PvP PvPiracy and its sad state.

[Einar Donarsson]

Not that its already the least performed Thing in the Entire Game. With all the new Punishmentstuff it gets almost impossible.

People mistake Pirates with Griefers 80% of the Time. At least 40% of the Guys i interdict just Combatlog.
The Guys that stay mostly Run and i have to disable theyr Drives first or shoot at them before they Stop wich makes you instantly wanted.
A Wanted Ship instantly gets targetted by everyone (CMDR's that is) Problem is: you cant even defend yourself against them because if you kill the aggressors you always get a Pilots Federation bounty.
So i can either go out in My Cutter and STAY in my Cutter so i never get destroyed Or i use a Mid/small ship. I cant do both. If i defend myself in a Cutter and later get destroyed in my Courier or Viper i have to pay the full rebuy of My Cutter.

I know F-Dev wants this system to Work against Griefers and Gankers but it also punishes the most difficult role in the Game. How am i supposed to get people to comply if they know im not a threat? Why cant i defend myself against Wannabe-police-wings? If i got this right i wont even be able to Dock on certain stations anymore if my Karma gets to low with the upcoming updates.

It kinda Feels like F-Dev wants to kill of everything that has to do with PvP if its not agreed to by both CMDR's.

 

[Stigbob]

Real pirates have the same problem real PVP'ers have, the griefers who claim to be that which you are have killed your rep.

 

[ALGOMATIC]

Real pirates have the same problem real PVP'ers have, the griefers who claim to be that which you are have killed your rep.

Salt mining and pvpieng are not mutually exclusive, most so called "griefers" are also constantly engaged in proper PvP (1 v 1 or wing fights), the game allows for any form of player interaction, the word "griefing" is being thrown around about almost any non consensual interaction which is wrong to begin with.
Take for example SDC who are well known for what you call "griefing" but at the same time they are the best PvP group at the game, so your theory is wrong.

 

[Stigbob]

Salt mining and pvpieng are not mutually exclusive, most so called "griefers" are also constantly engaged in proper PvP (1 v 1 or wing fights), the game allows for any form of player interaction, the word "griefing" is being thrown around about almost any non consensual interaction which is wrong to begin with.
Take for example SDC who are well known for what you call "griefing" but at the same time they are the best PvP group at the game, so your theory is wrong.

Thats a hilarious parody of a counterproductive post.

 

[Hedgehobbit]

The Guys that stay mostly Run and i have to disable theyr Drives first or shoot at them before they Stop wich makes you instantly wanted.

One of the things I thought of being on the receiving end of piracy, is that it would help if when ships were dropped to 0 hull by another PCs, that they'd be disabled instead of destroyed (but could later be attack and destroyed). And that the punishment for disabling a ship should be significantly less than for killing it, since you'd have to deliberately target a disabled ship to destroy it.

By making this disabled vs destroyed distinction you'd be better able to target the punishment system against killers without discouraging piracy as a side effect.

I've suggested this before but all the PvPers said it would ruin the game yet I still can't see why.

 

[ryan_m]

One of the things I thought of being on the receiving end of piracy, is that it would help if when ships were dropped to 0 hull by another PCs, that they'd be disabled instead of destroyed (but could later be attack and destroyed). And that the punishment for disabling a ship should be significantly less than for killing it, since you'd have to deliberately target a disabled ship to destroy it.

By making this disabled vs destroyed distinction you'd be better able to target the punishment system against killers without discouraging piracy as a side effect.

I've suggested this before but all the PvPers said it would ruin the game yet I still can't see why.

As we told you in your reddit thread, there are a number of reasons: doesn't fit with canon, simply provides more "safe" time for the player to log out, and until combat logging is fixed, it doesn't even matter because a huge percentage of people will combat log to avoid the loss.

Serious question: have you ever attempted pirating another person?

 

[nightsta1ker]

Real piracy is done in lawless areas. Pirates are thus relegated to the shadows. They need to sneak around and not get caught. They can’t travel openly as they will always have a target on their head. Gameplay should reflect this. We have lawless systems already.

So cmdrs need to have a reason to risk piracy to go to those systems, like profitable trade routes, and smuggled cargo on the black market should be worth the risk too. Then piracy can be realistically implemented and I think you would have more emergent gameplay. As it was before the game was just a griefer barrelshoot. It’s still not quite right but at least they are taking many of our concerns seriously?

 

[nightsta1ker]

Furthermore, for them to get it right, they need to fix a lot more than just the crime and punishment system.

 

[Hedgehobbit]

Serious question: have you ever attempted pirating another person?

Of course not. There's no point. I either get a bunch of cargo that's worth next to nothing or I kill a ship and get nothing at all. I would at least try it if I knew that I wouldn't have to send people to the rebuy screen every time.

 

[ryan_m]

Of course not. There's no point. I either get a bunch of cargo that's worth next to nothing or I kill a ship and get nothing at all. I would at least try it if I knew that I wouldn't have to send people to the rebuy screen every time.

So how do you think that your suggestions will fix it if you've never actually done it before? That's like me saying I know how to fix exploring, but I've never gone exploring.

 

[True Phoenix]

bad pirating?

 

[fnberger]

Yes - that sounds serious. But isn't "piracy" roleplaying in the first place? Performed between consenting users of an online game? Which is entertaining to all participating as long as it's consentual? Well, if you're trying to force your playstyle upon other players you will probably be regulated by game mechanics. While ED is a game that gives you the freedom of killing others, even against their will, it will not allow to to do this safely. Yes, "breaking the law" will have negative consequences for you. So you may want to move on to pirate in anarchy systems only, or limit it to powerplay situations, or face your fate of being an outlaw. Or stick to roleplay and stop destroying what's others'. I believe this decision is up to you.

 

[SushiCW]

I've been experimenting with pirating Thargoid stuff in Maia from people trying to do Palin's mission. There are a couple of ways to play it:

* Steal the cargo, then return the stolen goods to the Thargoids.
* Steal the cargo, and sell it for quite decent money (or even turn it in to complete your *own* Palin missions).

The amount of cargo being carried is small, so it's quite likely to get all or most of it with a hatchbreaker or two (no cooperation required whatsoever). Maia is also an anarchy, so no need to worry about becoming Wanted or authority ships jumping in to spoil things.

 

[Necronaught]

If the rebuys didn't take the average player hours and hours to recuperate then we wouldn't have this issue. You get an hour a day to play. You are trying to get somewhere in the game and you like the idea of being in player populated space. In a few minutes, days and days of game time can be for nothing because some spotty millennial with no job, all the time in the world and 12 billion in Robigo credits baked your Cutter you spent the best part of your game time this past year and half grinding for.

The problem is in the design of the mechanics. People's play time is valuable and non refundable. Losing millions of in game credits, that you really earned in this game, is a catastrophic set back. How I wish for 1000 player instances and a annual insurance that covers all losses. The more you lose the higher the fee etc. It can be worked out for balance and such.

Why is not considered lame seal clubbing but logging is a crime? People Merry Christmas. Let's see some good will this Xmas.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Then piracy can be realistically implemented and I think you would have more emergent gameplay.

The fundamental realism problem with piracy - forget modes, forget combat logging - is that it's in any economic sense completely unrealistic. Any ship or wing capable of piracy at all could make considerably more money doing honest (boring) A-B trading, never mind any earner-of-the-month stuff. Now ... you might say that people are in it for the fun. Certainly true - no-one would pirate for anything else - but note how many people will completely avoid all possible fun if it boosts their Cr/Hr (bulk economy passenger missions, ahem). The point is, if it's something which can only be done as an "endgame" activity after you've already got your ship by doing something else, you might as well just go to San Tu and set up some "pirates vs armed traders" fights.

For piracy to be economically realistic, in the average encounter between trader and pirate, the trader needs to lose so much cargo that they make a net loss on the trip. If you go further and insist on piracy being illegal (!) and pirates being hunted to rebuy by other ships (!!), then the trader needs to make an extremely large net loss on the trip, to cover the pirate's operating costs.

That requires the pirate to be able to reliably steal a significant fraction of their victim's cargo hold. At the moment, with a fully cooperative player, transferring a few hundred tonnes of cargo between big ships will take a good fraction of an hour. Actually having to steal the cargo means it will take even longer. I think the Adder may be the biggest ship where the current piracy mechanisms could actually work in theory.

For realism, an additional problem is that a type of attack only a player can do is a fundamental problem, because other players won't be used to it. So NPC pirates would also need to do the whole "we rob you, you make a loss" thing. That would seriously change trading - and not in a way that the current player base, attracted by a completely different style of game, would like.

baked your Cutter [...] Why is not considered lame seal clubbing

This is one of the big divisions, isn't it: is attacking a shieldless trade Cutter "seal clubbing". I would say not, because anyone who can afford a shieldless Cutter can afford a survivable trade ship instead. If they choose not to, then that's a deliberate risk they're taking: more cargo capacity per successful trip, higher chance of - and higher costs of - an unsuccessful trip.

The problem here - as above - is that the NPC implementation in Elite Dangerous doesn't encourage sensible risk-reward decisions. The NPC AI and loadouts have improved significantly over the last year - they've gone from "I'll just facetank this Elite Anaconda to death in my trade ship" to something much better ... but they're still at the level where the absolute toughest are "I'll need to fly decently if I want to kill this pirate in my trade ship" - if I submit-boost-lowwake, or fight the interdiction, or just fly to the station while they're extricating themselves from a planet's gravity well and dock while they're still 1000Ls away, they're still no threat at all. In the original Elite, or in FE2/FFE, flying an unarmed trade ship pretty much anywhere would get you killed by the NPCs [1]

And players ... well, players are so rare that they're statistically no threat at all. So flying a shieldless trade Cutter is basically optimal, so people do it. And then statistics catch up with some of them, and they complain about it. But if the NPCs were routinely capable of being a serious threat to an unarmed trade ship, people would fly something more sensible, and the seal clubbers would have to club the (rare) actual seals, not experienced players who should really know better.

But, that's not the game we have, and it's not the game we will have.

[1] Which is interesting, because the AI in FE2/FFE was terrible. Harmless NPCs in Elite Dangerous do a better job of flying their ships. But even Elite NPCs in Elite Dangerous have trouble killing unarmed unshielded traders, whereas even a single Eagle in FE2/FFE would manage that.

 

[Morbad]

Yes - that sounds serious. But isn't "piracy" roleplaying in the first place? Performed between consenting users of an online game?

Consensual piracy is an oxymoron.

Both players may be ok with what's happening (and if they aren't they have no business in Open), but when a CMDR is ok with being a piracy victim, it stops being piracy within a game and becomes a game within a game.

If the rebuys didn't take the average player hours and hours to recuperate then we wouldn't have this issue.

You'd have the bigger issue of losses being even more meaningless.

This is one of the big divisions, isn't it: is attacking a shieldless trade Cutter "seal clubbing". I would say not, because anyone who can afford a shieldless Cutter can afford a survivable trade ship instead. If they choose not to, then that's a deliberate risk they're taking: more cargo capacity per successful trip, higher chance of - and higher costs of - an unsuccessful trip.

The problem here - as above - is that the NPC implementation in Elite Dangerous doesn't encourage sensible risk-reward decisions. The NPC AI and loadouts have improved significantly over the last year - they've gone from "I'll just facetank this Elite Anaconda to death in my trade ship" to something much better ... but they're still at the level where the absolute toughest are "I'll need to fly decently if I want to kill this pirate in my trade ship" - if I submit-boost-lowwake, or fight the interdiction, or just fly to the station while they're extricating themselves from a planet's gravity well and dock while they're still 1000Ls away, they're still no threat at all. In the original Elite, or in FE2/FFE, flying an unarmed trade ship pretty much anywhere would get you killed by the NPCs [1]

And players ... well, players are so rare that they're statistically no threat at all. So flying a shieldless trade Cutter is basically optimal, so people do it. And then statistics catch up with some of them, and they complain about it. But if the NPCs were routinely capable of being a serious threat to an unarmed trade ship, people would fly something more sensible, and the seal clubbers would have to club the (rare) actual seals, not experienced players who should really know better.

All spot-on points.

Lack of credible PvE challenges breed incompetent CMDRs and combined with an economy that fast tracks people to the most expensive hardware in the game, the first mistakes are usually made quite late.

 

[Hedgehobbit]

So how do you think that your suggestions will fix it if you've never actually done it before? That's like me saying I know how to fix exploring, but I've never gone exploring.

If I had to kill other players to be an explorer I wouldn't be an explorer either.

My suggestion is based solely on my experience as a piratee, not a pirater. I've been interdicted about 7 or 8 times, and shot at by the same station campers 4 times. In all those interaction I never once noticed the "drop your cargo" message in my inbox until I had either high waked away or was safe inside the station.

 

[Chaparral]

I've tried pvp piracy in anarchy systems around CGs. The frequency of target appearance was exceedingly low, and I often found people going rather than coming. On the rare occasion that I actually was able to engage a target, the limpets dribbled out a pitiful amount of loot.

I think the mechanic for material piracy has to change substantially.

1) Extortion

Pull over a target via standard interdiction and say "pay me or I will rough you up" (a pirate flag is raised through pirate toggle). The extortion fee = 5% of the value of the ship and cargo. This is transferred after target consent via a target player toggle (like critical mission update). Once transferred, all players (within the instance) have weapons are disabled until the target hi-wakes. If the player does not consent, the pirate is free to murder the player.

2) Harpoon siphon

Pull over a target via standard interdiction and deploy the Harpoon Conduit. This is a short range (500 m) gantry that must strike the hull. Once the Harpoon Conduit hardpoint is deployed, no other pirate hardpoints may be deployed. The target may defend itself unless the harpoon lands. Once attached, a hole is cut through the hull and loot is vacuumed up. The amount is dictated by the quality of the harpoon. While the ships are connected, drives are disabled for both ships (including the FSD), and if either the target or pirate is destroyed, both are destroyed. Weapons are disabled on both ships while they are connected. Once disconnected, all ships in the instance have weapons disabled until hi-wake.

Bounties - Obviously there needs to be substantial bounties for piracy based on security level. I would also like to see scrolling Galnet bounties for wanted commanders in a given system. I would also like to see commanders have the option to place bounties equal to the value of the extortion or the stolen cargo.

 

[Stinja]

People mistake Pirates with Griefers 80% of the Time. ... The Guys that stay mostly Run ...

It kinda Feels like F-Dev wants to kill of everything that has to do with PvP

I'd actually say that the gankers killed piracy, not FDev.

As you say pirates are rare in number, so when a player gets interdicted 99% of the time it's going to be a ganker. They will obviously shoot first, so when pulled over, yes as a "victim" you need to run/dodge and wake away.
If you wait for a message, politely zero-ing your thrusters, and it is a ganker, all you've done is reduce your chances of escape.
Some gankers have been known to send a message "stop and pull over", but it's a lie and they do just want to blown you up.

As Mr Doncaster points out, the economics make no sense, except for fun.

Overall all of this means a real pirate has a massive uphill struggle to actually do genuine piracy as a viable profession.

2) Harpoon siphon

Pull over a target via standard interdiction and deploy the Harpoon Conduit. ... While the ships are connected, drives are disabled for both ships (including the FSD), and if either the target or pirate is destroyed, both are destroyed. Weapons are disabled on both ships while they are connected.

Pretty much any suggestion to improve piracy has to be critically evaluated as a gank-tool too.

Your Harpoon has some serious issues in this regard, as it will make for easy kills by gank wings. One member of the gank-wing (or even non-winged, but communicating via chat/discord) flying a cheap fast ship, like a Viper, icourier or Cobra, harpoons that fat Cutter: as per your suggestion the Cutter has no weapons and thrusters offline. The gank wing then opens fire on the immobile and non-firing Cutter. Unless they (15 second) log they will be destroyed.
The "pirate" loses their cheap harpoon-ship which may be a few hundred K, the Cutter CMDR loses a 50+mil. The gank wing gets easy salt.

Ditto past suggestions of "ion cannons", anti-thruster guns, stun weapons. Yeah they'd be a massive help for a pirate, but a gank-wing would also use them, and given the relative chances of encountering a real-pirate vs a ganker, you can see why FDev doesn't introduce them...


I've nothing against real pirates, i'd happily be properly pirated, or at least play the piracy game (and yes if I've chance they should be forced to shoot out my engines), but realistically I think I've been pirated twice in *cough* a lot of hours, while ganking attempts are very common (around CGs etc).
Usual response to an interdiction: MEEP MEEP! Sorry any real-pirates, but that's the reality

 

[Morbad]

I'd actually say that the gankers killed piracy, not FDev.

As you say pirates are rare in number, so when a player gets interdicted 99% of the time it's going to be a ganker. They will obviously shoot first, so when pulled over, yes as a "victim" you need to run/dodge and wake away.

Pirates are rare because the game's setting was never particularly conducive to piracy and has consistently moved away from being conducive to piracy.

There are no consequences for destroying ships, so no disincentive not to.

There are no commodities of any substantial value, so no serious incentive to try to take them. Even if there were, the mechanisms of cornering and extracting cargo are poor.

Interaction with would be pirates is completely optional, so the value of reputation as an 'honorable' pirate vs. wanton butcher is greatly diminished.

Gankers didn't kill piracy, the game just selects against pirates and for 'gankers'.

I've nothing against real pirates, i'd happily be properly pirated, or at least play the piracy game

If your CMDR is willing, it's not real piracy, it's just charity.

Usual response to an interdiction: MEEP MEEP! Sorry any real-pirates, but that's the reality

As it should be. If you cannot be caught and there is no practical way to retaliate against you for your defiance at a later point (the game has more mechanisms to avoid such so called 'gankers' than for those with perfectly in character grievances to express them), why would anyone interested in a believable encounter react in any other way (unless they had the firepower to put down the pirate 'of course')?