NPC pirate variety

Mephane

Mephane
At some point in the past, it appears the variety of pirate NPCs at resource extraction sites has gone way down. I have hunted pirates at the Resource Extraction Sites at Arque 2 on several separate occasions now, and there is a very clear pattern:

  • ~75% of the time, pirates only come as Sidewinders, all with 4 digit bounties only.
  • ~25% of the time, it's a mix in roughly equal parts of the Sidewinders and Cobras, with the former still giving only 4 figure bounties, the latter starting at 10k but never exceeding 30k.
  • Only once had I an instance where it was only Anacondas, each of them with bounties between 50k and 90k.

I distinctly remember there to be more variety, and not such clear, easily discernable patterns. What I would really like to see instead:

  • Whatever is causing these patterns should be changed into some kind of random selection. At all times it should be absolutely unpredictable what ship the next pirate will fly.
  • Every ship that is remotely piracy-viable (e.g. no Haulers or Orcas) should be in the mix. I see much more variety in NPC pirate interdictions and at nav points, but the resource extractions sites follow these odd patterns.
  • Pirates should also come in groups, not always alone. I see some miners doing this, arriving in small groups of one lead ship and two or three escorts (though at least the escorts then are all the same ship type, the leader can be a different type - this could need a bit more variety, too). The pirates could do the same.
  • While the correlation between bounty value and ship type is obviously meant to yield a better reward for more difficult opponents, I would also like more variety and extreme outliers. There absolutely should be, rarely, a pirate in an Eagle with a 100k bounty, or a pirate in an Anaconda with a few thousand only.
 
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JamesonJones

J
What's the system security level? Might be a pretty secure system meaning no badass pirates.

Also a systems security level goes up after time from player bounty hunting. When it goes up the system is safer and the real bad pirates go to systems that aren't as safe. Basically when they start getting killed a lot they move somewhere else where they don't get killed a lot :p. Might be time for you to find another system that's a little more dangerous.
 
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Mephane

Mephane
It's not a matter of security level and how badass and numerous the pirates should be. If the game decides that at most there should be Cobras, then why doesn't it throw in Adders, Vipers, and Eagles, too? And why do the pure Sidewinder only spawns exist in the first place (boring)?
 

JamesonJones

J
I think the eagle and viper are classified as fighters and don't have suitable cargo space for pirating. I think the adder is classified as more of a cargo ship by the game.
 

Agony_Aunt

Agony_Aunt
Cant say about your hunting grounds but in the last couple of days i've seen Pythons and Imp Couriers.

Maybe word has spread among the smart set of pirates that there is a damn hot bounty hunter in the area and perhaps they had better move to pirating in other grounds ;)
 
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