Design 102 - A cautionary tale about "food chain" design
- Thread starter Yokai
- Start date
I play this game regularly, fighting for my brethrens freedom in Lugh...
Have you played in any of the areas that are changing systems and statuses? Do know how frustrating the lack of basic MMO type tools of grouping in game communication, etc. is to accomplish this? Try to ascertain 1 commanders intentions within a system....then try to explain the do's and don't's of the current 'plan'...or try to maintain security within the system....or disrupt it. If someone is taking a contra stand and you decide to flex your muscle, to convince them of your cause, or to explain that it would be damaging to their purse to do so, have you tried to interdict them? Have others follow on the interdiction? Then have a logoffsky? Add to all that the knowledge that any number of people you will never see, can work against or with your intentions. Then try to formulate what is and isn't working. Then find out the state changes are on 26 day cool down! <that one ripped my heart out, Michael. Glad to see you guys dropping this one down!>
In spite of all this, and because of it, I understand the importance of this part of the game running properly. I also understand all sides of these discussions because I have played all sides of the discussions. There might only be about 500 or so folks that have stuck with these operations, trying to get them figured out so everyone else can play the game the way they want. The one thing I have come to understand about ALL of these actions is this: as they continue they enhance the galactic environment allowing all roles to have a place in these areas of change and upheaval. Traders come for the profits, the pirates come to pirate the traders, the bounty hunters come to see who is carrying bounties.....just like a food web in real life. People might not like being considered the herbivores of the game, but that is the way things are. Without traders, nothing happens. When things work well it is fun to be a part of. When they don't it's hard to play. Creating ever changing dynamics within the system means that certain player types will arrive and others will follow.
I believe there are already plenty of options to avoid being pirated as a trader.
As NPC's aren’t an issue no NPC pirate has ever cause damage or survived the experience I’ll limit this to player piracy. Now I've only been interdicted by player pirate’s maybe a handful of times so my opinion will reflect this.
I don't fight interdictions I always submit. And I have never been successfully pirated in this game, and I've not handed a single tonne of cargo over.
I believe there’s two main reasons for this,
1) I don't tend run trade routes in player populated space. The galaxy is huge, it's very easy to find a profitable quite corner.
2) I don't run light, poorly armed, poorly defended ship when trading in populated area. If you do this, accept the risk and understand you'll be a vulnerable and tempting target.
The attempts have played out as either,
1)
Pirate outguns me, if he's slower all PIP to engines and boost away - you can usually clear weapons range without taking any damage a jump out. If he's faster plan is the same but all PIP to shields instead. Now bear in mind I'm rigged with decent shield generators with counter measures and shield cells, I can take the hits for the duration.
2)
I out gun the pirate, results in a fight, and it ends with the pirate running or dead. Occasionally they're very skilled and I need to withdraw but so far never with damage.
My ships used for trade so far,
Cobra – Fast, can escape interdiction easily.
Asp - Heavily armed and shielded - Made several players regret they didn't check subsystem before interdiction, as not all Asp on rare runs are toothless.
Clipper - Fast , heavily shield and escape is a trivial matter. Also decently armed so fighting is an viable option. So far only one play has actually interdicted me in the Clipper, and with the current FSD cool down I was gone even before he could bring guns to bare.
Frontier has stated often that the core design principle is risk vs reward. Traders choose to run light for max profits, and they take that risk.
As NPC's aren’t an issue no NPC pirate has ever cause damage or survived the experience I’ll limit this to player piracy. Now I've only been interdicted by player pirate’s maybe a handful of times so my opinion will reflect this.
I don't fight interdictions I always submit. And I have never been successfully pirated in this game, and I've not handed a single tonne of cargo over.
I believe there’s two main reasons for this,
1) I don't tend run trade routes in player populated space. The galaxy is huge, it's very easy to find a profitable quite corner.
2) I don't run light, poorly armed, poorly defended ship when trading in populated area. If you do this, accept the risk and understand you'll be a vulnerable and tempting target.
The attempts have played out as either,
1)
Pirate outguns me, if he's slower all PIP to engines and boost away - you can usually clear weapons range without taking any damage a jump out. If he's faster plan is the same but all PIP to shields instead. Now bear in mind I'm rigged with decent shield generators with counter measures and shield cells, I can take the hits for the duration.
2)
I out gun the pirate, results in a fight, and it ends with the pirate running or dead. Occasionally they're very skilled and I need to withdraw but so far never with damage.
My ships used for trade so far,
Cobra – Fast, can escape interdiction easily.
Asp - Heavily armed and shielded - Made several players regret they didn't check subsystem before interdiction, as not all Asp on rare runs are toothless.
Clipper - Fast , heavily shield and escape is a trivial matter. Also decently armed so fighting is an viable option. So far only one play has actually interdicted me in the Clipper, and with the current FSD cool down I was gone even before he could bring guns to bare.
Frontier has stated often that the core design principle is risk vs reward. Traders choose to run light for max profits, and they take that risk.
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You can? OOOh! Gonna have to try with my X36 - thanks!
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PS: Yonkai, the posts from Sandro don't show that piracy is the core of the game, but they do show piracy is one of the cores of the game. And one that has had short shrift so far IMHO.
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Ok, I finally understand the point you're making. If traders and pirates were different 'classes', and you could only play as one or the other, Elite's current system would be fair enough - but instead, a pirate who gets blown up can simply jump in a Type 6 and do a trade run or two, and he's made his money back (just like the pirates in Archeage, who only had to work for 5 minutes). A trader who gets blown up, on the other hand, has to spend over an hour trading to try and make his money back (just like the traders in Archeage, spending 2 hours). So, the game is unfair.
However, as you say yourself, this is a worst-case scenario. According to Frontier, piracy is not meant to be about destroying traders at all - it is simply supposed to be a 'stand and deliver' sort of thing, where the trader will live to tell the tale. In order for this to actually be the case in-game, there needs to be a far heavier penalty for player-killing, to discourage pirates from murdering their victims... but if such a thing IS introduced, traders will almost never get destroyed, so the high insurance costs that you described will rarely be an issue. Pirates, on the other hand, live a more dangerous life, and can expect to get destroyed fairly regularly (by bounty hunters, police, traders with good defenses or wingmen, or even by other pirates) - each individual death may not cost them very much, but repeated deaths will start to add up, and over time a pirate may end up paying the same (or more) in insurance as a trader will, making the game relatively fair.
You also mention that even if a trader is not destroyed, repairing damage can be very expensive on the bigger ships... but I think Frontier did this deliberately, to encourage traders not to fight at all. If a pirate interdicts a Type 9, the trader can simply submit to the interdiction, give the pirate a few tons of cargo, and then fly away without taking any damage at all... the pirate is happy (because he got what he wanted without expending any ammunition), and the trader is happy (because he will still make a 250k profit anyway, a few tons of cargo is practically nothing to a Type 9). This is good design in my opinion, and it shows that Frontier don't just want pirates to let traders live, they also want traders to let pirates live as well, instead of always fighting to the death. And the loss of cargo that traders suffer as a result is (or should be) comparable to the fines and bounties that the pirate incurs, so again, it's approximately fair.
This whole debate was prompted by your concerns over Frontier's intention to adjust the way interdictions work, by making it more difficult for traders to escape quickly - but in the end, even this may lead to fewer traders being destroyed, not more. As it stands, a pirate must open fire on a trader immediately, before the trader escapes - there is no way to simply request cargo, instead you always have to fight. But if it took longer for your FSD to cool down after an interdiction, the pirate would have more time to 'negotiate' with the trader - and the trader would be more inclined to listen, instead of trying to run, because escape would be more risky. On the whole, it would lead to more peaceful encounters between traders and pirates, which would only cost the trader at most a few tens of thousands of credits... making the game less frustrating for the traders, and less frustrating for the pirates as well!
Of course, all of this rests on Frontier introducing a suitably harsh punishment for player-killers... but as longs as they do, I see no reason to worry about their intentions for the interdiction fix, and I certainly don't think it is necessary to make interdictions balanced - because the game as a whole will be balanced, and that is what matters most.
One thing that I've discovered about successful design is that it's vision led - not reactionary or driven by he who shouts loudest. Let's hope that vision remains at the core of ED.
meh. The game isn't balanced in favor of one or the other unless traders want it to be. Nobody forces traders to play the game near people who like to pirate (and npc pirates are laughable) and nobody forces traders to play in games modes that even allow the possibility of pvp and nobody forces traders to load out their ship to be defenseless and in the upcoming multiplayer changes, nobody would be forcing traders to go solo against groups of hostile players. Traders have the choice, since their boring lives of trading make the mode of gameplay irrelevant ( 
). Pirates do not have the same choice.
Pirates on the other hand need a major change in NPC behavior before pirating npcs can in any way be treated similar to proper piracy of human players (the ones that dont combat log) and piracy in general, the way traders would want it, would require severely changing the cost of repairs and purchasing of ships and how much damage ships can take before exploding so that there is actually time between a threat, making sure that threat is taken seriously and being able to follow through with it, and the trader deciding to submit to the threat and leave with his/her life or go down fighting. Currently I don't think there is sufficient time and most interactions result in just outright fighting to the death because a moment's hesitation could mean the end of the fight.
I'm not a pirate. I dont pirate anything. But it seems fairly obvious that combat has a ways to go and right now traders are running un-checked in the game. The fixes of which are not going to make people reaping huge profits very happy and FD will probably acquiesce to their demands.
). Pirates do not have the same choice. Pirates on the other hand need a major change in NPC behavior before pirating npcs can in any way be treated similar to proper piracy of human players (the ones that dont combat log) and piracy in general, the way traders would want it, would require severely changing the cost of repairs and purchasing of ships and how much damage ships can take before exploding so that there is actually time between a threat, making sure that threat is taken seriously and being able to follow through with it, and the trader deciding to submit to the threat and leave with his/her life or go down fighting. Currently I don't think there is sufficient time and most interactions result in just outright fighting to the death because a moment's hesitation could mean the end of the fight.
I'm not a pirate. I dont pirate anything. But it seems fairly obvious that combat has a ways to go and right now traders are running un-checked in the game. The fixes of which are not going to make people reaping huge profits very happy and FD will probably acquiesce to their demands.
On my X52 Pro, I use the clutch trigger + the roller on the front of the thruster under my index finger: clutch+roll up = zoom in, and vice versa. Works a treat.
Wow. I had no idea FD turned off the NPC traders on the North American servers. I'd ticket that.
NPC traders are both boring and not that lucrative.