Just fly a Cobra Mk IV. Nobody likes it, nobody wants it. So it's pretty safe from being stolen I'd say.
Monday Madness: Stealing ships
- Thread starter Bran Tse Mallory
- Start date
It's a nice idea but, as has been said, the first thing you have to ask yourself about any new idea is "how could it be abused?" and this could definitely be abused in the worst possible way.
Also, when Multicrew was released people asked how come you couldn't allow another CMDR to fly your ship so you could pilot an SLF, man the guns, or just to let somebody try out your ship.
FDev said there were substantial obstacles preventing this and I guess that would still be the case with regard to ship theft.
I wouldn't mind if FDev came up with some kind of "repo man" missions, where you had to chase an NPC ship, get the hull down to, say, 50%, force it to make a planetary landing and then you could board it (using space-legs or your SRV) and then return it to it's owner within a set time (perhaps after finding mat's on the surface so you could make repairs).
Failure to return the ship would lead to you gaining a "wanted" tag and other BHers would be sent against you.
The obvious problems with this, however, are 1) the previously mentioned inability to fly somebody else's ship and 2) the fact it'd mean abandoning you own ship.
Presumably, neither issue is completely insurmountable (#2 could be solved by having your NPC crew "fly" your ship) but I guess it's up to FDev to decide whether it's worth the effort.
It'd be nice if FDev introduced a mechanic where you could steal specific NPC ships for a specific reason but I'm not keen on the idea of allowing it to happen all the time.
Also, when Multicrew was released people asked how come you couldn't allow another CMDR to fly your ship so you could pilot an SLF, man the guns, or just to let somebody try out your ship.
FDev said there were substantial obstacles preventing this and I guess that would still be the case with regard to ship theft.
I wouldn't mind if FDev came up with some kind of "repo man" missions, where you had to chase an NPC ship, get the hull down to, say, 50%, force it to make a planetary landing and then you could board it (using space-legs or your SRV) and then return it to it's owner within a set time (perhaps after finding mat's on the surface so you could make repairs).
Failure to return the ship would lead to you gaining a "wanted" tag and other BHers would be sent against you.
The obvious problems with this, however, are 1) the previously mentioned inability to fly somebody else's ship and 2) the fact it'd mean abandoning you own ship.
Presumably, neither issue is completely insurmountable (#2 could be solved by having your NPC crew "fly" your ship) but I guess it's up to FDev to decide whether it's worth the effort.
It'd be nice if FDev introduced a mechanic where you could steal specific NPC ships for a specific reason but I'm not keen on the idea of allowing it to happen all the time.
sell a "self destruct" module, that on theft detonates killing the thieving commander and wiping their save clean so they start from scratch again?
I doubt this would be implemented. Think about all those poor sods that get their 100 hour Wonders destroyed in Minecraft or the toxic community in Rust.
However, if it was, it could open up lots of gameplay opportunities:
- Locks
- Traps
- Access Codes
- Centurion robots
- NPC bodyguards
Of course all of the above could probably abused by griefers. e.g.
- Locking the owner out of their own ship
- Reverse engineering a trap
- Changing the Access Code
- Taking control of a robot
- Bribing NPCs
Fun times.
Thefts couldn't be permanent anyway, i don't think they are perm even in SC. It would just be too exploitable.
A Stolen ship would have to slowly make your life more and more difficult over a course of say; 24 hours...Upon which time you are wanted everywhere with everyone and unable to dock anywhere.
A Stolen ship would have to slowly make your life more and more difficult over a course of say; 24 hours...Upon which time you are wanted everywhere with everyone and unable to dock anywhere.
As Long as FD is stuck in their concept of preventing any type of Money Transfer between Players, stealing ships won't ever happen. Unless it's stealing from NPC or have one's ship stolen by a NPC. That, on the other Hand, would be cool, but has to remain damn hard - which it will, since you Need to disable the ship to be able to board it. So you Need to snipe PP and haste onboard before reset an reboot. Maybe a Boarding security module would make it even harder for NPCs. Or the fact of having Crew members could lower the Odds of successful capture.
And if you are successful, who will Pilot your new ship to the next Station? You cannot Pilot two at the same time, ofc...
And if you are successful, who will Pilot your new ship to the next Station? You cannot Pilot two at the same time, ofc...
Well, that was my main source of income in EV:Nova, once I got a decent ship. Find an enemy ship, shoot it helpless, board it, sell it 
.
That said - I don't know how that would work in ED. I cuold imagine it tying in with an upgraded C&P scheme, though. Like (firing from the top of my head):
- stealing ships should be difficult. Impossible inside any legal station, only possible planetside or in an anarchy station
- ships flagged as "stolen" can't dock in spaceports except in anarchy systems
- they can't be sold in the open market, only to shady bokers/fences, found in piracy systems, paying you basically the insurance value (i.e. 5%) of the ship's price
- capturing ships in combat should have some high hurdles, like having to disable their drives, then entering them or persuading their crew to give up (yep, against NPCs, that comes down to RNG - or on-board hand-to-hand fighting)
- ship's owner may choose to self destruct, inflicting damage to the boarding party
- net value (including damages) of a ship captured in combat should be low, maybe 10% of its nominal value
- ships captured in combat may not dock at any stations associated with their originating faction (i.e. if you capture a ship from a Federal-aligned faction, you can't dock it in federal-aligned ports). Perhaps loosen that a bit for pirate ships carrying a large bounty.
.That said - I don't know how that would work in ED. I cuold imagine it tying in with an upgraded C&P scheme, though. Like (firing from the top of my head):
- stealing ships should be difficult. Impossible inside any legal station, only possible planetside or in an anarchy station
- ships flagged as "stolen" can't dock in spaceports except in anarchy systems
- they can't be sold in the open market, only to shady bokers/fences, found in piracy systems, paying you basically the insurance value (i.e. 5%) of the ship's price
- capturing ships in combat should have some high hurdles, like having to disable their drives, then entering them or persuading their crew to give up (yep, against NPCs, that comes down to RNG - or on-board hand-to-hand fighting)
- ship's owner may choose to self destruct, inflicting damage to the boarding party
- net value (including damages) of a ship captured in combat should be low, maybe 10% of its nominal value
- ships captured in combat may not dock at any stations associated with their originating faction (i.e. if you capture a ship from a Federal-aligned faction, you can't dock it in federal-aligned ports). Perhaps loosen that a bit for pirate ships carrying a large bounty.
On topic, but probably going to incite some kind of raging fire that will derail the thread and get it locked, but, here goes...
I read an article the other day about Star Citizen on this very topic - namely that they're going to be adding locks to the doors of player ships now to make theft harder, in preparation for the players to actually take ownership of their ships. The article talked about how ship theft would work in the game and be covered by the ship insurance, and also how it would be exploitable for insurance fraud.
And to be honest, I liked some of the ideas I was reading. Now obviously Star Citizen is lagging behind ED in terms of the feeling of ship ownership - apparently whatever ships you've got can just be instantly summoned if they're stolen so there's no feeling of it being something to lose, if you see what I mean? And they're just looking at the concept of ship insurance and rebuys (looks like a little more complex than ED's version, although I'm not sure I like that level of complexity tbh), but some of the ideas for ship theft included:
- Gameplay (lockpicking and such) for the thief to break in and steal the ship.
- The ships unique ID being marked as stolen, thus restricting where you can go and making what you can do with it more challenging.
- The victim of the crime being compensated by ship insurance company providing a replacement ship, so they don't actually "lose" anything.
- The ability for insurance fraud - a player getting their friend to steal their ship so they can have a nice ship, while the original player gets their replacement.
To be honest, if FD were to implement ship theft with the caveat that the insurance we pay on our ships also provided us with a replacement (in the same manner we get a replacement currently, except not having to pay the rebuy), no one would really be put out too much as to drive people out of Open to avoid theft, and just adds some extra gameplay loops into the game. For example, the player could make sure they lock their ships up (secure, but can be broken into) or have to make sure to use the starport hangars to prevent theft (100% secure); the player could also be able to locate the thief and take their ship back (which might be better if you turn the "replacement ship" into a "courtesy ship" which you can either keep or is handed back to the insurance company if you decide to pursue the thief and take your original ship back).
In short, there's lots of ways that ship theft could be implemented in fun ways that also make sure people don't actually lose the beloved ship they've spent thousands of hours tinkering with and engineering to perfection.
I read an article the other day about Star Citizen on this very topic - namely that they're going to be adding locks to the doors of player ships now to make theft harder, in preparation for the players to actually take ownership of their ships. The article talked about how ship theft would work in the game and be covered by the ship insurance, and also how it would be exploitable for insurance fraud.
And to be honest, I liked some of the ideas I was reading. Now obviously Star Citizen is lagging behind ED in terms of the feeling of ship ownership - apparently whatever ships you've got can just be instantly summoned if they're stolen so there's no feeling of it being something to lose, if you see what I mean? And they're just looking at the concept of ship insurance and rebuys (looks like a little more complex than ED's version, although I'm not sure I like that level of complexity tbh), but some of the ideas for ship theft included:
- Gameplay (lockpicking and such) for the thief to break in and steal the ship.
- The ships unique ID being marked as stolen, thus restricting where you can go and making what you can do with it more challenging.
- The victim of the crime being compensated by ship insurance company providing a replacement ship, so they don't actually "lose" anything.
- The ability for insurance fraud - a player getting their friend to steal their ship so they can have a nice ship, while the original player gets their replacement.
To be honest, if FD were to implement ship theft with the caveat that the insurance we pay on our ships also provided us with a replacement (in the same manner we get a replacement currently, except not having to pay the rebuy), no one would really be put out too much as to drive people out of Open to avoid theft, and just adds some extra gameplay loops into the game. For example, the player could make sure they lock their ships up (secure, but can be broken into) or have to make sure to use the starport hangars to prevent theft (100% secure); the player could also be able to locate the thief and take their ship back (which might be better if you turn the "replacement ship" into a "courtesy ship" which you can either keep or is handed back to the insurance company if you decide to pursue the thief and take your original ship back).
In short, there's lots of ways that ship theft could be implemented in fun ways that also make sure people don't actually lose the beloved ship they've spent thousands of hours tinkering with and engineering to perfection.
Thing is, it's not about the overt issue of "ship theft", itself.
What it's really about is how the mechanic could be abused as a means of selling ships/modules/weapons for real-world cash.
DB is coming across as a bit of a griefer himself tbh
Anyway, if there was a game mechanic where someone could steal my ship, I (and probably hundreds of other players) will never, ever, be tempted to go into open which, in itself, makes DB look out of touch regarding what makes ED a pleasant experience for some and not others.
To go back to one of Bran's initial questions, asking what in the lore is there to prevent the theft of ships, I think it would make sense that breaking into a ship should be a significant challenge by itself, even without counting the owner's attempts at stopping it, or even the police. There has to be strong automated security of some sort there.
But your comment touches upon the bigger discussion of adversarial play between players, and ultimately no matter how hard you make it for an attacker, there will be those for whom such a feature would be an absolute turn off. That's entirely expected and that's fine, that is the exact reason we have different game mods to catter to different tastes. For the rest, it's all a matter of finding the right spot.
Clearly stolen ship shouldn't be replaced, but as for reselling them that's something that should be a thing IMO. We could use a black or grey market for used ships of various origins, both for buying and selling, with various quirks and such. However, because of the sums pontentially involved, from even just a pure PVE perspective, the challenge of stealing one would need to match the pay. Now how do you cram enough challenge, in the span of a single session, to justify rewarding the player with a new, potentially fully outfitted ship, that's of course something entirely different. Or, and this is something that would require a lot more persistence than we have currently, both wrt NPCs and the reliability of being instanced with another player, stealing a ship would be a task potentially spanning several multi hour play sessions where you'd have to shadow the ship to try and figure out a pattern and find the one right moment where boarding becomes feasible.
Clearly even now there is an issue with ship progression being way too fast, but on the other hand the people that would be interested in fast-tracking to such a ship right away probably aren't interested in proper progression so from that pov allowing them to do so and probably quickly get bored isn't going to lose Frontier a long term customer. And since giving away your ship to a beginner is a clear, 100% loss for the seller, that's IMO already much less of an issue than the various iterations of seeking luxuries and Sothis and Ram Tah which do create money out of thin air for very little player involvement.
There is however the issue of insurance which could make ship theft one of the biggest money making exploits out there. So either the very actions by which you steal a ship would have to, at all time even in a multi-session scenario, be very challenging (so we're back at how to cram enough challenge in a small interval) even when the 'victim/seller' is doing everything they can to let themselves be robbed, or stolen ships need to be inherently worse somehow than a ship you'd have legitimately obtained through trading, so that the price the victim/seller pays via their insurance roughly reflects the new worth (not just monetary worth) of the ship that was just transferred to the other player.
That's alwyas been my take on RMT and why it shouldn't impact how the game is developped, expecially in a game like ED where players only interact at a superficial level and don't really impact one another that much, contrary to something like EVE.
RMT is against the rules, only those who take part in it should be punished. Legit features shouldn't be held back for the sake of stopping it, something that is impossible without stopping virtually all player interactions.
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Which ignores the obvious abuse - players would collude to transfer ships / credits to other players through "theft" (with the "victim" only needing to pay a 5% rebuy) at a much greater rate than is possible by cargo abandon / collect.
That wasn't my point - as Engineers take gameplay to unlock, as do the rank locked ships. My point was that allowing freshly renamed CMDRs to access ships that would require hundreds of hours of gameplay to acquire would be a "bad thing".
I doubt that Frontier would introduce a mechanism that greatly facilitated credit transfer (as it would encourage RMT).
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
This would permit direct credit transfer (if the "victim" colluded with the "thief" in the theft) and also the possibility of transferring more credits than were lost - if the "victim"'s rebuy was either 2.5% [Alpha] or 3.75% [Beta] rather than the standard 5%.
I address insurance schemes in the second quote, please read my posts in full.
There's two sides here. Those who are interested in said gameplay and progression, and those who aren't. Yes, giving the players who are interested in progression quick access to all that jazz would be a bad thing, and the best way to avoid that is to make it costly for the seller to just give it away so that they just don't. I'd say the Engineers grind is infamous enough that I'm sure few people are going to be willing to just give engineered modules away for no compensation, and players who know they like progression in games also would know not to fast track this way. This isn't like the rest of the game where you are literally showered with credits whatever you do: to buy stuff from a player you would have to actively go looking for it. This is much easier to ignore and avoid for those suffering from the dilemma of striving to become better (usually translated into higher money making ability) while also playing the game as intended and going through the normal progression (well designed and balanced games find the right spot where becoming better at the game feels rewarding while also not too significantly shortening the shelf life of the content, but Frontier is still inexperienced there and the game is still heavily WIP making balancing even harder so we'll be stuck with that dilemma for some time I think).
For those who aren't interested in the progression, it doesn't really hurt to give them what they want. They would get bored getting there (contrary to getting bored after getting there like I do), so at least it keeps them playing.
Again, people already pay others to log into their account to grind credits, ranks and engineers. There is no need for credit transfers for RMT really, this is locking away a legit feature for the sake of protecting us against something that already happens and wouldn't even hurt the game anyway.
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Guys, if every game mechanic was designed around "how can we stop people exploiting this" we wouldn't have a game, and given that's half-way what they've been doing so far it kind of explains why many of the mechanics are so dumbed down as it is. So ignoring that alley for the moment...
I think a good implementation of ship theft would be one which ties in closely with the crime part of the crime and punishment system.
Yes, anyone can steal a ship (so long as they can get past a few doors, flight control overrides, internal defences or angry crew members at least) but what do you do once you have the ship?
Well for starters the ship should be immediately reported stolen (if the owner had report crimes turned on) and be uninsurable, immediately declared hostile by any superpower starport or system security that see it, and if the person you stole it from was in the Pilot's Federation (ie a player) you now have them to deal with as well, possibly in the form of a hefty bounty and always showing as a hostile blip on the radar to any other PF ships in the area.
Now we've got the disincentives out of the way, what would make this an action worth taking for any reason beyond mindless trolling? There has to be some gameplay benefit to doing it otherwise it's just that.
Well the most obvious is fencing the hulls at more shady locations for a bit of quick cash. Obviously nothing like the actual cost of the ship, but enough of a percentage of the hull value to make grand theft starship worth the risk and effort. Missions centred around stealing such and such ship from such and such bloke we don't like with a reward penalty for every bit of damage it takes before you get back. Missions for more reputable powers that involve recovering a previously stolen ship intact (perhaps as a way to get into the practice without being saddled with all the crimes and associated punishments.) Etc etc you get the idea. Missions.
But going beyond the obvious a little, maybe joyriding a ship you stole (and for obvious reasons can't keep) could have the benefit of making it impossible to get bounties for crimes you commit while you're in it. They know someone's flying a stolen ship, but they don't know who's flying it. You can still be considered hostile and attacked during your crime spree, but nobody knows where to send the bill. There's a risk you might lose your hard earned quarry in the process but you could pull off an even bigger job with it and walk away clean afterward.
I can see this being a high risk, high reward activity if done right.
I think a good implementation of ship theft would be one which ties in closely with the crime part of the crime and punishment system.
Yes, anyone can steal a ship (so long as they can get past a few doors, flight control overrides, internal defences or angry crew members at least) but what do you do once you have the ship?
Well for starters the ship should be immediately reported stolen (if the owner had report crimes turned on) and be uninsurable, immediately declared hostile by any superpower starport or system security that see it, and if the person you stole it from was in the Pilot's Federation (ie a player) you now have them to deal with as well, possibly in the form of a hefty bounty and always showing as a hostile blip on the radar to any other PF ships in the area.
Now we've got the disincentives out of the way, what would make this an action worth taking for any reason beyond mindless trolling? There has to be some gameplay benefit to doing it otherwise it's just that.
Well the most obvious is fencing the hulls at more shady locations for a bit of quick cash. Obviously nothing like the actual cost of the ship, but enough of a percentage of the hull value to make grand theft starship worth the risk and effort. Missions centred around stealing such and such ship from such and such bloke we don't like with a reward penalty for every bit of damage it takes before you get back. Missions for more reputable powers that involve recovering a previously stolen ship intact (perhaps as a way to get into the practice without being saddled with all the crimes and associated punishments.) Etc etc you get the idea. Missions.
But going beyond the obvious a little, maybe joyriding a ship you stole (and for obvious reasons can't keep) could have the benefit of making it impossible to get bounties for crimes you commit while you're in it. They know someone's flying a stolen ship, but they don't know who's flying it. You can still be considered hostile and attacked during your crime spree, but nobody knows where to send the bill. There's a risk you might lose your hard earned quarry in the process but you could pull off an even bigger job with it and walk away clean afterward.
I can see this being a high risk, high reward activity if done right.
"victim" has to pay insurance value to get their ship back.
"thief" gets insurance value from selling the ship.
Ok, direct credit transfer confirmed, at a level of 5% of the ship's value. How much (in % of a ship's value) can you transfer with Platinum or Imperial Slaves changing hands in space? I don't think this would exceed the currently existig possibilities of cargo transfer.
Alpha/beta backer rebuy for creatig wealth: didn't know about that one. Might be handled the same way as LYR rebuys, i.e. the rebuy/sales value are locked to each other and each individual ship. Steal from an alpha backer, and you only get half the money you get from a regular player
One more thing: stolen ships should not be insureable.
And another thing for capturing ships: you will need of course a crew member (NPC or multi crew) to fly either the captured ship or your old ship to the nearest port.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I address insurance schemes in the second quote, please read my posts in full.
I didn't see anything that stopped players colluding to gain massive quantities of credits easily, sorry if I missed it....
The cost to the "victim" would not exceed the standard rebuy, in my opinion (I'd be very surprised if players were penalised even more for their ship being stolen than they were for it being destroyed).
Engineered modules need not be "god-rolls" to be a massive improvement over stock - and time is the currency of Engineers for every player that wants to modify their equipment.
We can't sell modules to players - and post-Engineers, I don't see it being introduced.
It's not how the feature would affect the disinterested player that is the issue, in my opinion - it's the use that those assets would be put to by those players.
That's another matter for CS to deal with as and when they identify accounts.
One thing, though, for which I don't have any idea: multiplication of engineered modules. Money is easy to come by, but a god-rolled set of engineered modules?
Clearly, the victim should get back their engineered modules. No need in punishing them in real theft scenarios.
On the other hand, the thief also should find the engineered modules on the stolen ship, otherwise it would severly break the immersion.
That would be the main dealbreaker here, unless someone can come up with a good idea. Otherwise, what's to prevent a wing to support one member to god-roll one ship, then clone that ship through repeated theft to everyone in the wing?
Clearly, the victim should get back their engineered modules. No need in punishing them in real theft scenarios.
On the other hand, the thief also should find the engineered modules on the stolen ship, otherwise it would severly break the immersion.
That would be the main dealbreaker here, unless someone can come up with a good idea. Otherwise, what's to prevent a wing to support one member to god-roll one ship, then clone that ship through repeated theft to everyone in the wing?
I would imagine ships would be secured using multi-factor authentication. Probably a passcode that the owner knows, the owner's biometrics, and the owner's pilot's fed ID (has an RFID chip). One or even two could be beat, but all three would be practically impossible.
So I'm proposing offsetting that cost to the 'thief' basically, either by giving them a ship of inferior worth (I don't like giving magical stat debuffs to ship so I'd like that 'inferior worth' to be something else - ideally in the wider context of a rework of crime and punishment to make criminality a more interesting, challenging and rewarding career) and/or by making them put in enough effort to justify the dozens of millions they could make.
Frankly I just wish Frontier had manned up and admitted to messing up the economy/progression after upping every reward tenfold or more across the board in mid 2015 while slashing running costs into nothingness. I mean they did admit it, but they did so by adding in a new currency instead of fixing the old one. Anyway, I belive modules and materials should be tradable - for the very reason I don't believe RMT to be a problem that justifies gelding player interactions. Yes, time is the currency of Engineers, and atm it can't really translated directly into credits because credits are so easy to come by there is virtually no time value associated to it. That's a problem with the value of credits and at some point Frontier needs to address that, they can't just keep adding currencies ala F2P MMO. This is supposed to be a serious game with verisimilitude at the core.
If this is about griefing, we have the karma system coming to address that. If you're worried about players smurfing and using ship trading to avoid the karma system, I think that's a discussion for the karma system itself. I believe most issues there are specific enough that they will be easy to detect and deal with unless players actually buy new accounts to work around any account-wide variables (and Frontier has made it clear, with the multicrew pip comments, that they're fine with people being 'creative' with the holes in the mechanics if that means them buying new accounts...)
So why not let CS deal with RMT and cheaters, and let the designers do the job of designing the mechanics without worrying too much about it.
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