The Dance of Pirate and Traders. Advice for both parties

Anopheles

Anopheles
An elaboration of a post I made earlier.

This thread is for discussing the relationship between pirates and traders. Not certain organisations, individuals or events. Advice to either in open is welcome, beyond a call to go to a group.

Advice to independent pirates/small pirate wings

Fun is profit, profit is fun. Don't, at the moment, expect to get rich quickly.

Always carry the following: An indictor and a cargo scanner
Optional: Drones

if you are in a wing, these modules can shared around.

Intelligence. Join trader forums, look out for cg's, keep your ears and eyes open.

Move around. If local is empty, go somewhere else.

Pick your targets. Learn what you can take regularly, or at least regularly enough for some profit.

Never eat a meal you can't lift. No point asking a mark to drop more than you can carry or more than that may be past their 'self destruct' fulcrum.

Don't pee in the soup. Traders running to another locale or another mode is bad for your profits. Traders are making the same risk reward calculation as you are. Making the trade run too unprofitable profits no one.

To this end: Don't kill unless you have to (they run, they stall, they insult, etc). Don't over fish the same small pond. Let confidence in traders build a little. Don't hit the same mark too often in a set time period.

Don't ever think yourself a navy, if you are losing a fight, run an live to rob again.

---
Traders

Always assume piracy. Never put all your capital in one load. Rushing for max profit us what loses you the most.

The best way to max profits is to stay alive.

Fly in a wing if you can.

Always carry some high value, low profit (to you) goods that you can part with.

Don't fight interdiction. It wastes your time and may irritate the pirate, making survivability less likely.

Drop good cargo immediately and then leave immediately. The pirates know the containers are on the clock.

Learn the ways to avoid being caught. I won't be listing them here, but they aren't hard to find. Remember that pirates will continue to interdict you and again, the survivability index lowers.
--

Pirates need traders for profit. Traders need pirates to enliven their game either in trading or in revenge.
 

Yabba Addict

Yabba Addict
Pirates want to play with others in a competitive way. Traders don't. They want to have a relaxing time raking in profits. I know this is a bit of a generalisation, but for the majority this is how it is, and you're not going to have much success getting the 2 playing together, especially with solo and pve groups in the mix. A trader can just say 'What's the point of me giving up cargo space and slowing my profits when I can just go solo?'

Traders don't need pirates. But they would've increased the longevity of the game for them if they were forced into the same universe together with them and we had a much better setup, ie multiplayer only, real consequences for combat logging, working wake scanners that can be used for pvp, decent profits, etc. Right now we have a trader force racing their way into the biggest ships possible and a completely demoralized pirate force who's pretty much given up working due to a broken system.
 
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Commander Blunthead

C
Another thing I think pirates should think about. If you come across someone who just kills traders indiscriminately, you should destroy them if you can. Indiscriminate killers will chase off trade players to go to private or solo and you don't want that. They will also make your pirating harder by making trade players think that you are probably out to just kill them and that there is no reason to comply with your demands if they are just getting killed anyway.

The fewer psychopathic murderers there are around, the more likely that a trader will cooperate.

Not to mention the obvious reason that a merchant destroyed is a merchant you can't pirate. You'll want to discourage that too.
 

Jesters09

Jesters09
I don't mind a "pirate" pulling me up and asking/demanding XXXX cargo, what I do mind is, an alpha singularity pulling me out and destroying my ship with no convo at all.
Yes it is part of the game, do I have to like it, NO, but I will move on.
 

CMDR Sun

CMDR Sun
Jesters09 said:
I don't mind a "pirate" pulling me up and asking/demanding XXXX cargo, what I do mind is, an alpha singularity pulling me out and destroying my ship with no convo at all.
Yes it is part of the game, do I have to like it, NO, but I will move on.
Click to expand...


In the last few minutes I had the hybrid version of those more typical experiences.

Two pythons in a wing pulled me out and asked me to throttle down. I complied as I was in an anaconda so could jump out at any time.
One of them said hello and I returned the greeting. The told me to stay throttled down while they scanned me.

I had no cargo but I just let them go ahead. After scanning there was a brief pause and then they both opened fire.

In my case I jumped out safely but overall it is very hard to recommend that traders do anything but flee for their lives.

Pirates are after profit and have some motivation not to kill you till you meet their demands for cargo. After that however you may just become sport - and a stationary trader doesn't typically have much chance.
 
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goemon

goemon
for pirates: it helps if you drop a line in supercruise, right before interdiction. the chance a trader reads it before interdicted is higher. also an easy command like "type STOP if you want to drop cargo instead of getting shot" helps

for traders:
- have a shield. simply do the math of 8t/16t less profit per stop and your rebuy

- chaff, thrusters and powerdistributor are investments for safety.

- you can't be masslocked if you highwake to another system. target another system if you want to run.
 

Agent2090

Agent2090
I trade in Open mainly because I've had a few interesting interdiction encounters with pirates, but more often than not, the CMDR interdicting me just pulls me out of supercruise and immediately starts shooting. When that happens, if the trade route is too good to give up, I'll move over to solo.

The frightened trader negotiating with a pirate for his life? Sure, I'll play that any day.

The helpless victim being killed by a mindless killer? Nope, I'll just move to solo.
 

Anopheles

Anopheles
Stressfest said:
If I could actually be bothered to find a "Why so serious" meme I would.. but far too busy playing to care.
Click to expand...

Forgive me if this discussion lacks the intellectual simplicity you require.

- - - Updated - - -

Agent2090 said:
I trade in Open mainly because I've had a few interesting interdiction encounters with pirates, but more often than not, the CMDR interdicting me just pulls me out of supercruise and immediately starts shooting. When that happens, if the trade route is too good to give up, I'll move over to solo.

The frightened trader negotiating with a pirate for his life? Sure, I'll play that any day.

The helpless victim being killed by a mindless killer? Nope, I'll just move to solo.
Click to expand...

The person who pulls you over to kill you is not a pirate.
 

Jon flint

Jon flint
I honestly never mind pirates, in fact in the past ive made a point of going out and finding them, around lave usually and just handing out free beer or gold, just for the sake of variety and my own amusement. And for a bit of a chat with a random player.

As long as there is some effort on their part to stay in character as a pirate and not interdict cargo-less ships. Trying to explain that I'm only carrying exploration data and have nothing to drop inevitably leads to my destruction and can get old real fast.
 

Redan

R
Yabba Addict said:
Pirates want to play with others in a competitive way. Traders don't. They want to have a relaxing time raking in profits. I know this is a bit of a generalisation, but for the majority this is how it is, and you're not going to have much success getting the 2 playing together, especially with solo and pve groups in the mix. A trader can just say 'What's the point of me giving up cargo space and slowing my profits when I can just go solo?'

Traders don't need pirates. But they would've increased the longevity of the game for them if they were forced into the same universe together with them and we had a much better setup, ie multiplayer only, real consequences for combat logging, working wake scanners that can be used for pvp, decent profits, etc. Right now we have a trader force racing their way into the biggest ships possible and a completely demoralized pirate force who's pretty much given up working due to a broken system.
Click to expand...

There is a lot of truth spoken here.
 

simo2003

simo2003
The trouble is that the 'just go to solo/Mobius' argument has been done, and is ongoing. This is a thread about what you can do as a trader or a pirate in Open.

Absolutely, if you can't bear the idea that some pirate scum is going to shave a few thousand credits off the profits of your trading (the fastest way to make credits in the entire game), then yes, go to solo. I've traded and I've pirated, and I've been ganked by player killers. I like the interaction you get between pirate and trader (from both ends) - think the fox and the hare. Trading doesn't have to be boring and honestly, for the love of custard creams, I don't understand why some people want to play the game doing uninterrupted trade runs and naught else.
 

optiplex

optiplex
Commander Blunthead said:
Another thing I think pirates should think about. If you come across someone who just kills traders indiscriminately, you should destroy them if you can. Indiscriminate killers will chase off trade players to go to private or solo and you don't want that. They will also make your pirating harder by making trade players think that you are probably out to just kill them and that there is no reason to comply with your demands if they are just getting killed anyway.

The fewer psychopathic murderers there are around, the more likely that a trader will cooperate.

Not to mention the obvious reason that a merchant destroyed is a merchant you can't pirate. You'll want to discourage that too.
Click to expand...

▲▲▲▲▲ Indeed :)

I have no issue where a pirate asks for cargo and then after you drop it he lets you on your way. I have an issue with the many murdering idiots who shoot first, cannot communicate and think its fun to just kill you for some sort of sick gratification.
 
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Gully Foyle

Gully Foyle
Commander Blunthead said:
Another thing I think pirates should think about. If you come across someone who just kills traders indiscriminately, you should destroy them if you can. Indiscriminate killers will chase off trade players to go to private or solo and you don't want that. They will also make your pirating harder by making trade players think that you are probably out to just kill them and that there is no reason to comply with your demands if they are just getting killed anyway.

The fewer psychopathic murderers there are around, the more likely that a trader will cooperate.

Not to mention the obvious reason that a merchant destroyed is a merchant you can't pirate. You'll want to discourage that too.
Click to expand...

Exactly. PKers give the Pirate crowd a bad name.
o7
 

optiplex

optiplex
Agent2090 said:
I trade in Open mainly because I've had a few interesting interdiction encounters with pirates, but more often than not, the CMDR interdicting me just pulls me out of supercruise and immediately starts shooting. When that happens, if the trade route is too good to give up, I'll move over to solo.

The frightened trader negotiating with a pirate for his life? Sure, I'll play that any day.

The helpless victim being killed by a mindless killer? Nope, I'll just move to solo.
Click to expand...

Same here
 
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