Alright, so I've tired of randomly shooting things up in res sites and started trying to NPC pirate. While I've been doing this, however, I've noticed several problems:
Firstly, the galaxy map is horrible at updating itself with pertinent information, like whether or not a system is anarchy. Both "anarchy" systems I traveled to turned out to be corporate governments when I got there. I understand that the system map is more accurate but sometimes the system map isn't available.
Secondly, piracy/bounty hunting are way out of whack when it comes to earning credits. NPC Piracy carries with it more risks and limitations than bounty hunting. A pirate ship needs both weapons *and* cargo space so it's generally more vulnerable. A pirate ship tends to gain bounties and so has to deal with system security or work in anarchy systems (which are hard to find because of the galaxy map's suckiness). A pirate ship generally needs to pull a target out of supercruise in order to get easy 1 on 1 interaction, but doing this means you can't see what cargo your target has before you pull it. A pirate ship has to target the powerplant to get most of the cargo because a moving ship spreads the cargo all over the place, ironically, targeting thrusters is bad because it doesn't stop the ship.
Meanwhile, a bounty hunting ship can go to a specific site where there are a ton of ships (res or compromised beacon) and just blow things up all day without a care. It instantly knows which ships are valuable based on their rank and type and, most of the time, whether they're wanted or not. You never get in trouble unless you accidentally hit a civilian. You may spend a minute or two hunting around but generally you'll always have something to do. On top of all this it gets huuuuge faction powerplay bonuses. Yet, while it can be fun, it feels more like MMO farming to me than a bounty hunter fantasy. There's missions that kinda fulfill that fantasy but missions in general are awwwful, unless I go to places named by other players at least 50% of the time there isn't even a single mission there that I can do when, even with just combat ranking, I think there should be at least 5 for me.
Anyways, I'm out of time to rant any more. The game is pretty fun but there are huge areas in which to improve.
Firstly, the galaxy map is horrible at updating itself with pertinent information, like whether or not a system is anarchy. Both "anarchy" systems I traveled to turned out to be corporate governments when I got there. I understand that the system map is more accurate but sometimes the system map isn't available.
Secondly, piracy/bounty hunting are way out of whack when it comes to earning credits. NPC Piracy carries with it more risks and limitations than bounty hunting. A pirate ship needs both weapons *and* cargo space so it's generally more vulnerable. A pirate ship tends to gain bounties and so has to deal with system security or work in anarchy systems (which are hard to find because of the galaxy map's suckiness). A pirate ship generally needs to pull a target out of supercruise in order to get easy 1 on 1 interaction, but doing this means you can't see what cargo your target has before you pull it. A pirate ship has to target the powerplant to get most of the cargo because a moving ship spreads the cargo all over the place, ironically, targeting thrusters is bad because it doesn't stop the ship.
Meanwhile, a bounty hunting ship can go to a specific site where there are a ton of ships (res or compromised beacon) and just blow things up all day without a care. It instantly knows which ships are valuable based on their rank and type and, most of the time, whether they're wanted or not. You never get in trouble unless you accidentally hit a civilian. You may spend a minute or two hunting around but generally you'll always have something to do. On top of all this it gets huuuuge faction powerplay bonuses. Yet, while it can be fun, it feels more like MMO farming to me than a bounty hunter fantasy. There's missions that kinda fulfill that fantasy but missions in general are awwwful, unless I go to places named by other players at least 50% of the time there isn't even a single mission there that I can do when, even with just combat ranking, I think there should be at least 5 for me.
Anyways, I'm out of time to rant any more. The game is pretty fun but there are huge areas in which to improve.