I do hope Season 2 helps Piracy - Today's experience just confirms to me it doesn't work very well...

[Boomer Kay]

Actually they didn't do too bad of a job in this regard, the most plausible pirate ships (cobra/asp/clipper) are all multi-roles, their combat abilities are less than their similar sized combat ships.

Good point.

The real issue is that flying a freighter (T6/7/9) is suicide because they were designed badly and have needed a buff since release.

I do not think they were ever designed as "standalone ships".
They are really really weak, even against NPCs - if you don't use "cheesy ways" out, you risk destruction. Even against NPCs.
High Waking is such a "cheesy" mechanic against NPCs (in my books .. not telling you how to play, just the way I like to play .. no Cheese.. I'm lactose intolerant), since it just "resets" the instance and "combatlogs" your opponent. Few "random" NPCs (just those annoying Jehova's Witness ones that follow you all the way to SAG A) will follow you .. and they don't really follow, they just get re-triggered in the next instance .. or not.
I got shot down in a T7 by a "pirate" (in a Railgun Viper MK IV? ... errrr .. FD .. "smart pirates???" .. Hire Kristov and Error to make the loadouts for your NPCs, por favor), because I was already in the system I wanted to get to, and instead of pulling the plug or high waking, I low waked out.
Got interdicted 3 times, lost the game every time, Shields did not regen back fast enough (flying Bi-Weave in smaller compartments, since they do have their advantages) and I lost a T7 full of cargo. ... -shrug- T7 is still in my personal top 5 of ships in the game, because it brings your options down to NPC level.

And still we have no npc wingmen and turrets (look at the hardpoint placement on traders .. they SCREM turret) have 1/5th of the dmg of actual weapons -shrug-

 

[Comrade Error]

How much cargo did you get in that encounter?

And is that really an invalid application of real life piracy? Nope .. and I gave the answer 5 pages ago:

When a pirate ship flew the red flag, it signaled their intended victims that the pirates would give no mercy once they boarded the prize. They would not take prisoners. If pirates sailed under the Jolly Roger, usually a black flag, this signaled that if the prey surrendered without a fight, the pirates would spare the lives of those aboard her.

If your fellow pirates don't stick to the pirate code of honour, "parlay" translates roughly into "shoot me now".

On the other hand, while Kristov is definitely negatively impacted by combat logging, since his goal is booty with the minimized risk of getting shot upon, for you it makes no tangible difference wether an opponent log or you destroy him. You won the encounter and no cargo, regardless.

Not sure what you're getting at but my goal is booty but understandably one can be a bit more twitchy when you have 2 ships that are bigger than you pointing their flimsy lasers at you. I think the encounters with the big ships can be fun but ultimately I do want that booty to atleast cover the expenses. Repeated interdictions can do damage on my ship to 50-70k. But back to the Corvette, I also did say I gave them another chance while mid combat. I took stand down as a threat (2 big ships flying around pointing lasers at you who wouldn't their hardpoints were deployed)

I give people a fair bit of chances to comply to my demands I bet on PC I might even be called stupid for giving them that many chances but not many on Xbox have figured out the hi-wake it seems.

But what? You want me to paint the jolly roger on my Python or something? That's a bit too bad to be honest because we don't even have paintjobs yet.

Sorry I didn't really get what you were trying to say.

 

[Vorthax]

Anyhoo. IMHO, three things need to happen:-
1) Piracy needs some help/improvements: The game needs to help pirates get their terms over and orchestrate their profession. I think they also need a rank/reputation and more to their role. eg: Hidden bases with better paying black markets and specific missions etc. ie: Piracy is low profit, so access to better payign black markets and specific missions might be a way to give some better rewards!
2) Traders need some security added by an improved Crime & Punishment system so mindless destruction is less likely to happen. I believe Frontier is addressing this matter!?
3) Exiting the game to evade interdictions etc needs to be addressed: At the moment you can simply pull the plug on the game, or tell the pirate "OK" and then press EXIT and 15 seconds later while the pirate is still waiting, you'll vanish back to Menu. I've suggested "uncontrolled exits" are noted by the game and warnings given. And if a player is EXITing, their countdown is displayed to all other players in the instance. I've also suggested maybe while in this phase there is a damage multiplier (eg: 150%) so it is not a means of evading/dodging attack. And/or increase the countdown to 20-30 seconds?

IMHO, piracy is a must! If we want OPEN to work (as well as it might hope) we need that dynamic relationship between TRADER --> PIRATE --> BOUNTY HUNTER...

1) Pirates need more: tools, time, incentives and consequences.
2) Traders do not need more security, they need better insurance - Open needs more interaction, not less.
3) If FD wants to have P2P architecture, a randomly selected client could be used as a referee/mini-server - and then they would be able to implement any mechanic.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Not sure what you're getting at but my goal is booty

Well, different valid ways of piracy.

Flying a "no quarter given" flag in a blockade might give you a huge psychological advantage, since while you risk blockade runners fighting harder, because they will not be spared if they just surrender, you might turn away an even higher number of "let's try, what's the worst that can happen".
On the open sea, they might even jettison all their cargo, just to get faster and escape certain death and spare you the fight and losses on your own side.
Savvy.

None of that is actually in the game (getting rid of cargo makes you so marginally faster, you might just as well get out and start pushing that T-9), and the knowledge about piracy has been lost.
Sid Meier, where art thou?

 

[matemaster]

@OP
If player pretending to be a psycho pirate decides to interdict you then cheat you that he wants cargo, only to shoot you afterwards... there is no game mechanics to prevent that behavior.
And if it happens accept it and dont combat log, or play in solo or private

 

[Robert Maynard]

3) If FD wants to have P2P architecture, a randomly selected client could be used as a referee/mini-server - and then they would be able to implement any mechanic.

Sandro would seem to have already discounted this possibility:

Because we don’t have an all powerful server running the moment-to-moment game play simulation, there is no infallible arbiter to take control of a player’s ship when they ungracefully exit.

 

[NeilF]

@OP
If player pretending to be a psycho pirate decides to interdict you then cheat you that he wants cargo, only to shoot you afterwards... there is no game mechanics to prevent that behavior.
And if it happens accept it and dont combat log, or play in solo or private

It's an interesting subject, really requiring it's own thread

I'd suggest a "psycho pirate" is incorrectly named... There is no piracy involved, so that means they're just a "psycho". Now let's follow some scenarios through. If the (now named) "psycho" is interdicting victims purely to destroy them for no monetary gain, no reputation gain, infact no gain at all, and most likely actually at a loss infact, why are they doing it? It leaves only one reason surely... They enjoy destroying other commanders due to the grief it causes them. Now is that an element of gameplay we wish to support/promote?

Ultimately I'm not suggesting the game should prevent it. But I think it needs to do more than it's doing now for two reason:-

• Mindless destruction drives Traders out of the game - This ultimately makee Piracy a lesser experience surely?[/*]
• Griefing drives other CMDRs (not just Traders) out of OPEN - This is not good for the game. ie: A PvE player should be able to generally play in OPEN being careful what they do, and ideally no suffer mindless destruction from another CMDR (IMHO).]/list]
  
  The game needs to deter mindless destruction, while embracing consensual PvP mechanics. It's not committed to either at the moment, so we're in some scary (weak) combination of the two!

 

[Vorthax]

Sandro would seem to have already discounted this possibility:

Not really, he was refering to a client-server architecture. The architecture I'm talking about is coordinating server + P2P clients, where one of the clients is selected as an arbiter.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Not really, he was refering to a client-server architecture. The architecture I'm talking about is coordinating server + P2P clients, where one of the clients is selected as an arbiter.

He was referring to the P2P architecture that the game has when he said that "there is no infallible arbiter", i.e. we don't have a Client / Server networking model.

His point, I think, was that clients cannot be trusted to be infallible (nor unbiased).

Also, in a situation where the connection between the only two players in the instance dropped, what would happen?

 

[Vorthax]

The arbiter needs to be randomly selected from clients that are NOT in the instance.

When one of two players CLs, arbiter would be able to detect which one did.

Edit:
If we can't trust single client, use 3 randomly selected clients at the same time.

 

[anikaiful]

The arbiter needs to be randomly selected from clients that are NOT the instance.

When one of two players CLs, arbiter would be able to detect which one did.

What if that said arbiter logs off the moment they get selected? Fail. So yea, that approach isn't infallible either.

 

[Robert Maynard]

The arbiter needs to be randomly selected from clients that are NOT in the instance.

When one of two players CLs, arbiter would be able to detect which one did.

Edit:
If we can't trust single client, use 3 randomly selected clients at the same time.

This would require additional P2P connections to players not even in the instance just to run an instance. A client cannot, I expect, detect how any of its P2P connections failed.

 

[Vorthax]

What if that said arbiter logs off the moment they get selected? Fail. So yea, that approach isn't infallible either.

Clients would have to request new arbiter from central server or the central server would send an update to the clients. I guess that multiple (3?) arbiters at the same time would be a good idea.

This would require additional P2P connections to players not even in the instance just to run an instance. A client cannot, I expect, detect how any of its P2P connections failed.

Yes. But if it were only "keep alive" messages, the required throughput would be quite low. A client cannot detect how, but it can detect if the connection failed.

 

[anikaiful]

Maybe... keep things as they are from client-viewpoint - just put couple PCs to do nothing else but watch connections. FD might be doing this or something similar already anyway, I don't know *shrug*. Primarily they've got P2P architecture, but what else they have (or haven't) isn't for us to know anyway.

 

[Majinvash]

Seeing as FD just spins up AWS and not being in anyway a software/networking expert.

Couldn't one of those be used to do this job?

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[Robert Maynard]

Yes. But if it were only "keep alive" messages, the required throughput would be quite low. A client cannot detect how, but it can detect if the connection failed.

The connections would still need to be made - and would also be subject to the same possibility of disconnection as other players in the instance. Not really seeing how the disadvantage introduced by increasing the number of connections required to run an instance (bearing in mind that the total number of good quality P2P connections required to run an instance is (N x (N-1) /2), where N is the number of players) is outweighed by a number of extra clients also noticing that a connection has failed.

Noticing that a connection has failed does not tell the client how / why the connection failed - and does not keep the ship of the player whose client has become disconnected in the game.

 

[Boomer Kay]

They could also simply start sending condescending mails to confirmed combat loggers.

Apparently my attempts at reminding them of the EULA are fruitless.

Maybe I need to try harder .. hmmm ..

That hurts, doesn't it?

 

[Derath]

The only thing that works against combat loggers is waiting in the instance until they greedily reappear, and reaping them as punishment for their cowardice, then put them on the big list of combat loggers. If you blow them up enough times you can always hope they will stay in solo

worse treatment than any trader ever got from me for sure lol

 

[Comrade Error]

They could also simply start sending condescending mails to confirmed combat loggers.

Apparently my attempts at reminding them of the EULA are fruitless.

Maybe I need to try harder .. hmmm ..
View attachment 109576
That hurts, doesn't it?

Wouldn't mind this. If Frontier don't actually give a about logging and they strongly belive in correlation =/= causation the least that could be done is setup some automated system to warn reported loggers even if they are just empty threats.

 

[Vorthax]

The connections would still need to be made - and would also be subject to the same possibility of disconnection as other players in the instance. Not really seeing how the disadvantage introduced by increasing the number of connections required to run an instance (bearing in mind that the total number of good quality P2P connections required to run an instance is (N x (N-1) /2), where N is the number of players) is outweighed by a number of extra clients also noticing that a connection has failed.

Noticing that a connection has failed does not tell the client how / why the connection failed - and does not keep the ship of the player whose client has become disconnected in the game.

Yes, the cost of such solution is that arbiters are additional, light-weight clients in the instance.
The gain is, the arbiter-client code could take over the CLed ships (including PvE scenario).

Apparently my attempts at reminding them of the EULA are fruitless.

Check the EULA yourself then, there is a lot of "Frontier may" in there. They simply decided that handing out punishments left and right would make it worse for everybody.