not planned Killshooter

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

In other MP games I've played, there was a concept of killshooter.

If a player shoots or bombs a friendly, the friendly does not take the damage.  The damage is reflected back on the shooter.  The shooter takes the damage.

That has always proven to be a pretty effective anti-griefing tool.

It'd be nice to have that as a MP server setting option for DCS.  Saves all the complexity of have scripts keeping track of infractions and kicking and banning.  Griefers would learn very quickly it is not to their advantage. 

And when mistakes do happen?  It's fair play that the shooter takes the damage rather than the friendly who made no mistake.  And it is better to get blown up than banned.  It's a learning opportunity.

$0.02.

 

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

Possibly even consider a "no-friendly collision" option.  Blame on collision is a lot harder to weigh.  

If griefers die when shooting friendlies and can't ram them, then whole chunks of MP admin scripts can be discarded.

Some might say that is too unrealistic, but if people are playing properly it will never be an issue because it shouldn't happen, if people are griefing, it prevents harm to the innocent.

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by [16AGR] CptTrips

[SharpeXB]

Seems gamey for a sim. After all friendly fire happens IRL. 

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

8 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Seems gamey for a sim. After all friendly fire happens IRL. 

How else would you control a griefer if you were running a simple server and didn't want to get into scripting?

It would be  a server "option" so don't click it if you don't want it.

 

[SharpeXB]

10 minutes ago, [16AGR] CptTrips said:

How else would you control a griefer if you were running a simple server and didn't want to get into scripting?

It would be  a server "option" so don't click it if you don't want it.

If it’s accidental it’s not too much to worry about. It happens. If it’s intentional report it and maybe there’s a ban deserved. If it happens too much on certain servers then avoid those. I honestly haven’t experienced this much in DCS. 

[baboeska]

I'd like that as a server side option.

[cfrag]

8 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

Seems gamey for a sim.

Let's acknowledge a simple fact: a griefer is a purely game-related phenomenon. In games (and DCS is a game), especially in MP, we have to deal with antisocial elements. One possibility is closing the server to members only. Many servers can't afford that. Another are measures to detect some specific game traits that identify a griefer. That's not 'gamey'. It is explicitly a gaming tool. Because DCS is a game. And to increase the entertainment we derive from a game, we from time to time have to resort to measures that embark to control other players who behave in a way that is actively aimed at spoiling other people's fun. Not doing something would be far worse - it could embolden and increase the ranks of those childish idiots. 

I've written a small tool (see here) that can detect friendly kills, and repeat offenders will suffer the consequences for as long as the mission is running (no matter what aircraft they slot into after they have been determined to be a griefer, their aircraft takes on an additional 200 tons of cargo). I believe that an internal method in DCS (a server option?) that automatically refuses aircraft slots to players who have committed more than a number of friendly kills could help - it's trivial to write (I know, because I wrote such a script without internal knowledge). 

7 hours ago, SharpeXB said:

I honestly haven’t experienced this much in DCS. 

Perhaps. But maybe other people have - I would caution against assuming that my own experience can be applied to everyone's. I don't know if it's a widespread phenomenon; I have seen it occasionally, I was asked to write an anti-griefing tool some time ago, and OP was sufficiently bothered by this to post here; I think that this may count as coincidental evidence that it is happening and could be a problem. Since griefers are immature jerks, they usually target servers with people who try to play as realistically as possible - for the simple reason that strict players tend to get more furious when their efforts are intentionally disrupted. Of course it would be best if griefers didn't exist at all. Next best thing: use an automatic bouncer, and have an inter-server blacklist of griefers. A lot can be done with little effort and with the (hopefully) continuing success and popularity of DCS, I think it can be a good addition to server owner's toolboxes if ED added some instruments to get rid of griefers.

Edited July 31, 2023 by cfrag

[draconus]

1 hour ago, cfrag said:

Since griefers are immature jerks, they usually target servers with people who try to play as realistically as possible...

Why play on a public server in that case, where you let everyone jump into armed military aircraft? Not realistic in the first place. Imagine it IRL and you'll see it's asking for tragedy to happen, inviting all kind of rookies and extremists.

When you apply some anti-grief tech you deny the realistic simulation of pilots going rogue, spies or false flag operations... and then all the action of players having to deal with such incident. You also deny realistic simulation of blue on blue incidents.

[SharpeXB]

3 hours ago, cfrag said:

I believe that an internal method in DCS (a server option?) that automatically refuses aircraft slots to players who have committed more than a number of friendly kills could help - it's trivial to write (I know, because I wrote such a script without internal knowledge). 

That seems like a better idea. 

3 hours ago, cfrag said:

I would caution against assuming that my own experience can be applied to everyone's.

Nevertheless, can recall this happening to me maybe two or so times over many years of playing flight sims. DCS and others. I assume all these games have tools for banning players.

[cfrag]

2 hours ago, draconus said:

Not realistic in the first place. Imagine it IRL

We are talking about a game, not real life. A game is the antithesis of real life, for entertainment purpose. IRL, I would not be allowed inside a fighter jet even though I have a pilot's license. Do you have a complex, turbine rating? Are you a member of the armed forces? If not, it would not be realistic anyone would let you fly an armed jet. Imagine if IRL they let any yahoo with less than 2000 hours stick time into a jet loaded up with weapons. It's a game, so let us not get too carried away with realism. 

2 hours ago, draconus said:

When you apply some anti-grief tech you deny the realistic simulation of pilots going rogue, spies or false flag operations

How many of your routine missions include going rogue, or false flag ops? IMHO, the "Firefox" strategy of stealing an enemy plane has only so many applications. And if - during mission design - you know that this may be a viable strategy, simply disable the "no-griefing" mission option. But I think that this is beside the point. Griefers do not do their stuff as a matter of role playing as spy. They do it to spoil all other people's fun.

2 hours ago, draconus said:

Why play on a public server

I know that you are obsessed with how everything should be realistic, but I believe that can lead to stagnation. Realism to a degree, and optional realism I believe would be the ticket to greater success. DCS can flourish if it manages to include more, and more casual play styles. That may not be as attractive to us rivet counters - but it is more inclusive and it must include less hardcore people. And if DCS can attract more people, that helps to fund development and progress.

That is where I believe a major part of DCS's future will be: multiplayer, with less hardcore people than us. To make multiplayer successful, there must be many servers, with many people frequenting them. In other words: many players must enjoy the experience and they must want more, want to come back. It may not be to our liking, but more popular servers will only start to show up if their owners can find a way to refinance them. That means popularity, and it means mainstream. And popularity always also attracts those people who we wish did not exist: the childishly immature asocial jerks.

So I'm not arguing for anti-grief measures out of desire for realism. A griefer is never part of "IRL"; they are not part of a carefully laid-out false flag strategy to solve a lovingly crafted multiplayer mission. They are a a lamentable by-product of our society and a sad fixture in the entertainment industry. Ignoring those little s%ç*!!! would not further DCS, because they thrive on spoiling fun. That's why, to grow, I think a modicum of optional server-side griefer suppression could go a long way. Not because it is realistic. But because it can help to preserve the game from some vandalism and allows its popularity to grow; to allow popular public servers to emerge and engage more players: a virtuous circle (I hope). 

Edited July 31, 2023 by cfrag

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

49 minutes ago, cfrag said:

So I'm not arguing for anti-grief measures out of desire for realism. A griefer is never part of "IRL"; they are not part of a carefully laid-out false flag strategy to solve a lovingly crafted multiplayer mission. They are a a lamentable by-product of our society and a sad fixture in the entertainment industry. Ignoring those little s%ç*!!! would not further DCS, because they thrive on spoiling fun. That's why, to grow, I think a modicum of optional server-side griefer suppression could go a long way. Not because it is realistic. But because it can help to preserve the game from some vandalism and allows its popularity to grow; to allow popular public servers to emerge and engage more players: a virtuous circle (I hope). 

 

 

In the two "options" I suggested above, in a perfect world, if there are no griefers on the server, those options being on wouldn't be noticed.  No would would be trying to ram, no one would be trying to shoot friendlies.  You wouldn't know they are on.  On a well behaved server, they would be invisible.  No additional burden on white-hat players.

In an imperfect world, they would protect innocent players from having their fun held hostage by a jerk.

There are excellent scripts out there, but a player ought to be able to throw up a server and have those basic gameplay protections in place just with what ED provides and not need external scripts. If they want more complex fine-grained control, they can turn them off and use scripts instead.

However, the option would not be on by default.  So if you don't want it, don't click those options.  If those options are on a server and you don't like it, then don't play on that server.  Other than that...thanks for your input.

 

Edited July 31, 2023 by [16AGR] CptTrips

[SharpeXB]

34 minutes ago, [16AGR] CptTrips said:

In the two "options" I suggested above

Trying to actually put artificial damage onto another aircraft in the game seems like it would be too much work to implement. It would be easier to just ban the offenders. Which can already be done afaik

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

 

59 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Trying to actually put artificial damage onto another aircraft in the game seems like it would be too much work to implement. It would be easier to just ban the offenders. Which can already be done afaik

 

Without scripting?  Can you point me to the UI for that?

 

[SharpeXB]

1 minute ago, [16AGR] CptTrips said:

 

 

Without scripting?  Can you point me to the UI for that?

 

I don’t know how servers work but I’m sure there’s a way to ban players

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

45 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

I don’t know how servers work but I’m sure there’s a way to ban players

There is UI to kick\ban a player from the player list on the server UI.  But I don't see any way to set rules.  A server owner can not necessarily spend every second of the day babysitting their server.  Should a griefer be free to ruin a server for hours?

Since this would be a voluntary setting, I really don't see what your problem is.  

 

Edited July 31, 2023 by [16AGR] CptTrips

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

And there will be cases where I don't want to ban a noob, but I don't want them continually shooting friendlies even if by accident.  

Killshooter would solve that problem instantly. The innocent players would be instantly protected and the noob should figure it out eventually when they die each time.  But they are not banned, so they can improve from there.

Save the server admin from having to adjudicate bans and decide if players deserve to be unbanned.  It would just make everything simpler.

And it would be optional to the server.  If you don't like it, don't enable it.  

 

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

6 hours ago, draconus said:

When you apply some anti-grief tech you deny the realistic simulation of pilots going rogue, spies or false flag operations... and then all the action of players having to deal with such incident. You also deny realistic simulation of blue on blue incidents.

That should be up to the server owner to decide if they want that.  If they want that, they can decline to enable the setting.  It isn't being forced on them.

SLmod already allows setting of rules to punish team kills for server owners who wish to do so. 

This would just be a simpler UI based way of doing that without resorting to 3rd party Lua scripts.  And I maintain that killshooter is probably a better solution than banning for noobs.

 

Edited July 31, 2023 by [16AGR] CptTrips

[SharpeXB]

1 hour ago, [16AGR] CptTrips said:

Since this would be a voluntary setting, I really don't see what your problem is. 

It seems like it would be a lot of work to develop, which could be spent better on other things. Really, how much of a problem is this?

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

29 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

It seems like it would be a lot of work to develop, which could be spent better on other things. Really, how much of a problem is this?

I doubt it would be that hard.  Games from 20 years  ago had it.

They already track who owns each deployed weapon.   They already know who is being hit.   They already know which coalition each is on.  When a weapon hit occurs, if they are on the on the same coalition, send a damage event back to the initiator, discard the damage to the target.  It doesn't even have to be detailed.  Just a basic damage level based on type of weapon.  It shouldn't be too hard to discard to damage to the target.  The code already understands how to make things invulnerable.  So it would just be a conditional form of the invulnerable setting.  Invulnerable to friendly fire and send the damage message back to the initiator.

But I'll let ED decide how difficult that would be.  You should too.  

If it wasn't a potential problem, the people who spent time writing SLMod wouldn't have bothered.  But pulling in 3rd party Lua scripts is something not all players want to deal with.  

And as a server owner, I wouldn't want to have to deal with noobs begging to be unbanned and having to review track files to determine if it is justified.  This solution would just be much simpler.  Easy.  UI based.  No third party Lua scripting necessary.  Hands-off.

 

Edited July 31, 2023 by [16AGR] CptTrips

[SharpeXB]

11 minutes ago, [16AGR] CptTrips said:

I doubt it would be that hard.  Games from 20 years  ago had it.

They already track who owns each deployed weapon.   They already know who is being hit.   They already know which coalition each is on.  When a weapon hit occurs, if they are on the on the same coalition, send a damage event back to the initiator, discard the damage to the target.  It doesn't even have to be detailed.  Just a basic damage level based on type of weapon.  It shouldn't be too hard to discard to damage to the target.  The code already understands how to make things invulnerable.  So it would just be a conditional form of the invulnerable setting.  Invulnerable to friendly fire and send the damage message back to the initiator.

But I'll let ED decide how difficult that would be.  You should too.  

If it wasn't a potential problem, the people who spent time writing SLMod wouldn't have bothered.  But pulling in 3rd party Lua scripts is something not all players want to deal with.  

And as a server owner, I wouldn't want to have to deal with noobs begging to be unbanned and having to review track files to determine if it is justified.  This solution would just be much simple.  Easy.  UI based.  No third party Lua scripting necessary.  Hands-off.

 

Everything in DCS is difficult and takes years to accomplish even if they decide to peruse something. The best bet is to do something on your own if it’s important enough to you. I know servers can already track this without extra work from the Devs. 

I’ve  actually never seen this feature in any other game, CFS or not. 

Edited July 31, 2023 by SharpeXB

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

1 minute ago, SharpeXB said:

Everything in DCS is difficult and takes years to accomplish even if they decide to peruse something. The best bet is to do something on your own if it’s important enough to you. I know servers can already track this without extra work from the Devs. 

 

You've made your point and I disagree.  At this point you are just trying to be a troll.

I've been meaning to put you and Draconus on Block for a while.  This just reminded me.  Buh bye.

 

[cfrag]

2 hours ago, [16AGR] CptTrips said:

They already track who owns each deployed weapon.   They already know who is being hit.   They already know which coalition each is on.  When a weapon hit occurs, if they are on the on the same coalition, send a damage event back to the initiator, discard the damage to the target.

Huh. If that is all that you want, that's a near instant script. If you commit fratricide, blowing up your plane is easy. That's already part of the "unGrief" script I referred to. If you want such a script (kill a fratricidal pilot), that's easy, I'd guess I can write a proof of concept in a few hours (tomorrow, I'm turning in for today). Just let me know. 

[And yes, it that was built into DCS, it would be even better. But if you want, I can craft you a stand-alone script for punishing attacking your own]

Edited July 31, 2023 by cfrag

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

15 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Huh. If that is all that you want, that's a near instant script. If you commit fratricide, blowing up your plane is easy. That's already part of the "unGrief" script I referred to. If you want such a script (kill a fratricidal pilot), that's easy, I'd guess I can write a proof of concept in a few hours (tomorrow, I'm turning in for today). Just let me know.

Except that doesn't protect the innocent player from a team kill.  That is only half the benefit of what I suggested.

SLMod has team kill punishment too.  But some people don't want to have to deal with custom 3rd party scripts.

And then deal with scripts breaking with new versions.

An average player who wants to throw up a server should have some basic griefer protection easily available from the provided interface.  They shouldn't have to go look on the internet to find a custom script to do something that probably should be provided built-in and figure out how to load it and update it when new DCS versions break it.

I'm not saying this couldn't be accomplished with custom scripts.  I'm saying a simpler, easier approach could be provided natively that would probably cover the 90% case.

 

Edited July 31, 2023 by [16AGR] CptTrips

[cfrag]

1 minute ago, [16AGR] CptTrips said:

  I'm saying a simpler, easier approach could be provided natively that would probably cove the 90% case.

Agreed. A native solution is always preferred to one that is bolted on. From where I stand, simply disabling friendly fire (player-player) would be a trivial task for ED, because the code indeed knows for each projectile who owns it. Adding some anti-griefing should be equally trivial. And I believe that in the future, when multiplayer DCS becomes more prevalent, making these protection server-side will become quite important. Let us hope that ED puts their mind to this soon.

[[HOUNDS] CptTrips]

9 minutes ago, cfrag said:

Agreed. A native solution is always preferred to one that is bolted on. From where I stand, simply disabling friendly fire (player-player) would be a trivial task for ED, because the code indeed knows for each projectile who owns it. Adding some anti-griefing should be equally trivial. And I believe that in the future, when multiplayer DCS becomes more prevalent, making these protection server-side will become quite important. Let us hope that ED puts their mind to this soon.

 

Also consider how much more approachable this makes MP for new customers.

I find it pretty intimidating going on MP servers.  Not so much because I worry about getting killed.  I worry about screwing up and team killing due to noobness.  I don't want to piss experience players off and I don't want to get banned and have to go crawling on hands and knees to beg forgiveness.

If I died from killshooter I'd smack my forehead and respawn at least knowing no harm to others occurred and I didn't make enemies.

I played another online MP game for over 20 years (off and on) that had this exact feature.  It is tried and true.  I assure you it works quite well.

And lowering the intimidation factor might increase DCS MP numbers which quite shockingly lag total units sold.

And it is optional.  So those that prefer the increased power and flexibility of a custom script can go that route and  server admins that currently use SLMod and other scripts like yours can continue to do so uninterrupted.

Edited July 31, 2023 by [16AGR] CptTrips