Pve pirating...not fun

[Skiritai]

There is no effective way to stop a ship after disabling drives.

There is no mod that is any good at doing this.

Please add tractor beam of some type with a mechanic similar to fsd-I, but creating a heat management element for the pirate ship. If they don't manage effectively, the beam breaks and goes through a reset cycle.

As it is now, it is a system of no system. It is sincerely terrible trying to play bumper cars in space to stop a ship.

 

[Voracity_T]

Out of intrest what happens when you Ion mine an NPC?

Do they drift like thier drives have been shot out or do they stop them dead?

 

[Old Duck]

I've advocated for grappling limpets in the past. Think of the last season of The Expanse when they salvage the Nauvoo.

Source: https://youtu.be/1oFwPdtaUSs

 

[Shir]

What i found difficult about piracy was disabling a ships drives without destroying it. More often than not, it went boooom!

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Get a big ship and boop it to a halt.

Maybe leave the harmless T6s alone though, they are a bit too fragile.

 

[Hanerib]

You can stop them, you just need to align with their velocity and carefully bump them to halt. Missiles are very effective against drives, superpenetrator railguns also. Something like a Clipper works very well.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

Last time I tried piracy, I shot out my targets engines just as it boosted, towards a planet.
It then just spiraled away in to the distance, gaining ever more speed, outrunning me, until it dropped out of visual range.

Lol

 

[Eli Jack]

There is no effective way to stop a ship after disabling drives.

There is no mod that is any good at doing this.

Please add tractor beam of some type with a mechanic similar to fsd-I, but creating a heat management element for the pirate ship. If they don't manage effectively, the beam breaks and goes through a reset cycle.

As it is now, it is a system of no system. It is sincerely terrible trying to play bumper cars in space to stop a ship.

If you're talking about NPCs then why are you trying to disable its drives?

Pirating NPCs for LTDs is a simple thing. If you're talking about player ships then that's a different matter.

For NPCs go to an Anarchy system with ResEx sites (not 100% Necessary). Use this https://s.orbis.zone/512v Make millions.

1. Any ship will do, doesn't have to be a Python. A Krait Mk II will work just as well.
2. Access to Prismatic Shields is not 100% necessary but will help.
3. G5 engineer access helps enormously.
4. Target suitable ship. T6s are a good bet. Check that it's carrying Mining Lasers.
5. If it has Mining Lasers use FSD Interdictor to pull from SC.
6. Once in normal space with the target use the Manifest Scanner to check for cargo. If it has LTDs (or whatever) shoot it a couple of times.
7. Come to a halt (zero throttle). NPC should turn to attack. Put four pips into 'Systems'. When it's within 1k set hatch breakers loose.
8. As cargo is liberated use collector limpets to gather.
9. If target makes to fly away go after it and shoot it a few times until it turns to attack again. Goto 7.
10. Collect all cargo available until NPC is empty. Allow it to go on its way.

No murder, no destroyed NPC. Job's a good 'un. Repeat ad infinitum until bored or wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.

I've made c. 250m parting NPCs from their LTDs and have never destroyed one. It is really easy to do.

If you make use of this knowledge I require only one small favour

 

[M00ka]

If you're talking about NPCs then why are you trying to disable its drives?

Pirating NPCs for LTDs is a simple thing. If you're talking about player ships then that's a different matter.

For NPCs go to an Anarchy system with ResEx sites (not 100% Necessary). Use this https://s.orbis.zone/512v Make millions.

1. Any ship will do, doesn't have to be a Python. A Krait Mk II will work just as well.
2. Access to Prismatic Shields is not 100% necessary but will help.
3. G5 engineer access helps enormously.
4. Target suitable ship. T6s are a good bet. Check that it's carrying Mining Lasers.
5. If it has Mining Lasers use FSD Interdictor to pull from SC.
6. Once in normal space with the target use the Manifest Scanner to check for cargo. If it has LTDs (or whatever) shoot it a couple of times.
7. Come to a halt (zero throttle). NPC should turn to attack. Put four pips into 'Systems'. When it's within 1k set hatch breakers loose.
8. As cargo is liberated use collector limpets to gather.
9. If target makes to fly away go after it and shoot it a few times until it turns to attack again. Goto 7.
10. Collect all cargo available until NPC is empty. Allow it to go on its way.

No murder, no destroyed NPC. Job's a good 'un. Repeat ad infinitum until bored or wealthy beyond your wildest dreams.

I've made c. 250m parting NPCs from their LTDs and have never destroyed one. It is really easy to do.

If you make use of this knowledge I require only one small favour

Good advice but it seems a lot of trouble for a measly 250M where you could make triple that on just one mining mission taking around the same amount of time probably.

But you want to be a pirate, good for you, and hope you find plenty of willing targets that won't shoot back.

Good luck Commander.

 

[Eli Jack]

Good advice but it seems a lot of trouble for a measly 250M where you could make triple that on just one mining mission taking around the same amount of time probably.

But you want to be a pirate, good for you, and hope you find plenty of willing targets that won't shoot back.

Good luck Commander.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Far easier to VO mine and make billions. Sometimes though you just want to try something different. I wouldn't recommend it as a career just as a different way to play the game from time to time.

 

[GraphiteGB]

NPCs will jump more offen then fight now after this years updates there AI will run... So if you try this and they run instead of trying to shoot you thats more normal now...
Take a wake scanner and follow them.. they are less likely to run the next time but you will likely be wanted this time after the jump moves you out of the first system..

 

[varonica]

Good advice but it seems a lot of trouble for a measly 250M where you could make triple that on just one mining mission taking around the same amount of time probably.

It's crime, there's no guaranteed return in crime, you do the job, you get what they are carrying, that's it basically.

 

[Eli Jack]

NPCs will jump more offen then fight now after this years updates there AI will run... So if you try this and they run instead of trying to shoot you thats more normal now...
Take a wake scanner and follow them.. they are less likely to run the next time but you will likely be wanted this time after the jump moves you out of the first system..

I must admit that I haven't done the pirate thing since 3.3 and with the advent of VO mining there isn't any reason to, if credits are your thing.

The 1 to 10 always worked for me in the past but I guess things move on.

 

[Kissamies]

There has been discussed a lot in the past. The bumper car stopping is doable, but counter-intuitive and bit hard for some people. Often mentioned solutions:

1. Tractor beam. A no-no. Too "soft" sci-fi for this universe of spinning stations.
2. Harpoon gun. Interesting, but might be a bit fiddly and require new mechanics that I don't fully trust them to implement well.
3. Grappling limpets. More limpet controllers? Come on!
4. Making the hatch breaker limpets slow down the victim slightly. Too little to matter if it still has thrusters, but eventually drop a drifting target. A variant of 3, really. This is the one I would endorse.

 

[Eli Jack]

It's crime, there's no guaranteed return in crime, you do the job, you get what they are carrying, that's it basically.

To a point I agree but there is another reason for doing it not related to pure profit for a single Cmdr.

 

[GraphiteGB]

I must admit that I haven't done the pirate thing since 3.3 and with the advent of VO mining there isn't any reason to, if credits are your thing.

The 1 to 10 always worked for me in the past but I guess things move on.

Believe they nerfed because T9s with over 400 tons of LTD were trying to fight instead of high wake out. which was making way to easy, when they have that much cargo its faster than mining....

 

[Eli Jack]

Right, thanks for the info.

I'll just have to rely on moving Battle Weapons, Combat Stabilisers etc into Fed dominated systems then. ☠

 

[Chaparral]

Here's the problem. Any mechanic that effectively snares a ship will be abused in ganking and griefing.

From a game design perspective, there has to be some sort of counter mechanic available.

If it's limpets that disable the target, then point defense is a decent deterrence.

If it's a tractor beam, then tractor beam resistance has to be an engineering secondary.

If it's a harpoon, then there has to be a module / limpet that can cut the tether.

We already have shield cascade weapons (debuffs), fsd interrupters (snares), drive limiters (cripples) in this game. Most games offer counter gear / skills to remove these conditions, Elite does not. Adding another condition applier without a counter is a bad idea in my opinion.

 

[M00ka]

Here's the problem. Any mechanic that effectively snares a ship will be abused in ganking and griefing.

From a game design perspective, there has to be some sort of counter mechanic available.

If it's limpets that disable the target, then point defense is a decent deterrence.

If it's a tractor beam, then tractor beam resistance has to be an engineering secondary.

If it's a harpoon, then there has to be a module / limpet that can cut the tether.

We already have shield cascade weapons (debuffs), fsd interrupters (snares), drive limiters (cripples) in this game. Most games offer counter gear / skills to remove these conditions, Elite does not. Adding another condition applier without a counter is a bad idea in my opinion.

Well said, a good game is a derivative of 'Rock/Paper/Scissors', everything should have a counter otherwise that would just become the meta and everyone will use it.

 

[Morbad]

Do they drift like thier drives have been shot out or do they stop them dead?

NPCs generally always behave as if they had FA On, and I've tested ion mines against them recently; they stop.

What i found difficult about piracy was disabling a ships drives without destroying it. More often than not, it went boooom!

Dumbfires or beam lasers.

There has been discussed a lot in the past. The bumper car stopping is doable, but counter-intuitive and bit hard for some people. Often mentioned solutions:

1. Tractor beam. A no-no. Too "soft" sci-fi for this universe of spinning stations.
2. Harpoon gun. Interesting, but might be a bit fiddly and require new mechanics that I don't fully trust them to implement well.
3. Grappling limpets. More limpet controllers? Come on!
4. Making the hatch breaker limpets slow down the victim slightly. Too little to matter if it still has thrusters, but eventually drop a drifting target. A variant of 3, really. This is the one I would endorse.

Tractor beams aren't really any softer than shields or FTL.

Personally, I'd simply allow canisters to retain whatever momentum they were jettisoned with, making it easy to keep them relatively close together. Collector limpets could also be made faster.

This is one of those situations where full Newtonian flight would make things way easier.