Design 101 - Players must ALWAYS have choice to avoid or run instead of fight

And each time the pirate risked nothing whatsoever.

This CMDR is not a pirate, did they ask for anything?

Surely the pirate (Player) has risked (Gambled) all that time sat waiting when his spreadsheet told him he could be earning megabucks and catching up on his favorite 'insert something other than watching the scanner, flying the ship here'.
 
My suggestion is for interdiction submission to just immediately dump like 10% of your cargo into space. As in, submitting to interdiction means you're voluntarily giving up your cargo.

Yes, that would work... but I would rather see more interaction between traders and pirates, instead of just an automatic 10% cargo drop when you submit. We'll have to wait and see what Frontier have up their sleeve.
 
One word: ArcheAge.

See how well this same essential design worked out for XLGames and Trion Worlds. There were _many_ of us in alpha/beta warning Trion to adjust this basic design flaw. Nobody wants to do all the work just to be robbed at gunpoint with UNEQUAL risk/reward by another player.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=archeage financials

Also, nowhere in the OP nor in any of my posts in this thread have I asked for a "push a button and say 'no' with 100% effectiveness". Instead, I have asked only for balanced risk/reward in the interdiction mechanics and post-interdiction mechanics.




Question: was the risk/reward of playing either role roughly equal?

The mechanic itself from interdiction onward is balanced according to ship type, however getting into that situation in the first place is quite balanced because you can see who is coming and drop before you get in this outmached scenario. If you maintain high situational awareness this is never going to happen to you. You think of it as an unbalanced mechanic, I think of it as a last ditch dice roll that I may make it, but if I get locked up by a python I failed as soon as the mini game starts. You say it isn't skill based but a lot of people here are avoiding these scenarios with a near 100% success rate. So I'm sorry to say this but if the interdictions are hanging you up it's probably you doing something wrong If you aren't effectively avoiding the bigger ships. I know there are the oddball out of nowhere cases but its pretty rare in itself and even rarer is the chance it's a big ship, but occasionally yeah you have a bad day. I still get by in stock haulers and sideys against them without a scratch a most of the time. For the most part what you are complaining about is avoidable so even if it's as unbalanced as you say, it's kinda irrelevant. Your failing to avoid the danger then asking for a buff for your folly. Maybe its warranted but your ignoring the options available to you which makes your balance suggestions a bit moot because obviously you are ignoring the big picture. I'm sorry if that comes off as rude or something but your having a problem a lot of us don't have so I'm inclined to believe your complaints aren't well considered because your expeirience doesn't match mine at all, and I know mine isn't a fluke.
 
You say it isn't skill based but a lot of people here are avoiding these scenarios with a near 100% success rate. So I'm sorry to say this but if the interdictions are hanging you up it's probably you doing something wrong If you aren't effectively avoiding the bigger ships.

As far as i can tell it's nearly impossible to avoid interdictions in a T7/T9. They're no problem with my Asp. They skip around for me a LOT, like it'll be under my crosshairs and then suddenly 90 120 degrees offscreen.
 
As far as i can tell it's nearly impossible to avoid interdictions in a T7/T9. They're no problem with my Asp. They skip around for me a LOT, like it'll be under my crosshairs and then suddenly 90 120 degrees offscreen.

You can see who is coming after you very easily. If they line you up drop out of sc before it starts. If you turn and face them they will do an endless loop and you have all the time in the world. When I refuel I spin circles with them chasing me the entire time. You can ignore the little guys but you need to be checking who is on your six, and scan the head ons because a lot will pull a u turn and drop behind you. You can also see them divert off the main path, and they wait around planets and stations and you can see them the entire trip. It's completely avoidable nearly 100% of the time. Those big ship interdictons are also fairly rare in most systems.
 
There is short term succes and there is over all success.
What you mentioned as succesful died early, had nothing to do, to live a life with , murderering, thief.
Maybe you have seen to many Holiwood movies, but pirates did die early, they did get horribly tortured.
Very few of them entered their thirties or even forties - and they died not because of accidents, they died because they were hunted down and - see above.
You can call this succesful - live hard die young. I call it stupid (in most cases).
Life has much more to offer than just 10 great years - btw. i for myself had a lot more wild years. And the most succesful, in your definition, died long ago, at heroine, alcohol whatever. Or have now rotten noses because of cocaine abuse. Still i myself and a couple off friends had this drugs too, but choose to stay away at the right time.
Tell me who is more succesful?
Anything you say reminds me at a kid, that listens, with a glance in the eye, to the heroic pirate/hero stories.


You are aware that during the time when pirates "sailed the high seas" (1650-1750 or so, the golden era of piracy), people rarely lived beyond 35, right?
As for whatever you feel you would call "successful", doesn't matter in the least.
They were successful pirates in that they ammased a small (or large) fortune during their time in life and they became quite notorious.

But all that is moot anyway because I stated that the successful pirates didn't start out with big ships, they started with small ships and got big ones because they were successful, not the other way around.
Whether or not they died in the end is irrelevant to the discussion.

Oh and that's a cute little ad hominem at the end there, but I do believe it's you who is showing your age with that behaviour.

(also, I suggest you look up Sir Henry Morgan, "long ben", Edward Low and Peter Easton. Oh and while you're at it, check out Ching Shih)
 
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Hate to bring it up (lies), in EVE, if you are caught in a warp bubble against superior numbers, you'd better have a cloaking device or a very fast ship, if not, your dead. It doesn't matter how badly you don't want to die.
 
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I just want to say that this is one of the most interesting threads I've seen for some time, & thanks to all who have contributed positively to it.
However, it does leave me wondering whether interdiction itself is fundamentally flawed in that it creates a "victim/perp" & hence inherently adversarial situation ? Little wonder there seems to be no common ground between the two viewpoints.

I'd say that interdiction was fundamentally adversarial (it is a hostile action), but in the context of the game it cannot be fundamentally flawed as it is part of the inherent context. Elite has always had pirates/piracy/bad people - whether AI or, now, players. End. Of. Story.
 
I mentioned it in a previous post which got NO responses.

Add cargo insurance, and let the pirate take a cut if you're interdicted/killed? A T7 or T9, or Python could generate hundreds of k in credit for the pirate and only cost the player 50 to 25% of his normal cargo restock cost.

Actually, I mentioned you specifically and linked to your post in this thread.

Addressing a few of the general "Oh yeah? So how would you design it different, Einstein?" comments in the past page or two. Well, @Skuli has the right idea. There have been other good ideas floated by quite a few people so far on this thread. Here's my general take:

A. The notion of a "food chain" design where some players are the vegetarian "prey" animals and some players are the "top of the food chain" hunter carnivores is fundamentally flawed. Very few people (no one, actually), would really choose to be a prey animal. Nobody likes to feel they do all the work and other players get to "leech" off of their work by attacking them with superior mechanics in the attacker's favor and imbalanced "fight to survive" mechanics that favor that attacker. Nobody. In. Their. Right. Mind. Example of this basic design failure: ArcheAge. Just google "archeage financials" if you aren't already familiar with the huge mess.

B. Instead, you look to Arenanet and their game GW2 for stellar design examples. Their community is overall the most friendly, helpful, cooperative and supportive--while also being HIGHLY COMPETITIVE--game community I've seen in my entire history of gaming, and more than 50% of their total game is devoted to PvP interaction at the team level and the massive level. And pretty much 90% of their end game revolves entirely around PvP and WvW.

C. Various ideas off the top of my head:

1. Reduce ship maintenance/repair costs to a nearly flat curve across all classes of ships. Keep the steep curve for bootstrapping yourself into the next larger/more expensive class of ship, but make the cost of repair for a complete loss or hull damage relatively cheap and only slightly more expensive for the larger ships. Like a range from current 137K to replace an A-class viper to something like 400K to replace an A-class anaconda. Don't get too hung up on the numbers I threw out: just look at the time for an _average_ player to recoup a total loss of their ship and normalize it to a very flat range that sits around the 10-minute mark. Viper loses ship: 10 minutes of trading to recoup cost. Anaconda loses ship: 15 minutes of trading to recoup cost. Everything else falls in the middle of that curve. WHY: This improves the balance of the _cost_ portion for the TRADER of the risk-reward equation for PvP interaction.

2. As @Skuli suggests, introduce a defacto type of cargo insurance for the trader. This could be done in a variety of ways. You could simply allow the trader to rebuy any lost cargo for 5% of the amount they paid for the lost cargo in the first place. Or, you could simply add a "forced cargo hold ejection" mechanic to encounters that the trader loses to a pirate. Something like "an amount equal to the sum of your two smallest cargo holds are auto-ejected if you 'lose' the interdiction and subsequent combat. And if your ship is destroyed outright, when you rebuy it it comes back with the full cargo that was not auto-ejected because of losing the fight". WHY: This improves the _cost_ portion for the TRADER of improving the balance of the _cost_ portion of the risk-reward equation for PvP interaction.

3. When a pirate _attempts_ an interdiction, they get a 10K bounty just for that action alone. If they shoot at a player ship, they get another 10K bounty. If they murder a player ship, they get a 50K bounty. All bounties "stick" for 7 real-world days and cannot be paid off until the 7 days are up. You want danger? Play as a pirate and run around with a bounty you cannot easily unload. All the time. WHY: This adds a currently non-existent _cost_ portion for the PIRATE side of the risk-reward equation. Now, the pirate stands to lose something roughly equal to the 5% cargo loss of a trader. Again, don't get too hung up on my specific numbers: they're just WAGs. The point is to balance the financial losses of the trader to be roughly equal to the financial losses of the pirate. #1 equalizes the financial loss from hull/component damage of the fight. #2 and #3 balance the cargo loss of the trader versus the bounty cost of the pirate. My WAG numbers for #2 and #3 are based on a trader losing 2 8-slot cargo holds of a commodity worth 1300 per unit. That's 20,800 credits. So if a pirate needs to shoot the trader to make them drop 16 tons of cargo, the pirate gets the 20,800 to pay off the two 10K bounties they racked up from interdicting and then shooting. But if the player just outright murders the trader anyway, then the cost is MORE excessive for the pirate. As it should be.

4. Improve the "security rating" of systems in various ways: Make "high sec" systems roughly 50% of total, and set up the economies so that trading in the high-sec systems maxes out at around 12,000 cr/ton/hour for the "best" routes. Make the "low sec" systems roughly 40% of total, and set up the economies so that trading in the low sec systems maxes out at the current rate of 16,000 cr/ton/hour for the "best" routes. Make the "anarchy" or "zero sec" systes roughly 10% of total, and make the trading endpoints in zero sec systems worth much more than the best routes today. Like: 24,000 cr/ton/hour for the "best" routes. Finally, improve the AI response time and strength of NPC system authority vessels much faster/stronger in high sec systems, about the same as they are today in low sec systems, and of course non-existent in zero sec systems. WHY: This balances the _reward_ portion of the risk-reward equation. Traders will want that sweet sweet honey, and pirates will know where to lurk. Traders will be armed to fight more effectively, and they'll be fully aware they're going to get jumped a LOT if they want that sweet, sweet honey.

5. Balance the interdiction attempt minigame and also the post interdiction combat/escape mechanics to be BALANCED on the basis of both combat skill _and_ gearing choices. Since larger, fatter trade ships with larger, fatter automated cargo drops (larger "smallest" cargo slots) are also slower, and less maneuverable, they need some other counters to having their ship crippled by long range cannons and smart component targeting by the pirate. But they need BALANCED counters. WHY: Nobody wants lopsided combat, or why bother? That's the problem now.

6. Provide _other_ cooperative roleplay elements to piracy as a lifestyle. For example, "Pirates and Bounty Hunters" could be an entire mini-game to itself with different risk-reward mechanics. Bounty Hunters get to potentially cash in on the accumulated bounty of a pirate if they successfully nail the pirate. BUT! If a pirate gets interdicted by another COMBAT SHIP (aka, a bounty hunter), and the pirate wins the fight, they automatically get a huge payoff just for winning against a merciless bounty hunter who surprised the pirate and jumped the pirate first. How much? No clue. 50,000 cr? 100,000 cr? Some propotion of the current bounty on the pirate's head? SOMETHING. In this scenario, both the BH and the pirate _risk_ the same cost of a ship loss or ship damage (see #1 above), and they both share a proportionate potential reward. Balanced risk-reward. What a concept. WHY: Combat hungry players need MORE outlets and excuses for balanced PvP _without_ it all revolving around robbing traders at gunpoint. That just creates bad blood in the community. See ArcheAge for a cautionary tale.
 
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Every player can trade.
The fact that trading is the best money right now is irrelevant: no player is prevented from increasing their personal cash by trading.

It _is_ a strawman to argue that "because piracy is less cash flow than trading, there's your balanced risk-reward". Why? See the two statements made above. I can explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you.

But then, as plenty of traders have shouted in this and other threads, "I shouldn't have to change the way I play the game because of others".
If someone wants to play as a pirate, then they shouldn't have to run trade runs to finance that.
It's not a bloody hobby, you know. It's supposed to be a valid profession.
 
It seems to me that some people are missing the fundamental differences in income here.

Trading is the most profitable career by a large margin.
A Trader that gets interdicted and dies, will still be making more money per hour than the pirate that got lucky and killed him.
A Trader that gets interdicted and drops maby 30 tons of his cargo will still be making more money per hour than the pirate that took the cargo.

Right now I'd list the incomes per hour as follows:
1: Trading.
2: Mining (and that's faaaaaar less profitable and more time consuming than trading).
3: Bounty Hunting.
4: Piracy.
5: Exploring.
6: Mercenary Work (ie. combat in conflict zones).
7: Doing missions.
 
It seems to me that some people are missing the fundamental differences in income here.

Trading is the most profitable career by a large margin.
A Trader that gets interdicted and dies, will still be making more money per hour than the pirate that got lucky and killed him.
A Trader that gets interdicted and drops maby 30 tons of his cargo will still be making more money per hour than the pirate that took the cargo.

Right now I'd list the incomes per hour as follows:
1: Trading.
2: Mining (and that's faaaaaar less profitable and more time consuming than trading).
3: Bounty Hunting.
4: Piracy.
5: Exploring.
6: Mercenary Work (ie. combat in conflict zones).
7: Doing missions.


Wrong scale. Different kettle of fish than the point of the OP. There are a large variety of balance issues across the entire game. Yes, they have to be solved. Yes, some of them, such as combat and exploration and mining don't make jack compared to trading is a HUGE problem. But it's not the point of the thread. The thread is about interdiction balance _now_ versus interdiction balance that would result from proposed changes stated by Sandro. Nothing more.
 
The mechanic itself from interdiction onward is balanced according to ship type, however getting into that situation in the first place is quite balanced because you can see who is coming and drop before you get in this outmached scenario. If you maintain high situational awareness this is never going to happen to you. You think of it as an unbalanced mechanic, I think of it as a last ditch dice roll that I may make it, but if I get locked up by a python I failed as soon as the mini game starts. You say it isn't skill based but a lot of people here are avoiding these scenarios with a near 100% success rate. So I'm sorry to say this but if the interdictions are hanging you up it's probably you doing something wrong If you aren't effectively avoiding the bigger ships. I know there are the oddball out of nowhere cases but its pretty rare in itself and even rarer is the chance it's a big ship, but occasionally yeah you have a bad day. I still get by in stock haulers and sideys against them without a scratch a most of the time. For the most part what you are complaining about is avoidable so even if it's as unbalanced as you say, it's kinda irrelevant. Your failing to avoid the danger then asking for a buff for your folly. Maybe its warranted but your ignoring the options available to you which makes your balance suggestions a bit moot because obviously you are ignoring the big picture. I'm sorry if that comes off as rude or something but your having a problem a lot of us don't have so I'm inclined to believe your complaints aren't well considered because your expeirience doesn't match mine at all, and I know mine isn't a fluke.


I agree oh boo hoo to pirating being tough; it should be. I'm surprised they get paid in credits as their kind's usual payment preference is meth cigarettes and pizza.

Oh boo hoo "I interdicted someone and they didn't roll over like a puppy and poop gold and when I scratched their belly, they bit", hope you get rabies and die.

Interdiction submission does not mean someone is personally surrendering to you. The can still fight, run, surrender and maybe even lie cheat and steal from you. If they run and somehow their T9 or T7 spacepig happens to waddle off and out run you in your tricked out for death viper or cobra it's not a exploit, you're a crap pilot.

Yembo has been fun trying out different techniques to get by the pirates and the best revolve around good piloting and not letting anyone get on your 6, it is possible.

The dumbest thing I tried was dropping out of FSD into silent running in the hope they couldn't see me and would think I had used the alt-F4 exploit. That experiment cost me 3.5 mil credits. I suppose I should come here and whine about it in the one continual thread on these forums, "I did something dumb and it cost me credits! Whaaaaaaa"

Ya ya I know it's unfair people can out run me and fsd before I can kill them,
it's a hark luck life.
 
A: you may not intentionally choose to be the prey, however, flying a defenseless ship is pretty much the definition of prey. It doesn't matter how you slice it, traders are the prey for pirates, not just in this game but in the real world too. Oil tankers are a prime RL example.

I can kind of understand cargo insurance, however, it completely negates the risk of hauling. The whole point here is that there is a risk/reward for everything in the game. Should pirates make as much as a hauler, of course not. Traders running 100tonnes of cargo, and a pirate hold 30, should have different yields. I don't think anyone here can argue that point.

The biggest problem with this thread, and no offence to the OP, but it's like talking to a brick wall. You have this it doesn't matter, I'm right attitude in all your posts, it makes discussing this pointless. If you can't understand the "ruthless galaxy" part of the description, you are in the wrong game. There are going to be pirates, you are going to get interdicted, it's part of the game. You have the choice to fight or flight, especially currently with the submit, and instant FSD charge problem.

I will say this though, the pirates bounties, and the ability to clear them so easily does need to be looked at. IMHO.
 
Lots of lots of things!

Ok, here's what I think of your ideas:

1 & 2) I don't like either of these, because they make it too 'safe' for the trader... a trader under attack from a pirate should be sweating, not relaxed, which means there has to be a sizeable risk involved. Also, the high cost of repair and insurance for the larger ships encourages them not to fight at all, and just give the pirates what they want... if you could replace your Lakon for less than a million, every trader would try their luck and fight the pirates, which means the pirates would never be able to steal any cargo at all. A 'forced cargo dump' would fix this, as Skuli suggested, but it would also reduce player interaction, and if anything we need more interaction, not less.

3 & 4) I fully support both of these changes; piracy is a crime, after all, and that should be reflected by incurring high bounties in the game... it would also make bounty-hunting more viable too. And high security systems should indeed be much safer, but also much less profitable, than anarchy systems... I'm not sure how to do this in a player-driven economy, but it would make everything better for everyone if it could be done.

5) I don't think this is necessary, because we already have this in a way. If you fly a trade ship, you are great at trading but not at fighting; if you are a fighter, you are great at fighting but not at trading; and if you want to be good at both, you can fly a multi-purpose ship, so you can be a jack-of-all-trades, but master of none. If dedicated trade ships became battleships that could go toe-to-toe with fighters, there would be no reason for anyone to fly fighters anymore, because they would gain no advantage by doing so. A trader should be able to buy shield cells etc so that they stand a chance of running away - but fighting back should only really be for multi-role ships, or fighters of course. Once the Wings update comes in, hiring bodyguards to defend your Lakon will hopefully become a viable tactic...

6) I... don't know about this. It might work, but it seems a bit artificial to me... bounty hunters get paid when they claim bounties, but who would pay a pirate for surviving a bounty hunter's attack? Hmm...

Still - some good ideas!
 
* In ED, there is NO possibility to truly avoid an interdiction _attempt_ by another player or NPC. To _avoid_, you must be able to _see_ potential danger ahead and change your route to simply not run into the danger in the first place. The ship radar display is far too cluttered and imprecise to clearly _see_ potential blips that might be trying to interdict you. In many cases, the radar give ZERO warning: no blips anywhere near by. You are just suddenly in the middle of an interdiction attempt.

Actually, this tells me you're making the one biggest mistake you can make, if you want to avoid interdiction attempts.

You are flying in the orbital plane.

Of course you are getting interdicted all the time. You are flying with things around you, making it hard to see anything. You're flying through multiple mass shadows, making it easy for people to catch up to you. And you're flying where it's busy, so you can't tell if those around you are on your tail, or just traveling with you.

I fly out if the orbital plane, orienting myself so I'm flying perpendicular to it, with the system to my starboard. This crowds all the planets and stars into the quarter right side of my scanner, leaving 75% of the scanner empty. This gives me plenty if warning, since if I see ANYTHING in that empty area, they're probably up to no good.
 
Actually, this tells me you're making the one biggest mistake you can make, if you want to avoid interdiction attempts.

You are flying in the orbital plane.

Of course you are getting interdicted all the time. You are flying with things around you, making it hard to see anything. You're flying through multiple mass shadows, making it easy for people to catch up to you. And you're flying where it's busy, so you can't tell if those around you are on your tail, or just traveling with you.

I fly out if the orbital plane, orienting myself so I'm flying perpendicular to it, with the system to my starboard. This crowds all the planets and stars into the quarter right side of my scanner, leaving 75% of the scanner empty. This gives me plenty if warning, since if I see ANYTHING in that empty area, they're probably up to no good.

Actually, I always fly well above or below the system ecliptic and approach every planet from a respective pole. I also rotate my ship constantly to spread out or clump the planet symbols to make whats around me as visible as possible. I also zoom the radar fully in to highlight the things near me (and its infuriating that it always defaults to fully zoomed out and I can't adjust it to full zoom in with a single button/keypress).

Look: player ships light up with big, blaring klaxons, metaphorically. It's easy to keep an eye on player ships and their relative position and vector. In solo, it's a different story. Absolutely nothing on radar and then BAM, interdiction attempt.
 
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