Let's have a look at a typical trading Community Goal scenario. Considering I am a trader that wants to compete in a community goal to get the prizes for top tier of players I am on a lost position from the get-go.
I have a choice - sacrifice some of my cargo space to get more armour and bigger shields to increase my survivability. This means that competing in the CG immediately becomes a lost cause, as the people who fly in Solo can easily go for min-maxed shieldless, defenceless all-cargo-rack builds, which means they will be able to haul A LOT more and win the CG.
Open only cmdrs can get into top 10%, but they cannot hope or neither have means to be "competetive" due of that they need optimize thier bulids specifically for open, wich is nothing else than sacrifice thier cargo capacity for some defences, and thats since ever CG was added into game.
Still, I would say, if really want win hauling CG, do it at solo like others who are in top of that game, rather than complain how open is unfair in that regard. Of course open is unfair becasue of risk being ganked. Charms of open, and it wont be away, becasue open is also PVP mode, like it or not.
What could be done to make it a bit better? Below are some of the proposals we came up together (remember I said it's been discussed with a lot of people, some of which were also gankers!)
- Remove the 2 million bounty cap for player bounty hunting. If a player has 100 million bounty - that's how much the bounty hunter should get!
Im all in for removing bounty caps. Its relic, and if removed, it still would not be anymore diffrent than "donating" as if say, wanted cmdr with 1b gives away it for thier friend, they still would need pay it upon rebui. Doing it by FC trade "donating", its way more simplier, easier and faster, than killing countless cmdrs or npcs to gather high bounty in to just give it away to a friend, who might be needed in credit boost. I cant image anyone doing it for that given FC are here now.
And its removal of cap would boost PVP bounty hunting by a lot, and actually properly reward those who would score kill like that.
- Increase player bounties greatly. With the cap removed, make it actually worthwhile for the player bounty hunters to engage with Wanted players.
Its actually not needed, with notoriety 10 and high-value ship, an ganker can still get millions of bounty added per single kill.
- Make escaping player interdictions easier.
Intediction game suffers mostly from lag and off-sync issues, but there is skill and knack for it required as well to be "good" at it.
- Make the aggressor being pulled to the victim after the successful and/or submitted interdiction, rather than the other way around. This will mean that the reward for my better piloting skills is the better chance to get to my destination if I manage to escape back into Super Cruise.
It would not make sense from very definiton how interdiction works, both as mechanic and by "lore" how it works.
- Multiply the victims' rebuy cost being added to the criminal's rebuy after they destroy a ship. Make it scalable with the current Credits value in the economy.
I would love to see that, currently gaining high bounty is hassle, even with high-value ships, of course by going only after cmdrs. But thats only my opinion, as someone with nearly 2b on myself, and besides, it would punish too much in PVE again, than it already does.
- From certain level of Notoriety (5 and above?) make the criminal get only the stock ship back, losing their engineered modules. Alternatively make them retrieveable after specific amount of time only (24/48 hours?)
Hell nope. As already pointed out by some others, this would make PVE too much punishing if someone decide doing illegal missions or make mistake, and then lose it all. Increase costs in credits, yes... but not take away engineered modules. Also, what if someone have double-engineered modules or really good legacy ones? You cant have them anymore if lost like that. You got carried bit too much here, pal.
- Increase the police response in High and Medium Security systems. Low Sec and Anarchy should be fairly safe for criminals, but Med and High should really make them think twice before they decide to destroy another player's ship.
Current problem is how ATR works. And there is no good balance, becasue if that would be too harsh, it would punish again, too much in PVE and those who cant deal with it. ATR can be evaded, but if they appear, they are already more than adequate to deal with thier target, mainly becasue of thier cheated weapons.
- Introduce more reasons to be a criminal that don't involve mindless ganking.
In space, ships go boom. That reason its enough, might as well be countless others. If attacked in open, do not try reason with it, but either fight back or evade it. It is that much simple. Open can be risky, and anyone should be aware of that, its not kind of rainbow unicorn paradise where every other player is kind and friendly, as many thinks it should.
I found it funny that no one complains if they get attacked by npcs, who just sayin: "I am pirate lord, and I kill you" (do not mistake it with pirate npcs who might want just cargo - there are npcs who going for the kill right of bat) but if other cmdr doing it, suddenly sea of salt appears and pointless disscusions, about "but I dont have cargo or weapons but other player killed me, WHY" or something along these lines... In elite dangerous, within its lore, cmdrs can get blasted out by loitering landing pad among many other reasons, and overall its very harsh environment for single human/cmdr in terms how easly they can die (way worse than in medieval period for example), since there is hundreds of billions of them. Loss of life/assets its been consider by very diffrently in 3300, by lore, than our "modern" standarts.
Of course main diffrence is when attacked by npc vs other player, is that npcs can be avoided with relative ease, while cmdrs who knows what they are doing, they do get thier kills by most of time, and evading those is also skill required to survive in open.
