Placates are abilities that prevent your enemy from targeting you for a short time. One of the easiest examples of this is Jam Sensors, the science ability. When you use Jam Sensors against an enemy, they cannot target or attack you until either the duration wears off, you deal a certain damage threshold to them, or they clear it with something like Science Team.
Jam Sensors is not commonly used in PvP, but there are two others that are - the Personal Space Trait "Pseudo-Submission" and the damage control duty officer that provides a placate after using Auxiliary to Structural Integrity Field.
Both of these placates prevent your attacker from targeting you for a fixed amount of time. When you are placated, the ship that placated you disappears visually, although you can still see certain visual effects on their ships and track them that way, but you will not be able to attack until the placate wears off or you cleanse the effect.
In the case of Pseudo Submission, anyone who is targeting you when you activate a heal is placated, and this can apply to multiple enemies. This placate cannot be cleared by enemies but is subject to their Control skill, so it frequently only lasts a few seconds at most. Additionally, it only activates once per 30 seconds, and it is also triggered by pets and objects that are targeting you - this is why you'll see even in 1v1 fights players spawning in Beacon ships as they will reduce the chance they will get placated by this trait. Alternatively, simply do not target your enemy and this trait will never activate, but there are times where you have to risk it when focusing a target in an organized team match.
The Auxiliary to Structural Doff only placates the next attacker after you activate this ability, so it also only applies to a single target, which could be a player or a pet/summon. This is yet another reason why pets are spawned in with such frequency. This placate lasts 4 seconds, and this 4 seconds is completely fixed regardless of any control skill. However, it can be cleared by Engineering Team - even if Eng Team is activated in the lead up to the attack. This is why skilled players will activate Eng Team just before attacking a ship using this placate as it allows them to circumvent it.
Despite the disadvantages of these placates, they are still very useful and help reduce incoming damage even if they are not completely reliable.
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