How to make piracy better?

[ciger]

Fellow pirates, traders and bounty hunters, please take a moment and add your suggestion as to what this game needs to make better piracy. By better I mean what could be done to prevent unnecessary trader deaths.

Today I went to do my job in a Fed High Tech system and believe if the below mechanics were in place it would save one Asp pilot from claiming insurance and loosing over 100t of imperial slaves.

Interdicted a fellow commander, sent my "greetings" to let him know I am after cargo and not the kill. Obviously the fellow commander wasn't going to part with his cargo easily so we started to dance. Shields down so I tried to use a limpet and get some loot so I could pay my bills. It didn't go well, 3 point defense systems and a commander who keeps his eyes on the radar are simply too much for a silly limpet.

Once his hull went below 30% I got message "ok". My hardpoints were immediately retracted as a sign of good will and I requested 15t of slaves. His ship went to full stop and nothing. So I waited, still no cargo. From my previous experience I was 100% positive I am waiting for the 15s countdown of save and exit. Opened fire on his cargo hatch to at least get something out of this encounter. Unfortunately his ship went out in a blast and the very moment this commander also released the requested 15t of cargo.

Needles to say I did not want to blow up his ship and do feel bad about it so below are some proposal that could prevent these kinds of commander deaths.


1) Broadcast a message similar to surge detected when a commander decides to use save and exit. Should there be something like this in place I would have not pulled the trigger and both of us would part ways alive.

2) Have point defense either not target limpets, should one of my limpets actually do what it should do I would again not pursue any further hostility; or allow me to fire all 3 limpets at once so there is at least some chance of being successful.
Another possibility is to make an expensive hatch breaker module which uses armor plated limpets, these could be damaged by point defense but still be able to siphon out a certain amount of cargo based on their hull strength once attached.

Please feel free to add any suggestions or ideas that would make piracy what it is meant to be and not a shoot first ask questions later which in most cases means murder and no cargo.

 

[Quineloe]

How did you rack up 3 million fed bounty?

 

[pdizzle]

Moar rum! and space wenches!

 

[DefiledDragon]

It's always going to be difficult to improve piracy as a game mechanic without impacting on the traders. I do agree that limpets, being essentially a "non offensive" weapon as in they don't kill ships, should probably be more effective, especially as you have to bring down the targets shields first. Other than that, I don't really know. I would like to see some form of module like a FSD scrambler that prevents, or at least increases the time frame for frameshift initialization, but this would be open to "abuse" by people who just want to pop every ship they see.

 

[Quineloe]

The biggest issue for pirates right now are RPK that kill anyone, of course preferably unarmed, slow traders (for additional challenge), so many traders are unwilling to sit still when player interdicted. Drop 10t of cargo once, and then killed anyways, it's obvious how a trader will react every single time from now on.

 

[DefiledDragon]

The biggest issue for pirates right now are RPK that kill anyone, of course preferably unarmed, slow traders (for additional challenge), so many traders are unwilling to sit still when player interdicted. Drop 10t of cargo once, and then killed anyways, it's obvious how a trader will react every single time from now on.

Yeah, have to agree with this tbh. I think the amount of PK'ing that goes on, or perhaps not so much the PK'ing that goes on in game but the seemingly endless discussions about it on the forum have put many traders into the mindset of "if I get interdicted, I'm going to die and must escape or pull the plug", which makes our jobs as legitimate pirates very difficult, next to impossible in fact. It's a shame, but FD have declared their support for the PK style of gameplay so we're stuck with it. In all honesty, I think the dedicated PK'ers will pretty much kill piracy and probably drive most traders out of heavily populated systems or into solo play.

 

[Cmdr Thrudd]

Piracy certainly needs a buff or two. The limpets need to be a little more effective. Better feedback and communications system would help both sides. Punishment for senseless killing increased and financial benefit for actual piracy boosted, maybe better pay rates for black market goods (this would help smuggling too). Maybe tougher hulls but weaker cargo hatches so the chance of popping a target would be lessened but more chance of getting loot out. Maybe even some sort of notoriety rating, based on loot stolen vs ships destroyed so a trader pulled over knows the pirates after loot and less likely to just pop them for laughs, might make more of them compliant knowing they can deal. Higher notoriety gives you better sales rates on the black market or something. Just throwing out ideas..

I'm a trader not a pirate but I'd personally like to see piracy encouraged and random pvp resulting in ship loss discouraged somewhat.

 

[CMDR Mr. Trent]

One possible "solution" type thing might be to escalate vs random player killers in a realistic way. I see plenty of NPC Anaconda's fully kitted out doing cargo runs of all things, so why not have a few military ones that specifically hunt down (once) players with high body counts (maybe 20+) when they enter a star system where they have a high bounty?

Or maybe just give trader ships better power slots. We barely use weapons anyways, so just let us turtle up with better shields.
The starter trader ships are pretty much made of paper mache. Or Raditz.

Edit:

Piracy certainly needs a buff or two. The limpets need to be a little more effective. Better feedback and communications system would help both sides. Punishment for senseless killing increased and financial benefit for actual piracy boosted, maybe better pay rates for black market goods (this would help smuggling too). Maybe tougher hulls but weaker cargo hatches so the chance of popping a target would be lessened but more chance of getting loot out. Maybe even some sort of notoriety rating, based on loot stolen vs ships destroyed so a trader pulled over knows the pirates after loot and less likely to just pop them for laughs, might make more of them compliant knowing they can deal. Higher notoriety gives you better sales rates on the black market or something. Just throwing out ideas..

I'm a trader not a pirate but I'd personally like to see piracy encouraged and random pvp resulting in ship loss discouraged somewhat.

Yeah, that's kind of what I was aiming to get across. The increased Black Market prices are a really good idea too. You get decreased repairs and refuels for being helpful to the lawful side, so why not a bonus for not killing all the traders that the pirates live off of?

Also, your trading tool is pretty much the only way I got enough money to get my Asp. Thank you very much.

 

[Jordan Cobalt]

I agree with the save and exit thing. I always get a little antsy when players stop moving.

Limpets need definitely improving, they aren't nearly as good as they should be. I have a few things id like to see added.

-Make limpets rapid fire for the higher class ones, there's an 8 second delay between firing of limpets for my A3 hatch breaker, far too long to get past point defense.

-Improve the speed, currently they're too slow against boosting cobras and type 6s.

-Have limpets eject 5/8 cargo or a % of the cargo which ever is higher. 8 cargo from a 216 cargo ship is pathetic.

-Oh and make limpets require hardpoints out to fire, I've been killed for accidentally firing near stations.

Not related to limpets but, cargo should drop on self destruction. Blowing up your ship shouldn't be desirable to screw over pirates.

 

[Arkku]

To reiterate some things I've suggested since beta/gamma:

• Murder in non-anarchy systems should have such severe consequences that victims could be fairly certain that someone going through the trouble of obtaining their cargo will not murder them afterwards (e.g., NPC law enforcement should hunt down murderers with sufficient firepower to make the life of a murderer very difficult in such systems).

• Pirates should have better tools to obtain cargo without destroying the ship – in my opinion the major problem is the very limited time there is before the victim can escape (whether by quitting or waiting for FSD to charge up – on the victim side I almost feel guilty when I can just submit to interdiction and be off in 10 seconds, then drop back out of supercruise). My suggestion has been to give the FSD interdictor some kind of FSD charge inhibiting function in normal space (e.g., make it a weapon that stops FSD charge while hitting the target), but obviously that has griefing potential of its own (there would probably need to be some sort of cooldown, possibly on the victim's side so that multiple griefers cannot team up to trap someone indefinitely).

Another thing that comes to mind would be a hotkey-bindable comms button to send the “drop cargo and live” message (which could then be localised according to target's user interface, and also work on NPCs), and if necessary the game might even detect this as a special circumstance and enable guards against logging off (despite not being in combat as such) as well as potentially have additional in-game penalties for pirates who then murder a complying victim (e.g., antagonising some sort of thieves' guild for hurting their business?).

Not related to limpets but, cargo should drop on self destruction.

To be effective this would need to extend to pulling the plug / quitting, i.e., if the ship gets blown up during the disconnect timeout it should then also release (at least some) cargo.

 

[Kramster]

How to make piracy better?

My vote would be to bring back keel hauling, the gibbet and the gallows.

 

[The Sovereign]

I'm sure there are reasons, probably stated that I've just never seen... but we really need a direct money transfer system. No more looting cargo, just ask for straight up cash. Pirates would make a lot more money, making piracy actually viable, and the instant transactional nature might help with misunderstandings.

 

[ComradeFresco]

I'm sure there are reasons, probably stated that I've just never seen... but we really need a direct money transfer system. No more looting cargo, just ask for straight up cash. Pirates would make a lot more money, making piracy actually viable, and the instant transactional nature might help with misunderstandings.

Also this would allow traders to hire escorts/etc easily.

 

[Jezzah]

Get rid of the crippling repair cost of "successful" interdictions.

Sure I could fly a smaller ship with smaller repair costs but then no FSD mass lock on the majority of ships I could tackle.

 

[The Sovereign]

Also this would allow traders to hire escorts/etc easily.

True. Especially when Wings are implemented.

 

[Quineloe]

To reiterate some things I've suggested since beta/gamma:

• Murder in non-anarchy systems should have such severe consequences that victims could be fairly certain that someone going through the trouble of obtaining their cargo will not murder them afterwards (e.g., NPC law enforcement should hunt down murderers with sufficient firepower to make the life of a murderer very difficult in such systems).

you mean the police force that currently is so pathetic pirates can ignore three of them while scooping up at 30 m/s?

Yeah, don't count on that. They're like the car chase cops in Blues Brothers. They might as well not be there. FD needs to follow through on their promise to remove griefers from open play. There can be only one, Griefers or pirates. This wouldn't be the first game to try both, and fail hard. There's no comfort in knowing that the pirate who just caused you 5 million credits loss might get attacked by some AI police ships that are no threat to anyone.


I think trade ships should have significantly more hull hitpoints so they're not destroyed so easily. Type 6 melt so fast it's very hard to shoot out drives or the hatch without destroying the entire ship. Jury rigging for drives should become a thing, so pirates can shoot out drives, then discuss loot handover. Also ships without drives should slowly decelerate to zero... currently they even maintain top boost speeds

And forget wings / escorts for now. We have no confirmation whatsoever that credit transfers will become a thing, and most players will not escort traders only to play the scoop minigame and then dock themselves - they might as well be trading on their own for more profit.

Sure, many claim they would escort traders, but my experience from this type of game is that either you have friends who will escort you for free, or no one will give a damn. Especially after you've scooped up another 10 items, docked with the trader, sold it and nothing happened, you will have died of boredom and quit your escort career.

 

[ComradeFresco]

Player organization will be essential. if traders organize and request escorts i'm sure i won't be the only player happily escorting for minimal payment/free.

 

[Daffan]

The biggest issue for pirates right now are RPK that kill anyone, of course preferably unarmed, slow traders (for additional challenge), so many traders are unwilling to sit still when player interdicted. Drop 10t of cargo once, and then killed anyways, it's obvious how a trader will react every single time from now on.

Who cares about RPK

just make anarchy systems in OPen give 5x the trade profit, bingo. Now the pirates have fair game and the traders dont complain cause they get 5x reward.

lo

 

[ciger]

It's always going to be difficult to improve piracy as a game mechanic without impacting on the traders. I do agree that limpets, being essentially a "non offensive" weapon as in they don't kill ships, should probably be more effective, especially as you have to bring down the targets shields first. Other than that, I don't really know. I would like to see some form of module like a FSD scrambler that prevents, or at least increases the time frame for frameshift initialization, but this would be open to "abuse" by people who just want to pop every ship they see.

Yes I can already see the rage posts when someone would just prevent a trader from completing a trade run I think the current mass lock is working ok. Pitty a cobra is not able to mass lock T6. Pretty much the reason I am flying an Asp. Cobra seems to be an entry level vessel for pirates.

How did you rack up 3 million fed bounty?

It just adds up over time if you dont pay it off.

Get rid of the crippling repair cost of "successful" interdictions.

Sure I could fly a smaller ship with smaller repair costs but then no FSD mass lock on the majority of ships I could tackle.

Oh dont even get me started on the upkeep of an Asp. Yesterday I made about 200k on the black market and spent over 100k for repairs and w&t. This is forcing me to farm a RES for bounties.

Who cares about RPK

just make anarchy systems in OPen give 5x the trade profit, bingo. Now the pirates have fair game and the traders dont complain cause they get 5x reward.

lo

This would not actually help anyone, pirates would still kill traders the same as they do now, because a lot the traders have a silly mentality of I am not going to give you a single canister of scrap, I will rather bite the dust...
There need to be tools to know if someone is trying to log out of the game, a better way of communicating with other commanders. Limpets could use some love as well. Like already mentioned let us fire all the limpets that are loaded in a higher class equipment. I see I have 3 loaded yet there is no way of spamming all 3 in rapid succession. Some speed buff would be nice as well, boosting T6 is immune to them pretty much.

 

[Arkku]

you mean the police force that currently is so pathetic pirates can ignore three of them while scooping up at 30 m/s?

No, I mean the police force that needs to be implemented instead of what we have now. As discussed in various other threads, pretty much all the NPCs and “encounters” (e.g., USS) seem like placeholders at the moment, and not very good ones. So I mean a police force that will determine the amount of force to bring according to the ship, armament, and skill level of the criminal, and actively come at them with far superior firepower (i.e., no suicide runs, no ignoring them until scanned).

Pirating in any “high security” system with a bounty on your head should be very difficult. And the bounty system should not allow the bounties for murder to be simply cleared on death, i.e., the criminal should pay the bounty, and the bounty for murder should be scaled up (and according to value of damage/loss caused). Notorious pirates should have to hang out in seedy backwater systems and anarchies, and keep clean in at least one major faction. (Even so, with sufficiently high bounties NPC bounty hunters should also become a nuisance. And no, I don't mean the current suicidal ones, but ones that would be smart enough to bring sufficient firepower…)