Improvements for making piracy worth while.

[Muetdhiver]

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 should return a net loss to the poor sod engaged in it.

There are plenty of issues with Piracy in-game, linked thread in previous post, but your desire to only engage with it in a limited fashion is not one of them.

Sure. But look at what FDev did :

1. Added Megaship and new structure cargo hold piracy. But… the payout is terrible.
2. Added high value targets, with like 10t of 100-200K a pop cargo. AKA 1-2M worth of stuff. Nice. but… next patch, LTD can be sold 800K a pop... So, back to Agri LTD piracy.

It's like mini crumps of piracy bread created in their bubbles with no awareness of the rest of the game. Neat, but useless stuff.

I would suggest the following things also : Make pirating components, data and raw engineering stuff a thing and put "special" commodities like hafmium as valuable as the new gems.

1. AKA have medical transports that carrry medical research worth millions, along with experimental drugs worth millions and pharma insulators. Then slap a solid escort for good measure.
2. Military hazardous material transports, with Hafmium, polonium (mat) and other goodies.
3. Imperial Navy Archelologists, with ships containing guardian paterns scans and guardian materials.

As you see, finding cool ideas of piracy targets is easy as pie. But we need better tools also.

 

[deleteduser]

As you see, finding cool ideas of piracy targets is easy as pie. But we need better tools also.

Edited above before seeing this Muetdhiver. I don't disagree at all.

 

[Warflower]

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.

Through several runs and some Trial and Error, I came to understand the points and tips you mentioned. I would add that I think higher pop, Agricultural Anarchy Systems that are in BOOM adds to the Diamond Frequency. Thanks for the complete stop gimmick...i was following Low Temp Diamonds all over a wide arc

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

Through several runs and some Trial and Error, I came to understand the points and tips you mentioned. I would add that I think higher pop, Agricultural Anarchy Systems that are in BOOM adds to the Diamond Frequency. Thanks for the complete stop gimmick...i was following Low Temp Diamonds all over a wide arc

Took a lot of trial and error for me to figure it out. I too started out chasing them around. One of the reasons I moved to a Vette to Pirate was being able to outfit a Class 7 Collector limpet for the extra range, allowing me to not have to move, although it's a bit overkill, but the 4 collectors is nice. They tend to sit and shoot you from above at about 1km which close enough for the smaller collector limpet controller if you're in a smaller pirate ship.

 

[Muetdhiver]

Took a lot of trial and error for me to figure it out. I too started out chasing them around. One of the reasons I moved to a Vette to Pirate was being able to outfit a Class 7 Collector limpet for the extra range, allowing me to not have to move, although it's a bit overkill, but the 4 collectors is nice. They tend to sit and shoot you from above at about 1km which close enough for the smaller collector limpet controller if you're in a smaller pirate ship.

The fact that the only way to keep a target still is to face tank the damage with engineered shields is very illustrative of the state of piracy…

I mean ROLF.

If a NPC T7 get pulled by a Corvette, he should stand very still and wait for it to be over or the cops to come.

4 collectors are nice indeed. Class B for extra range.

 

[Krash]

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.

I never gave piracy much thought, but this looks like new and engaging gameplay. No I don't need the credits, but its another skillset to work on; another revenue stream to add to the others. My main question: Do you set asides a "pirate" ship that accumulates notoriety for this activity? Hence this ship is always hot and should be factored in when choosing the pirate ship?

 

[Muetdhiver]

I never gave piracy much thought, but this looks like new and engaging gameplay. No I don't need the credits, but its another skillset to work on; another revenue stream to add to the others. My main question: Do you set asides a "pirate" ship that accumulates notoriety for this activity? Hence this ship is always hot and should be factored in when choosing the pirate ship?

I can only speak for myself but I have two dedicated pirate ships, one "Jelly Roger" Imp Clipper that is all about "normal" piracy and one "Poltergeist" K. Phantom for stealth robberies (quite fun on high value targets).

 

[DeathFish]

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.

The other way of doing it would be to increase the profit margin on traded goods, wouldn't it? That would achieve the same effect, while at the same time rehabbing trading, which by comparison to other activities in Elite, isn't that profitable. In many ways, it was only when trading missions came along that it became possible to rely on trading in Elite, without hauling huge amounts of cargo or jumping vast distances. Once trade missions were balanced, Fdev then left traded goods profits to fall (more or less) by the wayside, which is why NPC pirating is so unrewarding for anything except mats.

But something along these lines would give both trading and NPC piracy a shot in the arm, for sure.

 

[DeathFish]

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.

Very, very neat, I'm going to have to try it (-:

The problem the OP has identified, though, is that with a few exceptions, pirating NPCs is for the very, very patient. There are swarms of NPC pirates out there that aren't in anarchy high pop boom systems that must be on the breadline! It would be good from the point of view of both PVE pirate players and PVE traders if there was a buff to the profit involved in trading goods—it might even make PVP piracy a bit more interesting than it is right now.

 

[DeathFish]

I would suggest the following things also : Make pirating components, data and raw engineering stuff a thing and put "special" commodities like hafmium as valuable as the new gems.

1. AKA have medical transports that carrry medical research worth millions, along with experimental drugs worth millions and pharma insulators. Then slap a solid escort for good measure.
2. Military hazardous material transports, with Hafmium, polonium (mat) and other goodies.
3. Imperial Navy Archelologists, with ships containing guardian paterns scans and guardian materials.

As you see, finding cool ideas of piracy targets is easy as pie. But we need better tools also.

Elite could definitely benefit from stuff like this—I quite like the idea of ships filled with explosives too, where you have to be very, very, very careful how much damage you do when you are stopping them (-:

 

[SushiCW]

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.

Yeah, this is definitely a problem. Void Opal piracy was really fun in the brief window when everyone had just discovered it and there were only a handful of popular sell locations. Now there are dozens of them and everything is too spread out, so trying to pirate void opals becomes an exercise in bored waiting.

It would be interesting if every commodity had just a handful of "super-boom" systems, updated weekly and published in galnet. It reduces the dependency on external tools like eddb or inara, and also helps concentrate the action better.


EDIT: I like this idea so much I took the liberty of creating a suggestions forum post about it: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...or-specific-commodities?p=7417047#post7417047

 

[Wasp0]

Make the prices of selling VO(Insert any Commodity) 50% higher in 'OPEN'. The greed will kick in and Cmdrs will flock to OPEN to get their Credit fix, then we just pick them off wahaaaa!

Hell, whilst mentioning this contentious Open v Solo/PG, why not just go the whole hog and make EVERYTHING bigger, better, easier in OPEN



Inserted after i thought about my wonderful suggestion:

Caveat to 50% price hike in OPEN..... The opals (Insert Any Commodity ) must have been found whilst in OPEN, Mined whilst in OPEN, Transported in OPEN and sold in OPEN!!

 

[Captain Jack Sparrow]

The fact that the only way to keep a target still is to face tank the damage with engineered shields is very illustrative of the state of piracy…

I mean ROLF.

If a NPC T7 get pulled by a Corvette, he should stand very still and wait for it to be over or the cops to come.

4 collectors are nice indeed. Class B for extra range.

I made the gripe in another Pirate thread in the suggestions forum. Yea, it's easy/great money, but it's not even remotely realistic. Why is the target ship hanging around for me to milk like a cow? There really needs to be a way to disable a ship for a short period of time when certain criteria are met.

 

[dekot]

I know disabling PPs in npc pirating hasn't worked for a while but can't you still disable weapons and drives and punt them to a stop? Everybody is only talking about tanking while deploying limpets.

 

[Krash]

I can only speak for myself but I have two dedicated pirate ships, one "Jelly Roger" Imp Clipper that is all about "normal" piracy and one "Poltergeist" K. Phantom for stealth robberies (quite fun on high value targets).

Please share link to Jelly Roger for ideas? I finally have a reason to take my Clipper out of dry dock (since skimmer missions were nerfed).

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I am certainly not asking for millions an hr profit,

Well, you don't have to ask. 10s of millions per hour from PvE piracy is quite possible. It was possible a long time ago, its doubly possible now. However, getting target ships to stop can be tricky and do recommend watching some guides on how to do it. Easiest way though from what i've seen is just take out all but one of their weapons and tank the damage while letting your limpets do the work. Its pretty cheesy and wish FD would just bring back the old system whereby they wouldn't reboot if you got their powerplant down to zero. Perhaps have it based on combat rank or something, so they will always remain submissive if you have a higher combat rank or something.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I know disabling PPs in npc pirating hasn't worked for a while but can't you still disable weapons and drives and punt them to a stop? Everybody is only talking about tanking while deploying limpets.

Yeah, you can do that, its tricky though.

Also worth keeping in mind that Harmless and Mostly Harmless don't reboot, so you can just shoot their PPs happily like in the good old days.

 

[Sooden]

Make the prices of selling VO(Insert any Commodity) 50% higher in 'OPEN'. The greed will kick in and Cmdrs will flock to OPEN to get their Credit fix, then we just pick them off wahaaaa!

Hell, whilst mentioning this contentious Open v Solo/PG, why not just go the whole hog and make EVERYTHING bigger, better, easier in OPEN



Inserted after i thought about my wonderful suggestion:

Caveat to 50% price hike in OPEN..... The opals (Insert Any Commodity ) must have been found whilst in OPEN, Mined whilst in OPEN, Transported in OPEN and sold in OPEN!!

Had an idea that was like that, but i saw the issues right away... just gonna put it out there

Up the profits in open (with your caveats) maybe even 100% because, you want to add value for the risk and offset the build changes needed to play in open.

You wont be able to use a paper-ship in open, so 50% more may not gain anyone interest.

Still even with 100% to allow for changes, Lower jump ranges, cargo space taken up with better shields.... I fear a good number of commanders would still take PvE builds into Open, hoping to get the full 100% buff and.. well, we would be back here

 

[Wasp0]

Please share link to Jelly Roger for ideas? I finally have a reason to take my Clipper out of dry dock (since skimmer missions were nerfed).

Not the Jelly Roger, but my very best pirating ship ever. Super fast to catch the fleeing Cmdrs, bit of Punch to let them know i mean business, and PH (Seekers) to clip the drives if i get Narked by a running Cmdr.

https://s.orbis.zone/25ii

Bring that Clipper out of Dry dock and get some Pirating done.

 

[Clifra Jones]

Has the problem of taking out the power supply of an NPC ship been fixed? Until it is pirating NPC seems really useless. Pirates of old had many tools to disable a ship and not sink it. Specific cannon rounds designed to take out the rigging of ships. As said before, this is needed. These "tools" should only be sold at Anarchy controlled systems and be illegal in all other systems. If you get scanned having them you face a fine. They should be designed to take out power plants, drives, weapons, moduals, etc. different weapons for different purposes. Your choice what to carry but they will be a bit ineffective if you get into a serious fight with a serious opponent such as System Authorities so you would need to make sure you have enough regular weapons to defend yourself. Also need is a kind a grapelling hook as a disabled ship will drift away from you so you fire your grapeler and it keeps the disable ship a certain distance from you using a cable.

Possibly a few new engineers that are very secretive and only accessible by being friendly with certain "pirate" factions. These Engineers could improve these pirating tools.


Also, it really seems dumb that LTDs are found on supply ships in Ag/boom systems. The correlation escapes me.

Ships leaving refinery systems should have cargo such as Gold, Silver, Platinum, etc.
Ag systems should have food, alcahol, tobacco, etc.
Industrial should see manufactured goods, High Tech obviously high tech goods such as Proginator cells

These items should be salable at Black markets where the demand is high and supply is low for 30-50% above market price. In systems where goods are illegal the price should be 100% or more higher.