So, there's been a lot of discussion going on lately around piracy, PvP, and related topics. I thought that I'd make some suggestions, but try to explain the observations behind them.
1) Solo/Private are never going to go away.
This is speculation, but given that FD included these in the game in the first place, and publicised them widely, it seems fair to conclude that these are a completely deliberate feature.
2) There is no incentive for non-combat pilots to play in Open.
I feel that this is quite self-explanatory, but in case anybody questions why I think this, there is no difference in goods prices between Solo/Private, and Open. On top of this, there are many more risks to playing in Open-player pirates, player murderers, and the usual spate of NPC's as well.
3) Penalties for hostile actions, especially against Commanders, are easily ignored.
Bounties don't really follow you anywhere, cap at a pathetically small amount, and do not prevent any gameplay actions. On top of this, security forces are woefully underprepared for combat ready Commanders, if they react at all.
4) The interdiction minigame is buggy, and exploitable when it doesn't bug.
Between the tunnel reversals, throttling down to submit and boost, and the ability to chain interdict when in a wing, this feature is an annoyance for most pilots on both sides of the divide. For PvE players it's a pain too, as NPC's are not subject to the spinning top effect *ever*, whereas players seem to get the spinning top at both ends.
Onto suggestions. FD is already conidering many of these in the response posted on www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/519ss8/fdev_on_pvp_changes_back_in_february_sandro/ recently. Of note are interstellar bounties, updates to fines, and some sort of Pilot Federation response to hostile actions.
Now, on top of this, I have some suggestions.
A) Open goods should have better margins than other game types. A 1-5% decrease on buy prices and increase in sell prices would tempt many more traders into open. Obviously this margin would need to be smaller than the sell-to-buy margin, otherwise players could buy in open, and sell to the same station in private for a profit, but I trust FD to be able to create this without running into this issue.
B) Security forces should be much more aggressive in proportion to bounties, rather than being as RNG dependent for a 100 CR bounty on a type 6 as a multi-million credit bounty (post FD changes above) on a top-end combat ship.
C) Fix instance issues! Not being able to wing up properly with friends in other countries is a pain, especially given the loss of trading bonds, and the ability to protect other players/be protected by.
D) The largest suggestion. Take away interdiction completely. Replace it with a frameshift trap system, with the range of the trap being dependent on the same speed-limit multiplier calculations that currently define interdiction range. Allow players (and NPC's) setting traps to set it to trigger on certain types of ship signatures, such as "light trader" (Hauler, T6, KB) "Light fighter" etc, as well as IF they have a bounty scanner being allowed to trigger on bounty presence. This could even be expanded to triggering on the presence and/or quantity of certain cargo types if the appropriate scanners are installed. However, the downside of this is that the traps show up as USS's, and can be scanned as per normal to reveal it as such (assuming the scanner hasn't triggered the trap yet), with the option of jumping in as per normal USS rules. This trap would require being in normal space to set up, but would disable both FSD drives for a considerable amount of time if successful. Ideally there would be some opportunity for escape before being pulled into the trap fully, with a succesful escape allowing the trapper to simply reset, or to leave to set up elsewhere.
On top of this, as a complementary and additional idea, create modules that mask ship type to some degree-for instance, making a conda show up as a "heavy trader" instead.
This would allow NPC security forces to create real checkpoints, would improve both piracy and anti-piracy, and remove many of the current frustrations with the current interdiction minigame.
1) Solo/Private are never going to go away.
This is speculation, but given that FD included these in the game in the first place, and publicised them widely, it seems fair to conclude that these are a completely deliberate feature.
2) There is no incentive for non-combat pilots to play in Open.
I feel that this is quite self-explanatory, but in case anybody questions why I think this, there is no difference in goods prices between Solo/Private, and Open. On top of this, there are many more risks to playing in Open-player pirates, player murderers, and the usual spate of NPC's as well.
3) Penalties for hostile actions, especially against Commanders, are easily ignored.
Bounties don't really follow you anywhere, cap at a pathetically small amount, and do not prevent any gameplay actions. On top of this, security forces are woefully underprepared for combat ready Commanders, if they react at all.
4) The interdiction minigame is buggy, and exploitable when it doesn't bug.
Between the tunnel reversals, throttling down to submit and boost, and the ability to chain interdict when in a wing, this feature is an annoyance for most pilots on both sides of the divide. For PvE players it's a pain too, as NPC's are not subject to the spinning top effect *ever*, whereas players seem to get the spinning top at both ends.
Onto suggestions. FD is already conidering many of these in the response posted on www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/519ss8/fdev_on_pvp_changes_back_in_february_sandro/ recently. Of note are interstellar bounties, updates to fines, and some sort of Pilot Federation response to hostile actions.
Now, on top of this, I have some suggestions.
A) Open goods should have better margins than other game types. A 1-5% decrease on buy prices and increase in sell prices would tempt many more traders into open. Obviously this margin would need to be smaller than the sell-to-buy margin, otherwise players could buy in open, and sell to the same station in private for a profit, but I trust FD to be able to create this without running into this issue.
B) Security forces should be much more aggressive in proportion to bounties, rather than being as RNG dependent for a 100 CR bounty on a type 6 as a multi-million credit bounty (post FD changes above) on a top-end combat ship.
C) Fix instance issues! Not being able to wing up properly with friends in other countries is a pain, especially given the loss of trading bonds, and the ability to protect other players/be protected by.
D) The largest suggestion. Take away interdiction completely. Replace it with a frameshift trap system, with the range of the trap being dependent on the same speed-limit multiplier calculations that currently define interdiction range. Allow players (and NPC's) setting traps to set it to trigger on certain types of ship signatures, such as "light trader" (Hauler, T6, KB) "Light fighter" etc, as well as IF they have a bounty scanner being allowed to trigger on bounty presence. This could even be expanded to triggering on the presence and/or quantity of certain cargo types if the appropriate scanners are installed. However, the downside of this is that the traps show up as USS's, and can be scanned as per normal to reveal it as such (assuming the scanner hasn't triggered the trap yet), with the option of jumping in as per normal USS rules. This trap would require being in normal space to set up, but would disable both FSD drives for a considerable amount of time if successful. Ideally there would be some opportunity for escape before being pulled into the trap fully, with a succesful escape allowing the trapper to simply reset, or to leave to set up elsewhere.
On top of this, as a complementary and additional idea, create modules that mask ship type to some degree-for instance, making a conda show up as a "heavy trader" instead.
This would allow NPC security forces to create real checkpoints, would improve both piracy and anti-piracy, and remove many of the current frustrations with the current interdiction minigame.
