What is your idea?

During the recent war, there was one fluke type event that occurred. A player who was in protection against being wacked ("pro'd" in the parlance of we hitters) was shooting at another player that was not pro'd, and, well, it's going to be hard to explain briefly, but things got strange.

Jul 22, '12 06:37 You tried to WACK! DeadlySin

This shot was a jailed shot. The message received for the result was the "DeadlySin walks away unharmed as two of [city]'s finest slap the cuffs on" message.

Jul 22, '12 06:37 dsaneildy tried to WACK! you.

That same minute, that same second, DeadlySin shot back. When this shooter, you would think, would have been in jail from the attempt that resulted in him being jailed. Just to be 100% clear, he was sitting in jail after the shot as well:

Jul 22, '12 06:38 DeadlySin broke you out of jail.

He got broken out of jail that was caused by his shot after the shot at him. So someone who was pro'd shot at DeadlySin, got jailed from that very attempt, and had a shot go through in the gap between the attempt registering as valid and the attempt being fully resolved and shoving the shooter into jail. A shot that, for TWO reasons, someone would think wouldn't go through: (1) you'd think he would be in jail at the time anyway, and (2) if he wasn't in jail at the time, you would think that he would still be pro'd.

When this happened, a few players involved spoke with the administrators, who determined this result to be caused for a similar reason as double kills. Two wack attempts registered in the server at the exact same second, and it had to go through and resolve them both. It did so as follows: The pro'd shooter locked on his wack and DeadlySin locked on his wack simultaneously. The locking on of a wack itself is what voided pro for the "first" shooter (the one who was protected) which allowed the second attempt (DeadlySin's attempt) to also clear. Thus both attempts achieved results, and at about that time the protected player was placed into jail and both gained protection at the end.

If your head is hurting, that's because the result was weird by most standards, not because you read it wrong.

In its shortest form, the server-side calculations step one is voiding out a shooter's pro, even before it figures out the result of the attempt. The server locked on, voided the pro, then figured out what happened. The two shots going through at the same millisecond meant that two attempts had to be resolved in a funky weird order that resulted in what I think most would recognize is a weird glitchy result.

Counterfactual: as things currently stand, if the pro'd shooter's shot had been a hit instead of a miss, DeadlySin would have died. But his shot would have already been locked on, and for the same reason it slipped through before jails, his shot could have gone through as well. If that shot had hit, the shooter (protected at the time he was shooting) would have been killed by his target who was killed by his own bullet. Two people would have killed each other, when one of the two went into the fight with protection.

Suggestion: reorder operations in the wack code so that the last thing that happens after a wack attempt is resolved, rather than the first thing that happens when a shot "locks on," is the pro being voided.

Has your idea already been suggested in some form or another before? (Check the Suggestions forum for past threads with ideas the same or similar to yours.)

Nope. First time anyone noticed this problem.

What is the positive impact of your idea?

No one will be shot at in the gap between a shot locking on and being resolved. (1) People jailed on the attempt won't be shootable until broken out, regardless of how fast attempts came in. (2) If someone who is pro'd shoots at someone who is not pro'd, the not pro'd person will never be able to kill the person who is pro'd regardless of if he clicks the very same second as the pro'd person.

What is the negative impact of your idea?

I can't think of one.

How may your idea affect the rest of the userbase?

It won't. It just deals with a very rare situation where very weird results can happen.


[Note: Being that this is my own suggestion, I shall not be sponsoring it.]

I've seen this happen countless times where my pro wack has shown up before my shot in the personal's. I think this is more of a bug fix than an actual game change but I agree it needs to be resolved.

Agreed, this does sound like a bug fix.

I agree to a point. If your shot had gone through and killed DeadlySin, there should be no way for him to return a shot that same second. However, If your shot had gone through and had a jail WB, from a RP perspective, in the time it takes a couple of cops to get handcuffs on you, and drag your ass to jail, it'd be very doable for DeadlySin to have shot back at you before they managed to drag you away.

However, then you could argue, would somebody shoot at someone with them being so close to two cops? Obviously, from an RP perspective.

Maybe there could be some sort of option whether you want to be able to shoot someone as they are being carted off to jail, but with the risk of getting thrown in jail yourself, even if it wasn't a jail wackback? This sentence could be increased as law enforcement saw you commit it right in front of them, and you endangered their lives. Maybe 20 minutes, or even 30? With an increased amount of guards, maybe triple or quadruple your original amount?

Just a couple of points to think about really. I will however be sponsoring this idea as it would make a lot more sense in the game even if my suggesstions weren't considered at all.

I'd guess that the amount of times this happens is small enough that this really is a bug fix not a change, but i'm in favor of fixing it.

I'd also say i'd be interested in seeing pratster's idea put in as either a timer or a CA thing. My logic behind it being a CA thing is that If you have a guy working for you, he may be the arresting officier for takes in your enemy, so you get say a 1 in 15 chance of being allowed to take a shot or something like that, and then a (guess number here) 40% chance of being jailed no matter the result of teh shot. Of course the normal WB and what not would still apply.

{Without any real deterrent, wouldn't everyone just shoot back with cops in the area? I think every wacker would take a shot if it resulted in purely a jail sentence. You would have to enter the realms of a true drawback, otherwise it would be pointless coding it.

I don't see how a sentence of anything less than 1 hour, that you couldn't be rescued from, which would then keep you away from taking another shot, would be a worthwhile reason to stop you from always taking on the shot.}

Most of that went over my head and like Sayyid said, my head ended up hurting. But I got two things out of this.

1. DeadlySin shot back when JohnGalt should have been in jail. My thought: I'm not opposed to the second shooter shooting back immediately after having been shot. One could RP that while JohnGalt was being put into cuffs DeadlySin just got his shot off. If DS misses, then JG still goes to jail. Perhaps a situation like this could increase drastically DS's chances of going to jail himself since he is shooting in front of police presence.

2. The conclusion that two people could kill each other. I'm on the fence about this one. We could conceive the possibility of two people shooting at each other killing each other. But I also understand that if we are to acknowledge one of the shooters approaching the situation with a pro shot, then the second shot shouldn't go through until the first shot and its consequences is *completely* resolved.