Verity Sovereign
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
127
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Posted - 2012.01.09 13:32:00 -
[1] - Quote
Not a bad idea at all.
I like how its effect is neutral: it could be good or bad - it could summon help, or it could attract more pirates.
I mainly see it being used in low and NPC-null.
In PvE, it lets other people into your site without scanning-> could attract ninja salvagers, or competitors to a plex.
I'd say to prevent spamming, someone with a criminal flag must have aggro'd you (ie someone "illegally" shoots at you, or an outlaw shoots at you even if you can flipped him or shot at him first). After all, if this is in high sec ... well concord will help you. If concord isn't helping you, then the players that respond can't really help you without being concorded themselves (RR excepted) unless it is low sec or the guy has a global criminal flag.
So this would primarily be a low/Null thing. It could go off in high sec during a gank... but are players really going to respond faster than concord will?
The above condition still leaves some things out: maybe a dumb noob go can flipped, and would like some RR.
But is anyone really going to come? the tarps will outnumber the "real" help requests at least 10:1.
You get jumped by war targets, and want some RR -> again, is anyone actually going to come help?
So I'd say: unrestricted in Null
For High and low: someone criminally flagged must have aggressed you for you to send out a distress call.
If other players can't attack the "bad-guy" without concord intervention or a sec status hit, then you can't send out a distress call when attacked by the "bad-guy"
And then there is one last scenario: you are getting your ass kicked in PvE.
I don't like the 50% shields idea, because the armor tankers could still spam it.
They could spam at 50% armor too, if their tank is plenty for the mission, they just rep to 50% and then stop.
I'm tempted to say you'd have to have 0% shield and armor, and being aggressed by NPCs in order to use it - but then it will likely be too late for actual mission runners, while those with elite hull tanking certs may lulz hull tank low level missions and spam it.
Should we even worry about it being spammed?
Why not allow a "boy who cried wolf" effect.
Of course, there are other possible anti-spam options: a 100,000 ISK fee for using it. Or a 12 hour wait period between uses.
Or 1 "free" use every 24 hours, with each subsequent use charging a higher fee and resetting the 24 hour timer.
ie:
First use: free
2nd use within 24 hours: 10k ISK
3rd use within 24 hours: 20k ISK
4th: 40k ISK
5th: 80k ISK
...
10th: 5.12 million ISK
No more spamming that, the next one costs 10.24 million to activate! |