PvP How to make PvP piracy be made engaging/rewarding for both participants

[Powderpanic]

Interesting thread by Agony, but allow me to put my view for you all to comment on how to improve PVP Piracy

Firstly lets get the elephant in the room, out of the way.

Being pirated is not meant to be a pleasant experience for the "piratee".

We can romanticise as much as we want about how it should be fun to be robbed.. But if you can really be honest with yourself, its not fun being robbed.

It might be exciting but unless you enjoy being held up and forced to do hand over some credits per hour, its going to be a negative experience.

Referencing how it worked during the golden age of piracy is also a little daft as erm.. they had ships, not spaceships.

PVP Piracy works by the threat of destruction of the ship during a hold up. Really simple concept.

Yes you have limpets if you want to be a pick pocket but to make Piracy profitable and it really can be.. You pick a soft target with cargo.

You tell them to stop and drop 100 tonnes of abandoned cargo and then you scoop it up with 9-12 limpets/a wing and carry on your way until your hold is full. A pirate fit Conda/Vette/Cutter can hold about 200 tonnes realistically between sell offs.

Now whether you feel we have the right to demands abandoned goods is entirely redundant because we can and do.


Now that is clear, it needs to come down to how can the negative experience be worth it?


It comes down to a two things..

Reward and Options

Reward

Trading should be the most profitable way of making credits in the game. Period.

People should want to load up hulks full of cargo and grind runs for the biggest credit per hour available in game.

These rewards should be higher in Anarchy systems due to gaming reasons and lower the more secure a system is because you are paying the local faction for that security as a cargo tax.

The rewards in Anarchy should be so high that to lose even a 100 tonnes of your cargo, will not put you into a negative payout on completion ( ship dependent )

A great start would be to vastly increase the carry capacity of the Trade spec ships, so they actually make sense in game.

T9 - 1000 Tonnes
T7 - 600 Tonnes
T6 - 300 Tonnes

Now obviously trading in Open should be buffed because it carries actual risk but waa waa waa see a million other threads on that hornets nest.

Options

The current available options to traders in trade fit ships, are extremely limited.
This comes because of the insane Delta between a Trade ship and an engineered Pirate ship or Wing.

Stop and comply
Do not comply and get sent to rebuy

This could be improved by making trade ships stronger defensively but in this lays the issue with high wake.
If you make a ship strong enough to last the insultingly short amount of time it takes to submit and high wake.
You instantly make Piracy impossible, in all situations and no grom missiles are not strong enough to really change that. ( they could be if they removed the high wake option for longer or didn't have the cool down between effects )

And aggressively, traders need rear facing hard-points that can carry some really dangerous weapons. Mines really don't cut it.

Back in the early days of ED before HRP and Engineering. If you jumped a trade conda/python with a battle conda, you actually had a level of risk.
If they flew in a wing, it was a real risk.
Now, there is absolutely zero risk, none, zero, nothing. Yay engineers zzzzzzzz

I mentioned trade wings, this needs to be reviewed and some sort of defense hub UI built into stations, where traders can find player gun totting death dealers, to fly with them. ( Obviously the rewards to the defenders should be high )

You make the trade rewards higher and you give traders an actual chance against a pirate and you revolutionise PVP piracy. ( You actually make bounty hunters a thing again )

The new punishment and punishment mechanics that are coming in wont make a whole load of difference until a pirate becomes feared enough to trigger the ED Concord police.
At which point that pirate can no longer ply his trade, as there is currently zero reason to go into an anarchy for a trader and unless that changes, PVP Piracy will be deader than it is now.

I expect the future to be... ( if Punishment and Punishment actually has aggressive NPC's that are a risk to player ships )

Pirate jumps trader in anything but anarchy. Trader knows the pirate cannot shoot them without triggering insta spawn Concord, pirate has no options but to pick pocket as the trader boosts away laughing at how easy ED is now.

Pirate Rewards

Pirates do not need additional rewards to pirate. If you pirate well, it is profitable enough to be worth the effort because you also get the exciting emergent content of being a bad guy! Naturally if trade rewards get buffered, then the rewards to pirates will be higher as a result.

TL/DR

Being robbed is negative, get over that issue and move forwards from there.
Traders need bigger rewards and more options than just dying or combat logging, if they decide to not comply.
Pirates just want to pirate and are not there for the amusement of traders.

( Not bad right, i only mentioned combat logging once in the main post )

 

[Vode-an]

I dig. Have some rep!

 

[CMDR Plexus Ironrot]

As a trade cmdr turned pirate I can attest that there is extremely limited options when your the one that gets attacked. Rear facing weapons are fine but most trade vessels have turrets options but being only small to medium that puts you at a distinct disadvantage. Agreed that a trade buff is in order. However if built correctly and with some sheilds a t6 or t7 can escape a fight if you’re smart* a type9 is suicide un engineered stock. With the introduction of t10 traders do have a fighting chance. Also the cutter and vet and conda are all excellent trade options as well with fire power to boot. As for piracy there is very little profit in interdicting non miners its more of the fun of doing it. I want to mention that pirates are not free from ganking we get murder hobo too

 

[Lateralus]

All good points & suggestions! Would rep but can't.

 

[Powderpanic]

As a trade cmdr turned pirate I can attest that there is extremely limited options when your the one that gets attacked. Rear facing weapons are fine but most trade vessels have turrets options but being only small to medium that puts you at a distinct disadvantage. Agreed that a trade buff is in order. However if built correctly and with some sheilds a t6 or t7 can escape a fight if you’re smart* a type9 is suicide un engineered stock. With the introduction of t10 traders do have a fighting chance. Also the cutter and vet and conda are all excellent trade options as well with fire power to boot. As for piracy there is very little profit in interdicting non miners its more of the fun of doing it. I want to mention that pirates are not free from ganking we get murder hobo too

Dunno, the old imp slave runs or palladium drops were decent. 200 tonnes at 10k+ each ... Cha Ching!

 

[fnberger]

The ongoing discussion on the profitability of PvP piracy is imho missing a large part of Elite Dangerous: The background. All NPCs, all economical and political structures. How would a society - and most star systems within the bubble are assumably governed - react to acts of piracy or robbery? By putting a fine on the lawbreaker, to be paid off later? Probably not, but some kind of prison or death sentence (depending on the judicial state of the star system). So while we can agree on piracy as a valid role within the game, we also need to be aware that sooner or later the background might be adjusted to reacting stronger to cases of piracy and robbery.

We need to be aware of the fact that MMOs arent mean't to be perfectly fair or safe, so acts of violence might occur within the set of rules. We also need to be aware that this "not being safe" wouldn't concern traders/social players only, but also pirates and attackers. A well balanced MMO (which ED is aiming to be) will find the sweet spot between danger for traders and danger for pirates. Right now the danger for pirates is neglegible. This lack of balance will be fixed sooner or later.

I still can imagine improvements for the pirate role, i.e. catching traders in a powerplay or (minor/major) faction conflict.

 

[Powderpanic]

The ongoing discussion on the profitability of PvP piracy is imho missing a large part of Elite Dangerous: The background. All NPCs, all economical and political structures. How would a society - and most star systems within the bubble are assumably governed - react to acts of piracy or robbery? By putting a fine on the lawbreaker, to be paid off later? Probably not, but some kind of prison or death sentence (depending on the judicial state of the star system). So while we can agree on piracy as a valid role within the game, we also need to be aware that sooner or later the background might be adjusted to reacting stronger to cases of piracy and robbery.

We need to be aware of the fact that MMOs arent mean't to be perfectly fair or safe, so acts of violence might occur within the set of rules. We also need to be aware that this "not being safe" wouldn't concern traders/social players only, but also pirates and attackers. A well balanced MMO (which ED is aiming to be) will find the sweet spot between danger for traders and danger for pirates. Right now the danger for pirates is neglegible. This lack of balance will be fixed sooner or later.

I still can imagine improvements for the pirate role, i.e. catching traders in a powerplay or (minor/major) faction conflict.

I would be very happy for there to be risk to piracy.. Honestly.

But as has been discussed in the C&P thread, they need to work on the crimes as well not just the punishment.

Sandro's plans are not going to make Piracy more viable by adding risk, they are just going to add punishment to an already broken system.

 

[Powderpanic]

The ongoing discussion on the profitability of PvP piracy is imho missing a large part of Elite Dangerous: The background. All NPCs, all economical and political structures. How would a society - and most star systems within the bubble are assumably governed - react to acts of piracy or robbery? By putting a fine on the lawbreaker, to be paid off later? Probably not, but some kind of prison or death sentence (depending on the judicial state of the star system). So while we can agree on piracy as a valid role within the game, we also need to be aware that sooner or later the background might be adjusted to reacting stronger to cases of piracy and robbery.

We need to be aware of the fact that MMOs arent mean't to be perfectly fair or safe, so acts of violence might occur within the set of rules. We also need to be aware that this "not being safe" wouldn't concern traders/social players only, but also pirates and attackers. A well balanced MMO (which ED is aiming to be) will find the sweet spot between danger for traders and danger for pirates. Right now the danger for pirates is neglegible. This lack of balance will be fixed sooner or later.

I still can imagine improvements for the pirate role, i.e. catching traders in a powerplay or (minor/major) faction conflict.

The society part is right but in the context of this game. You need the food chain reestablished.

Top of the tree is the Trader - The premium way of making credits, which dwarfs all other credit routes. Make Trade great again, reestablish the trade routes, rare trading etc

Next you have pirates - This greedy swashbucklers should hunt out traders, steal and then sell on either unmarked ( best ) or market goods on the black market. Yarrr

Then you need bounty hunters - These hunt down pirates and get their bounties. They also work for the traders providing protection for a very profitable cut of the traders huge pot.

You fix that part and the rest falls into place, you also get the return of the RP'ing player groups.. Anyone remember when EIC and the Merchant Marines were staple part of Galnet and forum lore?

 

[Julio Montega]

The current available options to traders in trade fit ships, are extremely limited.
This comes because of the insane Delta between a Trade ship and an engineered Pirate ship or Wing.

Stop and comply
Do not comply and get sent to rebuy

This could be improved by making trade ships stronger defensively but in this lays the issue with high wake.
If you make a ship strong enough to last the insultingly short amount of time it takes to submit and high wake.
You instantly make Piracy impossible, in all situations and no grom missiles are not strong enough to really change that. ( they could be if they removed the high wake option for longer or didn't have the cool down between effects )

And aggressively, traders need rear facing hard-points that can carry some really dangerous weapons. Mines really don't cut it.

Back in the early days of ED before HRP and Engineering. If you jumped a trade conda/python with a battle conda, you actually had a level of risk.
If they flew in a wing, it was a real risk.
Now, there is absolutely zero risk, none, zero, nothing. Yay engineers zzzzzzzz

Hmm referring to CG piracy, due to the need for the pirate to hybridize
and have engineered defenses to fend off or escape from defense wings that is correct.
Also the issue is the hitpoint modules added, rather than just engineers.
Since in CG piracy to my understanding you want hardened defenses.

Outside of that the risk to get caught by player defense ships is low,
the police however can pile in quite fast based on security level of the system
and repeated infractions of the pirate to my testing.

Let me say it this way:
There are two doctrines to piracy fitting.
The defensive and resilient CG pirate ship with lower cargo hold,
trading in for survival, with the second kind being
the random open patrol, where the pirate ship is a tradership
with hardly increased defenses, catering towards a bigger hold
for higher profits.

The rest is well put and i agree with you,
with the silent hope for criminal ranking for a
piracy career that was advertised.

 

[Powderpanic]

Hmm referring to CG piracy, due to the need for the pirate to hybridize
and have engineered defenses to fend off or escape from defense wings that is correct.
Also the issue is the hitpoint modules added, rather than just engineers.
Since in CG piracy to my understanding you want hardened defenses.

Outside of that the risk to get caught by player defense ships is low,
the police however can pile in quite fast based on security level of the system
and repeated infractions of the pirate to my testing.

Let me say it this way:
There are two doctrines to piracy fitting.
The defensive and resilient CG pirate ship with lower cargo hold,
trading in for survival, with the second kind being
the random open patrol, where the pirate ship is a tradership
with hardly increased defenses, catering towards a bigger hold
for higher profits.

The rest is well put and i agree with you,
with the silent hope for criminal ranking for a
piracy career that was advertised.

Yeah Piracy at a CG should carry a higher risk vs a potentially higher reward.

But it is the other way now..

Pirates need larger ships and even a 95% PVP fit ship will be chased out of the system by the roaming FDL Gank wings.

Big ships just aren't viable in wing PVP anymore because of all the large ship counters.
These counters would have been wonderful if they had in some way buffered the damage output of large ships to compensate.

Currently all a large ship can do is tank and wake out. Yes it can return fire but due to all the counters that really hurt large shield tank ships.
ie PA's on mass with lock breaker and cascade rails.
Even the best PVP player in the best PVP build big ship knows its rebuy if you stay in a fight too long with a wing of meta FDL and FAS.
By too long I mean until you start to bank.
At that point, you are done. So what, 30/40 seconds.

Never dying but never doing anything of use, its dull.

You know as much as I that if you goto any CG and look at local.. Most of the time you dont see traders or anything bigger than an FDL.

 

[jasonbarron]

Great idea for a thread, Powder. Just don't yank the rug on it for no reason like AA did his, ok?

My thoughts, loosely: After the much heard about c&p and karma runs villains of all stripes out of high and medium sec space, low sec & anarchy need powerful financial buffs to incentivize trade in those locales. Like a 250% increase in profits and much better engineering data/materials as rewards to hot zones where not only are Thargoids likely to appear, but PvP "bad guys" have been relegated and NPC's are buffed in general.

Being the piratee isn't going to be fun, but the rewards will make the risk irresistible and offset the occasional run that goes pear shaped. Give villains and criminals a reason to inhabit these places, and then give traders powerful reasons to go there.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The ongoing discussion on the profitability of PvP piracy is imho missing a large part of Elite Dangerous: The background. All NPCs, all economical and political structures.

The problem is that the background as shown makes no political or economic sense in lots of aspects.

If you economically model the current risk-reward-capability situation for the three 'classic' professions, what you get is that everyone (NPC or Player) should be trading, with literally no pirates (especially not those incompetent NPCs) and therefore - as no-one commits any crimes - no bounty hunters either.

Changes which would allow piracy to exist *at all* without masses of handwaving would be extremely significant and result in an extremely hostile environment for traders compared with Elite Dangerous.

For NPCs this is of course handwaved - to get the Elite feel, waves of incompetent pirates from self-nerfed Anarchy factions will mildly inconvenience trade ships and line up to be shot in RES. There's obviously a major clash of expectations when a player tries piracy and it turns out they're competent enough to rob a poorly-flown unshielded T-9.

A well balanced MMO (which ED is aiming to be)

Citation needed

It seems more to be aiming to be an MMO sequel to the Elite series to me.

 

[Morbad]

Being pirated is not meant to be a pleasant experience for the "piratee".

We can romanticise as much as we want about how it should be fun to be robbed.. But if you can really be honest with yourself, its not fun being robbed.

Completely agree.

People should want to load up hulks full of cargo and grind runs for the biggest credit per hour available in game.

These rewards should be higher in Anarchy systems due to gaming reasons and lower the more secure a system is because you are paying the local faction for that security as a cargo tax.

The rewards in Anarchy should be so high that to lose even a 100 tonnes of your cargo, will not put you into a negative payout on completion ( ship dependent )

I'm not sure the degree of increased risk would justify this, as it takes far less than the sacrifice of 100 tons of cargo space to make a ship essentially immune to piracy.

A great start would be to vastly increase the carry capacity of the Trade spec ships, so they actually make sense in game.

The problem isn't with cargo capacities, it's with the lack of an actual economy.

Money supply has been growing at an exponential rate rate for years, but prices are fixed. Most cargo (and equipment) should cost 10-100 times what it does now.

Making cargo worth more is a much better solution than requiring massive amounts of cargo to be profitable.

 

[Roybe]

If piracy is to flourish, the NPC's have to carry cargo worthwhile to the activity. There isn't enough player density for piracy to be worthwhile with PC's

 

[Powderpanic]

Completely agree.

Winner!

I'm not sure the degree of increased risk would justify this, as it takes far less than the sacrifice of 100 tons of cargo space to make a ship essentially immune to piracy.

That is assuming you get pirated every run, you get through and braaaaaaapp ching ching, you are rolling in boats and women of loose morals!

The problem isn't with cargo capacities, it's with the lack of an actual economy.

Money supply has been growing at an exponential rate rate for years, but prices are fixed. Most cargo (and equipment) should cost 10-100 times what it does now.

Making cargo worth more is a much better solution than requiring massive amounts of cargo to be profitable.

Absolutely but making reason to acquire credits is so much larger than ED is at the moment and while I would like this to be resolved.
The only thing left that make sense to be able to spend our billions on, are player owned assets and really other than ships. The only ones that make sense are persistent bases or perhaps actually player controllable fleet carriers. BUT the moment you mention player owned stuff other than ships, half this forum implodes and starts referencing EVE.

 

[phong]

TL/DR
Traders need bigger rewards and more options than just dying or combat logging, if they decide to not comply.
( Not bad right, i only mentioned combat logging once in the main post )

Evasion is not combat logging.Just saying.

 

[Julio Montega]

If piracy is to flourish, the NPC's have to carry cargo worthwhile to the activity. There isn't enough player density for piracy to be worthwhile with PC's

Piracy rewards are broader than just money.
You influence the BGS but only by a very small percentage
in the robbery system and at selling stuff.

PvP and PvE
First blackmarket transactions need to be fixed.
There is no reasoning behind these transaction in anarchy
with an anarchy faction hurting the faction, that revolves around it.

PvE mostly
Second there is no real economy. The ships robbed are not necessary
for the BGS to change commodity demands, if this doesn't change
the deed of comitting piracy just stays meaningless.

PvE PvP
Third there must be a better solution on balancing the ships
and playstyles. Most here know me as an advocate of removing the
hitpoint modules, but i also would like to have turrets boosted
and evolving patches and buffs of basic hull hardness and HP
of combat and trader ships.
The amount of impact outfitting has on that balance is just
breaking the game.
In PvP it is as powderpanic says, gank wings,
in PvE it is reflecting police as an annoying joke due to your tank.

 

[Roybe]

Piracy rewards are broader than just money.
You influence the BGS but only by a very small percentage
in the robbery system and at selling stuff.

PvP and PvE
First blackmarket transactions need to be fixed.
There is no reasoning behind these transaction in anarchy
with an anarchy faction hurting the faction, that revolves around it.

PvE mostly
Second there is no real economy. The ships robbed are not necessary
for the BGS to change commodity demands, if this doesn't change
the deed of comitting piracy just stays meaningless.

PvE PvP
Third there must be a better solution on balancing the ships
and playstyles. Most here know me as an advocate of removing the
hitpoint modules, but i also would like to have turrets boosted
and evolving patches and buffs of basic hull hardness and HP
of combat and trader ships.
The amount of impact outfitting has on that balance is just
breaking the game.
In PvP it is as powderpanic says, gank wings,
in PvE it is reflecting police as an annoying joke due to your tank.

Although I get the ideas of PVP intrinsic rewards, no one will take a chance in Open to go into criminal space....limiting the number of targets even more. PC Criminals can hang around with other criminals in criminal space...but law abiding traders will not be there...they will make all those bonuses in PG and Solos!

 

[Powderpanic]

Although I get the ideas of PVP intrinsic rewards, no one will take a chance in Open to go into criminal space....limiting the number of targets even more. PC Criminals can hang around with other criminals in criminal space...but law abiding traders will not be there...they will make all those bonuses in PG and Solos!

Then maybe finally people will accept you need to buff rewards in Open and stop referencing stuff from pre-launch, like its some sort of holy grail that is never allowed to change.

Most things that do not evolve... Die

 

[jasonbarron]

Although I get the ideas of PVP intrinsic rewards, no one will take a chance in Open to go into criminal space....limiting the number of targets even more. PC Criminals can hang around with other criminals in criminal space...but law abiding traders will not be there...they will make all those bonuses in PG and Solos!

Sure, I get that. I only brought it up because if Frontier pursued this kind of design philosophy (ie: made a game with actual gameplay instead of a bunch of 2 dimensional placeholders) ED would be something more than a niche product only appealing to a fragment of the potential customers and players out there. It would be amazing, and fun. To pull off an angle that would truly promote piracy, as well as a lot of other things, they'd have to either make the game Open only, or only have these locales in Open.

I harbor no illusions, however.