Powerplay once had a nifty PvP piracy mechanic that was taken out due to collusion (where two players from separate powers could make a lot of merits and cash).
My idea is to bring it back, but with the following:
The game has a heatmap of Powerplay systems based on pledges with armed ships (by adding the DPS of held weapons) in that system in a 24 hour period.
Power materials pirated are very valuable- opal levels of valuable. They are worth credits but cannot be redeemed for merits. This is your powers bounty placed on these items. Naturally only powers pay this so you must be pledged to redeem them with contacts.
PP NPCs no longer carry materials.
Haulers who lose cargo have the corresponding merits deducted from their own count. When they have no more merits, they cannot get allocations for a set amount of time. This is to stop collusion, taking one set of cargo from another or anothers account. Its a bit like tea clipper insurance in that you are placing your merits down as a bond.
When you accept a load of fort materials, the game treats that as a mission load, and offers you one of 3 mission like rewards. One is straight merits (as it is now), one is cash (amount is extra to what you paid to make it worthwhile but not free), and the other engineering material. The differing rewards stop the situation of players doing lots of work but wind up with 50,000 merits which is useless (since 10,000 is the working limit to benefit a rank 5 bonus). This could also scale to the size of the haul, with small amounts giving G1 and large amounts G5 materials, and also be based on how hostile the area you are flying through is. So, if you are flying through a reported hot zone, your bonus goes up. If you are in a cool backwater, the bonus is low.
Since this is a mission hybrid, you could inject bonus objectives, or objectives that make botting difficult by breaking routine. For example, you might have to go to system X to get information from Ship Y ("follow my wake").
Fort materials act like irate passengers in that if the ship carrying them gets damaged, they become damaged. Sustain too much hull damage and the haul is spoiled and worthless. So absolute ship destruction is not required to make a difference and might (?) mitigate combat logging and make piracy be more than brute force.
So, in this system the fortifier can make a lot of cash and materials- the risks are high, but even after a losing streak you can gain enough merits to make it pay because by betting on a decent return. This would hopefully create a food chain to sustain pirates, push people to take more risks to get that money and make deliveries less certain (which makes fortification harder).
In my brief thought experiments you can't really game the system hauling- if you chose loads of hotspots in your route you still put yourself in danger as these areas had potentially dangerous players in them.
The other is a power gives a lower cash reward for ship destruction and half normal merits
My idea is to bring it back, but with the following:
The game has a heatmap of Powerplay systems based on pledges with armed ships (by adding the DPS of held weapons) in that system in a 24 hour period.
Power materials pirated are very valuable- opal levels of valuable. They are worth credits but cannot be redeemed for merits. This is your powers bounty placed on these items. Naturally only powers pay this so you must be pledged to redeem them with contacts.
PP NPCs no longer carry materials.
Haulers who lose cargo have the corresponding merits deducted from their own count. When they have no more merits, they cannot get allocations for a set amount of time. This is to stop collusion, taking one set of cargo from another or anothers account. Its a bit like tea clipper insurance in that you are placing your merits down as a bond.
When you accept a load of fort materials, the game treats that as a mission load, and offers you one of 3 mission like rewards. One is straight merits (as it is now), one is cash (amount is extra to what you paid to make it worthwhile but not free), and the other engineering material. The differing rewards stop the situation of players doing lots of work but wind up with 50,000 merits which is useless (since 10,000 is the working limit to benefit a rank 5 bonus). This could also scale to the size of the haul, with small amounts giving G1 and large amounts G5 materials, and also be based on how hostile the area you are flying through is. So, if you are flying through a reported hot zone, your bonus goes up. If you are in a cool backwater, the bonus is low.
Since this is a mission hybrid, you could inject bonus objectives, or objectives that make botting difficult by breaking routine. For example, you might have to go to system X to get information from Ship Y ("follow my wake").
Fort materials act like irate passengers in that if the ship carrying them gets damaged, they become damaged. Sustain too much hull damage and the haul is spoiled and worthless. So absolute ship destruction is not required to make a difference and might (?) mitigate combat logging and make piracy be more than brute force.
So, in this system the fortifier can make a lot of cash and materials- the risks are high, but even after a losing streak you can gain enough merits to make it pay because by betting on a decent return. This would hopefully create a food chain to sustain pirates, push people to take more risks to get that money and make deliveries less certain (which makes fortification harder).
In my brief thought experiments you can't really game the system hauling- if you chose loads of hotspots in your route you still put yourself in danger as these areas had potentially dangerous players in them.
The other is a power gives a lower cash reward for ship destruction and half normal merits