet kill shooter induced death anyways? I've both caused kill shooter deaths, and been subject to such deaths, but it's so rare that I hardly notice any so-called 'drawbacks'. Not to mention I apologize with deepest regrets, when I ever cause one.
Being subject to kill shooter, in whatever end, just simply means you have a sucky SA.
It's not just how many enemy planes are in the area that matters. SA includes the awareness of all of your surroundings - the whereabouts of your friendly planes are as important as the whereabouts of enemy planes. If possible, knowledge on the personality, skill level, and tendencies of your fellow pilots, are preferable, too.
Just when do people get KSd?
More often than not when hordes of friendlies chase after one plane, groveling for a single kill. KS, in reality, rarely ever happens in fights of equally matched forces. In other words, you would almost never get KSd during a well formed and structured clash of planes, where a clandestine friendly really ACCIDENTALLY crosses your gunsite.
It happens when everyone is simply blinded by the greed to get a single kill, hordes of people chasing after one plane, that they forget everything else. KS is simply a result of target fixation, glaring stupidity, indifference and disrespect toward your fellow pilots.
And as Karnak said, precisely because the results are so lethal, that it makes us check twice, look around, try to avoid it. KS is like car accidents. It is the danger of it that implies to people that they should watch out themselves. And if everybody is careful, accident rates will naturally decline.
Of course, there are people who aren't careful. People who are wreckless, and unaware of what happens around them. That's why there are automobile accidents, and that's why KS victims appear. Both the KS and the KSee is equally in blame, when that ever happens.
Doesn't matter what you rank at, how much your skill is, how good a fighter pilot you are. If someone gets shot down because of KS, they deserve it. The one being KSd, is not really an "innocent victim" at all.
Also, the one who induced someone's death by KS, is most likely to be flamed. People get angry against such people, and most likely he will be victim of such consequences himself - since the same kind of people will be hording in the same spot most of the times, wrecklessly and pathetically groveling for a single kill.
KS works. You can hiss and moan and blame and flame the one who gives you KS all you want, but as long as the system is there, you will be the one who is going down, and it will make you think twice next time. It urges people to stay responsible for their own safety. Which in turn, dramatically lessens the idiocy of people shooting at their own planes.
If KS is such a problem for someone, I suggest he better correct his flying style, first.
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PNG was ok in AW. I think the "ammo goes to zero" would work too. Basically you shoot a freindly and your ammo goes to 0, you have to return to base. It's not as bad as dieing but close. It wouldn't count as a death against you but would cost you in k/h and k/s. My $0.02
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Originally posted by Kweassa
Killshooter works, .
I can understand this arguement.......
I agree with the penalty side of things........
I see that kill shooter makes the guilty suffer in a direct and fatal way.........
I see that its an SA issue.
Frankly my view is that the penalty is not high enough and that it only effects one party when both (most often***)should be penalised.
Shanes comment may be valid ......... let them both die. (its simple enough)
What we see in the MA (kill shooter is not an issue anywhere else) are massive furballs where freindly bullets do not (seemingly) represent a hazard.
You must have seen it.
1) freindlies diving between chaser and chased to get a snap shot.
2) freindlies shooting over the shoulder of other freindlies.
3) freindlies racing to over take other freindlies to take the kill.
We can take these each in isolation and show how its an SA issue or how kill shooter deals with the problem.
But lump them together and you see how kill shooter allows a mind set to establish.
"let the shooter beware!"
In actual fact it becomes
"let only the shooter beware"
Whilst i have suggested several methodologies the core of my opinion is that "let the shooter beware" is (whilst essential) not enough.
Snap shotting, kill stealing, cherry picking gangbangers should also be aware that the victim (potentially himself) is also at some risk.
That when they dive into a melee with the object of the easy kill they risk the bullets of their freinds as much as their own when damaging freindlies.
Thats the core of my view. The actual methods of penalty, or consequences of action I might hold likes and dislikes for but essentially these could be several different proposals.
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Originally posted by Tilt
1. Prevention. Lesson the lethality of freindly hits. (some figure that reduces the 1 ping freindly kill)
Disagree. Why should anyone be immune to friendly bullets at all? They weren't immune IRL and they shouldn't be here either.
Originally posted by Tilt
2. Penalty. Deduct perk points for freindly hits. (not just for freindly kills but for each and every hit) PNG for multiple kills.
Agree. Friendly bullet holes are punished by "lack of trust" and a semi-probation (i.e. fewer perks), and more severe penalties for friendly kills. There should be a scale of severity on friendly kills, like 1 kill = no ammo for 1 hour. 2 kills = can't fly planes for 1 hour. Etc. This is more penalizing than killshooter, as it should be, but not directly penalizing in the immediate situation, also as it should be and as it was IRL.
Originally posted by Tilt
3. Shame. System report announcing freindly kills.
Yes, also agreed.
Originally posted by Kweassa
If KS is such a problem for someone, I suggest he better correct his flying style, first.
Orthogonal to the issue. It's not that anyone is really affected by KS. Not much anyway. It's the principle of the thing. Doesn't make any sense WRT real life, and is unnecesary from an incentives point of view. That is, there are better incentive structures available.
Edit: Actually, I shouldn't quite say that. KS may not have a direct impact on anything most of the time, but the *existence* of killshooter causes unrealistic dweebified situations to arise on a regular basis, as Tilt points out. Slavering overtaking gangbangs, etc. So it is both a theoretical and practical fault.
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Another related issue that mrblack brought up above, and which requires a solution, is what to do with friendly collisions. It would be good to come up with some way to allow friendlies to collide, but still get around the problem of dweebs purposefully ramming their teammates with no consequences beyond death. The solution could be similar to the friendly fire solution presented above, but the fundamental problem I think is in determing who is at fault in a collision.
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I think the one time i killshot myself was aaaaaages ago. I was vulchin' in a 110 and a friendly spit swooped into my bullet stream at a 90* angle.. No complaints here - i love 'accidentally' sliding in front of people's bullet streams that try and shoot over my shoulder. :D
When it sucks is when some dipchit with a grudge hops in an M3 and tries to get you to KS your tiger on him :p
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>>Being subject to kill shooter, in whatever end, just simply means you have a sucky SA<,
No, it doesn't.
>>the whereabouts of your friendly planes are as important as the whereabouts of enemy planes. If possible, knowledge on the personality, skill level, and tendencies of your fellow pilots, are preferable, too. <<
Elementary SA 101;but why would anyone care about the personality, skill level and tendencies of fellow pilits; especially if one has never seen them?
If I'm 5k below some dweeb kill stealer workin on an nme to get saddled up, I'm gonna know where other nme are before I commit to the kill move, part of that isn't watching out for a friendly 5k above me, or even 2k above and behind me. I wont fly that way, and shouldn't have to.
IMO I'd rather be able to say oops and shoot the bastid down. I would pay by whatever means determined by the owners of the game, but the dweeb who flew in front of me "out of greed" would pay too. In this way the "idiot" who flew irresponsibly might learn something from the experience. As KS is now, only one suffers, and the rightness of that is in question for me.
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Every time i let my countrymate handle it,the con ends up gettin away or killin the guy i let handle it :p
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Originally posted by Tilt
Except troops and supplies.
Infact as you know AW dropped PNG in favour of Kill shooter (which many questioned) but it also had such system reports as
"you are shooting at a freindly"
"you have shot down an Ally"
and it penalised points scoring (as if any one cared)
AH has the somewhat more valuable perk points it could subtract.
It could also add the system status report...........
"Goober1 shot down a freindly"
I think a multi pronged approach could be adopted.
1. Prevention. Lesson the lethality of freindly hits. (some figure that reduces the 1 ping freindly kill)
2. Penalty. Deduct perk points for freindly hits. (not just for freindly kills but for each and every hit) PNG for multiple kills.
3. Shame. System report announcing freindly kills.
AW never had the killshooter system. Instead friendly fire didn't do any damage and I think it wasn't until A3/MV that they removed it. AW4W had PNG all the way until the bitter end.
ack-ack
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Originally posted by Ack-Ack
AW never had the killshooter system. Instead friendly fire didn't do any damage and I think it wasn't until A3/MV that they removed it. AW4W had PNG all the way until the bitter end.
ack-ack
I dont think PNG ever saw AW3 ......it was an arena setting so could be switched on and off.
As could freindly fire lethality.
AW4W was dead by early 97.
What was anti-frag? I thought that was the same as kill shooter.
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I never saw any type of anti-frag or killshooter system in AW3/MV. I didn't switch over until '97 when AW4W finally went tits up. From that time to the end of AW3/MV, I only remember having friendly fire disabled, with the exception of bombs.
ack-ack
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Originally posted by Ack-Ack
While not perfect, the PNG system in AW was a lot better than killshooter in AH. In AW if you were to shoot down 2 friendly aircraft within 24 hours you were unable to take off with any type of ordnance or ammo. And for every friendly kill above the initial two in the 24 hour period resulted in an additional 24 hours being tacked on to your PNG status. It did a pretty good job of getting rid of the griefers.
ack-ack
Cant argue with that idea :) I thought it was much more fun being chased down by multiple bogies to get them to shoot each other.
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SA? I cant manage the views as well as I manage my head. Does most players have a HOTAS with several 8 way hats and function buttons to cover all the possible views with a single finger movemet? no, surely not at all. It is just hard enough to keep pressing the arrows to pan your view through the canopy bars while pressing trim or rudder keys to track the enemy (but, that cant be done, we have only two hands and one should be on stick).
If friendly fire needs to be punished, how about punishing by ammo instead of damage? For example, draining 25% of total ammo per hit.
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killshooter?
Wait until HTC enable friendly collisions in the MA..........
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>>killshooter?
Wait until HTC enable friendly collisions in the MA..........<<
Hehe, and the whines will be heard around the globe
:rolleyes:
I have gotten another something out of this post though; when I see tracers over my shoulder before I saddle up, I'm gonna move into their tracer stream Hehe, I can get used to hearing the tell tale explosions behind me :D
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Well, one thing is for certain, killshooter stirs up a lot of debate.
I have been on both ends of K/S & in my defence to the person that hit me & got sent to the tower "hey, i'm 300 out, lined up to fire & you shoot over my shoulder, of course u going to hit me & die!" On the occasions i have been K/S it was only when someone crosses my line of fire at the wrong time, whether by accident or their intent. I take care not to fire when there is a possibility i will hit a friendly. the reverse situation has presented itself for griefers by shooting down someone on your own country that you dont like by getting in their line of fire. Of course we need a system to discourage griefers but why should it be so harsh a penalty? For those who are concerned about their points/ranking how about a non- recorded death for killshooting?
On the other point of friendly collisions, can you imagine the frustrations when 20 people try to up in a mission together?
Thier is a fine line between creating a true to life sim & making it enjoyable.
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I luv killshooter, matter of fact they should change it so that a single bullet strike on your 6 would instantly turn the offenders plane into a oscar meyer wiener with their name in smoke letters streaming behind them across the sky and a system message streaming across everyones chat bar identifying the numbskull visible for all to see who the knuckleheads are.
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I don't like KILLSHOOTER, either. If you don't fly one of the uber-fast planes you stand a good chance of one of yer dweeb countrymen cutting in front of you from above/behind you in a 500+ mph pony or lala right into your bullet stream. This has happened to me numerous times. I never whine about it while I'm flying, but this thread seemed a good place to vent my frustration over this common occurance.
PLEASE, PEOPLE, PRACTICE BETTER S.A. AND BE MORE CONSIDERATE!
Rant, off. :(
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if having problem with killshooter...better sa the answer, that and be quicker shooting enemy down before friendly swoops in for kill.
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I'd like to see friendly fire engaged in one way or another, I haven't killed any Nomads in a very long time. Heck, if you can't kill your wingmates who can you kill? :D
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i dont like the killshooter too much either... in my example, i was with a squad mate diving on a VH + GVs around it, and his bomb blast (i think) got me... and he went to tower instantly... This ment we lost fighter support and ended up losing the edge we had built up...
But then we do need to have some kind of killshooter :o
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I have died twice recently to KS. Both times the friendly dove into my fire from the right side and a little high. (only times I can recall dieing to KS)
Both times I had waited, maneuvered, got lined up, and was within 500yds of my target and fired a short burst only to suddenly see a friendly fighter dive, at high speed, right into my stream from the right and a little high!
Thinkin Kill Shooter needs to be off :mad:
Happened so fast, both times, I never even saw the friendlies name! I had already fired both times before I saw the friendly!
If I have ever done this to anyone my apologies.
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Cool thread...
Loss of perks would get everyone's attention... I am sure most of the offenders are after those and have a 'my precious' attitude towards perk points... so endangering 'my precious' should have the desired affect giving the 'new?' behavior of 'stealing' kills....
BUT... the main issue, that started this particular thread, is the interloper pulling between the attacker and his prey... and the innocent 'attacker' dying because of KS... KS pretty much handles all of the other offenders... but this one really brings KS shortcomings into play...
1. An 'accident' should have a like penalty... perk points for that sortie are set to zero at that point... the friendly plane flys on... no damage... they can earn perks from this point forward in the sortie...
2. A repeat within a 'time period' would result in loss of all perk points for the sortie... the friendly plane flies on... no damage...
3. Now we have the habitual offender... nasty system messages and short PNG PLUS loss of 50% of their total system perk points...
4. Now check this... a pilot gets friendly hits more than..say... 2 times in a 4 hour period (some number for some time...whatever...), well now, we have a 'pattern' or 'apparent' behavior here... turn KS off for HIM... then in scenarios one and two... he get's damaged... or dies... this works out the problem
of the guys pulling between an attacker and his prey...
I don't know HiTechs programming model but, it should be a medium effort to put this in...
My 1 cent worth