Recently I started my first actual Mercenary character and found out that the situation out there in the field and on boards is much more complex than I expected. Let me describe the set of hypothetical situations and shape the problem.
1.
Imagine a group fight between numerous sides. Let it be Bounty Hunters, Mercenaries of Lawful and Unlawful affiliation and some different criminals which don't have good relations, let's say they got pretty much bad temper and lack tolerance to each other. It's a blizzard and everything is shooting everything.
Here comes the blue message glitch which displays the final blow as the great will of admins or NPCs. Sometimes it's not hard to define the successor according to the hull and shield points on the screenshots, nanobots and batteries count, but let's say that the situation is pretty much unclear.
Should this kill be claimed by one of the sides or all of them?
Should it be claimed at all to fit the bounty board rules or left not posted in violation of the said rules?
2.
Now imagine the aforesaid situation in a fight involving capital ships of different sides. Let's say, Hessians and Corsairs, shooting each other and getting shot by mercenaries working on both sides. While the snubcraft fights are simpler from this point, the role of a single fighter or bomber in the fight between battleships is considerably low.
Now let's assume that the battleships went down with the said NPC blue message and it's obvious that the battleships dealt almost all the damage to each other before going to hell. The mercenaries and Bounty Hunters in several different groups did their part as well, but none of them had the superior numbers or ship classes to claim the leading role in the final attack.
Can one of the groups or one of the individuals claim the destruction of the said battleship on his own?
How can be defined the one capable to claim the result of the group effort?
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#66CCCC]3.
tl;dr
Where is the thin line between following the simple ethics and bounty board rules in the situations when the targets that died to group effort of various parties hadn't left any information on the actual killer?
Is it ethical to claim the kill in which the role of the claiming party was insignificant?
And how do such situations correspond with the bounty board rules?
I would like to add my /approve to this. The kill messages, especialyl on caps, go unclear most of the time. Isnt there a way to focus on target? /focus or smth, to link it together for name of a hunter?
And it happens that the "Someone, but not any of those present had killed your target" appears in the duels or simple group fights with no more than two sides present, so I can't really agree with you.
And it happens that the "Someone, but not any of those present had killed your target" appears in the duels or simple group fights with no more than two sides present, so I can't really agree with you.
Under bounty contract, boards can accept only those clear messages, and loophole the loopholes. :cool:
' Wrote:I would say that you can only claim when destruction message states your name, as it is the only proof, you made the final blow.
But that's just me.
In practice this won't work. Because it means that only, and I`m making an educated guess here, 30-40% of your actual kills can be claimed. the remainder will have weird death messages.
After a good time merc'ing and a frackload of "# killed by npc/admin." or the good ol '# has died." alongside with the ones that run to the system wall (and we get no kill message, something i think we should have, since a) The attacker had the patience to follow said target for 500k's, b) Someone that hits the system wall alone is afk with their cruise engines on, thus slot-saving or something and the kill beep makes no diference), i think the current system of claiming bounties on 'npc/admin' kills should go on as it is.
Either you coordinate a pay-out with the other mercs (Reavers and Mandos do such thing when hitting the same target), or as happens in much of my case, i alone do the pinning, the dodging and some residual damage on enemy caps while the support capitals total the cap 8 turtles (whoops, did i said that outloud?).
Some i claim, some i don't due to see that most of the damage was done by the support caps.
Other times i know my work should and gets rewarded.
If you change the bounty rules on that point, the whole system will suffer a shake on it or we ask for such bug to be corrected. (But that won't prevent someone to lay the last shot, someone that was the only fighter in the middle of a capital brawl or something).
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