Deal. I'll be on same time tonight.
Making money as a pirate, is it possible?
That's a brilliant idea, and would absolutely make an FC an integral part of fun game play promoting player interaction and maybe even covering some running costs.
So far as pirating, I'm no expert, but when I do pirate I almost always do it in a Sidewinder. A full hold means I just payed for my ship, maybe even more! It's a very easy ship to escape in should things go bad. Booty strewn over a length of space is no big deal, manually scoop it with easy (even under fire) and you are off to sell.
It depends on your definition of making money. If you're after, say, 50 million in a couple of hours I'd say you'd have no problems with some practice. Up against Borann and it's potential 150 million an hour or whatever it is, it definitely won't compete. That said, I would say it is a fairly guaranteed process once you know what you're doing.
Personally I'd say it's one of the more balanced by activities right now as it does balance a reasonable credit return with fun and a level of skill.
Piracy seems to be the least profitable profession in the game, followed by smuggling. I'm not sure if this is because FDEV thought that all other things being equal, most people would choose these jobs and they needed to balance it out, or they have a moral issue with them.
In any event, piracy is more a hobby than a paying profession in this game.
In any event, piracy is more a hobby than a paying profession in this game.
The irony is that there are more paint jobs dedicated to piracy than other professions, and we earn more Arx for killing other players than many an honorable action like rescuing escape pods, so morality is not something I'd ever accuse Frontier of, LOL (especially considering the unlock requirements for some of these engineers).
Opening dialogue with cmdrs you are pirating is decently efficient rather than going straight to hatch breaking. I usually do this in local chat immediately after the interdiction via a macro. Local chat will always be seen since it defaults to main window and cannot be changed. Always tell them to abandon x amount of cargo and itll be clean for you to obtain max profits. Of course, some are going to run. Instinctive to do so. Then you put your pirate tools to work. Remove shields, take out drives and then bleed them dry if you feel the need. Also, lets say the highest buying system has a black market and you have illicit cargo. You will get 25% less at that black market period. But if that top buying system does not have a black market, I'd suggest checking inara for the top 15 places to sell those LTD's and look for the closest one of those systems with a black market so you aren't selling dirt cheap. As long as you demand a reasonable amount of cargo, you will have pretty good luck with getting it and it being clean. Happy pirating cmdr!
Hey Braddux! The flavor text is appreciated. I would expect most of the miners (in open) are clueless and might mistake you for an NPC.
The black market is connected to the normal market at the station. If LTDs sell for 1mil in the open market and the station has a black market you get 750k (25% tax) for the "liberated" LTDs. So best practice is to check for black markets in high selling systems, of course if you do it in open another pirate could try to "liberate" your already "liberated" LTDs.
Once you find a system with some LTD carrying ships you can make good money and it is way more fun than mining. My pirate noob behind made $50mil in a couple of hours trying to figure out how to pirate NPCs and blowing up my favorite fuel rat in between.
In Borann you can only steal limpets. In last week I made about 50 mil by pirating in Irula and a few best selling systems. I'd probably make 500 mil by minign at that time, but pirating is more fun. Plenty of shameless harmless to novice cmdrs there, they usually behave like npcs, they do not react to commands so the best way is mass lock them as they always go for low wake, strip the shields and start with the hatch breaking. It is also good to have a fsd disrupting missile. Problem comes with scooping all that cargo as many containers get lost, so it good have have 3-4 active collector limpets or working in a team where one do the milking the other does the collection.
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Good point.
I get that there should be a fence discount, the fence is assuming risk and needs to make a profit. What I don't get is why all the cargo goes away when a ship is destroyed, and why you can't disable a ship and take it. It seems to me that some random percentage of the cargo should survive when a ship goes boom. It would be easy to implement. As for taking a disabled ship, I'm sure it would be trivial to come up with a 'auto-pilot' limpet that takes control of a disabled ship (newly repaired by the repair limpet) and has it follow the new owners ship until it can be taken to a 'chop-shop' capable fleet carrier. I dunno, not trivial coding wise, but certainly doable.
EDIT: reading some of the other posts imply that the cargo isn't lost when a ship is destroyed. if that is true, then yippy!
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Deleted member 110222
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Yes, it is possible.
The reality is that no activity compares to mining when it comes maximising credit earnings.
However, looking a the question of "Is it enough?"
This is purely subjective and the answer will differ for every player.
Though I suspect that many players, if not most, will choose whatever makes the most money per hour, if the numbers in particular systems are anything to go by.
I'll stick to my Cobra. I find the game far more enjoyable in my little light transport.
The reality is that no activity compares to mining when it comes maximising credit earnings.
However, looking a the question of "Is it enough?"
This is purely subjective and the answer will differ for every player.
Though I suspect that many players, if not most, will choose whatever makes the most money per hour, if the numbers in particular systems are anything to go by.
I'll stick to my Cobra. I find the game far more enjoyable in my little light transport.
I'll admit that I have killed on some occasions where the miner decides to attack me and not stop after being warned, but I try to avoid this and I can confirm that zero cargo drops when doing this. If cargo did drop when a player ship was killed, the gank numbers would be astronomical considering they could now justify it rather than saying you consented by playing in open.
THIS is the answer I was looking for. Thank you!
This helpful answer was provided by your distant helpful Anarchists.
Another happy customer of Loren's Reapers
Currently I have a hybrid mining-pirate set up. I mine in the hotspots, and pirate any players I can see.
Makes for a more reliable income than piracy alone, while being far more exciting that flat mining. Made 30 mill last night from one obliging Python, and added it onto my mining profits
Makes for a more reliable income than piracy alone, while being far more exciting that flat mining. Made 30 mill last night from one obliging Python, and added it onto my mining profits
What ship do you use for this?
Conda currently, any big ship with lots of spare hardpoints would work, as you can sacrifice 2 Mediums for mining lasers while still having a ton of DPS
You people and your build-swaps. Well you ain't getting the blueprints to my ship, you Soviet spy!
I setup a T10 mining ship because that's the spare big ship I had in inventory, but sometimes wish I used a Conda instead.