+rep to the OP, for this post and the numerous great posts he made before. I don't think 2.1 will change much piracy. I dream of a season devoted to the bad guys, maybe Elite : Rogues or something. I would give piracy, murders, smugglers a vast amount of missions, special rewards, a new rank (like trading / combat / exploration), new assets (secret bases in a asteroid), new game mechanics and so on and so forth. I'm dreaming, I know. And I don't even roleplay a pirate. Still, this is an essential part of the game I think.
I do hope Season 2 helps Piracy - Today's experience just confirms to me it doesn't work very well...
- Thread starter NeilF
- Start date
Well all it would need is a mute function which already exists mechanically in the game.A lot of folks don't have mics. Alot of folks don't want to hear 12yr olds insulting their lineage.
But I still think a local voice channel, together with the local text channel, and indicators for when people are typing might solve some of the communication issues.
During the DDF era some of us suggested to FD about a radial dial similar to what you would see in BF3 for example.
Seemed to be well received but it's not in game <shrug>
And then you encounter someone who has you on mute and does not respond and you get angry and start shooting him and. .. the ciiiiircleeee of liiiife (be glad you could not hear me singing
)As mentioned before, there's noninvasive macro add-ons that provide such 1 button to much text functionally. Google is your friend.
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Frontier must be absolute fools if they expect pirates and murderes of all people would pay for an expansion that would make what they do worth it in-game financialy. There is a clip of Braben saying he wouldn't want mining to become like the only way of making money (or in this case traders and or powerplay bounty hunting) in 2012. That went great.
See this is why I almost enjoy killing reliant traders. He may not be one but I've seen and met others who hold the same views as him. Would almost claim it's reward enough in itself.
Oh and this would almost benefit traders more than the pirates themselfs. Shows you really have no clue what you're talking about.
Not claiming to be a saint or nothing but I do claim having a bunch of pirates is much better than having a bunch of murderers which are going to be a thing no matter what but if those individuals would rather play pirate instead of murder well then you are going to get see your rebuy screen much less.
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Well, they could activate the cargo insurance that's mocking me from the right panel whenever I seek appreciation.
But then the insurance company might go bankrupt.
And if smart players would not cheese the dough out of the missing cool down on mode switching and would undoubtedly pirate their own buddies to dupe more dough, that might seem like a splendid idea. If pirates are too busy pirating pirates, who takes care of all the lonely traders ? Alas .. smart people ruined it... As usual.
And lots of sympathy for those pirates that ask me how I make a living in a haz res.
What do they teach in pirate school these days? I'm in a fas full of hrps and am kill warrant scanning you... I'm here to talk about our Lord and saviour the flying spaghetti monster.
Now jettison the parrot and no one will get hurt.
But then the insurance company might go bankrupt.
And if smart players would not cheese the dough out of the missing cool down on mode switching and would undoubtedly pirate their own buddies to dupe more dough, that might seem like a splendid idea. If pirates are too busy pirating pirates, who takes care of all the lonely traders ? Alas .. smart people ruined it... As usual.
And lots of sympathy for those pirates that ask me how I make a living in a haz res.
What do they teach in pirate school these days? I'm in a fas full of hrps and am kill warrant scanning you... I'm here to talk about our Lord and saviour the flying spaghetti monster.
Now jettison the parrot and no one will get hurt.
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Easy to work around on FDs part. In a 1v1 engagement a mutual disconnect from each other when they were already instanced together doesn't point a finger at either one and so might not be sufficient to trigger this mechanic - but if they are each still connected to the server clearly one of them might have ip-blocked the other. It would be trivial to detect this happening repeatedly to the same player. If one player pulls the cord or kills the process, they'll vanish from the servers view too and that's the player gets the hit for it. Once you get more than two players into the instance the data points mount up fast and it really doesn't take much logic to see who blocked who.
I'd love it if "non-PVP" players who want to play in Open but don't like the idea of randomly being killed, yet still leave the door open for criminal behaviour.
Call it a Shipping License, any pilot with a clear record can buy one (for a % of all mission/trade income) - but it's essentially protection money. Pirates can still interdict you and scan you - in which case they get the protection money. They can't kill you though, since you've already paid for protection.
For Traders/Miners - you have the option of playing in Open without fear of random ganking. The downside is you have to pay for this protection, and you still have the inconvenience of being interdicted.
For Pirates - you still have targets to track and interdict, and now you get paid without having to haul their cargo back. It's racketeering rather than piracy, but at least it's better than blowing up traders laden with cargo they refuse to part with.
Call it a Shipping License, any pilot with a clear record can buy one (for a % of all mission/trade income) - but it's essentially protection money. Pirates can still interdict you and scan you - in which case they get the protection money. They can't kill you though, since you've already paid for protection.
For Traders/Miners - you have the option of playing in Open without fear of random ganking. The downside is you have to pay for this protection, and you still have the inconvenience of being interdicted.
For Pirates - you still have targets to track and interdict, and now you get paid without having to haul their cargo back. It's racketeering rather than piracy, but at least it's better than blowing up traders laden with cargo they refuse to part with.
Now this just sounds too easy.
And since the scan can be completed in 10 seconds like the kws, you'd even solve the 15 sec legal logout issue.
Best idea to address that issue so far.
The "can't kill you" part is a bit hard to implement, though.
Maybe they'd just lose the booty again, if they did...
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For the pirate, or the trader?
Given there's less risk for the Trader, I think they're more likely to fight the interdiction and/or escape the scan until they can jump. At least there's some 'sport' there for the pirates. I can't imagine it's much fun or challenge blowing up traders who won't drop their cargo or just seeing them combat log.
The attitude of some players towards piracy in this game will never cease to baffle me.
Space pirates (actual pirates who stop ships and attempt to rob them, not people who interdict you, go ARRRRR in chat and then proceed to blow your face off for giggles) are probably one of the most longstanding and embedded tropes in all of science fiction. I'm not saying there's anything especially noble about what is essentially theft, that would be ridiculous, but it is absolutely something that I would expect to see in an open space game and as a play style it is completely valid.
Why else would FD have taken the trouble to code gear which is specifically used for piracy? I mean is there a secet hidden purpose for hatch breaker limpets that I'm not aware of over and above their ability to err.. break cargo hatches?
Yours sincerely
Puzzled of Sol.
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Too funny. FD catered to the demands of the player-killer crowd by having meaningless bounties and completely inconsequential "punishments" so when the people interested in playing the game concluded that FD was always going to favor the player-killers we all went solo or to groups. If FD had begun the game correctly and the player-killer group had severe sanctions that they had to deal with then Open would be much more populated. Until FD implements serious repercussions for criminal behavior open will continue to be the sandbox that is shunned by the rest of the community. If FD decides to eliminate solo and group, then FD will get the rude awakening of 80% (or more) of their players walking. That will do wonders for the stock price of FD and their 10 year plan.
All of that said. I have truly been enjoying the player-killer tears in the forums over the last week. I am beginning to have just the beginnings of hope for this game.
Isn't the FD server in that loop too? If the Trader pulls the plug, the server will see it, and the other player(s) will see it. As such a penalty is applied.
If the pirate uses some under-the-bonnet IP block, then the server will know the trader isn't pulling a fast one as it can still see the trader, and the trader can still see the pirate. No penalty applied.
The problem might be if the trader blocks the pirate of course, but then the game would know the problem is at the traders end... so a penalty would apply.
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For the pirate, or the trader?
Given there's less risk for the Trader, I think they're more likely to fight the interdiction and/or escape the scan until they can jump. At least there's some 'sport' there for the pirates. I can't imagine it's much fun or challenge blowing up traders who won't drop their cargo or just seeing them combat log.
Both really.
Yeah this is my view on it to. I lost a cutter to a pirate cutter the other day due to;
1) Alcohol
2) stupidity
3) Not realising the Pirate was not an NPC
4) see points 1 and 2
5) Not seeing the chat message coming up and trying to boost away
5) Finally realising the situation at about 50% hull and realising that I was a goner
The one thing I didn't do was log, normally if someone wants to pirate me, fair enough, its a valid game style and me losing my ship was my own stupid fault.
I have been pirated before and each time, just stopping and simply saying ok is enough to stop the pirate from destroying me.
If it is too hard to push 2 buttons in the right sequence to avoid frustration and ambiguity, the only viable solution is to reduce it to one button.
To be fair to FD, implementing a working, easy to use communication solution across the platforms is a task many companies have tried and few have nailed.
I think that nails it. I assumed the OP was speaking hypothetically to find ambiguity, where there's just minimalistic simplicity and with the benefit of doubt, my first answers were genuine attempts to alleviate the situation.
After new hypothetical issues arose with each suggestion, I switched to the Anonymous Pirate Problem Proadcast with the topic of the day "My parrot put his pecker in my pie, does that mean I'm pregnant?".
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Absolutely... Now FD need to the finish job and give pirates (& their victims) stronger mechanics. Ideally they also need to give some more flesh to the piracy role with stuff like a rank of some sort. Ideally leading to better hidden bases with better black markets and better missions. etc...