Look, I know its a game, and for many people that excuses just about anything. My initial reply was more about his choice of words: the idea that his "client's" hull wasn't strong enough to take the missile hits... What you're describing is one of the least evil variants of ED piracy I've seen, but if we're talking about role-play and career path - there's no such thing in ED. Piracy carries nothing like appropriate consequences for the pirate. As has been pointed out countless times, all the risk falls on the trader. The lack of response from the existing political institutions is relatively ahistorical Pirates were and are hunted. What we're left with is something on the spectrum between griefing or ganking. Piracy needs a viable career-path, some actual threat to the pirate, and the obvious material reward to the trader who was willing to brave pirate-infested space-lance to get those LTDs to market.
Why is being a "prey" of a pirate in open a bad game design...
- Thread starter Alsteif
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Look, I know its a game, and for many people that excuses just about anything. My initial reply was more about his choice of words: the idea that his "client's" hull wasn't strong enough to take the missile hits... What you're describing is one of the least evil variants of ED piracy I've seen, but if we're talking about role-play and career path - there's no such thing in ED. Piracy carries nothing like appropriate consequences for the pirate. As has been pointed out countless times, all the risk falls on the trader. The lack of response from the existing political institutions is relatively ahistorical Pirates were and are hunted. What we're left with is something on the spectrum between griefing or ganking. Piracy needs a viable career-path, some actual threat to the pirate, and the obvious material reward to the trader who was willing to brave pirate-infested space-lance to get those LTDs to market.
"Balancing" the pirate/trader interaction is hardly arbitrary.
And also unnecessary.
If the pirate knows what they're doing, they get cargo.
If the trader knows what they're doing, they get away.
Sounds pretty balanced to me.
If the trader doesn't get away, they lose everything, they come out very cash negative. Doesn't matter if they can afford it or not. They lose mission progress, a rebuy, and in some cases hundreds of hours gone because somebody refuses to practice restraint.
If the attacker doesn't make it, the only thing they "suffer" is the equivalent of a mild slap on the the wrist and a "$10 fine" with rebuy.
That isn't true at all. Quite a few pirates are happy with a token donation, and only a fool thinks they can get milk from a slaughtered cow.
In what scenario do they lose hundred of hours of gameplay. That is pure and utter hyperbole.
You're forgetting about exploration data.
My longest exploration trip was a couple of hundred hours of game time. If I'd been 'sploded before I got back to a station, I'd have had quite the loss. No hyperbole here.
Actually, that's jarring for reasons other than just losing the carto data, there's also having to rebuy and ending up right back where I started from..
Deleted member 182079
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You can't pirate exploration data.
Please don't throw gankers & pirates into the same bucket.
Deleted member 182079
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Exactly - most if not all pirates don't do it for the credits - they'd be stupid to do so, as the prices you get for loot at black markets is always worse compared to legit - and involves more time travelling to those unless you're lucky and one is closeby (that also offers a decent price), not to mention finding a target in the first place.
You haven't balanced the failure states. If a pirate doesn't know what he's doing, he gets a re-buy. If a trader doesn't know what he's doing he loses the time spend mining/trading plus a re-buy. You could "balance" this by limiting access to insurance/re-buy to systems controlled by Archon Delaine and then sending the cashiered pilot to penal station proportionately distant from Delaine-controlled space. The pirate would then be stuck in a sidey until he made the trek to Archon Delaine where he could then re-aquire his ship. There are additional variations on this you could implement to add texture to the pirating experience. Also, the game needs a way to launder stolen goods.
Piracy should be high-risk, high-reward. Also, balance probably isn't the right word. The reward a pirate (or any other criminal) receives is only a fraction of the economic damage he causes. That's not balanced... but its internally consistent.
Its hard not to when the power differential and consequences are so disproportionate. Even so, If I'm carrying large amounts of exploration data and you've decided you're entitled to the cache of LDTs I've accumulated out in the black while surveying...
Deleted member 182079
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So I pull you over and ask for 10t of your LTDs. What will you do?
(Edit - and that means you've already dropped the ball by letting me interdict you in the first place i.e. sleeping on the job)
This speaks to the deeper issue of lawless gameplay being pretty much ignored in favor of a system where—inexplicably— no one seems to care if your character is a criminal. Someone touched on the idea of having the option to leave the Pilots Federation and go rogue, which is absolutely something I'd love to see if the appropriate career path and accompanying gameplay were crafted to make such a worthwhile choice.
Deleted member 182079
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I think the underlying problem here is that people assume that pirates will destroy your ship after taking your cargo (or before - in which case you either tried to run, which from the pirate's view means "challenge accepted", or you didn't run into a pirate but a murderhobo/ganker/griefer). Killing your targets doesn't make sense as it's bad for business.
Do what I can to deny you of something you didn't work for. I don't like panhandlers who don't even ask for change
Depends on how much I want to pander to anti-social behavior. Sometimes I'm up for it, some times not. Part of my issue is the game give me no incentive to.
Yup. Piracy could be interesting. Instead the game mechanics are all murderhobo and CMDRs that want to role-play Golden-age-of-piracy-in-space are left concocting head-cannon fantasies and trying to get their victims to buy into it. Another month or so, and credits will pretty much cease meaning anything to me personally (I'll have banked enough credits to pay for the carrier for longer than i'll live). At that point I'll step up my AX activity and fiddle with some less credit-focused activity. That'll definitely includes some NPC Piracy, not sure if or how pirating CMDRs might fit into that. Really wish Frontier could be arsed to flesh out more of the game.
In fairness to game design, we players have been left doing the heavy lifting on the roleplay elements of the game from day one. Some people care about this and some don't... but if a pirate is making an effort to put their actions into context, then it seems unreasonable to be too upset with them.
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Deleted member 182079
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You're denying a playful RP interaction worth about 30 seconds of "work" shooting a rock amongst many others and calling me anti-social? My word.