Improvements for making piracy worth while.

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I initially wrote this in another thread but i do not think it was the right please....... but piracy right now i think is a bit pointless - other than for fun of course..... but i think it would be possible to do it better than it is now. for the record i generally (i did do some trading, but not much) made my money in the 1st 3 games by just bounty hunting and pirating the pirates so to speak (my head canon was that i was handing in the cargo rather than selling illegally) and this i found very profitable.

in the game now however it is not worth my time to scoop even profitable loot such is the economy as it is.

in the current frame work In my opinion the way to make - npc at least - piracy profitable is to massively reduce the pay of all missions and bounties paid on ships - at or close to launch game levels..... but keep the cost of commodities the same.

make the profit margins of the current cheap stuff much greater than it is now so even grain can bring in reasonable coin... and allow pirated goods to be sold for full price in pirate stations once you are trusted by the pirate faction.
allow "reclaimed" goods to be handed over at legal stations for a decent percentage of their value. if we want to go this route we flag them (a switch similar to report crimes against me toggle) (goods cannot be reclaimed from clean ships)

once this change goes live everyones bank balance is adjusted to a FD set new limit, reduce the costs of the most expensive ships and gear in game significantly so that relative wealth is not nerfed too much.

now all of a sudden we would have a scenario where it is definitely worth pirating and getting 100% profits on pirated goods,
bulk trade would be increidbly profitable - allowing FD to make it significantly more dangerous - and introduce docking fees and ships crew fees which could be balanced going forward (big ships have bigger docking fees and wages.....)

there will be small print to this and work to be done to tidy up but right away this would bring piracy in to being a proper viable carrer - and even bouty hunters may stop and pick up spoils

mining would now also be very profitable without having to have a 1.5million credit per ton for a few mins mining profit.

 

[Threeofseven]

I’ve found piracy very profitable in the new update. I’ve made over 100 million Yesterday doing it. Pirating players with void opals gets you a lot of credits. Before PvP piracy was a money losing occupation but now it’s pretty profitable.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I’ve found piracy very profitable in the new update. I’ve made over 100 million Yesterday doing it. Pirating players with void opals gets you a lot of credits. Before PvP piracy was a money losing occupation but now it’s pretty profitable.

Cool that is good then . However I am only interested in NPC piracy (which is not to say anything against improvements to player piracy).

Out of curiousity have you tried pirating any NPC's do they have high quality loot in appropriate systems?

Thanks

 

[Threeofseven]

Cool that is good then . However I am only interested in NPC piracy (which is not to say anything against improvements to player piracy).

Out of curiousity have you tried pirating any NPC's do they have high quality loot in appropriate systems?

Thanks

NPC piracy is awesome. Go to a Anarchy high pop Agricultural system in Boom and stop any trade ship with a mining laser. I was doing this in a Clipper and getting around 50 mil for each load of diamonds. Steal and sell in the same system. I took an alt account from 15 mil to 130mil in an hour or so.

Edit: you’re looking for low temperature diamonds. They sell for about 5 times higher in this update than last one.

 

[Ouberos]

I’ve found piracy very profitable in the new update. I’ve made over 100 million Yesterday doing it. Pirating players with void opals gets you a lot of credits. Before PvP piracy was a money losing occupation but now it’s pretty profitable.

Can we expect a video? You do good you tubes.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

NPC piracy is awesome. Go to a Anarchy high pop Agricultural system in Boom and stop any trade ship with a mining laser. I was doing this in a Clipper and getting around 50 mil for each load of diamonds. Steal and sell in the same system. I took an alt account from 15 mil to 130mil in an hour or so.

Edit: you’re looking for low temperature diamonds. They sell for about 5 times higher in this update than last one.

Cool. My character has till now been a law abiding citizen outside of the betas. Maybe time to look to the dark side.

 

[Old Duck]

NPC piracy is awesome. Go to a Anarchy high pop Agricultural system in Boom and stop any trade ship with a mining laser. I was doing this in a Clipper and getting around 50 mil for each load of diamonds. Steal and sell in the same system. I took an alt account from 15 mil to 130mil in an hour or so.

Edit: you’re looking for low temperature diamonds. They sell for about 5 times higher in this update than last one.

My alt-CMDR was born to be a pirate but never found it much "use". I'm going to give this a try

 

[Threeofseven]

Can we expect a video? You do good you tubes.

My most recent
[video=youtube_share;UCfwnJkp9I8]https://youtu.be/UCfwnJkp9I8[/video]

 

[Warflower]

NPC piracy is awesome. Go to a Anarchy high pop Agricultural system in Boom and stop any trade ship with a mining laser. I was doing this in a Clipper and getting around 50 mil for each load of diamonds. Steal and sell in the same system. I took an alt account from 15 mil to 130mil in an hour or so.

Edit: you’re looking for low temperature diamonds. They sell for about 5 times higher in this update than last one.

What weapons/loadouts are you using for these ships. I have been using module sniping and hatch breaking, but the ships are very difficult to immobilize, despite the fact that I kill their PP, FSD, and even drives sometimes (using MC and Missles)...OR I just destroy them outright. The NPC ships seem to simply explode or wont stop. Sure I have gotten some stuff via hatch breakers. Any tips or load out suggestions would be great. Thx

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

What weapons/loadouts are you using for these ships. I have been using module sniping and hatch breaking, but the ships are very difficult to immobilize, despite the fact that I kill their PP, FSD, and even drives sometimes (using MC and Missles)...OR I just destroy them outright. The NPC ships seem to simply explode or wont stop. Sure I have gotten some stuff via hatch breakers. Any tips or load out suggestions would be great. Thx

Using my corvette, and like Threeofseven, I go to Agriculture Anarchy and pull ships with refineries on them. I usually only Target T6, T7, keelbacks, and T9's and if they aren't spawning, then I'll pull Asp / DB Scouts, and Asp / DB Explorers. I try to pass on the Asp and Diamondbacks because they simply aren't carring as much as the others. Sometimes I"ll pull Pythons and MKII's, but they usually have Plasma Accelerators, making it harder to tank all the damage for a long period of time to empty their cargo hold. When you pull them out of supercruise. fire on them, they'll deploy hardpoints, and then, cease fire and come to a complete stop. Launch your hatch breakers and tank the damage. Don't move. If you move, they move and strow the cargo everywhere. Then I launch a second, then send my 4 collector limpets to do their work. Once I see the diamonds down to about 4 left, I'll launch another hatch breaker, and another. Rinse and repeat. If you can pull a T7 you can make 100m an hour.

 

[deleteduser]

Cool. My character has till now been a law abiding citizen outside of the betas. Maybe time to look to the dark side.

You've started a thread about how piracy doesn't work in the current patch, without having actually done any?

omg

For the sake of not being the naysaying a&rsehole on the forums I'll add this thread, started by a pirate, raising issues with the current state of piracy, PvE and PvP...

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...r-a-hard-look-at-piracy?p=7415520#post7415520

 

[Marra Morgan]

Cool. My character has till now been a law abiding citizen outside of the betas. Maybe time to look to the dark side.

You really should Mad Mike!

Doing so would most certainly allow you to have a better insight on the profession and help you develop your ideas on how to improve it [up]


ThreeofSeven/Nine: inspirational as always [heart]

 

[Bigmaec]

My biggest gripe with PvP piracy (next to combat logging of course) is the new void opal selling spot madness.

There should be one or two spots only in the bubble (+ one in colonia) that offer the 1.6 million.

So as a pirate you know where to look for, and as a miner you should have to make the choice to
sell there with the risk of piracy, or sell somewhere else for 2/3 but in anonymity.

The selling hot spots should be found in Galnet articles, not in Inara.

That would be awesome.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

You really should Mad Mike!

Doing so would most certainly allow you to have a better insight on the profession and help you develop your ideas on how to improve it [up]


ThreeofSeven/Nine: inspirational as always [heart]

note i have done piracy - just not in the production version.... albeit i did not try it in the last few betas.

I did quite a lot of piracy in beta in the early days as well as looking to do what would have been "legal" piracy in the 1st 3 games in earlier production builds, but I stopped doing it in this game because #1 it is no longer legal and #2 because it was not worth my time really..... better to let the stuff dropped by the pirates just drift in space - which never sat right with me when it was slaves etc and i wanted to rescue them. .

it is 1 advantage console gamers have over us PC gamers. they can start a 2nd character without buying another copy of the game to try new things.

however it does seem like it is worth a look again. I tried to get in a week ago however oculus had botched my install so it would not work. i have fixed it now so may get on tomorrow and try my hand at it. (PvE only piracy for me.......)

 

[Sooden]

What weapons/loadouts are you using for these ships. I have been using module sniping and hatch breaking, but the ships are very difficult to immobilize, despite the fact that I kill their PP, FSD, and even drives sometimes (using MC and Missles)...OR I just destroy them outright. The NPC ships seem to simply explode or wont stop. Sure I have gotten some stuff via hatch breakers. Any tips or load out suggestions would be great. Thx

There is an 'easy' build, using the orca (then corvette), but it's mainly for NPC. just have to stay 600-700m away from the target, in silent running and overwhelm the target with hatchbrakers. It wont see you.

Spoiler

with 3 Heatsinks and one chaff, incase i mess up

yes there are better ways, but this is the easy way. you can even pull them from SC then go silent right away.
If you do it right, you don't get into a fight

Added: want a location that always had LTDs go to ''Lendinji'' kennicott dock. 2ls from the doc is a haz rez where you always find LTD ships (so no need for scanner).
Only issue is, its kinda bugged area and ship leave... need a reasonably fast ship to get to your target and collect you winning before the other pirate swamp you, or blow up or target, or steal your loot
As an npc pirating area, it can be very challenging and rewarding. especially with a dock right next to the area

 

[Agony_Aunt]

You can make good money from NPC piracy.

However, if what makes an activity worth doing for you is only if you are raking in tens or hundreds of millions per hour, I have to ask, what will you do when you have more money than you need?

 

[Muetdhiver]

Piracy is indeed worthwhile, but :

1. This is only the case for LTD piracy in Argi systems. It makes no sense but there it is. Out of LTD's, piracy is crap pay.
2. The tools are terrible. We need tools to stop ships, we need way to deliver demands (incl. to NPC's) and NPC's should submit when faced with overwhelming force. And bid their time till police arrival.
3. Hatch breakers are non-sensical. You can fire multiple breakers with say an A6 controller, by what's the point ? There is only one hatch and good luck pirating several ship at once…
4. Cargo should drop in bigger clumps, say multiple bundles of 6 canisters. So, a clump of say 4x6 canisters in one go. Have the used hatch breaker limpet act as a beacon allowing you to recover the stuff even if moving far away.

But what is really needed is a full on piracy focused update.

ATM piracy seems to be working (barely) and mostly by accident...

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

You can make good money from NPC piracy.

However, if what makes an activity worth doing for you is only if you are raking in tens or hundreds of millions per hour, I have to ask, what will you do when you have more money than you need?

So there is a lot wrong in this post about how i play but dont really have time to respond properly... but will try.

I absoultely never earn 100s of millions an hr and really do not want to either. There is so much wrong with the economy now it pains me. I am staying well away from mining in the hope it gets looked at, despite enjoying it mechanically in beta and have also stayed away from all other things i have generally felt were cheesy in the past.

HOWEVER

despite all this general piracy (i am not talking about cherry picking just LTDs or VOs) IME (if it has changed since 3.3 i will stand corrected - indeed i have not tried piracy since Beyond to be honest) but general piracy when i tried it last was not worth it from a role playing point of view even ignoring all the "gold rush" type shizzle.

I am certainly not asking for millions an hr profit, but just it being worth my time that when i shoot a ship and it drops a few tons of computers or slaves or land enrichment systems or what ever there is an incentive to actually collect them.

Elite 1, 2 and 3 all had the balance about right imo. Elite dangerous - again in my experience which was before beyond - does not.

but again i am told otherwise by some apparently respected pirates. (again though from my RP perspective "just" pirating LTDs or VOs is not really ideal either imo. i am sure blackbeard did not pirate a ship on the high seas and say ".... sorry lads no diamonds, only rum and slaves here, not worth the hassle lets be on our way".

 

[Sooden]

I would settle for pirate bases station, with snarky comm... Not independent, but pirate

So, you come into land with 10% hull and you just hear traffic-control cracking up
or come in with no cargo (the trigger would be no limpets +32 capacity at lease) And they say things like ' you could not catch a fish in a barrel'
or maybe, as you land, the comms say 'welcome cmdr, we just got in the A6 hatch barkers you asked for'

My immersion

 

[deleteduser]

despite all this general piracy (i am not talking about cherry picking just LTDs or VOs) IME (if it has changed since 3.3 i will stand corrected - indeed i have not tried piracy since Beyond to be honest) but general piracy when i tried it last was not worth it from a role playing point of view even ignoring all the "gold rush" type shizzle.

IMO - If you want meaningful (whatever that means in a videogame) RP, you need PvP; you can't threaten an NPC with Keelhauling!

PvP piracy is rarely going to pay well unless you focus on [Current Gold Rush] traders/miners, same as with real Piracy. There's a boom market for certain items/commodities and pirating Biowaste in a high-tech sytem should return a net loss to the poor sod engaged in it. There is certainly an argument that the particular commodities experiencing a Gold-Rush should vary according to the state of the system though. Biowaste might be more profitable than LTD/VO in terra-forming or agricultural systems for instance.

There are plenty of other issues with Piracy in-game, linked thread in previous post and @Muetdhiver's post above [edit] and below, but a players desire to only engage with it in a limited fashion is not one of them.