Yes PVP is unfair.

[excalibus]

Higher ranked ships are worth more, but its a measure of time spent, you can get elite by flying a turreted conda in a CZ and cruising around without any input other than making sure imminent death isn't about to occur. I have a great deal of personal experience with this as i flew with many dedicated pirates, who all end up with a rank of ~ novice because they very rarely kill anything lol being in combat against people with deadly/dangerous/elite ranks who are almost always terrible because they reflect the skill of the average AI in the farmzones.

The ship differential might work, but in many cases I think the lighter ships often just have the chance to escape i'd prefer if they brought a more serious police response to say a T6 or T7 than to a cobra for example

if thats how the pilot got their ranks... no wonder you see it that way... I would argue that other pilots equally did not farm rez's or CZ's in self firing ships but spent their time ranking taking on assassination missions using fixed weapons and a viper...

I am not saying that fighting the NPC's and fighting other players are the same thing... not by any stretch of the imagination... But taking the ships overall power into account would need taking the pilots rank into account yes?

And it's not that we are talking about higher 'ranked' aka more expensive ships, it's the ships overall 'combat power' that sandro is talking about I think... do feel free to correct me if I am wrong...

Police response should differ on a number of factors, and IMHO a pilots criminal history should be an aspect of the game that is also taken into consideration with the overall seriousness of the police response...

A police hunting a wanted fugitive who murdered 20 people would be far more agressive in their search for and in far greater numbers covering a larger area, than they would be for an offender who just robbed 20 people... This is one of the fundamental flaws of the system we currently have (I feel) as that the responses do not scale with the history of the players actions...

 

[Faded Glory]

Surely the issue is to make piracy a fun and engaging career path.

FD, or perhaps we the players, seem to have made ED all about the credits, rather than about doing stuff for fun, and credits being accrued in the process.

 

[excalibus]

Surely the issue is to make piracy a fun and engaging career path.

FD, or perhaps we the players, seem to have made ED all about the credits, rather than about doing stuff for fun, and credits being accrued in the process.

This is how I have played the game, I have often not worried about the 'credits', with a few exceptions such as when getting close to buying a ship or buying an upgrade i really want for enhancing my gameplay fun...

Heck 14 months since release and I am not even elite in any ranks yet nor do I even have half a billion in assets and credits, even though I have some 8+ weeks of ingame time (probably 9 weeks by now)...

Credits are a means to an end... I have personally found that my game experience overall has been a great deal of fun, I do attribute that to not worrying so much about the credits and doing the things I enjoy, and changing it up when things start to begin to hint at feeling a tad tedious or boring

 

[Sandmann]

While I agree with your overall concept (the idea that an overall increase in commodity prices would require some risk to be offset, which I would argue could be best achieved through cargo insurance implementation), your suggestion that PvP pirates face less expense from risk than traders is simply mathematically untrue.

Let's define our concepts here: we should seperate out "risk" (IE the CHANCE that an adverse situation will occur) with "hazard" (the COST of the adverse situation).

Risk x hazard = losses. Losses are what matter, moreso than either on their own. Losing 1cr 1,000 times is nowhere near as bad as losing 10,000,000 once!

For a trader, let's define the HAZARD first. Assume an Anaconda trading Imperial Slaves. That's 450 x 16,000 = 7,200,000 cr cargo. A typical trader conda fit will have a rebuy of 8.5 million. This leads to a total HAZARD of ~15,000,000 cr.

The risk is harder to define, but in my hundreds of hours of trading in a max jump range anaconda in Open, I have never been killed by player or NPC.

Let's be pessimistic though, and say the trader is destroyed, on average, once every 20 hours. That's a hazard of 0.05

0.05 x 15,000,000 = 750,000 per hour

Meanwhile, the pirate with a similar asset level would fly a Python or similar. Their rebuy is likely on a similar level to the trader, leaving a HAZARD of 8,000,000 cr.

Meanwhile the RISK is far higher, I would put at 0.25 (1 death every 4 hours) or higher due to the prevalence of PvP bounty hunter, armed traders, etc etc etc. BTW this is not assuming that the pirate has any loot: in reality that is a very real possiblity

0.25 x 8,000,000 = 2,000,000 cr/ hr

So the pirate's total losses are far higher than the trader.

Not only that but given that the trader can earn 6-10 million per hour, and the pirate can struggle to break even even disregarding rebuys, the disparity is clear.

Now I agree: increase cargo prices by 5-10x then the trader's hazard becomes extremely high: However I would want these changes to come hand in hand with the introduction of cargo insurance of up to 90% of the destroyed/jettisoned cargo value

Wow, really flawed logic. As a trader I've been destroyed several times PER HOUR on occasion in open. I think if it were REALLY once per 20 hours of gameplay noone would be complaining.

Next, it's ludicrous to suggest that any but a few armed traders pose a significant threat to pirates, and even then a simple scan of the potential victim's ship will show the threat long before you even interdict them. No, armed traders are completely avoidable.

Third it's impossible for the pirate to be killed by bounty hunters at a rate any faster than the pirate kills traders, as the bounty hunter is only after you if you have a bounty big enough to warrant the risk of attacking, which you must have done something pretty serious to earn. You can NOT have more bounties than victims, thus your math is way wrong.

Sorry but you're really grasping at straws now.

 

[Alexander the Grape]

Wow, really flawed logic. As a trader I've been destroyed several times PER HOUR on occasion in open. I think if it were REALLY once per 20 hours of gameplay noone would be complaining.

Next, it's ludicrous to suggest that any but a few armed traders pose a significant threat to pirates, and even then a simple scan of the potential victim's ship will show the threat long before you even interdict them. No, armed traders are completely avoidable.

Third it's impossible for the pirate to be killed by bounty hunters at a rate any faster than the pirate kills traders, as the bounty hunter is only after you if you have a bounty big enough to warrant the risk of attacking, which you must have done something pretty serious to earn. You can NOT have more bounties than victims, thus your math is way wrong.

Sorry but you're really grasping at straws now.

What are your total rebuys? And what is your total playtime?

Armed traders are avoidable, gank wings of 4x bhers are not

Pirates do their best not to kill their marks. I get very few murders

 

[Sandmann]

Surely the issue is to make piracy a fun and engaging career path.

FD, or perhaps we the players, seem to have made ED all about the credits, rather than about doing stuff for fun, and credits being accrued in the process.

Totally agreed... credits alone do not a game make. Hence the frequent complaints that game is a mile wide but only an inch deep.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

You haven't tried piracy have you? Most PvP pirates asks the mark for abandoned anyway.

The thing holding piracy back isn't the 25% markdown on black market goods, it's that the profit margins on goods are too high.

When profit margins are 20% or more, the idea of piracy being viable is laughable, because its always easier to simply trade 5x as much of the good as pirate it.

Indeed, considering the relatively small holds on cargo ships and the difficulty of piracy atm, id say profit margins would need to be between 1-5%

Commodity prices simply need to be increased across the board by 5-10x to make piracy (and mining and salvaging for that matter) viable.

What I get from this is that crime does not pay... Working as intended then.

 

[Alexander the Grape]

What I get from this is that crime does not pay... Working as intended then.

Piracy is meant to be a viable career on par with others, and is advertised as such. Stop projecting your vision of the game onto the developers

 

[Sandmann]

What are your total rebuys? And what is your total playtime?

Armed traders are avoidable, gank wings of 4x bhers are not

Pirates do their best not to kill their marks. I get very few murders

Mine personally? No.idea, I just started playing again 2 days ago after 8 months break. I'm a beta backer though and been playing since beta 1.0 so you can guess my total play time is significant. Why?

If it helps I'm flying a mostly a & b specced armed asp.

Even if the bounty hunters are in wings of 27, you CAN'T get hunted by them more often than you kill traders. It's impossible for you to have more bounties than intended victims. Even then you can ONLY be hunted if you are currently in the same system as one of your robberies.

[Edit] you mention you get very few murders, that would work strongly in your favour in Sandro's proposed changes as you wouldn't get the same hit on your rep that a murderer would get and so wouldn't lose access to major faction stations.

 

[Alexander the Grape]

Mine personally? No.idea, I just started playing again 2 days ago after 8 months break. I'm a beta backer though and been playing since beta 1.0 so you can guess my total play time is significant. Why?

If it helps I'm flying a mostly a & b specced armed asp.

Even if the bounty hunters are in wings of 27, you CAN'T get hunted by them more often than you kill traders. It's impossible for you to have more bounties than intended victims. Even then you can ONLY be hunted if you are currently in the same system as one of your robberies.

You can find both stats in your sidepanel. I'm interested in your average deaths/hour.

Most of my bounties come from assault bounties, interdiction penalties and murder of bounty hunters.

Regardless, the suggestion that pirates kill more traders than get killed is irrelevant: considering that in the last CG I saw 5 bona fide pirates other than myself out of 3,000+ contributors, the suggestion that traders face a palpable risk from PvP pirates isn't especially convincing: especially since handing over 20-50 cargo of a value of 400,000-800,000 CR will save them their rebuy.

 

[MadMikesch]

It is no problem to run even from a wing. In your car you have safetybelts, airbags ... So why do people fly arround without shield, shieldcells and bad thrusters?

 

[Alexander the Grape]

While I agree with all the balances changes your suggesting Alexander I don't think pirates face any threat other than the ones they choose to fight,

You'd be better of arguing that we suffer a constant opportunity cost of having to deal with irritations and moving area / finding targets, which of course all lower income.

Would love to see commodity values increased substantially though its always been the best fix for piracy earnings without impacting the rest of the game too much.

If BH wings aren't a threat, you haven't been facing skilled PvPers. Railguns, frags and burst lasers form 4 ships aimed at modules can take you out in less than 15 seconds if you're not careful

 

[Jockey79]

....Armed traders are avoidable, gank wings of 4x bhers are not...

Erm, hate to burst this bubble, but you can very easily avoid "gank wings of 4x bhers".

1) Do not sit on the same trade route for too long - steal some goods, move to another route... bhers will never know where you are.
2) You can use Solo / Groups to move from hunting ground to hunting ground - completely avoiding any accidental bumping in to a bher
3) You have freedom of movement;

traders have to fly trade routes to earn money - they cannot avoid you, but you can avoid anyone and fly where you like when you like.
So you can leave the area at any time, like when you know bhers are about. They spend time looking for you, you're in another area getting more stolen goods.

Play a smart pirate = No risks, all rewards

 

[Alexander the Grape]

Erm, hate to burst this bubble, but you can very easily avoid "gank wings of 4x bhers".

1) Do not sit on the same trade route for too long - steal some goods, move to another route... bhers will never know where you are.
2) You can use Solo / Groups to move from hunting ground to hunting ground - completely avoiding any accidental bumping in to a bher
3) You have freedom of movement;

traders have to fly trade routes to earn money - they cannot avoid you, but you can avoid anyone and fly where you like when you like.
So you can leave the area at any time, like when you know bhers are about. They spend time looking for you, you're in another area getting more stolen goods.

Play a smart pirate = No risks, all rewards

Good luck finding traders outside of CGs and 1 or 2 popular systems

have you evertried PvP piracy?

 

[Sandmann]

You can find both stats in your sidepanel. I'm interested in your average deaths/hour.

Oh I know where they are, but given that I'm currently in bed, the computer's turned off, and it's 2am here I'm not gonna go looking. I can tell you it'd be low though. My total game hours is from Gamma 1.0 on, I stopped playing in open around the same time as the xbox release (coincidence?), and npc's very rarely kill me.

Most of my bounties come from assault bounties, interdiction penalties and murder of bounty hunters.

Yeah you can't really count them as a cost of pirating as you didnt get those bounties while pirating. If you were to include that then traders could include losses from non-pirate related and npc encounters. Direct costs only please, let's not get exotic here.

Regardless, the suggestion that pirates kill more traders than get killed is irrelevant:

Actually it's entirely relevant. Remember what we are discussing here... relative direct costs to traders and pirates due to piracy, thus the number of traders killed by pirates vs the number of pirates kiilled by traders is entirely relevant. You argue that the cheaper rebuy cost to traders vis-a-vis pirates offsets the losses in cargo not experienced by pirates, but you fail to take into account that each pirate attack a trader recieves is not a standalone event. A trader will be killed by piracy several to many more times than a pirate will be killed by a trader. Even when you include pirate deaths by bounty hunters due to piracy related bounties the number of times the pirate will die is significantly less than that of the trader. (Logically it must be the case unless you will argue that every bounty is collected immediately and none avoided and never will anyone hold multiple bounties which are all collected with one death, which we know to be not so)

The financial risk to traders is patently greater than that to pirates. By your own argument risk must be rewarded.

 

[GilliganTX]

What I get from this is that crime does not pay... Working as intended then.

Two words:


Smuggling.

 

[Alexander the Grape]

Oh I know where tbey are, but given that I'm currently in bed, the computer's turned off, and it's 2am here I'm not gonna go looking. I can tell you it'd be low though. My total game hours is from Gamma 1.0 on, I stopped playing in open around the same time as the xbox release (coincidence?), and npc's very rarely kill me.



Yeah you can't really count them as a cost of pirating as you didnt.get those bounties.while pirating. If you were to include that then traders could include losses from non-pirate related and npc encounters. Direct costs only please, let's not get exotic here.



Actually it's entirely relevant. Remember what we are discussing here... relative direct costs to traders and pirates due to piracy. The number of traders killed by pirates vs the number of pirates kiilled by traders is entirely relevant. You argue that the cheaper rebuy cost to traders vis-a-vis pirates offsets the losses in cargo not experienced by pirates, but you fail to take into account that each pirate attack a trader recieves is not a standalone event. A trader will be killed by piracy several to many more times than a pirate will be killed by a trader. Even when you include pirate deaths by bounty hunters due to piracy related bounties the number of times the pirate will die is significantly less than that of the trader.

The financial risk to traders is patently greater than that to pirates. By your own argument risk must be rewarded.

If there are more traders than pirates (as there are, by an order of magnitude or more) then each trader death is diluted amongst thousands of players, whereas each irate death is concentrated on a few indivivuals: the total number of deaths doesn't matter, it's death per CMDR

 

[Sandmann]

Two words:


Smuggling.

Bananas?

 

[Sandmann]

If there are more traders than pirates (as there are, by an order of magnitude or more) then each trader death is diluted amongst thousands of players, whereas each irate death is concentrated on a few indivivuals: the total number of deaths doesn't matter, it's death per CMDR

I'm aware that this is how YOU count it, but I can tell you that's not how traders do it. We don't care if it's you, or Pirate Pete, or Bollicle Bill the Sailor who did it last time or this time or next time. What we care about is the TOTAL effect because that's what our profitability is based on. If my total profit before piracy is say 10 million in a period, and I lose 9 million in piracy related costs I'm looking at a net profit of only 1 million.

The reason YOU can look at it this way is because for you each event IS a standalone, because you don't have the massive cash outlay before every "mission" you head out on, so you can afford to think in the short term. If I lose my ship and cargo I can get my ship back coz I'm not silly enough to fly without insurance, but I'm left hauling biowaste and vegetables for the next several days before I can even think about real cargoes again.

 

[GilliganTX]

Bananas?

Aye aye Skipper, just pick a color.