The way you are

[Thurgret]

I've had characters lose their ships four times in the time I've been playing here. I've been in more fights than that, but I only recall actually winning just one of them. Since my experience is frankly somewhat limited, I'll go with what I know and what was fun and what wasn't.

Once, it was a swarm of pirate ships - some fighters, some bombers - against the guns of Trenton outpost, a swarm of fighters and a dreadnought. I was with the lawfuls. That was -brilliant-. It didn't matter that I lost my ship. I checked the pirate factions message dump later on, and laughed at it when I saw that the dreadnought had managed to crash into Manhattan. It was fun. It seemed balanced (in truth, the pirates gave the lawfuls a thrashing, but the fight took a loooong time). I wanted my ship to be there and to take part in that. I knew I was horribly outmatched by most of them in terms of both flying skill and equipment. It didn't matter. It was fun.

The other times - well, I'll not point fingers. They weren't fun. They involved me being outnumbered and outgunned, me trying to flee, them CDing me and blowing my ship to bits so that they could get my spare 20 credit countermeasures.

I -have- managed to flee from some fights, actually, but only when other friendlies have been nearby.


But -- this isn't about personal issues, but the game as a whole. Going from what I know, however, being killed is not fun if it is a situation where you would rather flee than fight. If you are content to face overwhelming odds and find it enjoyable, then good on you. If not, flee. And, attackers - don't CD them. Let them get away. From the moment they activate their cruise engines, they'll not be allowed touch you or come into the system you're in for so long as you stay there for 4 hours. The only exceptions to this are if they are a trader, in which case you should still try to RP a bit more even when they try to flee, if there is some very valid reason to kill them e.g. they have a bounty on them and you're a bounty hunter, or if it would be utterly ooRP to let them go e.g. Order vs. Nomads.


Edited to add: if you outnumber someone, it seems weird that anyone would pull back. But let folks flee if they want to flee.


Also, had a great learning experience earlier. I was with a small convoy - two transports, two VHFs. One pirate in a VHF stopped us. We talked to him, he called a freighter over, transports dumped some goods for the freighter, we continued. We could probably have destroyed both pirates. But in hindsight, what did happen was much better.