This will reliably prevent FF with ADSed hitscan weapons but what about the odd statistical outlier bullet from hip firing, any AoE or trajectory weapon?

In EVE there's only a handful of things (bombs and smartbombs from the top of my head) that can cause unintentional FF and those are arguably advanced enough to assume people know (usually) what they're doing when handling them.

A mass driver is a pretty basic weapon. Or grenades

Edit for moderation: I think this system might be secure enough for low-sec (don't fire explosives into a bunch of blues, duh) but this and the following posts by CCP Wolfman et al. makes me suspect that he'd prefer a safer rule set for hi-sec areas.

Thanks for bring up the AoE weapons.

Eve Online does have bombs and smartbombs, but there is a difference between the two. Bombs in Eve are prevented from launching in high-sec and low-sec regardless of the SAFETY setting. You can only use a bomb in null-sec. It's just like the interdiction bubbles which are only allowed in null-sec.

Smartbombs however are an entirely different beast. Currently in Eve Online you can use them in any system but you will have to set it to SAFETY RED in order to use it at all. Bare in mind that once you fire that smartbomb, you will suffer punishment from Concord if anyone in high-sec is caught in the blast.

However, we're talking about a point-to-point MMO here. In Eve Online, it's nearly impossible to commit friendly fire unless you really are going out of your way to troll everyone. In a FPS setting however, it's different. I'm going on a limb here and think that certain weapons will be jammed in high-sec and low-sec unless you manually set yourself to SAFETY RED.

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Eve Online does have bombs and smartbombs, but there is a difference between the two. Bombs in Eve are prevented from launching in high-sec and low-sec regardless of the SAFETY setting. You can only use a bomb in null-sec. It's just like the interdiction bubbles which are only allowed in null-sec.

Smartbombs however are an entirely different beast. Currently in Eve Online you can use them in any system but you will have to set it to SAFETY RED in order to use it at all. Bare in mind that once you fire that smartbomb, you will suffer punishment from Concord if anyone in high-sec is caught in the blast.

However, we're talking about a point-to-point MMO here. In Eve Online, it's nearly impossible to commit friendly fire unless you really are going out of your way to troll everyone. In a FPS setting however, it's different. I'm going on a limb here and think that certain weapons will be jammed in high-sec and low-sec unless you manually set yourself to SAFETY RED.

Ah right, I forgot about sec restrictions on weapons. While I agree that locking those high risk weapons to RED safety is a possibility, it worries me to think how many weapon systems have to be "redlocked" to provide the safety necessary to provide new players a friendly environment.

Worst of all, I just thought of another, technical, problem with the system you propose.

Latency

The games' current net code is based on a client/server architecture with the latter having full authority over the game state. This means that the client does not directly control the simulation but merely sends user input to the server which will incorporate it into the simulation.

However, to provide a fluid and responsive gameplay experience the client does a fair amount of predictions regarding his actions and the results thereof. For example, firing a shot from any weapon will immediately commence the firing animation, draw the fired projectile and, if it sees a shot connecting from his end, the impact animations.

But all of these actions are just anticipated by the client while the server has to confirm on his end that a shot has been fired before deducting a bullet from the magazine and check itself whether the hitscan function or bullet simulation actually produces a hit before deducting health from the target.

Due to lag and interpolation, the exact positions of all moving entities displayed to the user by the client never matches their respective coordinates exactly. This regularly leads to cases where the client, based on the game state known to him, predicts a hit and displays the hit marker and effect while the server, in control of said gamestate, negates the hit and deals no damage to the target. The inverse does also happen for the same reasons.

In th the case of GREEN security settings and firing at a friendly with a pinpoint hitscan weapon, four particular things can happen:

Client predicts hit. Server calculates hit
Server and client agree that the shot would've caused friendly fire. The client draws no animations and the server denies the fire command. What the user sees is congruent with what is actually happening.

Client predicts miss. Server calculates miss.
Server and client agree that the shot wouldn't cause FF. Client draws animation and server confirms shot and deducts a bullet from the magazine. User feedback is, again, consistent with reality.

Client predicts miss. Server calculates hit.
That's where things get awry. The client assumes the weapons trajectory does not intersect with a friendly hitbox, thus displays weapon and (ground) impact animations, while the server declares that the shot would've connected and that no shot was ever fired because of the FF lock. Feedback and reality do not align.

Client predicts hit. Server calculates miss.
Lastly. The client predicts a FF hit and draws no animations. The server, however decides that the shot can happen and deducts a bullet from ammo count. The user loses a bullet despite having been given the information that no shot has been fired.

Remember that the two latter scenarios are no edge cases. This kind of stuff happens in FPS all the time. While surely not a game breaking flaw, this kind of behavior can be very annoying and is very detrimental to the gameflow as well as perceived net code quality.

Interesting scenarios. Those seriously need to be looked into BEFORE Legion goes into closed beta. But I fear there is not much to do except one thing. Streamline the server architecture so that there is as minimal hit-n-miss cases. But that's easier said than done as that probably will require a level of Client/Server communication that is unheard of in the gaming industry.

The client hit/server miss scenario is actually rather easy to prevent with a minor drawback attached.

When the client anticipates friendly fire, it doesn't send the "firing" packet in the first place. This means no chance of uncommunicated shots but results in reduced combat efficiency as potentially valid firing opportunities are denied on initiative of the client. This seems like a reasonable tradeoff since a "when in doubt, hold fire" approach at least makes some sense when thinking about it.

I think being able to use emotes, proximity voice chat, and being able to holster your weapon are ways that players can use to show their non-hostile or hostile intentions.

Most people won't even use the ingame chat. Calling it now.

Quoted for truth. Eve alliances even often discourage the use of in-game chat because of how insecure the communication is. If you have critical intel to relay to very important people and you want to do it in the most secret way possible, the last thing you would ever use is the in-game chat. Teamspeak and Mumble are well known to provide secure comms. But even then those aren't the only options. Some players even go as far as sharing cell phone numbers and emails. I swear, us Eve players are some of the most paranoid bunch you've ever seen.

Thanks for all the great ideas guys.

IGÇÖve been giving this a little thought and I think IGÇÖm leaning towards a reactive system rather than a proactive one. If the safety level is player determined (proactive) I know for sure that a blue tag isnGÇÖt intending to shoot me. If it is reactive then I just know he might not shoot me and hasnGÇÖt shot anyone recently. I rather like the sense of slight uncertainty with the latter method.

Whether or not thatGÇÖs appropriate for high sec is a different question though...

Agree u break the rules in high sec u get slapped hard like a concord police drone that instant blaps u.

Quoted for truth. Eve alliances even often discourage the use of in-game chat because of how insecure the communication is. If you have critical intel to relay to very important people and you want to do it in the most secret way possible, the last thing you would ever use is the in-game chat. Teamspeak and Mumble are well known to provide secure comms. But even then those aren't the only options. Some players even go as far as sharing cell phone numbers and emails. I swear, us Eve players are some of the most paranoid bunch you've ever seen.

Ok. I'm going to go ahead and state what should be incredibly obvious but you've both missed.

Your opponents won't be on your teamspeak, nor will the potential allies that you might happen across.

Whilst many players (according to the stats that you didn't bother to quote) don't use EVE speak. Doesn't mean people wouldn't use it in Legion. Look at CoD or planetside 2, or DayZ, or Dust514 (yeah I went there) or any number of other games.

Ok. I'm going to go ahead and state what should be incredibly obvious but you've both missed.

Your opponents won't be on your teamspeak, nor will the potential allies that you might happen across.

Whilst many players (according to the stats that you didn't bother to quote) don't use EVE speak. Doesn't mean people wouldn't use it in Legion. Look at CoD or planetside 2, or DayZ, or Dust514 (yeah I went there) or any number of other games.

I think it's very relevant to Salvage though, handling this badly (or not at all) could lead to a lot of frustration.

This is quite interesting. Will give it some thought.

Salvage fields are set in the aftermath of battle and the salvage is scattered across the map and must be located and harvested. You don't gain it from directly killing drones currently.

@ Severus Smith

At the moment the harvester doesnGÇÖt take up a slot. We didnGÇÖt want to place an extra step (fitting) between the player and salvaging. The current idea is that you will be able to fit modules to your dropsuit that will augment the harvester.

EVE players and drones

IGÇÖve seen a few comments asking whether or not EVE players will be allowed to deploy drones to salvage themselves. This is a pretty cool idea although it seems like a shame to not create a player to player relationship between EVE pilots and mercs on the ground. Still interesting possibilities there for the future.

Is there a chance to allowing EVE players to deploy scanning probes over the planets to help dusters find salvage site, drones, or others player "harvesting" module?

I think it would be hillarious to see us escorting Drones to Salvage zones, have the drones box up the goodies, and see those boxes fly up into the sky X-files style.......