Yep, I went solo for trading rare goods

[Derath]

No because he could just as easily set up shop in the middle of nowhere and it would for all intents and purposes be the same as solo.

It does represent why open and solo should be separate you just stopped straight away to throw some flak, use some of the imagination were all supposed to have here apparently, what you have here is a player cheating another player by swapping to solo to avoid the consequences of his choices, that pirate probably would have thought jackpot with 10 cargo. If you go into the middle of nowhere you still might meet a player from time to time, it might even be a hostile encounter, but if you choose to avoid it by switching to solo when things get bad after choosing open.... Thats just awful isn't it?

Any pirates reading this i hang around LTT 1349 shipping palladium around, if you want somebody to pirate try me if you earn it i'll drop some!

 

[mandellorian]

Maybe a solution would be to give traders a chance...at the moment even an Anaconda is nothing more than a sitting duck once you understand the basic mechanism of the combat...i can sit there and laugh at the turreted weapons on it as they do next to no damage to a fully spammed up Cobra...try that in Frontier or FFE and see what happens when a 100MW turreted beam laser reaches out and says hello to Mr Cobra MKIII...i don`t understand how pirates can be pretending what they are doing is anything more than picking on the 90lb weakling in the corner...even with a human player that trading ship cannot arm itself to be a viable threat...its kinda pathetic i was hoping for the equivalent of a Q ship looks like a trader until you get close and it turns out to be a warship in disguise...Not with the weapon options available at the moment..you can have a pee shooter...a pee shooter or a pea shooter.

 

[Geers]

Absolutely, you are right. Play as you want. Play your solo character whenever you wish. When you feel up to it.... switch to open and you'll be welcome with open arms... with a new character and none of the money/gear/creds that you used in the danger free hug zone that is known as solo play.

Being able to become a trade god worth billions in danger free solo and then come to the open world with those same billions to become Star God, ruler of the universe in your zillion dollar space craft that shoots out zeus lightning bolts is an asinine idea. You didn't earn those things through the dangers of surviving and thriving the universe that is ED. You went to carebear island where the drinks are free, the hugs are plentiful, and mom is always there to kiss away the pain and wipe away the tears. Which is a fine place and I have no desire to see it burn to the ground... it just needs to be segregated from the rest of us. I don't want it having an effect on an otherwise awesome, ever changing, dynamic, DANGEROUS universe where anything can happen and every man is on his own (until they put in wings, then every group is on their own, you get my point).

Play to your hearts content in solo mode. Never come to open play if you don't want to. However, when you do, you need to be on the same level as the rest of us. Realize it's a dangerous universe and anything can happen. Use your head, know your enemies, think tactical, you'll get by. If this means fewer players in open.... fine. So be it.

I don't begrudge anyone for playing how they want to play.... but allowing this jump to solo/open at any time with the SAME GEAR AND CREDS is one of the dumbest things in the history of gamedom. Is it stopping me from enjoying the game? No, of course not. I'm having a blast and will continue to do so. Just my opinion about a very poo game design choice. Leave solo play intact, so don't allow players to cross over once they've reach "oh yeah, I own several star systems" rich.

Tell me more about this incredibly dangerous "two player encounters per week" universe that is Open play.

 

[Sams]

I don't begrudge anyone for playing how they want to play.... but allowing this jump to solo/open at any time with the SAME GEAR AND CREDS is one of the dumbest things in the history of gamedom.

It does work the other way as well. I decided from the start that I would play solo. Worked my way up to a cobra but it came kinda lonely after a while. I decided to dip my toes into open mode and... I wasn't instantly swamped by 5 human pirates and I liked seeing the odd human player. I got talking to a few people, made a few friends and now I'm in open all the time.

Last night I made a monumental cockup and bought a ship I didn't mean to buy (Clicked 'buy' but not 'confirm' and was looking at it, thinking it will soon be mine... then clicked confirm instead of cancel). That lost me a ton of money in module losses. I thought 'what the hell', after filling the cargo hold to 90% I had ZERO credits left for insurance and 80 million credits on the line with no back-up ship.

I could have swallowed more losses and purchased my old ship again or I could have gone back to solo. Instead I spent yesterday evening on adrenaline filled tender-hooks, risking everything. I could see there was a human asp where I was indicting haulers and every time that ship popped on the scanner and his icon changed from a square to a triangle my heart was racing. Lots of text chats to people I know asking if I had the insurance credits yet.

I could not get that in solo and I love playing in open too now much for those exact kind of heart-racing moments.

 

[CMDR Saunders]

Until such time as you reimburse my purchase cost and pay me £10 an hour to play you don't have a say.

And neither do you.

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Tell me more about this incredibly dangerous "two player encounters per week" universe that is Open play.

Head to eravate. 2 per week? I'd have quit by now. I get dozens per day. I interdicted at least 25 people TODAY. I'll do so again tomorrow. Eravate system. You're welcome.

 

[Derath]

It does work the other way as well. I decided from the start that I would play solo. Worked my way up to a cobra but it came kinda lonely after a while. I decided to dip my toes into open mode and... I wasn't instantly swamped by 5 human pirates and I liked seeing the odd human player. I got talking to a few people, made a few friends and now I'm in open all the time.

Last night I made a monumental cockup and bought a ship I didn't mean to buy (Clicked 'buy' but not 'confirm' and was looking at it, thinking it will soon be mine... then clicked confirm instead of cancel). That lost me a ton of money in module losses. I thought 'what the hell', after filling the cargo hold to 90% I had ZERO credits left for insurance and 80 million credits on the line with no back-up ship.

I could have swallowed more losses and purchased my old ship again or I could have gone back to solo. Instead I spent yesterday evening on adrenaline filled tender-hooks, risking everything. I could see there was a human asp where I was indicting haulers and every time that ship popped on the scanner and his icon changed from a square to a triangle my heart was racing. Lots of text chats to people I know asking if I had the insurance credits yet.

I could not get that in solo and I love playing in open too now much for those exact kind of heart-racing moments.

This is what we need more of (IMO) good for you sir/madame.

 

[Woodwose]

Having a T6 full of rares is a sin

 

[CMDR Saunders]

My problem for the last three weeks has not been pirates or other players as I have seen only two persons in the game in all that time.
I only run into npc pirates. and the biggest headache of mine has been playing drowsy and crashing into the docks. or losing all my cargo when selling it when the server takes a nose dive during the transaction. Just last night I lost a half a mill when I tried to purchase the laser that costs that much and the server decided to lose concentration and gone was my half a million credits and no laser on my ship.

Head to eravate. I keep seeing people say they never see anyone. The systems around eravate have dozens of people every single day.

 

[ChaseBears]

Eravate's all Harmless newbs though.

Although tbh i think the rating thing is broken for players. I can't recall the last time I saw a player that was anything but harmless. I refuse to believe all the Cobras i see flying around haven't ranked up to mostly harmless at least.

 

[CMDR Saunders]

It does work the other way as well. I decided from the start that I would play solo. Worked my way up to a cobra but it came kinda lonely after a while. I decided to dip my toes into open mode and... I wasn't instantly swamped by 5 human pirates and I liked seeing the odd human player. I got talking to a few people, made a few friends and now I'm in open all the time.

Last night I made a monumental cockup and bought a ship I didn't mean to buy (Clicked 'buy' but not 'confirm' and was looking at it, thinking it will soon be mine... then clicked confirm instead of cancel). That lost me a ton of money in module losses. I thought 'what the hell', after filling the cargo hold to 90% I had ZERO credits left for insurance and 80 million credits on the line with no back-up ship.

I could have swallowed more losses and purchased my old ship again or I could have gone back to solo. Instead I spent yesterday evening on adrenaline filled tender-hooks, risking everything. I could see there was a human asp where I was indicting haulers and every time that ship popped on the scanner and his icon changed from a square to a triangle my heart was racing. Lots of text chats to people I know asking if I had the insurance credits yet.

I could not get that in solo and I love playing in open too now much for those exact kind of heart-racing moments.

Love stories like this and they do give me hope that solo play is a tool used for good.

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Eravate's all Harmless newbs though.

Although tbh i think the rating thing is broken for players. I can't recall the last time I saw a player that was anything but harmless. I refuse to believe all the Cobras i see flying around haven't ranked up to mostly harmless at least.

Indeed, a lot of sidewinders, but plenty of vipers and cobras mixed in too. I haven't found a place with more people than this.

 

[Traciatim]

I could run into an NPC in solo.

And let's face it. There are 400 billion stars. It's not too likely. People are already complaining about not seeing anyone for days and that's inside populated space.

That's because anyone doing anything important to a goal is playing solo or group where it's easy mode, leaving just pirates and a few altruists actually playing the game where they might run in to someone.

 

[Bangfish]

Maybe a solution would be to give traders a chance...at the moment even an Anaconda is nothing more than a sitting duck once you understand the basic mechanism of the combat...i can sit there and laugh at the turreted weapons on it as they do next to no damage to a fully spammed up Cobra...try that in Frontier or FFE and see what happens when a 100MW turreted beam laser reaches out and says hello to Mr Cobra MKIII...i don`t understand how pirates can be pretending what they are doing is anything more than picking on the 90lb weakling in the corner...even with a human player that trading ship cannot arm itself to be a viable threat...its kinda pathetic i was hoping for the equivalent of a Q ship looks like a trader until you get close and it turns out to be a warship in disguise...Not with the weapon options available at the moment..you can have a pee shooter...a pee shooter or a pea shooter.

The problem here is some carebears would like to persuade the rest of us that the ED open play universe is swarmed with ruthless griefers jumping on every single sidewinder that pops on their scanners. One shotting sidewinders might be fun for few hours unless that person is mentally challenged. And I don't really think most of the players of ED is mentally challenged.
I regularly pirate other cobras, fight bounty hunting vipers at nav beacons etc. and I believe I am not the only one... not even close.

 

[AlexRyder]

That's because anyone doing anything important to a goal is playing solo or group where it's easy mode, leaving just pirates and a few altruists actually playing the game where they might run in to someone.

I've been trading rares in a type 6 for the last few days... not encountered a single player.

 

[DogTailRed2]

You shouldn't have a solo mode as it will ultimately spoil the game. For me meeting people in game is what makes it fun and interesting.
The way to solve this problem is to give players three free saves.
You can use the save at any point but once all three are used up then you have to buy (either with real money or credits) each additional save, perhaps up to a maximum of 10.
People will tend to use the saves at each milestone in their career rather than dead, reload all the time.
Levy a bounty for each kill a pirate makes (say 10'000 credits per kill). Then you will encourage bounty hunters to keep the pirates in check and also encourage pirates to let their foes go.
Make the life of a pirate difficult as a real pirate would be.

BTW I had two interdictions today, couldn't escape either but managed to evade using some heavy manouvering (and I'm still in the default ship) and jumped clear.
What startled me was both pirates, when hearing I had no cargo, decided to kill me :-(
But the engagements livened up what was a pretty unsuccessfull trip . I have no intention of going solo. I just want more guns!

Incidentally after all this I went and stranded myself in deep space with no fuel! Doh, now I understand what `Unexplored` means!! (maybe it should be uninhabited).

p.s.
While waiting to die I found 8 cannisters of rare artwork. Talk about kicking a Commander when he's down and I couldn't even get the scoop to work. Hummpf!

 

[Crabwich]

Thought: What if Solo mode gave less profit for selling goods? It's simple math really. Say, a 20% difference between Solo and Han-Solo mode? That would be enough to incentivize people to stay in Open. Simple risk/reward. Then someone can choose to play it safe and grind without player "interruptions" or choose to take the risk and progress more quickly.

 

[neXib]

It's easy to sit on your high pirate horse criticizing traders for going to Solo mode to trade. But what exactly is the risk of a pirate with half a brain. There's no big red flag on him on the galaxy map, if he avoids the obvious places he's no more in danger than a trader in solo mode really. Get off the horsey

 

[Quineloe]

Doesn't this demonstrate why Open and Solo should be entirely separate Careers? I understand your situation and the option is there, so why not? It just has a ring of cheating to it.

No, it does not. It's right there on the options when you start. Every time.

Where is this "cheating" coming from? Cheating is breaking the rules. Not playing the game you want someone else to play (for the utmost altruistic reasons I'm certain) is not cheating. The rules are still made by FD, and if they say a player may at any time go to Solo, then that's fair and square.

Right now, the choice between solo and open play is a binary choice anyways: Do I want to fight players? Then open play. If not, Solo.
There are no benefits at all for trading. You see some players in more popular systems, but there won't be any interaction.
There are no benefits for bounty hunting. Since there's no wing mechanic yet, all the bounties go to the last player to hit the target.
There are no benefits for mining. You can't transfer credits, so you can't pay anyone to protect you. Dumping some gold or whatever for them is a tiresome method at best.

And of course the lack of player BBs or a decent chat tool make it next to impossible to arrange something like this to begin with.

Make solo and open play completely separate, and you will really have all the people who don't want to fight in Solo so all the PVPers will sit in open play with no one to fight except each other. They need to be linked now, so the traders can come back once it's also beneficial in some ways for them to be in open play.

And it's not like Solo is not risk free. Asp Interdictions with high ranked pirates are dangerous in a space cow, because they can easily mass lock you.

 

[Bangfish]

It's easy to sit on your high pirate horse criticizing traders for going to Solo mode to trade. But what exactly is the risk of a pirate with half a brain. There's no big red flag on him on the galaxy map, if he avoids the obvious places he's no more in danger than a trader in solo mode really. Get off the horsey

Currently piracy brings these benefits:
- No rank progression (no combat rank, no trader rank, no nothing). You don't progress by selling stuff on black market.
- Money enough to cover fuel and ammo. And also hull damage from interdictions.
- Timer on cargo so even if a packed trader dropped everything there is no way to ever scoop more than 30 pieces and that only if you are very lucky.
- Most of the people don't even bother responding to pirate hail message and just boost away.
- Pirating in secured systems entails cumulating bounty and regular fines from scans. However, given the poor AI authority vessels never pose any treat and human bounty hunters usually just camp nav points for dumb NPCs.

The current state of piracy: not viable (laughably so) and only for fun.

 

[Geers]

You shouldn't have a solo mode as it will ultimately spoil the game. For me meeting people in game is what makes it fun and interesting.
The way to solve this problem is to give players three free saves.
You can use the save at any point but once all three are used up then you have to buy (either with real money or credits) each additional save, perhaps up to a maximum of 10.
People will tend to use the saves at each milestone in their career rather than dead, reload all the time.
Levy a bounty for each kill a pirate makes (say 10'000 credits per kill). Then you will encourage bounty hunters to keep the pirates in check and also encourage pirates to let their foes go.
Make the life of a pirate difficult as a real pirate would be.

BTW I had two interdictions today, couldn't escape either but managed to evade using some heavy manouvering (and I'm still in the default ship) and jumped clear.
What startled me was both pirates, when hearing I had no cargo, decided to kill me :-(
But the engagements livened up what was a pretty unsuccessfull trip . I have no intention of going solo. I just want more guns!

Incidentally after all this I went and stranded myself in deep space with no fuel! Doh, now I understand what `Unexplored` means!! (maybe it should be uninhabited).

p.s.
While waiting to die I found 8 cannisters of rare artwork. Talk about kicking a Commander when he's down and I couldn't even get the scoop to work. Hummpf!

Buy saves with real money? Are you high? I already paid $50, why do I need to give them more money for saves? If that happened I'd boycott Frontier and encourage anyone I met to do the same. That's the kind of crap you'd expect from EA.

 

[Mysturji]

I went solo when I got close to civilisation again after a 15000+ LY exploration trip, just until I could sell my data (~3.5 M Cr), but since then, I've been in Open, currently trading rare commodities in a type 6.
I had a close call yesterday - The first ever successful interdiction attempt by a player (I forget the system, but it was 1 or 2 jumps away from Lave). He blasted me down to 36% hull before I got away.
My solution? Upgrade shields and buy a shield cell bank as a priority. Keep playing solo.
Loving it.