Chokepoint: Playing with mechanics.

[popuptoaster]

To counter this I imagine the pirates would identify the freighter most susceptible to taking damage ie the one with the weakest shield generators or has the slowest speed, and focus on it. Possibly concentrate fire on it's vulnerable points, disable engines etc using long range weaponry perhaps. With enough persistence the freighter might be prised away from the convoy.

Thats why you rotate the ship into the centre of the formation when it's taken damage and push a fresh one to the outside, much the same as when huddled penguins swop places to keep warm.

it is possible but usually have to have voice coms, we do it when we are playing World of Tanks as you advance towards the enemy if the tank at the front takes damage you let one of the other overtake it.

This means that all your tanks take damage, but the enemy cannot focus fire and take out one of your guns because rather than being able to do 2000hp of damage to on tank they have to do 6000 to three.

If done well it should work even better with ships that have shields as they will have time to repair and regenerate.

It's hard enough to do it with three tanks though, you'd have to go some to get it right with 30 freighters although the fire coming off all those turrets would be pretty amazing and you wouldn't want to dive in amongst them.

 

[Tony Spaniels]

Thats why you rotate the ship into the centre of the formation when it's taken damage and push a fresh one to the outside, much the same as when huddled penguins swop places to keep warm.

it is possible but usually have to have voice coms, we do it when we are playing World of Tanks as you advance towards the enemy if the tank at the front takes damage you let one of the other overtake it.

This means that all your tanks take damage, but the enemy cannot focus fire and take out one of your guns because rather than being able to do 2000hp of damage to on tank they have to do 6000 to three.

If done well it should work even better with ships that have shields as they will have time to repair and regenerate.

It's hard enough to do it with three tanks though, you'd have to go some to get it right with 30 freighters although the fire coming off all those turrets would be pretty amazing and you wouldn't want to dive in amongst them.

Intriguing

I guess it will come down to who's got the better organised team in a lot of cases.

 

[Tony Spaniels]

It's hard enough to do it with three tanks though, you'd have to go some to get it right with 30 freighters although the fire coming off all those turrets would be pretty amazing and you wouldn't want to dive in amongst them.

30 freighters would probably be too big to handle for a band of pirates I'd imagine.
If I was a pirate I'd go for the ones chancing their luck in a system to make a quick profit (you know who you are )

 

[Dejay]

Ok, I'm a pirate. (Not really but for the sake of the example).

Just curious, did you mean that more as a PVP pirate, aka lurking for player ships to come in and ambush?

I think this tactic could work nice. No one will fly carefully around in a group, with a separate player as a scout etc. getting more than 2-5 people together who just happen to share the same destination than you will be rare. And even if you don't catch everybody, as long as enough people fall into your trap you're achieving what you want to. Doesn't need to be a full on blockade to cause some mayhem =) I do hope there are viable tactics like this for PVP.

Did anyone see "Captain Phillips"? It's a nice modern take on the whole pirate thing, at least in the first half. I like the idea of being followed by unidentified ships and trying to outrun them and calling for help. I hope this will work in ED, being able to "chase" someone actually for a bit of time (not just mass lock etc.). Straining your engines to the limit until something breaks.
And the whole deception thing was cool too, I somewhat hope that voice chat will work out like that. Like you call someone and ask him if he needs a patrol or wants to travel together, since you've heard there are pirates around. You group up and guess what? You heard right, because the pirates are your buddies and you're the guy who lures traders into traps lol.

 

[insanephoton]

30 freighters would probably be too big to handle for a band of pirates I'd imagine.
If I was a pirate I'd go for the ones chancing their luck in a system to make a quick profit (you know who you are )

With 32 player instance size, I'm guessing that the 2 pirates would think that its too big a challenge

The key factor is how disciplined the convoy is, because the first move a pirate crew would make is to try and split the group.

 

[Karl]

Did anyone see "Captain Phillips"?

Yeah, excellent movie, highly recommended, although I didn't expect to like it that much But in movie it was about ransom, not cargo takeover. I'm curious about this whole piracy thing, how will it really play out?