It would not have taken much to say that Heth either has access to Capsuleer grade clonetech, or Dust clonetech, or simply had a clone of himself stashed somewhere, waiting to be activated, in case of a nasty case of death.

That way his ship could been destroyed at Haatomo, or not if the defending provists were successful, or the opposing side missed flagging his ship.

Sandbox > Scripted Events, CCP.

However, by making that ship unable to be engaged (even by suicide gank?) they are essentially blueballing the players...

People could suicide gank. They choose not to.

Though, whether or not Heth would still be on that ship (if he ever was) is a different question.

I also was one of the Heth supporters and was quite disappointed that there was no premeditated "if you support him go over here and gather with (insert player name here) if you oppose him gather with Caldari navy at point X" as there was with the incursions event and sanshas worm holes..... Also there were a few players who thought the only way to help the dragoons was to remote-rep and ended up dying without really having much help, or say, since everyone was all in the same spot with no real clear way to distinguish who was on what side.....and apart from some name calling and mocking on the part of the Caldari RPers including a GM......all in all, I am highly disappointed that I flew close to 20 jumps to try and partake, in what turned out to be the most one sided, and useless fight, in my years of eve playing.

Instead of whining about it, consider why it may have been that way.

Concord had officially announced several days ago that CEP were the legitimate authority in the matter at hand. Why would their ships be suspect flagged?

No leeway for Heth supporters to save some portion of the fleet, no realistic chance for Heth to be killed.

Did anyone on the Heth side do the same for this event, did they protest Concords legitimising of the CEP/Navy fleet and by doing so, the deligitimising of the TD fleet?

I also was one of the Heth supporters and was quite disappointed that there was no premeditated "if you support him go over here and gather with (insert player name here) if you oppose him gather with Caldari navy at point X" as there was with the incursions event and sanshas worm holes....

Actually, suspect flagging only the Dragonairs makes a bit of sense. Going by the lore, CONCORD controls all of the suspect flags. CONCORD not only recognized the CEP as the rightful authority, but also went as far as to send the DED to assist the Caldari Navy, with some high-profile DED Officers arriving on the scene. CONCORD would not flag CN as they were shooting at people who were criminals anyway. Personally, I'm surprised the Dragonairs didn't have criminal flags rather than suspect flags. Than again, if they did that, the non-CCP controlled CONCORD ships would come and just roll over everyone.

What would be interesting is if CCP could dynamically change the sec status of a system. If they could, then whenever there is an event that leads to a battle, they just drop the system to lowsec for the duration and say that CONCORD is normally outfitted to take on isolated incidents , so they can't properly respond to a large battle.

In the mean time, flagging everyone in system accomplishes the same thing.

In an ideal world, this would solve a lot of issues in terms of technical limitations for engaging eachother, but for one, it's something that we can't do, and secondly it has very shaky, if any, storyline justification.

What I was expecting was something like a newsblurb, "Navy has just mobilized in Haatomo" to signal that the event is starting soon, so log on. Then they say there's several minutes to a couple of hours of fighting in the station, and THEN the Provists make it to the hangar and undock at which point the players can become involved.

In an ideal world, this would solve a lot of issues in terms of technical limitations for engaging eachother, but for one, it's something that we can't do, and secondly it has very shaky, if any, storyline justification.

Flagging everyone as suspect has other bad effects in that it completely messes with Logi pilots due to the way the flags propagate & constantly renew on the logi, meaning that it weights heavily in favour of DPS pilots just after shiny killboards rather than people RP'ing and trying to be serious. So there is no ideal tool that solves all issues. A 'Fleet' sized limited engagement tool could work. As it would allow sides to engage each other without weird suspect flags popping up for repping the lawful navy of the area. But thats about the 'best' tool I can envisage, and even that has it's own issues.

Universal flags seemed to work well enough for Colelie.

Bullshit. If corporate bellends like Microsoft can decide to remove the DRM in the XBone that they said they "couldn't just flip a switch and turn off DRM", then SURELY you guys can figure out some way to vary system sec statuses.

Actually, they worked pretty badly and I had a number of people contact me to complain that, and ask why the Federation Navy were flagged in their own space.

Actually, they worked pretty badly and I had a number of people contact me to complain that, and ask why the Federation Navy were flagged in their own space.

Actually, they worked pretty badly and I had a number of people contact me to complain that, and ask why the Federation Navy were flagged in their own space.

There are arguments both ways, and there are pros and cons to both ways of doing things.

The most sensible thing to do is to go with what makes the most sense in terms of backstory as a compromise, because regardless of how we decide to flag, there'll always be complaints from at least one group involved.