There are quite a few NPCs which are primarily designed for piracy. You can recognize them ingame; 'Military Couriers', or 'Private Couriers', and also random NPCs carrying rare goods.
Unfortunately, actually using this mechanic is currently severely underperforming compared to other activities. You can calculate the income per hour fairly simply.
• Firstly, what are these things carrying? In general, about 25 units of random salvage goods like AI Relics or Antiquities. On average, these sell for between 80k and 160k; I could average these, but for the sake of argument, lets just say they're all 160k. That means each ship will give you about 4m.
• Now, finding one of these ships isn't instant; you need to look around for them, as they don't always spawn consistently. Once you find them, you need to interdict them and win. On average, lets say this process takes 5 minutes. This is probably less than it actually takes, but we'll be generous.
• After doing this, you need to disable them and hatchbreak their contents, or just hatchbreak them immediately and have to fly around over about 5km to scoop up everything. Lets say this takes another 5 minutes.
• After this, you need to fly to another system to sell. Given you'll only do this with a full cargo, lets say this adds an additional 1 minute.
• And then, lastly, you need to account for the Black Market reduction of 25%; rather than 4m, you'll get more like 3m.
• So that's an approximate income of about 3m/11 minutes.
This gives a total of about 16m per hour. Additionally, players need to deal with the bounties after, slightly reducing the income further.
I rather like the gameplay loop, as it's complicated and takes a lot of different types of skill, but at the moment, it's really not worth bothering with.
In order to be brought up to a more enjoyable payout, I'd like to see these salvage goods buffed to be worth more like 800k each, on average. That gives about 80m/hour in ideal circumstances, which is at least enough to make it somewhat competitive with other activities.
Unfortunately, actually using this mechanic is currently severely underperforming compared to other activities. You can calculate the income per hour fairly simply.
• Firstly, what are these things carrying? In general, about 25 units of random salvage goods like AI Relics or Antiquities. On average, these sell for between 80k and 160k; I could average these, but for the sake of argument, lets just say they're all 160k. That means each ship will give you about 4m.
• Now, finding one of these ships isn't instant; you need to look around for them, as they don't always spawn consistently. Once you find them, you need to interdict them and win. On average, lets say this process takes 5 minutes. This is probably less than it actually takes, but we'll be generous.
• After doing this, you need to disable them and hatchbreak their contents, or just hatchbreak them immediately and have to fly around over about 5km to scoop up everything. Lets say this takes another 5 minutes.
• After this, you need to fly to another system to sell. Given you'll only do this with a full cargo, lets say this adds an additional 1 minute.
• And then, lastly, you need to account for the Black Market reduction of 25%; rather than 4m, you'll get more like 3m.
• So that's an approximate income of about 3m/11 minutes.
This gives a total of about 16m per hour. Additionally, players need to deal with the bounties after, slightly reducing the income further.
I rather like the gameplay loop, as it's complicated and takes a lot of different types of skill, but at the moment, it's really not worth bothering with.
In order to be brought up to a more enjoyable payout, I'd like to see these salvage goods buffed to be worth more like 800k each, on average. That gives about 80m/hour in ideal circumstances, which is at least enough to make it somewhat competitive with other activities.
