NPC Piracy Payouts

DemiserofD

D
I've been playing around with NPC piracy for a couple days now. It's quite enjoyable! Unfortunately, it doesn't particularly pay very well.

In the last three days, I've done about 8 hours of piracy, and have in that time acquired roughly the following(with their ideal prices in parentheses):

150 rare commodities (30k)
200 gold (60k)
75 beryllium (10k)
200 rebel transmissions(100k)
12 ltds(600k)
40 military plans(50k)
100 expensive goods(AI relics, jewels, etc)(200k)

This means I've made a total of about 70m in the past eight hours, or approximately 9m/hour.

There are two important caveats to this; this is only true if I am able to find and sell at the ideal state combinations, which a player without a FC cannot do. Rebel Transmissions, for example, sell at most stations for about 20k each.

Secondly, this is BEFORE the 25% price penalty at black markets.

This means that the average player will probably be able to make about 2m/hour doing npc piracy, and let me tell you, it's FAR more dangerous and difficult than something like mining, which can make upwards of 150m/hour. It's even more difficult than combat, in my opinion, as killing an enemy is much less difficult than handling the police while trying to hatch-break a trader. But combat also pays upwards of 100m/hour.

Are there any plans in the works to improve the results of npc piracy? Right now, by any reasonable measure, it's clearly not worth bothering.
 

Esteban

E
Curious: Do you go after NPCs whether they're wanted or not?
I would also expect that the commodities you pick up wouldn't earn you very much, rather that bounties might be more lucrative if you were to destroy a number of vessels.

At least it's fun; something to be said for that...
 

DemiserofD

D
Esteban said:
Curious: Do you go after NPCs whether they're wanted or not?
I would also expect that the commodities you pick up wouldn't earn you very much, rather that bounties might be more lucrative if you were to destroy a number of vessels.

At least it's fun; something to be said for that...
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Wanted criminals are quite a bit easier to pirate, so I go after them if I see them. No cops come after you if you hatch-break them, so you can take as much time as you like, AND you get the bounty at the end.

But it's a bit strange that the easier option also pays the best.
 

[VR] Bulbulunufus

[VR] Bulbulunufus
If there were more mineable-only minerals that came out of it, it'd be a good way of fulfilling (wing) source-and-return missions for that kind of mineral. Bromellite, osmium and the like. That gold you could have leveraged up a lot by using it for one of those, but you could equally have bought it.
 

DemiserofD

D
Bulbulunufus said:
If there were more mineable-only minerals that came out of it, it'd be a good way of fulfilling (wing) source-and-return missions for that kind of mineral. Bromellite, osmium and the like. That gold you could have leveraged up a lot by using it for one of those, but you could equally have bought it.
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Unfortunately, I don't believe they currently accept stolen goods. Otherwise that might be a pretty good idea, if you could consistently find minerals that way...unfortunately, there's no real consistent way to find anything in particular, so unless you happened to stockpile some in your FC beforehand, it'd be tricky to find it that way.
 

[VR] Bulbulunufus

[VR] Bulbulunufus
DemiserofD said:
Unfortunately, I don't believe they currently accept stolen goods. Otherwise that might be a pretty good idea, if you could consistently find minerals that way...unfortunately, there's no real consistent way to find anything in particular, so unless you happened to stockpile some in your FC beforehand, it'd be tricky to find it that way.
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Yes, it's much easier to daub some asteroid muck on bought goods to pass off as mined than to clean blood off 'em.
 

goemon

goemon
do you have a list, which rares you have pirated?

anyway, yes - npc payouts a meh compared to other activties.
 

DemiserofD

D
goemon said:
do you have a list, which rares you have pirated?

anyway, yes - npc payouts a meh compared to other activties.
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You can get a load of different types, but I've mainly gotten Gawain Dance Dust, Guauze Beer, and Pavonis Ear Grubs. They mostly drop from keelbacks with about 20 of them per ship.
 

fus roh potato

fus roh potato
There are some systems that can spawn T9's packed full of diamonds, but these are tricky to find and require a lot of waiting.

Of course, in no way does that excuse the general lack of difficulty and progression in the profession as a whole, but there is a rare case you find such system and get 25x the return for no added effort. They aren't in wings and are usually either found in lawless systems or followed to them. The eliteminers subreddit probably has the lastest info on where and how.

Prior to their latest adjustment of what ships spawn with what, there was a system named Senones that spawned them within 5 minutes very reliably during the Borann gold rush. It was so good that you could outpace any miner at the time and cash in ~280 mil (after the 25% reduction) every 30 minutes. Unfortunately, the current systems that produce such ships only spawn every 30 minutes or so cutting unit rates in half, and on top of that, the drop in LTD price by 66%ish dropped that rate all the way down to 40m/hr tops on average. Not very sweet, but still a lot better than 2m to pilfer anything else.
 

Danieros

D
It's one of the activities I was really hoping they'd greatly improve with the rebalancing part 4+, but we haven't had any of these so far on 2021.
 

DemiserofD

D
fus roh potato said:
There are some systems that can spawn T9's packed full of diamonds, but these are tricky to find and require a lot of waiting.

Of course, in no way does that excuse the general lack of difficulty and progression in the profession as a whole, but there is a rare case you find such system and get 25x the return for no added effort. They aren't in wings and are usually either found in lawless systems or followed to them. The eliteminers subreddit probably has the lastest info on where and how.

Prior to their latest adjustment of what ships spawn with what, there was a system named Senones that spawned them within 5 minutes very reliably during the Borann gold rush. It was so good that you could outpace any miner at the time and cash in ~280 mil (after the 25% reduction) every 30 minutes. Unfortunately, the current systems that produce such ships only spawn every 30 minutes or so cutting unit rates in half, and on top of that, the drop in LTD price by 66%ish dropped that rate all the way down to 40m/hr tops on average. Not very sweet, but still a lot better than 2m to pilfer anything else.
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More than 66%, pragmatically. You're very lucky if you can get 600k per LTD these days; 300k is much more practical, which takes you down to more like 20m/hour.

Frankly though, I find it pretty annoying that the best thing to pirate is mining materials. If I wanted those, I could mine for them. I wish they'd buff up Antiquities and Gems and such to be worth closer to 1m each by default, and much higher with the right BGS states. They're supposed to be the piracy motherlodes, but they're not very valuable at the moment.

Rare goods are another one that should be worth much more, but that's true in general, not just in Piracy. Trading rares hasn't been worth doing for years.
 
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GraphiteGB

GraphiteGB
Due to the NUKE of ICE rings in july 2020 Its faster to get LTD from raiding ships than to mine them because RNG in rings is even worse than RNG at pulling over ships now in ice rings...

This is because the RNG of getting LTD is no longer RNG.. The player base broke the generation pattern for LTD the very month Fdev changed it...

RNG LTD ships spawning is RNG, the systems they spawn in is not... Pirates allready know exactly what systems will generate LTD cargo...
But you will remain at the whim of "if its a T9" or only "a side winder" selected to carry the cargo by the server...
This is also combined with the normal drop table for the hole local area which will give non mining NPC... LTD as well...

In the correct location there is, NO cops and No bounties even issued... As with most things in Elite dangerous theres the easy way with no research and then there is the meta way which is easy way and no risk...
 
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