Fine, danger is good, but implement cargo insurance; there is too much danger associated with losing your cargo.
Or go ahead an implement cash for credits. Choose one, but choose the one that makes a better game.
Interdiction Dodgers
- Thread starter Snakebite
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Fine, danger is good, but implement cargo insurance; there is too much danger associated with losing your cargo.
Or go ahead an implement cash for credits. Choose one, but choose the one that makes a better game.
Aint dat da troof!
I suppose though, that there simply have to be folks like that in life, otherwise, how would I ever get to feel happy that I am not one of them?
ARF ARFRobert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I agree to some extent but at the same time disagree. If an always present, free, insurance was available for cargo then there would be less financial risk for the trader - with no effect on profits. There would be no down-side to the benefit and it would probably be perceived to make trading even more OP with respect to profitability.
If a payment was required to cover the period from embarkation to discharge of each container then, like shields, the trader could choose to run without the benefit of insurance - and therefore make as much profit as currently. If the trader chose to take out insurance then that cost would impact on profits but would mitigate, to a large extent, financial loss incurred by the loss of a cargo with the ship on destruction.
Which Insurer would ever offer to insure Trader's Cargo, when it is the Traders themselves, who routinely destroy their entire cargo and their ships, because they somewhat misguidedly think they are being Noble and Medievally Honourable by doing so?
They should have the Insurance on their ships revoked too!
There is. Once cargo clears sensor range it despawns. This means, if you go 7km from where you dropped the cargo, you're safe if the pirate wants the cargo.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the best way to deal with a pirate is to dump cargo and run. Don't attempt to run then change your mind, don't sit there waiting for him to scan you allowing him to get close. As soon as the interdiction closes, boost away and dump what you think will be enough to cause him not to chase you. Then run like crazy. If the bribe isn't good enough he'll chase you, and maybe now is the time to submit to scans and put your life in his hands. If the bribe is good enough, he can't both take the money and you. To minimise risk, make sure it's good enough. Of course, this isn't flawless, as you may have got away anyway with all your cargo, and it's hard to be clear what "good enough" is. I generally work on "if you have no shields, you pay more" and "the more work you make me do, the more you pay". I ask for more from people who run then people who cut engines and let me scan.
Part of the problem is that there are quite a few people who don't care about profits from pirating as they can make 5x more in the same time trading. There are others who aren't really there for the piracy, but to shoot up people who can't shoot back. The above tactic may not work on them.
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If cargo insurance is implemented, you should have to pay it upfront and on each trip if you chose. 5% upfront and you don't get your money back. Also you don't get partial repayments, you only receive money on total destruction. I don't see many traders using it.
No. I mainly did it because I enjoy the interaction with people in the stream chat. Delays/uploads aren't really worth me dropping my FPS for, as my computer isn't the best in the world at the moment.
It's probably already been said many times before.....This is called Elite : Dangerous because the game can and should be Dangerous! I like being Interdicted by bad guys, it gives me something to shoot back at. Its the stupid Cops who interdict me all the darn time and take 3% of my Asset Integrity off me from the hard FSD drop into normal space to scan me! Frontier need to stop this crap!
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
If cargo insurance was introduced at 5%, on-destruction, non-refundable, then it would be a reasonably attractive option as it would significantly reduce losses on destruction, e.g. ship insurance excess of 5% (say on a Type 6, 100t cargo holds, 1,250,000 Cr. cost) would be 62,500 Cr. Losing a 100t cargo of palladium (c. 12,000/t) would be a 1.2M Cr. loss. Paying 60,000 Cr to insure the cargo against loss sounds pretty reasonable in that example as it would be the difference between a loss/cost of 122,500 Cr. against a total loss of 1,262,500 Cr.....
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You'd have to add a clause that if a pirate asked you for <20% of it and you said no, the insurance is void! Again, why would one insure cargo if the carrier is going to be willfully reckless with it?
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Losing 20% of a cargo that may only be making 10% profit (less the 5% cargo insurance, therefore 5% profit) cost seems to be rather steep, wouldn't you think?
Why do we have ship insurance at all? I thought that it was to enhance gameplay by largely mitigating the effects of losing a ship and therefore encouraging the player to take more risks....
The difference for the trader is that the loss of a cargo can exceed the insurance of the ship by large factor (near 20 in my example).
If you read between the lines a little, my point isn't about piracy or pirates. I'm aware that it works when pirates, pirate for profit as is. Pay the 'ransom' and you can go.
But you're asking from a trader to put faith in the fact you are in fact a 'pirate' and not just looking to blow them up outright because there's no mechanic that penalizes you if you do so. Hence my comparison with EVE, I've done a fair bit of hi-sec eve piracy of the ganking variety. Which is always a cost/benefit analysis, it carries real (financial and asset) risks for the ganker/pirate. In ED I feel this is out of wack there is no real risk for a pirate who open fire since the security response is a bit of a joke. Unless those internal security vipers are scary to you, they're not to me anyway (nor the anaconda's really).
Obviously pirates need 'a way' to enforce threats but their needs to be a more severe repercussion for opening up on players who aren't wanted. And I'm saying this as somebody who is very sympathetic to good piracy gameplay. Piracy vs players *should* be hard for the pirates too, not just hard on the traders.
I've also said this before as well: NPCs need to be a lot less dumb. I tank the Viper + 2 Eagles which is the standard high-sec response against somebody with a non-trivial bounty for quite a long time. My shields should be shaking after one pass.
Certain death sounds daft, but moderate risk of hull damage/not completing scooping sounds good.
A pirate should have to gain a bounty by his piracy, so a trader should wait for the pirate to land the first shot (unless they make interdiction itself a bounty offence).
For the interdiction problem. What if you made it so people could dump a certain amount of fuel to avoid an interdiction? Maybe have a module that does it. You Dump a bunch of fuel to throw off the interdiction computer. Also adds some risk to attempting to avoid interdiction. What if you dump too much fuel? Then you gotta scoop which leaves you vulnerable. I donno, just spitballin ideas.
He was talking about high security systems like Sol and Achenar. Anyone pirating in those systems should realistically have a brief, fiery, and vacuous career. On the other hand, the profits from trading in those system should be lower due to the lower risk. At the moment one of the most profitable one-way in-system runs is in Achenar, so that doesn't work out right.
Oh noes, 200Cr. Bounty in the sector I was in last night was 750k, galaxy-wide is over 1 million. The 6k for a kill is fairly trivial to me now, and the response you get from humans/NPCs doesn't really vary much as it goes up.
Assuming they up that though, if you wait for me to land the first shot, I'll be asking for more after I've fired that shot, and when I start shooting accidents can, and do, happen.
Right now the main source of my bounty comes from stolen goods fines (often ~80k per scan), which doen't seem to be working correctly in some sectors (ie. no fine), so my bounty depends on whether that is bugged or not where I get scanned. I don't really think there's a much better way of doing it myself: peaceful piracy looks like an exchange of goods, and violent piracy looks like friendly-fire at a nav-beacon.
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A security response that is scary enough that it would allow say a type-6 to survive unscathed if they forego cargo space and jump range to fit a C4 shield and a shield cell bank and some weapons might be all that's needed.
It would mean that traders who fit for it have counterplay options to piracy.
About bounties and wanted status being put on aggressors, I don't think having a bounty on you or being freely attackable is much of a punishment years of EVE have taught me sheep don't attack wolves, I've spend many many hours being a freely attackable suspect in really busy systems in EVE, rarely does somebody even attempt to have a go at you and when somebody does they're normally not very experienced with PvP and the outcome thus predictable.
Min/max traders are the problem here, not FDEV. No, I do not have much in the way of armaments (2 small hardpoints..why waste the cargo space), but I definitely have more armor and shields than a normal trader does. Those that min/max trading need to understand losing a ship is a cost of business...at least in Open. If you want to minimize that cost, then limit your credit/run by buying some shields and upgraded armor.
Not sure if I follow, but surely you're paying 60,000Cr, on a cargo that will earn you say 100,000Cr? And if you make less that 5% profit you'll lose money?
If you instead took out 5% insurance on profit? So when you sell the cargo you lose 5% of any profit you make on it? And this guarentee to pay (when you sell) covers your cargo should you lose it?
So if you sell your cargo, and make 100,000Cr you pay 5,000Cr for it being covered?
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