Fix Piracy

[Thetele]

Complete n00b-pirate question here, but why don't you target Drives?

I get that the PP is the power-supply hub of all the systems in a ship, but if you disable drives first then surely you can pick and choose what subsys to target next from the perfect orientation, as the victim can't wiggle round? Plus, the drives must be easier to hit when angling in pursuit...

Genuine question from a normally non-combatant CMDR.

NPC started to repair their drives since 2.2 dropped so they aren't stationary long.

 

[bigity]

It's weird. It's like there's the need for players being pirated to know how to play the game or deserve the loss, but for some pirates, they don't have to work out the specifics of how to play that trade....

Not sure if the subsystem targeting can include utility spots, though.

- - - Updated - - -



Go mine the ice rings!

What kind of pirate are you?

- - - Updated - - -

NPC started to repair their drives since 2.2 dropped so they aren't stationary long.

They also reboot to repair power plants.

And in some cases, just ignore power plants being disabled completely, continuing to run all weapons and modules (so its not a 50% power thing).

 

[Sterling MH]

What kind of pirate are you?

One that wanted low temp diamonds! It;s the easiest way to get 100+t of them.

And nobody will know I'm a pirate if I'm mining. Think of Assasin's Creed: all you have to do is sit down and suddenly you're a common pleb. Walk in the middle of priests, and they can't see you!

It's super effective!

 

[Thetele]

One that wanted low temp diamonds! It;s the easiest way to get 100+t of them.

And nobody will know I'm a pirate if I'm mining. Think of Assasin's Creed: all you have to do is sit down and suddenly you're a common pleb. Walk in the middle of priests, and they can't see you!

It's super effective!

Why mine your self when you can have refinery and limpets and sit next to npc that mine and just steal every stone he mine, those aren't even market as stolen.

 

[bigity]

Why mine your self when you can have refinery and limpets and sit next to npc that mine and just steal every stone he mine, those aren't even market as stolen.

LOL I haven't tried this. Too funny.

 

[Sterling MH]

Why mine your self when you can have refinery and limpets and sit next to npc that mine and just steal every stone he mine, those aren't even market as stolen.

Yeah, but that's a bit like Altair sitting down to hide from the guards, then nicking the sarnie from the dude sitting next to them. Way to break cover, dude!

 

[Xainath Ulsen]

I am trying to pirate in a medium security system with a cobra mk III and honestly using hatch breakers and collector limpets I cant get anymore than 1-6 pieces of dropped cargo before the fuzz show up and zero in on me even with silent running on. Any tips?

 

[Lucius-Darcia]

This is about PvE piracy obviously, PvP piracy has long been scrapped as an idea of any FD support.

Last time I logged in a change was finally added that when following a specific number of steps you could disable a ship completely and siphon all of their cargo (in a still annoying/unpolished way), even avoiding the fuzz if done properly. It had a certain amount of challenge involved and made contract piracy missions doable and fun.

Now NPC's are rebooting after a few seconds of module destruction and immediately boosting away...forget giving up the cargo, just kill me instead...top notch AI programming there.

I've seen players are now shooting NPC shields once so they attack then cutting their engines, launching their limpits and collectors, and just shield tanking while the NPC circles and attacks and slowly drains cargo. This is backwards progress for one of the career paths in the game.

From the previous solution, to request certain amount of cargo dump COMMS, to a module that keeps them from moving after PP destruction, etc...give a little update to make PvE piracy reasonable again.

The NPC's start the reboot only above master rank or higher but that's not the problem. Time is usually enough to shoot the cargohatch to 0% but....
There are more problems

-hatch breakers release always just 1t cargo when succesfull. You'll need at least 20 limpets per ship to get enough
-collectors are SSLLOOOOOOOOWWWWWW. when mining they are annoying but okay. When pirating they are useless!!!
-shooting the cargohatch to 0% has 0% effect. No drop. Shooting further sometimes release 1t. When npc rebooted and boosts away he drops of 20t and spray them around 20km impossible to collect!!! WHAT THE F....FUN is this shi..ship? :S
-if collectors managed to grab a canister, you have to sit and wait. I was moving at 8m /s and all canisters got destroyed when limpets wanted to give me them.

Wanna hear more? NPC piracy is CRAPPY BROKEN LIKE HELL!

 

[Ubiquitous Che]

I am trying to pirate in a medium security system with a cobra mk III and honestly using hatch breakers and collector limpets I cant get anymore than 1-6 pieces of dropped cargo before the fuzz show up and zero in on me even with silent running on. Any tips?

I've just come back into the game after more than a year away. Low temp diamonds weren't even a thing the last time I played, I've been gone for that long.

So while a lot of people are crying about the recent power plant thing, I'm just ecstatic that I can turn any kind of a meaningful profit from PvE piracy at all.

I've been following ideas here, but I'll summarize in my own words.

I'm currently PvE piracy in a Cobra IV with no Engineering modifications - I don't have a lot of time to play and I hate progression-via-RNG, so I just can't be grinding up with Engineers. If you can be , I've heard really good things about high-yield cannons for module sniping.

My current ship build is here. I don't claim that it's super-optimized or anything, I'm still getting a feel for this and tweaking things.

First thing, don't where you eat. When I find a likely miner - Type 6's and 7's mostly - in my hunting ground system, I'll interdict and manifest scan. Typically they wake out really fast. So I wake scan and follow.

Rinse and repeat until the trader gets into an anarchy or lawless system. At this point when interdicting, I tag the trader immediately with a weapon to get them to fight me.

I try taking down the power plant, but I'm a terrible shot.

So the sloppy method I've fallen back on is to just gradually wear down the trader while hatch breaking all the while, scattering loot everywhere. If I manage to snipe the power plant, I get into position to re-snipe when they reboot. But, again, I'm a shot, so this normally doesn't happen.

So instead I'll try and snipe the power plant, but I'll be hatch breaking as I go, scattering loot everywhere. I'll draw out the fight to get at least four hatch breakers' worth of loot out of them before I kill them or let them escape. If they try to run early, I like the seeker missiles for taking out engines.

Once the fight is over, I have until the loot decays to collect it all. Biggest limiting factor here is how quickly I can draw it all in. So I'll position my ship nearby a cluster of loot where everything is within 1km, and deploy my four collector limpets.

Using this sloppy method, I can normally get away with about 20T of low temp diamonds in a single fight. But I'm sure that if I git gud, I could manage a lot more through powerplant sniping and efficient limpet management.

I'm considering dropping out my hull reinfocement for a fuel scoop, because I often get into low-fuel situations while I follow the traders around waiting to land somewhere that I can attack them with impunity, and I don't want to have to risk smuggling a full load of stolen goods into a station if I don't actually have to.

My game loop for this is about 30-40 minutes from start to finish, and I typically make between 1 and 2 million per cycle.

Moral of the story: If you get your tactics right, you don't even have to be that good a shot to make a bit of profit.

I originally thought the Cobra Mk IV was a ship, but it's actually been a perfect fit for my PvE piracy preferences.

Word of warning, however: I wouldn't want to use a Cobra Mk IV in a PvP context. Too slow to run away, and not maneuverable to get a big enough edge on a CMDR that actually knows what the they're doing in a dogfight when I kind of don't. So I'd switch up over to something else for PvP. Probably a Cobra Mk III because it's good at running away. ^_^