Fix Piracy by making Commodity Trading more risky by increasing purchase prices.

[V'larr]

I hate to burst the bubble here on piracy, but historically, piracy of any kind has always been worth less than half of whatever the legitimate business would be.

Example: if you steal a $25,000.00 Rolex watch, you are not going to get anywhere near $25,000.00 for it. At best, you'll get 1/4 to 1/3rd of that or $6,250 to $8,300.00.

Reason being, you're selling it to a fence who then has to sell it to somebody willing to risk owning whatever good it was you stole or go through the expense of making it a legitimate item through some sort of forged papers or the like.

There's no such thing as "leveling the economy" with regard to piracy. It's never, ever worked that way. The risk has always been far greater than the reward, which this game seems to have pretty much nailed as it is.

The game doesn't have $25000 Rolex watches. Instead it's mostly mass produced stuff worth a fraction of that. You'd never bother committing the same investment and effort in stealing that $25000 for a watch worth only $2500.

Plus, you have to remember it's a game. There is a balance to be struck between grim authenticity and compelling reasons to engage in gameplay.

 

[V'larr]

Precisely

But i suspect the Piracy is a pretense for OP's desire to make the galaxy more dangerous / risky*[] than it actually is >>> with the supposed net effect of people being more prepared for combat >>> with the supposed effect of people more accepting to play in open
Thus, just another hidden open only thread.

There, i've said it


*[This is actually reflected in the title and in the majority of suggestions made by the OP in this section of the forums]

This is completely disingenuous. Not cool.

 

[DemiserofD]

A subset of those with PMFs in the 50% of systems that would be affected.- and if half of systems were affected then that subset could be up to half of players with PMFs.

That's not the question I asked. I asked how many players would have established a faction in a system that is canonically dangerous, and yet in complete contradiction to this or any form of roleplay, are utterly unwilling to engage in combat, to the point that they are forced to relocate.

You completely ignored this, and literally just took the total number of systems, which is disingenuous at best, and actively manipulative at worst.

In reality, what you actually have is a tiny subset of players utterly willing to engage in combat, as part of an already tiny subset of players who have created their own minor faction. Realistically speaking, almost no one would be hurt by this change, and certainly not enough to outweigh the much larger portion of players who would benefit.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

Lot of very weird back and forth going on between other posters.

I like the first few points made in the original post, but I don't think this game needs to see any further credit inflation. Credits feel meaningless nowadays - and I say this with both an account that has a 2Bn net worth, and an account that barely has one million. I don't think that the ridiculous tens-of-millions of credits per hour incomes should be the standard - the devaluation of the credit makes getting to Fleet Carrier's much easier and possible for many players, but at the expensive of making all the pilot-able ships feel too easy to get.

I think the problem lies with the core gameplay loops of each combat-focused activity. FDev has given a lot of love to 'peaceful' activities - Mining had a wonderful overhaul, exploration received the FSS and miscellaneous lifeforms to put into the Codex, and Trading has benefited greatly from new UI and the recently introduced faction states - I actually found a few good trade routes through systems experiencing infrastructure failure, without touching EDDB - something I would've never done shortly after the game's original launch. However, I get a strong impression that FDev management strongly favors these activities over combat, as evidenced by how flawed these gameplay loops are, and additionally by how poorly their community managers tend to perform on streams, in combat.

Let me be specific. I prefer piracy to any other activity in Elite, so I'll speak about this. The core gameplay loop involves a few steps:

• Finding a preferable system to pirate in.

This involves judging the system's economy, security, population, government, allegiance and system state. You look for low security or anarchy systems, ones that are likely to have many good commodities to steal, and hopefully one not aligned to a superpower, to manage your reputation and interstellar bounties.

• Finding a target.

Generally, the reliable method is to wait in supercruise for traders and miners passing through the system. You can also visit nav beacons, resource extraction sites, or more recently, join in on heists against megaships and installations.

• Stealing from the target.

Either attack the target in the hope that it will drop it's cargo voluntarily, shoot it's cargo hatch, or usually, attach a hatch breaker limpet to the hatch. Once cargo is dropped, scoop it or utilize collector limpets to collect the cargo for you.

The problem with the Piracy gameplay loop is that it scales poorly. The above mechanics work perfectly if you're in a Sidewinder - as you can only hold a scant handful of cargo, a few canisters is often a full load, meaning a single hatch breaker limpet can fill your hold and net you a very nice profit - especially with the (recently?) raised prices of certain minerals/metals, and the high prices of rare goods. Additionally, small, agile ships scoop cargo very easily.

Now, go to the opposite extreme to see the issue - take, for example, the Anaconda. This is a ship which has no business attacking very small ships - in it's default, A-grade configuration (assuming no Engineering), it can't catch anything smaller than the Type-7 Transporter - but, theoretically, it excels at attacking large, lumbering traders, the pinnacle of which being the Type-9 Heavy. Now, imagine pirating a Type 9, while flying the Anaconda. If you do this, you'll quickly realize that the tools available to you don't actually allow you to get the cargo in the bulk that you'd need to justify the activity. Here are the issues:

• Hatch Breakers don't 'scale'. Larger classes of hatch breaker limpet (and by extension, any multi-limpet controller with hatch-breaker functionality) allow you to fire off more hatch breaker limpets simultaneously - which is not useful, as in virtually every case, you'd only pirate one ship at a time, and only one hatch breaker limpet can be activate on any ship at once.
• Collectors cannot collect cargo ejected from the target efficiently, while either the host ship, the target ship, or both are still moving (i.e still in combat). Cargo is flung in many directions over great distances, increasing collection time dramatically, and exiting collector range and/or sensor range.
• Compounding the previous point, cargo 'decays' in every instance rather quickly, and there is a limit of only 100t in an instance at once - further cargo dropped is immediately destroyed.

These issues boil down to larger ships having the theoretical means to steal large amounts of cargo (often in excess of 200 tonnes, sometimes 300 depending on loadout), with the firepower to back it up, with the correct mass-lock factor, with all the tools the game provides in their arsenal, often with their targets on the edge of destruction, yet still unable to fill their holds, with no proper way to coerce or force the targets to drop the cargo.

Issues addressed - on to solutions. I think if only a single change was going to be implemented to fix piracy, it would need to be a way to stop trader ships - the Pirate's equivalent of the 'win' - the kill, if he were a bounty hunter. I would merge hatch breaker and recon limpets into the same limpet type, and create an additional limpet type, called the 'Inertia' limpet - which would fly at 600 m/s, and slow a ship to a stop as long as the thrusters are disabled. I specifically intended for some new module to fill this role, as otherwise, should destruction of the thrusters be all that's necessary to stop a ship, bounty hunters in RES sites would probably have a new, completely unbalanced meta, similar to power-plant destruction pre-Engineers.

At this point, I'd consider piracy to be playable. You now have a variety of options to disable a target via destruction of the drives. Once the target is stopped, any issues with cargo collection disappear - the cargo is neatly ejected into a tight space, and no changes to collectors are necessary. Additionally, as a bonus, I'd like to see hatch breaker controllers updated - I think higher classes should seriously de-buff the actual limpet drone, reducing speed to 300 m/s at class 3 and above, and removing the ability to pass through shields, with the trade-off being that these higher classes of hatch breaker force more cargo to drop, faster. This creates an interesting niche for the class 1 hatch breakers, as modules used by small ships in smash-and-grab operations, whereas larger hatch breakers are for larger pirate ships willing and able to properly subdue a target before looting, as opposed to grabbing what they can under fire.

TL;DR No more credits needed, at least, not yet. Add ability to stop targets via thruster destruction & new inertia limpet in order to scale piracy well for larger ships, and optionally re-design Class 3+ hatch breakers to drop more cargo faster at the expense of high limpet speed & ability to pass through shields.

 

[DemiserofD]

Lot of very weird back and forth going on between other posters.

I like the first few points made in the original post, but I don't think this game needs to see any further credit inflation. Credits feel meaningless nowadays - and I say this with both an account that has a 2Bn net worth, and an account that barely has one million. I don't think that the ridiculous tens-of-millions of credits per hour incomes should be the standard - the devaluation of the credit makes getting to Fleet Carrier's much easier and possible for many players, but at the expensive of making all the pilot-able ships feel too easy to get.

I think the problem lies with the core gameplay loops of each combat-focused activity. FDev has given a lot of love to 'peaceful' activities - Mining had a wonderful overhaul, exploration received the FSS and miscellaneous lifeforms to put into the Codex, and Trading has benefited greatly from new UI and the recently introduced faction states - I actually found a few good trade routes through systems experiencing infrastructure failure, without touching EDDB - something I would've never done shortly after the game's original launch. However, I get a strong impression that FDev management strongly favors these activities over combat, as evidenced by how flawed these gameplay loops are, and additionally by how poorly their community managers tend to perform on streams, in combat.

Let me be specific. I prefer piracy to any other activity in Elite, so I'll speak about this. The core gameplay loop involves a few steps:

• Finding a preferable system to pirate in.

This involves judging the system's economy, security, population, government, allegiance and system state. You look for low security or anarchy systems, ones that are likely to have many good commodities to steal, and hopefully one not aligned to a superpower, to manage your reputation and interstellar bounties.

• Finding a target.

Generally, the reliable method is to wait in supercruise for traders and miners passing through the system. You can also visit nav beacons, resource extraction sites, or more recently, join in on heists against megaships and installations.

• Stealing from the target.

Either attack the target in the hope that it will drop it's cargo voluntarily, shoot it's cargo hatch, or usually, attach a hatch breaker limpet to the hatch. Once cargo is dropped, scoop it or utilize collector limpets to collect the cargo for you.

The problem with the Piracy gameplay loop is that it scales poorly. The above mechanics work perfectly if you're in a Sidewinder - as you can only hold a scant handful of cargo, a few canisters is often a full load, meaning a single hatch breaker limpet can fill your hold and net you a very nice profit - especially with the (recently?) raised prices of certain minerals/metals, and the high prices of rare goods. Additionally, small, agile ships scoop cargo very easily.

Now, go to the opposite extreme to see the issue - take, for example, the Anaconda. This is a ship which has no business attacking very small ships - in it's default, A-grade configuration (assuming no Engineering), it can't catch anything smaller than the Type-7 Transporter - but, theoretically, it excels at attacking large, lumbering traders, the pinnacle of which being the Type-9 Heavy. Now, imagine pirating a Type 9, while flying the Anaconda. If you do this, you'll quickly realize that the tools available to you don't actually allow you to get the cargo in the bulk that you'd need to justify the activity. Here are the issues:

• Hatch Breakers don't 'scale'. Larger classes of hatch breaker limpet (and by extension, any multi-limpet controller with hatch-breaker functionality) allow you to fire off more hatch breaker limpets simultaneously - which is not useful, as in virtually every case, you'd only pirate one ship at a time, and only one hatch breaker limpet can be activate on any ship at once.
• Collectors cannot collect cargo ejected from the target efficiently, while either the host ship, the target ship, or both are still moving (i.e still in combat). Cargo is flung in many directions over great distances, increasing collection time dramatically, and exiting collector range and/or sensor range.
• Compounding the previous point, cargo 'decays' in every instance rather quickly, and there is a limit of only 100t in an instance at once - further cargo dropped is immediately destroyed.

These issues boil down to larger ships having the theoretical means to steal large amounts of cargo (often in excess of 200 tonnes, sometimes 300 depending on loadout), with the firepower to back it up, with the correct mass-lock factor, with all the tools the game provides in their arsenal, often with their targets on the edge of destruction, yet still unable to fill their holds, with no proper way to coerce or force the targets to drop the cargo.

Issues addressed - on to solutions. I think if only a single change was going to be implemented to fix piracy, it would need to be a way to stop trader ships - the Pirate's equivalent of the 'win' - the kill, if he were a bounty hunter. I would merge hatch breaker and recon limpets into the same limpet type, and create an additional limpet type, called the 'Inertia' limpet - which would fly at 600 m/s, and slow a ship to a stop as long as the thrusters are disabled. I specifically intended for some new module to fill this role, as otherwise, should destruction of the thrusters be all that's necessary to stop a ship, bounty hunters in RES sites would probably have a new, completely unbalanced meta, similar to power-plant destruction pre-Engineers.

At this point, I'd consider piracy to be playable. You now have a variety of options to disable a target via destruction of the drives. Once the target is stopped, any issues with cargo collection disappear - the cargo is neatly ejected into a tight space, and no changes to collectors are necessary. Additionally, as a bonus, I'd like to see hatch breaker controllers updated - I think higher classes should seriously de-buff the actual limpet drone, reducing speed to 300 m/s at class 3 and above, and removing the ability to pass through shields, with the trade-off being that these higher classes of hatch breaker force more cargo to drop, faster. This creates an interesting niche for the class 1 hatch breakers, as modules used by small ships in smash-and-grab operations, whereas larger hatch breakers are for larger pirate ships willing and able to properly subdue a target before looting, as opposed to grabbing what they can under fire.

TL;DR No more credits needed, at least, not yet. Add ability to stop targets via thruster destruction & new inertia limpet in order to scale piracy well for larger ships, and optionally re-design Class 3+ hatch breakers to drop more cargo faster at the expense of high limpet speed & ability to pass through shields.

I like the way you're thinking. I think we are both approaching the same issue from opposite directions, and on a basic level, I think that what you are proposing is reasonable.

There are a few things I would like to point out, however. The first is, limpets actually do function acceptably well at higher speeds. The function that players so often forget is that when targeted at a specific unit of cargo, collector limpets move at 200 m/s, rather than the standard 70. While this is approximately a 250% increase in speed, since the important factor is the limpets speed relative to the players speed, needing to be going about 30 m/s faster than the player, in reality, this allows the player to be moving more than five times as fast.

So in my opinion, needing to reduce the speed of your target is not actually that much of an issue.

The real issue is, as you point out, being able to steal enough Goods in a short enough time frame to be worthwhile. The problem is, this is not a simple thing to fix. Just having hatch Breakers eject more cargo alone will not solve the problem, since collector limpets would not be able to keep up, anyway. Fixing this problem in this way would require changing collector limpets, hatch breaker limpets, and adding a brand new way to slow down your target, since the trick I explained above would not work with substantially larger amounts of cargo.

While a smaller concern, there's also the matter of PVP piracy. I very much doubt that the timer for logging out will ever change, so Pirates will only ever have a limited amount of time to steal from other players. That being the case, higher value cargo makes PVP piracy more realistic, and while I doubt he will ever be a major aspect of the game, it would be nice to have it at least somewhat functional, and not completely reliant on roleplay.

All of these reasons together are why I ultimately decided the better solution was just to change the value of that cargo.

 

[CMDR Hagglebeard]

I like the way you're thinking. I think we are both approaching the same issue from opposite directions, and on a basic level, I think that what you are proposing is reasonable.

There are a few things I would like to point out, however. The first is, limpets actually do function acceptably well at higher speeds. The function that players so often forget is that when targeted at a specific unit of cargo, collector limpets move at 200 m/s, rather than the standard 70. While this is approximately a 250% increase in speed, since the important factor is the limpets speed relative to the players speed, needing to be going about 30 m/s faster than the player, in reality, this allows the player to be moving more than five times as fast.

So in my opinion, needing to reduce the speed of your target is not actually that much of an issue.

The real issue is, as you point out, being able to steal enough Goods in a short enough time frame to be worthwhile. The problem is, this is not a simple thing to fix. Just having hatch Breakers eject more cargo alone will not solve the problem, since collector limpets would not be able to keep up, anyway. Fixing this problem in this way would require changing collector limpets, hatch breaker limpets, and adding a brand new way to slow down your target, since the trick I explained above would not work with substantially larger amounts of cargo.

While a smaller concern, there's also the matter of PVP piracy. I very much doubt that the timer for logging out will ever change, so Pirates will only ever have a limited amount of time to steal from other players. That being the case, higher value cargo makes PVP piracy more realistic, and while I doubt he will ever be a major aspect of the game, it would be nice to have it at least somewhat functional, and not completely reliant on roleplay.

All of these reasons together are why I ultimately decided the better solution was just to change the value of that cargo.

I'm not a fan of using collectors in their targeted mode, as it's very tedious when dealing with bulk volume. This the same reason why I don't consider bump-stopping to be a useful method.

I would consider the effect on commodity prices on new traders with few credits. Raising prices could very negatively affect starting traders and too positively effect starting pirates.

Lastly, we may disagree on cargo collection speed. As it stands, if current hatch breaker cargo ejection speed were to remain unchanged, assuming as close to perfect collection speed as you can attain in game now, I would be satisfied. If you were to pirate in an extraction/refinery system (typically the most preferable systems), you have a good chance to find all different kinds of valuable metals and minerals, which often sell above 20k a pop. If in a half hour you can steal 200 units, that's 4 million credits, up to 10 million depending on commodity. I think that's very fair, and possible with my suggestion.

As for PvP... I wouldn't think too hard on it. PvP piracy was fantastic when rares trading was big at launch. Since then, changes have been introduced which seem to favor a single-player experience. Engineers wrecked PvP balance, or rather, put the barrier to entry through the roof, and credit inflation means the exact answer to your problem, rares, fell out of favor a long time ago. I'm not saying it couldn't be addressed, but it would take a big change (like your suggestion) to make it happen. Then you have to consider the community, many of whom already see this as a complete and finished game and could be bothered by big changes to a core mechanic (as evidence earlier in this thread), unlike me, who sees this game as incomplete in many areas since launch and still requiring development. I structured my suggestion in such a way that players uninvolved in piracy would essentially see no difference in their gameplay.

I think it's unfortunate; I daydream sometimes of buying FDev and steering ED development, ripping up a lot of the game to make it more like I'd imagined during beta. But nearly 8 years into development, big core changes probably aren't happening. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

 

[DemiserofD]

I'm not a fan of using collectors in their targeted mode, as it's very tedious when dealing with bulk volume. This the same reason why I don't consider bump-stopping to be a useful method.

I would consider the effect on commodity prices on new traders with few credits. Raising prices could very negatively affect starting traders and too positively effect starting pirates.

Lastly, we may disagree on cargo collection speed. As it stands, if current hatch breaker cargo ejection speed were to remain unchanged, assuming as close to perfect collection speed as you can attain in game now, I would be satisfied. If you were to pirate in an extraction/refinery system (typically the most preferable systems), you have a good chance to find all different kinds of valuable metals and minerals, which often sell above 20k a pop. If in a half hour you can steal 200 units, that's 4 million credits, up to 10 million depending on commodity. I think that's very fair, and possible with my suggestion.

As for PvP... I wouldn't think too hard on it. PvP piracy was fantastic when rares trading was big at launch. Since then, changes have been introduced which seem to favor a single-player experience. Engineers wrecked PvP balance, or rather, put the barrier to entry through the roof, and credit inflation means the exact answer to your problem, rares, fell out of favor a long time ago. I'm not saying it couldn't be addressed, but it would take a big change (like your suggestion) to make it happen. Then you have to consider the community, many of whom already see this as a complete and finished game and could be bothered by big changes to a core mechanic (as evidence earlier in this thread), unlike me, who sees this game as incomplete in many areas since launch and still requiring development. I structured my suggestion in such a way that players uninvolved in piracy would essentially see no difference in their gameplay.

I think it's unfortunate; I daydream sometimes of buying FDev and steering ED development, ripping up a lot of the game to make it more like I'd imagined during beta. But nearly 8 years into development, big core changes probably aren't happening. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

I agree that ultimately PVP is a sideshow, but that doesn't mean it should be ignored entirely. If at all possible, I would like a solution that works for both.

As far as your proposed income is concerned... honestly, that's more than an order of magnitude too low. Right now, Traders can make on the order of 200 m per hour. Bounty hunters can make slightly more, and anti-xeno combat can earn in the order of a billion credits per hour. Even exploration would make several times your proposal.

Honestly, I see nothing wrong with piracy being a dominant early game activity. It encompasses almost every aspect of gameplay, so it would be a great way to introduce new players to the game. Personally, I see the complete lack of any form of progression in terms of trading to be a flaw, not a feature. While increasing the cost of Commodities would have a flowing effect on newer players, I believe that ultimately, requiring a larger investment would actually results in a greater sense of accomplishment, and make that success all the more meaningful.

 

[Northpin]

Synthesized ammo and Engineering most definitely pose risk in the PvP scene

That's absolutely besides the point and even more irrelevant. PVP is not the subject here

Engineering is boosting defensive capabilities way more than the offensive ones, thus giving people more chances to escape a dangerous situation - and this is valid especially in PVE, but also in PVP

Basically in PVE a fully enginered ship is basically immune to NPC attacks for the time needed to escape.
A such ship can easily outrun the NPC in most situations or can pack enough shields/hull to leisurely wake out.

How many videos have piled up over the years, of gankers literally obliterating player ships within seconds? The imbalance introduced by these changes are monumental.

that's not an apt comparison

gankers were using specifically engineered ships to deliver as much damage as possible, while their predilect targets were either non engineered, or the engineering was focused not on resilience, but in entirely different areas.
People flying paper planes, does not mean the engineering pose a danger to them. It only means they didn't used engineering to protect their ships.

 

[Northpin]

The game doesn't have $25000 Rolex watches. Instead it's mostly mass produced stuff worth a fraction of that. You'd never bother committing the same investment and effort in stealing that $25000 for a watch worth only $2500.

The game has valuable commodities that are worth the risk ot pirating. Not many, but there are some.
The activity of pirating NPC T9 loaded with LTD was extremely lucrative - and way more entertaining than mining those LTDs

However, if you want to pirate for profit, it is absolutely non-sensical to pirate stuff that you can easily buy/sell for profit using legal means.
Hence the OP example is extremely flawed: why should i pirate agronomic treatment when i can get more profits by simply trading it legally?

This is completely disingenuous. Not cool.

It was merely an observation. Made in jest, but still a valid observation.
OP's proposal does have the intent of making trading more risky... and its using Piracy as argument.
And lot of their proposals have the same aim of making the game more risky.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Where in this thread did anyone suggest challenge gating players out of existing systems? I defy anybody to display a pirate encounter - not an assassination target, not a CZ encounter, not a mission-generated wrinkle - that offers anything remotely approaching a challenge, as the game currently stands. Even before Engineering, I was capable of fighting off pirate encounter Anacondas in a Type 9.

Unless someone proposed to bring back bugged NPCs with things like beam-laser-plasma-accelerators, I really don't think it's valid to claim that anything remotely approaching "challenge gating" could possibly take place.

It started here:

The real key to making players want to engage in potential pvp scenarios is keeping them prepared for it. Nobody is going to risk pvp if they'll die in 2 shots, but if they're already in a defensively-built ship, they'll be more willing to take that risk. This comes by making NPCs more dangerous in dangerous parts of the galaxy, like low security and anarchy systems, while simultaneously making higher security systems safer, so players are able to play there securely.

Anyway, I'm not JUST talking about pvp piracy here; this would effect pve piracy as well, which is where most piracy will take place ultimately.

 

[Robert Maynard]

That's not the question I asked. I asked how many players would have established a faction in a system that is canonically dangerous, and yet in complete contradiction to this or any form of roleplay, are utterly unwilling to engage in combat, to the point that they are forced to relocate.

No-one knows - so any estimates are based on assumption.

 

[Robert Maynard]

And lot of their proposals have the same aim of making the game more risky.

.... with a "and maybe then more players will engage in PvP" subtext.

 

[zikolach]

Nobody is going to risk pvp if they'll die in 2 shots

Not entirely true - you get some cheap ship, enable "report crimes" and let some ganker destroy you

 

[Ettanin]

Maybe it's best to discuss ideas intent (hidden or not) on "making PvP more acceptable" in the Hotel California thread.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Piracy will never really be a thing in ED simply as the 'economy' is not based on scarcity- its far easier to simply do a mission, or just take a cargo from a mission.

The only time piracy could be made to be profitable if FD made pirate missions that ramped up the rewards for doing a set task. These missions could be unlocked via notoriety levels, or simply by gov type (i.e. criminal anarchy, certain black ops for others).

I know these sorts of missions have been in and out of the game, but IMO in a reworked way would be the easiest method to satisfy everyone.

 

[DemiserofD]

No-one knows - so any estimates are based on assumption.

So your claim that anyone would be bothered is purely based on assumption?

Let's be honest here, the number of people who would actually be bothered by this are vanishingly small, and the majority of them will easily get over it, just as players have gotten over every change before.

Let's take this in a more positive note. Can you think of any problems that might arise even with the players who would theoretically enjoy something like this? After all, it's easy to say, "make things more dangerous"; much harder to actually do it. If you could see some sort of fundamental problem with the idea in that regard, I would be more open to changing my mind.

 

[Robert Maynard]

So your claim that anyone would be bothered is purely based on assumption?

Nope. All it takes is one....

Let's be honest here, the number of people who would actually be bothered by this are vanishingly small, and the majority of them will easily get over it, just as players have gotten over every change before.

That's one viewpoint based on a particular set of assumptions.

Let's take this in a more positive note. Can you think of any problems that might arise even with the players who would theoretically enjoy something like this? After all, it's easy to say, "make things more dangerous"; much harder to actually do it. If you could see some sort of fundamental problem with the idea in that regard, I would be more open to changing my mind.

The arithmetic: rebuy + significant cargo cost (in relation to profit) = many successful trips required to recoup a single complete loss.

 

[DemiserofD]

Nope. All it takes is one....

That's one viewpoint based on a particular set of assumptions.

The arithmetic: rebuy + significant cargo cost (in relation to profit) = many successful trips required to recoup a single complete loss.

That is true, but having a large investment is a fundamental aspect of trading in the real world. I see that as a positive. If players don't want to have a large investment themselves, they could always do delivery missions instead.

Indeed, I believe that was for the most part how it actually worked back in the beginning of the game. The problem is, the profits have inflated substantially, while the buy-in price has remained mostly the same, creating a situation where virtually no investment is required to make phenomenal amounts of profit.

I would like to return things to the way it was at the release of the game, simply adjusted for modern income levels.

 

[Robert Maynard]

That is true, but having a large investment is a fundamental aspect of trading in the real world. I see that as a positive. If players don't want to have a large investment themselves, they could always do delivery missions instead.

Indeed, I believe that was for the most part how it actually worked back in the beginning of the game. The problem is, the profits have inflated substantially, while the buy-in price has remained mostly the same, creating a situation where virtually no investment is required to make phenomenal amounts of profit.

I would like to return things to the way it was at the release of the game, simply adjusted for modern income levels.

That's what one player wants - there are other players to consider.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Piracy will never really be a thing in ED simply as the 'economy' is not based on scarcity- its far easier to simply do a mission, or just take a cargo from a mission.

The only time piracy could be made to be profitable if FD made pirate missions that ramped up the rewards for doing a set task. These missions could be unlocked via notoriety levels, or simply by gov type (i.e. criminal anarchy, certain black ops for others).

I know these sorts of missions have been in and out of the game, but IMO in a reworked way would be the easiest method to satisfy everyone.

I guess pirating materials could be interesting..... if when you scanned a ship they also had high level mats that could make things worth it regardless of credits.