The Invisible Hook

[Toebs]

There is a book, the title is the subject, which investigates and describes pirate society in the Caribbean during the "Golden Age" of piracy (Golden if you were a pirate).

Things basically worked out like this;

1. if you surrendered your ship without a fight, you were NEVER harmed
2. if you fought, then you were killed

The cause being the pirates wish to avoid a fight.

I would expect to see something in ED which enabled this system to exist, because it is what I think you could well expect to have happen with space piracy.

You attack a vessel (including NPC); if they surrender, you take their vessel and you never kill them (if they have a pod, the pod is always left unharmed).

If they fight, then you either run or fight and if you fight and win, then you kill them, always.

I would look for this system in fact to emerge for player-character behaviour, too, simply by the incentives placed upon players, as pirates or merchants.

[AndyB(EDB50)]

Originally Posted by Toebs

There is a book, the title is the subject, which investigates and describes pirate society in the Caribbean during the "Golden Age" of piracy (Golden if you were a pirate).

Things basically worked out like this;

1. if you surrendered your ship without a fight, you were NEVER harmed
2. if you fought, then you were killed

The cause being the pirates wish to avoid a fight.

I would expect to see something in ED which enabled this system to exist, because it is what I think you could well expect to have happen with space piracy.

You attack a vessel (including NPC); if they surrender, you take their vessel and you never kill them (if they have a pod, the pod is always left unharmed).

If they fight, then you either run or fight and if you fight and win, then you kill them, always.

I would look for this system in fact to emerge for player-character behaviour, too, simply by the incentives placed upon players, as pirates or merchants.

chances are we will have the ability to jettison cargo and your average attacking pilot is going to be more interested in scooping it up and getting the heck out of there before the cops show up. why make it any more complex than that?

and to be perfectly honest if i surrender my 650,000 credit freighter without putting up any sort of fight or being forced to jump in the escape pod as the ship explodes around me my insurance company is going to laugh at my claim.

besides that point i think if pirates are allowed to seal your ship it will lead to all sorts of problems, number one being they would make ~WAY~ too much money selling it and it would upset the balance between the different career paths in the game, why bother spending months trading to buy a better ship and weapons when i can just go and steal them from an NPC or other player?

[deMangler]

seems like the kind of thing that could naturally emerge if the universe is free-form enough to allow it.
Or maybe unexpected new unspoken norms of convenience might emerge.
I read somewhere that in Africa for thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of years Lions and Humans shared the top of the food chain by mutual agreement almost never attacking each other because it was just not worth it. There was enough to go around. Then the equilibrium changes and... I hope the Elite dynamic universe is free form enough to allow this kind of evolution too.
Pilots can talk about the good old days when there were enough unarmed traders they didn't have to fight over cargo. These days everyone is Elite with military lasers and the price of fuel, well....,

[Toebs]

Originally Posted by AndyB(EDB50)

chances are we will have the ability to jettison cargo and your average attacking pilot is going to be more interested in scooping it up and getting the heck out of there before the cops show up. why make it any more complex than that?

Good point. Jettisoning without a fight is properly tantamount to surrender, except you don't need to use your escape pod. You just bail.

However, if it is possible to take over ships belonging to others, then things change.

and to be perfectly honest if i surrender my 650,000 credit freighter without putting up any sort of fight or being forced to jump in the escape pod as the ship explodes around me my insurance company is going to laugh at my claim.

I don't think so. Insurance companies did not expect crews to fight for their merchant ships in the Golden Age of piracy. It's not a reasonable expectation. I think it is not expected today of crews off Somalia.

besides that point i think if pirates are allowed to seal your ship it will lead to all sorts of problems, number one being they would make ~WAY~ too much money selling it and it would upset the balance between the different career paths in the game, why bother spending months trading to buy a better ship and weapons when i can just go and steal them from an NPC or other player?

I don't have a problem with it *as long as players are empowered to take steps to react to and deal with the problem*, e.g. forming convoys, hiring decent escorts, having NPC hunter-killer groups go looking for pirates, etc.

The game will never be in some kind of perfect balance; we should not look to attain this but rather to bring into existence mechanisms which allow players to deal with the problems they face.

[Zplintz]

Originally Posted by Toebs

There is a book, the title is the subject, which investigates and describes pirate society in the Caribbean during the "Golden Age" of piracy (Golden if you were a pirate).

Things basically worked out like this;

1. if you surrendered your ship without a fight, you were NEVER harmed
2. if you fought, then you were killed

The cause being the pirates wish to avoid a fight.

I would expect to see something in ED which enabled this system to exist, because it is what I think you could well expect to have happen with space piracy.

You attack a vessel (including NPC); if they surrender, you take their vessel and you never kill them (if they have a pod, the pod is always left unharmed).

If they fight, then you either run or fight and if you fight and win, then you kill them, always.

I would look for this system in fact to emerge for player-character behaviour, too, simply by the incentives placed upon players, as pirates or merchants.

I am not what you wrote above actually happened in historical reality (except in books and films maybe). For a start they didn't have FTL capable escape pods and a crew set free in a rowing boat in the middle of an ocean would have a pretty low probability of survival.

I think you could probably hope for a 'gentlemen's agreement' between players on this basis, but you cannot expect it (or enforce it). There would be nothing stopping the winner destroying the escape pod after the ship was given up and as you will have lost your ship.

Not sure what benefit surviving by giving up your ship and its cargo would be over taking the chance to fight it out?

[Toebs]

Originally Posted by deMangler

I read somewhere that in Africa for thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of years Lions and Humans shared the top of the food chain by mutual agreement almost never attacking each other because it was just not worth it. There was enough to go around.

And then we invented firearms.

[Toebs]

Originally Posted by Zplintz

I am not what you said wrote above actually happened in historical reality (except in books and films maybe).

Be quite clear. This is not fiction or a movie. This is proper full-on historical research. You are free to verify the authors sources.

For a start they didn't have FTL capable escape pods and a crew set free in a rowing boat in the middle of an ocean would have a pretty low probability of survival.

They were not set in a boat, they were taken on board and let off when the ship next reached land.

I think you could probably hope for a 'gentlemen's agreement' between players on this basis, but you cannot expect it (or enforce it). There would be nothing stopping the winner destroying the escape pod after the ship was given up and as you will have lost your ship.

Yes, there is; the fact that if players KNOW they will be killed then they WILL always fight and the pirate wants to avoid the fight, because it's costly and risky.

[Mobius]

sounds like a typical case of bullying, give me your lunch money or me and my mates beat you up.

I know its only a game but i expect peoples ships to be alot stronger and have the oppertunity to be able to put up a good fight,

[Toebs]

Originally Posted by Mobius

sounds like a typical case of bullying, give me your lunch money or me and my mates beat you up.

Erm...

...what were you expecting piracy to be?

I know its only a game but i expect peoples ships to be alot stronger and have the oppertunity to be able to put up a good fight,

If that's so, then no-one will be a pirate. It'll just be too risky. Pirates preyed on the weak, because it's high profit/low risk. If it's not, it won't be done.

[Memnoch]

But their own pirate ships will also be tougher. I don't see that Piracy will be problem, either for those that want to do it or those that are worried it will be too powerful. I'm sure the game will have it's own checks and balances to make it fun for all. The popular idea seems to be that higher security areas will police themselves so that traders can trade with some security against attack and those that want to perform piracy can do so in systems which don't have so much of an active police presence.

And for those who might be annoyed that a Pirates life might mean floating about in the dangerous systems and not being able to stray into core systems without dealing with the police, what did you think being a Pirate was going to be like!?