I'm trying to mine (the 500 tons for Selene Jean) and can't do more than 2 minutes before a pirate shows up. Yes, this is Elite "Dangerous" and I don't object to pirates - they make sense. It would be wonderful if I could "hire protection" from a station. I'd pay them per hour and they'd follow me and engage any pirates. I could see this as useful for transport missions as well, or even combat missions.
Ability to hire protection (while mining and other activities)
- Thread starter case44
- Start date
Hmm, or maybe some sort of Fighter that can Launch from your Ship...
Nonsense. I've been core mining in an Adder.
I would like something like this. Similar to Galaxy on Fire 2.
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You mean Pirating
Lol, it's certainly do-able, but not my style!
It's fine that you don't like the idea. I'm just saying I spent 3 hours trying to mine in peace and have been attacked by pirates 100% of the time before even getting into the asteroid field. Perhaps I am choosing the wrong places to mine, or perhaps I need to outfit a ship that can both mine and defend itself. There are options already - I understand that. Equip a dual purpose ship that can mine and fight, equip a fighter hanger and hire crew. I'm just suggesting another option.
You're posting in the wrong subforum here - as you might have noticed
Not because your suggestion is bad, but because it marks you as an inexperienced player (aka newcomer), and this is an often asked suggestion. People in the main forums tend to have little patience with that, the newcomer's forum is a bit more forgiving.
To put something constructive there:
- you can hire crew for your ship, if you have a sufficently large ship. The latter has (almost) nothing to do with experience nowadays, you could get an Anaconda apparently in less than two days (and lose it again in less than two minutes, but that's a different story). The smallest ship, if you want to continue mining the way you are doing, that can handle a fighter is the Keelback.
- you can "hire" (ok, ask) players in specific groups to provide protection for you. Usually only in open, though, and a lot of people are out on DW2.
- are you mining in a RES? Then don't. Drop in anywhere in a ring (or even better, get yourself a DSS and locate a Painite hotspot) outside a DSS, and all you'll get (at the most) are couple of clowns that will scan you, complain that their children will have to go hungry tonight, then leave - as long as you have nothing but limpets in your hold
- if you want to avoid even those, jump a couple of hundred ly or so (don't know the exact number) out from inhabited space for your mining. Perfectly quiet - although of course you may attract some bottomfeeders when you return to sell your haul.
Oh, and finally: if you have ever seen the ususal NPCs in combat, you wouldn't want to hire them (at least not the low level ones). They're mainly good for decoys, but I wouldn't count on them to keep any pirates off my back.
Great response, thank you. I'm not new (have well over 1B credits and quite a few ships), but am completely new to Mining. Was finding it frustrating to mine due to pirate attacks. Figured the "Suggestions & Feature Requests" was a good place to suggest the new feature of adding the ability to hire protection - just another option.
Your suggestions and points make sense though, thank you very much. I was mining in the bubble so it makes sense there are pirates everywhere. I like the idea of heading outside of populated space for "quiet mining".
I wasn't mining in a RES site actually, just dropping in at a random location away from "xxx rich" sites in various unpopulated systems. But, as I mentioned, I was in the bubble, so having lots of pirates hanging around for noob miners does make perfect sense.
Currently outfitting a Type-10 that can mine and defend itself.
Your suggestions and points make sense though, thank you very much. I was mining in the bubble so it makes sense there are pirates everywhere. I like the idea of heading outside of populated space for "quiet mining".
I wasn't mining in a RES site actually, just dropping in at a random location away from "xxx rich" sites in various unpopulated systems. But, as I mentioned, I was in the bubble, so having lots of pirates hanging around for noob miners does make perfect sense.
Currently outfitting a Type-10 that can mine and defend itself.
You're posting in the wrong subforum here - as you might have noticed
Not because your suggestion is bad, but because it marks you as an inexperienced player (aka newcomer), and this is an often asked suggestion. People in the main forums tend to have little patience with that, the newcomer's forum is a bit more forgiving.
To put something constructive there:
- you can hire crew for your ship, if you have a sufficently large ship. The latter has (almost) nothing to do with experience nowadays, you could get an Anaconda apparently in less than two days (and lose it again in less than two minutes, but that's a different story). The smallest ship, if you want to continue mining the way you are doing, that can handle a fighter is the Keelback.
- you can "hire" (ok, ask) players in specific groups to provide protection for you. Usually only in open, though, and a lot of people are out on DW2.
- are you mining in a RES? Then don't. Drop in anywhere in a ring (or even better, get yourself a DSS and locate a Painite hotspot) outside a DSS, and all you'll get (at the most) are couple of clowns that will scan you, complain that their children will have to go hungry tonight, then leave - as long as you have nothing but limpets in your hold
- if you want to avoid even those, jump a couple of hundred ly or so (don't know the exact number) out from inhabited space for your mining. Perfectly quiet - although of course you may attract some bottomfeeders when you return to sell your haul.
Oh, and finally: if you have ever seen the ususal NPCs in combat, you wouldn't want to hire them (at least not the low level ones). They're mainly good for decoys, but I wouldn't count on them to keep any pirates off my back.
This is something that I've wondered. Could be a good idea to hire an NPC and put them in charge of one of my own combat, fully engineered ships like it is done with the built in hangar bay in some ships?
I guess it can throw the game off balance with gankers going in squadrons with two killing Fer-de-Lance each one or something, but maybe it could be limited in a time basis? maybe the NPC will only work defend you if you are not the one to fire the first shot?
Basically, if you have No cargo, limpets does not count. then let the pirates scan you, and if they do not find anything other than limpets, then they will leave and you get to work on mining stuff....
Also the task is to mine 500T of stuff, so what this amounts to is to put 500T worth of mined stuff into the refinery. not 500T refined material... so that makes this part easier.
it is the 2nd part of the unlock that is the "fun" part, as that requires painite.... and if you have big enough ship to stockpile paininte and still have enough cargo space for limpets, then you have to deal with the pirates who want to steal it.... so saving this for later is in this case a good precaution, as you can now mine painite and then go and hand it in what you have before doing another mining session, with an "empty" cargo hold.
Well a simple hire a NPC with a ship to wing up with could be a good function, wing would still be limited to 4 ships, and the more experienced, and the bigger the ship is, the more it costs to hire. Paid upfront.
I like the defend only thing, this could be a cost issue. hiring NPCs for doing criminal stuff could be alot more expensive.
As someone who has mined as well I understand both sides of this argument.
1: First, yes mining ships are typicaly viewed as "defensless"
2: Yes, NPC miners are usualy seen accompanied by other vessels
3: However NPC pirates are not that difficult to deal with in a mining vessel I have used a type 9 to take down a few FAS pirates that came after me while I was mining. You have more options to defend yourself than you think, you just have to look.
I am in support of hiring a temporary wing although I do not need one. Mainly because it often takes advanced knowledge of the game to know how to take on a fully outfitted pirate with a "mostly" vulnerable mining vessel. Which new players will not be able to figure out without time invested into the game.
It could also work like a credit sink. If you put your hired NPC in one of your fully moded ships and he gets destroyed, you have to pay full re-buy price as the NPC is not part of the Pilot Federation.
I mine in a Sidewinder, MSS Chip, and I keep a high wake destination locked in my nav screen. 500 tonnes though.. naaa, I can do 8 at a time. My defense is to disappear really quick. I suppose if I had some mining lances I could take some pot shots at who ever is disturbing my rock chipping but I'll just settle with heading to a station and selling off what I found, if I actually found anything.
While Selene is pretty high on my "I hate these engineers" list, a couple things can speed the process along. First, note you don't have to SELL the 500 tons, just get them refined. If you were so inclined, you could load up your mining lasers, refine a bunch of junk and dump it before moving on. This won't make you more money of course, but it can reduce the need to make return trips--so long as your limpet supply holds out. It means you can just move from rock to rock and ignore whatever you refine since the value of the mineral doesn't matter.
As for protection? Well, it might be nice, but as mentioned above, just get to a hotspot, fly away from the drop point, wait for a couple pirates to scan you and leave, then continue on, always moving AWAY from the entry point. the further out you go, the less pirates you find. Also if you're just mining regular junk for Selene without regard to money as per my method above, you can always just give the pirates what they want and continue on. Let them bottom feed; just saves you the trouble of having to go sell the garbage.
As for protection? Well, it might be nice, but as mentioned above, just get to a hotspot, fly away from the drop point, wait for a couple pirates to scan you and leave, then continue on, always moving AWAY from the entry point. the further out you go, the less pirates you find. Also if you're just mining regular junk for Selene without regard to money as per my method above, you can always just give the pirates what they want and continue on. Let them bottom feed; just saves you the trouble of having to go sell the garbage.
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Jean, palin, and cheng are my top 3
Jean for the 500 mining plus the painite delivery
Cheng for the trade profit at 50 unique stations
And then palin for the 5000ly and the 25UA fragments that take even longer to collect than the 5000ly trip does
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I actually don't mind the tasks to unlock engineers ... it forces a player to experience all aspects of the game at least once and to travel to all parts of the bubble. I think that's why FDev does it that way. What I don't like is that a pirate will attack if you have any cargo (ignoring limpets, etc). Even if it is low value. That's what doesn't make sense. If I have 10 tons of cargo that is worth a few thousand credits, it shouldn't be worth their effort. There should be a "if target is carrying xxx credits, then harass".
Also, I think I just had a bad run of luck. About 4 planets and maybe 10 drops total I had 100% harassment by pirates over a few hours. Logged off, did some errands, came back and equipped a T10 and went back ... and nothing. Was able to mine in peace (even though I had painite).
I still like the idea of hiring a wing for escort. Sometimes I don't want to equip a fighter hangar and hire a crew member. I could hire a wing (1-3) of NPCs, pay them for their time, perhaps an "engagement" bonus if combat happens, and if they blow up, I pay their rebuy costs. New players could afford a small wing of cheap NPCs while an advanced pilot could hire experts. I would probably use it for mining and if I was ever transporting a high value cargo. If interdicted while flying a big tanker, you'd know your wing would drop in as well. It'd help if the NPC pirates had logic that allowed them to assess the situation, meaning "I can't win this, so I am leaving".