First of all, I want to say that I have not played as either a pirate or a trader, but as a bounty hunter and explorer. Therefore I may be completely wrong in my thinking so I want to heat some opinions.
1. First of all, the 20 item limit should be removed to help pirates. It's a silly mechanic that doesn't help anyone, including the traders that the pirates want to keep around to milk them more.
2. Lots of changes to the bounty system have been proposed, and I've taken a liking to some;
a. Bounties incurred scale to difference in ship size/worth and combat ranking, in the same way raising the combat ranking does.
b. The length you have to wait to pay off your bounty increases past the week with the size of it, possibly getting towards months with high bounties.
c. Players that are clean and have been taken out by a wanted ship can place a personal bounty on that ship up to the cost of their insurance. I was playing with the idea of making this only for ships that were taken out without ever firing at the attacker, but this will most likely just be another way to help unprepared and greedy traders who run from pirates. You'll still have to pay two insurance fees, but people will be more inclined to hunt the pirate in question.
3. Adding an in-ship bounty board, so that pirates are more likely to get the bounty hunter interaction they should instead of ganking traders due to boredom. This will also help the player bounties be more widely seen.
Finally, you guys should understand that there are sociopaths in both camps that are causing the problem; pirates that kill traders for no reason except "fun", and the traders that do stupid things like shoot their own cargo and such. If you're a trader and you want to keep your cargo then you can a. elude the interdiction, b. outfit your ship with lots of defensive measures and/or weapons to fight back and escape, or c. hire some bounty hunter to protect you. Traders who ignore the second two in open should expect pirates to pillage your profits; you're making more than others that pay attention to them.
1. First of all, the 20 item limit should be removed to help pirates. It's a silly mechanic that doesn't help anyone, including the traders that the pirates want to keep around to milk them more.
2. Lots of changes to the bounty system have been proposed, and I've taken a liking to some;
a. Bounties incurred scale to difference in ship size/worth and combat ranking, in the same way raising the combat ranking does.
b. The length you have to wait to pay off your bounty increases past the week with the size of it, possibly getting towards months with high bounties.
c. Players that are clean and have been taken out by a wanted ship can place a personal bounty on that ship up to the cost of their insurance. I was playing with the idea of making this only for ships that were taken out without ever firing at the attacker, but this will most likely just be another way to help unprepared and greedy traders who run from pirates. You'll still have to pay two insurance fees, but people will be more inclined to hunt the pirate in question.
3. Adding an in-ship bounty board, so that pirates are more likely to get the bounty hunter interaction they should instead of ganking traders due to boredom. This will also help the player bounties be more widely seen.
Finally, you guys should understand that there are sociopaths in both camps that are causing the problem; pirates that kill traders for no reason except "fun", and the traders that do stupid things like shoot their own cargo and such. If you're a trader and you want to keep your cargo then you can a. elude the interdiction, b. outfit your ship with lots of defensive measures and/or weapons to fight back and escape, or c. hire some bounty hunter to protect you. Traders who ignore the second two in open should expect pirates to pillage your profits; you're making more than others that pay attention to them.
