Wouldn't it be great if when you attack another ship, say a trade ship, it asks you "What do you want" and you reply "Drop 100 units of Fish* and I'll let you live. You decide". *50% of contents of most expensive commodity.
Of course, randomly the trade ship will try and make a getaway or call the cops in which case do it the usual way. Wrinkles/choice are nice.
If we could threaten them via comms, then it wouldn't be so much effort / skill / time for not much money. NPC can speak to us, but we are mute. Why?
It should be possible to pirate as a beginner. Without even a hatch breaker - just a scoop and some lasers. Plenty of Harmless NPC pirates around.
Yup. Expansion of the "Contact" panel is sorely needed, and the way it it now it's as if FD expect to do this some day soon, but for some reason haven't.
Other things could affect the successful outcome of a target dropping cargo on demand too
- How damaged the target is
- Your combat rank
- Your rep relative to their faction (lower = better)
There could be a few different piracy options too, things too like "Drop 25%, 50%, 100%" each levying different requirements.
WRT people asking about grapples... before asking for a grapple, I'd be asking "What's the counter to the grapple?", since this would be employable against players too.
Simply shooting the grappling ship is out; no trading ship would ever survive that sort of encounter.
Boosting away to overcome some tensile force? Maybe, but it would have to be a thrusters-vs-HP affair, not a "exceed X speed" case, simply because the latter would be an all-or-nothing affair again, while the HP one could have different grades/sizes of grapple with different strengths or quantities of grapple. Personally, I'd have the ammunition not exceed, say... Class 1 - 1 grapple, Class 3 - 2 Grapples... up to class 7 - 4 Grapples, with B rate granting one extra grapple for all classes, A rate the strongest grapples, D rate the weakest but lightest.
Would there be anything to counter a successful grapple from occurring? I'd suggest there should be, for depth of fitting requirements for traders. NFI what that would look like (PDT seems like a cop out) but feels like it should be.
I just mention this because I think most thought has not gone beyond "we need a grapple to stop ships" and just assume that once it's done, it's done. Other considerations like "Once the grapple is engaged, the attacking ship can't fire weapons without damaging the grapple" could be given too, which offer traders in PvP a level of assurance they won't be destroyed by a grappling ship (though, it's compatriots could be another question I guess).
