PVP/Crime Consequences required levels (Answers from PVE players please.)

[Majinvash]

I am going to ask a few questions now.

For the people talking about the escalation of fines to the point you end up back in a sidewinder, if you should ever die.

How would piracy work? ( Without saying super hatch breakers, that go through shields )
If the fear of killing a player is so high that it's just not worth it. ( You more often kill a running ship than disable, it in my experience.)
How would a Cutter, pirate a sidewinder. When the sidewinder can high wake in 30 seconds?
How much interaction could take place in that time?
What threat could that Cutter offer?
"Give me your cargo right now before you jump!" - Cutter
"No" - Sidewinder
"Ok cool, have a great day. Sorry to disturb you" - Cutter

How would a bounty hunter be able to ply his trade if the bounty jumps to a system where he is not wanted? ( We can assume that because of exploitation that bounties will never be high enough to cover that risk )

How would the lore work for general crime? If I kill npc's for a mission do the same fines apply?
If not why not? Is in game crime now a two tabled affair? Your npcs crimes and your player crimes?

Majinvash
The Voice of Open

 

[Sandmann]

Like in a private PvP group ...


Too soon ? I will get my coat

Well I was thinking about anarchy and independent systems, but now you mention it...

 

[Sandmann]

I am going to ask a few questions now.

For the people talking about the escalation of fines to the point you end up back in a sidewinder, if you should ever die.

Not actually a fan of just relying on fines/bounties. It's part of a solution but it needs to be multi-faceted... but anyway

How would piracy work? ( Without saying super hatch breakers, that go through shields )

Non lethally. Why NOT say "super hatch breakers"? They're part of the solution, plus other tools as yet undeveloped to immobilise your victim's ship or "pick it's pockets" without killing them. The crime of "ganking" is about murder, the crime of "piracy" is about theft, and we're not trying to stop piracy.

If the fear of killing a player is so high that it's just not worth it. ( You more often kill a running ship than disable, it in my experience.)
How would a Cutter, pirate a sidewinder. When the sidewinder can high wake in 30 seconds?
How much interaction could take place in that time?
What threat could that Cutter offer?
"Give me your cargo right now before you jump!" - Cutter
"No" - Sidewinder
"Ok cool, have a great day. Sorry to disturb you" - Cutter=

Again, you're assuming piracy can only happen with violence/murder or the threat of it. The point is to enable non-lethal piracy so that murderous piracy becomes a choice (with much greater consequences) and not a requirement of the pirate.

[edit for more info] caveat: I'm no game designer, I've given this about two minutes of thought, and I'm not claiming it's balanced or perfect or without flaws. Obviously it would need real development, it's just the seed of an idea. People have suggested EMP pulse weapons to immobilise or "stun" a ship's drives (at the cost of heat build-up in the pirate's ship), allowing hatch breakers more opportunity to work. There's issues with that but I think it could be done. There's another idea that would encourage pirate wings - imagine if you will a weapon fitted to 2-3 ships that would form an EMP (or something else) "net" would could be fired at a victim? Or a "hacking weapon" which given enough time could hack the victim's ship's computer into ejecting cargo. There's plenty of ways that piracy could be improved and actually make it part of the game instead of an excuse to shoot a trader, and these WOULD encourage players out of solo/group as they'd be balanced and more enjoyable (with a chance for them to get away with it if their skill was up to it, as with the interdiction mini-game) and they'll feel reassured that they were a lot less likely to suffer complete loss of the cargo/destruction of their ship. Piracy CAN be fun (or at least not traumatic) for traders IF we take away the need to kill them.

How would a bounty hunter be able to ply his trade if the bounty jumps to a system where he is not wanted? ( We can assume that because of exploitation that bounties will never be high enough to cover that risk )

The same way he does now. We've not begun to look at bounty hunting but it's reasonably well covered right now. KWS scans give you "bonuses" but you must catch the criminal in a jurisdiction he's wanted or you're committing a crime. Having said that, if bounties cover entire major factions and not just local systems it's going to be a lot easier to find him in a jurisdiction he's wanted.

How would the lore work for general crime? If I kill npc's for a mission do the same fines apply?
If not why not? Is in game crime now a two tabled affair? Your npcs crimes and your player crimes?

As the announcer in the stations is fond of saying "UNSANCTIONED violence will not be tolerated". If you've been SANCTIONED to kill person X there's no penalty, same as if you scan them before you shoot them and find them wanted there's no penalty. If you kill them in an anarchy there's no penalty. If you commit murder (ie: unsanctioned violence) in a lawful system you'll be wanted in that system. If it's a system that belongs to a major faction you'll be wanted across that major faction. It means you have to THINK about who and when you kill, you can't just do it with impunity - that's the whole point.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

How would piracy work? ( Without saying super hatch breakers, that go through shields )

Actually, my solution would be just that, super hatch breakers that go through shields. Maybe have it so they are less effective after going through shields, but still can work.

But i'm not one of those talking about escalation of fines until sidewinder...

 

[Sandmann]

This would indeed turn the game into a place so safe that it would become boring.
Did you really think more than a minute of what you wrote?
Like a pirate, who already earns peanuts from his activity, would lose over 100 millions upon destruction of his Python.
And if you think that, wit the current tools available for piracy, you can be pirate without killing...well, try it yourself and you will see.

Sorry man but your list of suggestions has lost all credibility with that one. What next? Banish players who commit too many murders? Mail them real fines to be cleared out via Paypal..?

I gotta agree that CANCELLING insurance for a wanted status is excessively punitive, however that's not to say we can't look at insurance. For instance right now insurance covers what, 96% of the cost of the claim? For repeated claims with murder bounties that percentage could start to reduce over time, making it more and more expensive to die with a bounty on your head... eg: insurance covers 5% less every time you do it. Naturally there'd have to be a way to increase that figure too. As I said it's excessively punitive that insurance would be cancelled for death with a bounty (I consider myself a "good guy" and even I have a few bounties) but at the same time it's ludicrous to think that an insurance company would just continue shelling out for ships for serial killers without batting an eyelid. It also relies on piracy (as I mentioned in my previous post) getting much more love with new tools for non-lethal piracy which would make it more profitable and avoid many of the bounties the pirates currently get as they could do so without committing murder.

[edit for more info] I'd actually like to see insurance re-worked completely to be more "real world". Right now everyone has insurance, as long as they can pay the "excess". I'd like to see the "bank of zaonce" offering insurance policies at a few different levels which require regular payments of insurance premiums at varying rates depending on what level of cover you want and what sort of excess you're willing to pay. This would also pave the way for policies that also covered cargo, at a much higher rate of course.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Excuse me, what? I've been interdicted by many wings of NPCs and I'm pretty much always flying by myself, I've only grouped up for Truckers vs Code or when doing system defense. You seem to be saying that Solo should have training wheels on it, no one should face more than a single NPC at a time, and that's total , wings of NPCs interdict players all the time, it should be far more prevalent at CGs however due to their very nature.

Maybe I misinterpreted your post - it seemed to infer that NPC FAS/Rail Wings would be introduced because players would have to turn up in Wings to combat them. I was not suggesting (or meaning to suggest) that NPC Wings would be removed from Solo.

 

[Scoopy Doopy]

I see the OP has given a reason but I fail to see what benefit there is to FD to encourage people going into open. It makes no difference to them except perhaps a bullet point on the sales brochure.

Frankly I don't see why its such a big thing. Ultimately, the only things open offers above the other modes is an increased chance to bump into random people and tougher opponents (occasionally). Is that what makes Elite Dangerous great?

 

[Sandmann]

I see the OP has given a reason but I fail to see what benefit there is to FD to encourage people going into open. It makes no difference to them except perhaps a bullet point on the sales brochure.

Frankly I don't see why its such a big thing. Ultimately, the only things open offers above the other modes is an increased chance to bump into random people and tougher opponents (occasionally). Is that what makes Elite Dangerous great?

Yep, which goes back to what I was saying earlier... even if you fix the ganking with decent mechanics, you'll only get the people who already WANT to be in open, but aren't because *reasons* (plus maybe a few curious ones for a quick look). To get other people out of solo/group into open they need a "carrot", an actual reason to leave the mode they're already quite happy in. FDev have committed to keeping the groups equal so the ONLY thing open has is the multiplayer aspect. If you want to use that to attract people it has to be a lot more fun and a lot less offensive than it currently is.

You're right though, getting people out of solo/group ONLY serves those already IN open/group. The OP makes two assumptions... that open is the default (or "best") mode and needs to be promoted, and that the game is primarily about shooting other players and this aspect needs to be promoted and protected. Neither of these assumptions is true.

 

[Lateralus]

I see the OP has given a reason but I fail to see what benefit there is to FD to encourage people going into open. It makes no difference to them except perhaps a bullet point on the sales brochure.

Frankly I don't see why its such a big thing. Ultimately, the only things open offers above the other modes is an increased chance to bump into random people and tougher opponents (occasionally). Is that what makes Elite Dangerous great?

Not quite true - open play is quite a large selling point of the game as many potential new players will only be interested in the multiplayer aspects of it. If they load up the game and there is nobody to be found they will probably stop playing and write negative feedback about the experience, discouraging like-minded people from buying the game. Frontier get bad press and lose out on profit.

Players who come into the game expecting a rich, multiplayer experience and are disappointed can often be seen creating threads on this forum along the lines of "Where is everybody?".

 

[Querty Out]

I am going to ask a few questions now.
For the people talking about the escalation of fines to the point you end up back in a sidewinder, if you should ever die.

"if you should ever die": Inability to pay an instant fine could have you self destruct if you worry about not dying.

How would piracy work? ( Without saying super hatch breakers, that go through shields )
If the fear of killing a player is so high that it's just not worth it. ( You more often kill a running ship than disable, it in my experience.)
...

Balancing options could include very high profit trading in anarchy systems where murder is allowed and de-escalation of fines after some time without murder. You can still commit the odd murder while fines are low and you can still pirate in non-anarchy systems shooting traders down to 1% hull if murder is too expensive at the time.

I'm sure you can pick holes in this and anything that can be written in a few sentences so I won't event attempt to come up with an all-encompassing, consistent solution; for that you have Mr Fang.

 

[Robert Maynard]

Not quite true - open play is quite a large selling point of the game as many potential new players will only be interested in the multiplayer aspects of it. If they load up the game and there is nobody to be found they will probably stop playing and write negative feedback about the experience, discouraging like-minded people from buying the game. Frontier get bad press and lose out on profit.

Players who come into the game expecting a rich, multiplayer experience and are disappointed can often be seen creating threads on this forum along the lines of "Where is everybody?".

.... which, given the size of the game world was only to be expected to some extent. That's not to say that Frontier shouldn't do what they can to mitigate some of the causes of players not playing in Open, however.

 

[Jack Schitt]

You more often kill a running ship than disable, it in my experience.

That's the core of the problem right there. Everything else is frills around the edge. I backed this game under the assumption that one of the mechanics would be small and medium sized ships damaging larger ships to the point where some or even all of their cargo spills out. Pirates would then take the cargo, leaving the larger ship still intact and limping home but with a hefty repair bill (hopefully insured). David Braben talked about this in his pre- and post-KS diaries. There was even a very early video of a skirmish between Vipers and an Anaconda, in which this scenario more or less played out although you didn't actually see the cargo coming out.

We eventually got a reasonably granular Anaconda damage model, and the often useless hatch breaker limpets, but neither of them really comes close to what was originally envisioned. Add in the fact that some people will always just want to see other people's space pixels blowing up (something FD were repeatedly warned about but seemingly chose to ignore) and any hope of subtlety in the trader/pirate interaction is gone.

Basically this game does very little to encourage RP piracy, but nothing at all to dissuade non-RP PKing. The two can't be separated. You said it yourself, even when you try to disable a ship nine times out of ten it blows up. After a while you might as well not bother trying.

A lot of players on both "sides" of this argument seem to be looking for a quick fix solution that will remove the thing that's annoying them the most and/or bolster the thing they most enjoy, but there isn't one solution. There's a whole host of possible solutions, consisting of a mix of new and tweaked elements working in concert, that given enough time might slowly push the game in a direction more appealing to a majority of players (but never all of them of course, that's impossible).

But despite their occasional appearances in the forums, asking for "player feedback" of which they should already be sitting on a pile big enough to fill a Type 9, FD have done next to nothing except introduce a few band-aids (speeding?) to dissuade people from exploiting mechanics for lulz, and post mealy-mouthed "condemnations" of behaviour that in-game mechanisms should have been preventing from day one.

I just don't understand FD's strategy, I really don't. One thing's for certain: despite ED still being the best game I've ever played (I'm an Elite junkie, so it could be ten times worse and still meet that criterion) it's most definitely not the game I thought we'd be getting. And if FD keep dragging their heels on sorting out the fundamentals, I fear it will never even come close.

 

[smiths121]

Interesting last few pages (I had to sleep for page 10-16).

From Cmdr Majinvash recent responses increasing policing and increasing bounty is not going to change his behaviour or where he plighs his trade. Security Force response currently scales with bounty, I know this from taking a few kill security forces missions for BGS work. I also agree with his points if you make the consequence for murder too high - then it starts to impact bounty hunters, people performing military ranking etc.

This rather backs my view that you will not encourage any players back in to open by affecting the risk of the pirate or murderer. If I was in a Type 9, just lost 400 tons of Palladium and the ship, I generally would not care how bigger bounty Cmdr Majinvash had gained, or how much the local system security hated him. I actually would care far more about the bottom right figure on the insurance screen and what it did to my balance. Actually I expect I would have paid him if I was in a Typ-9 as "operational expenditure" and try to get some local knowledge from him, but that is a different argument.

I think positions are hardening in the community, I think there is a sizeable minority (+/-10% plucked from the air) of players that will never go back to open and would stop playing the game if some form of open PvE (whether on the menu or Morbius) did not exist. PvE only is already well catered for in the game in other modes (I am sort of including Morbius in this), and PvP is becoming increasingly rare in open.

The only way to get players into open is to alter the percieved risk/reward of open - with PvP comes higher risk. Focussing on the consequences to pirate indirectly reduces the risk of the target. Increased income in open compared to other modes increased the reward part of the risk/reward equation for the target. I would tie this higher income into giving up the right to mode switch. an increase in the bounty for murder, more police brutality, no reset of bounty on ship destruction, and missions to hunt the top 5 bounties in a system lasting a week. The list being made up of only those that chose to give up the right to switch modes. The mission would place the top 5 bounty player on the mission takers galactic map as if they were on their friends list. Match Making would also act as if they were on the mission taker's friends list. The latter is designed to encourage player bounty hunting. The whole idea is to make PvP work in open and restore the PvP focussed careers of bounty hunting and piracy.

From a PvP point of view, Bounty Hunters need Pirates need Traders. Bounty Hunters do not really exist Bounty Farmers in Haz Res is the nearest we get, chasing players, doing the cat and mouse, getting wanted as you will not be killing them in a system they are wanted in for a few MCr over the course of a game session - or a quick 1 hour blast in a Haz Res Zone - most players seem to opting for the latter. Pirates need targets to pirate, they also need to fear the next hollow triangle is a Bounty Hunter that has their number. Traders need profit from runs, the fact a PvP pirate is harder to run from (but not impossible save Type-7/9), is increased risk so should attract increased profit.

There should also be an open PvE mode which acts like current open but players can only help each other and cannot perform actions against each other. The details are debate on what this means are on other threads, I do not actually care as I would never go there, the same as I have never seen the need to join Morbius. Rename open to Open PvP if this occurs.

Never thought I would back the PvP side in this debate, I just want 99% PvE with rare and meaningful PvP as the game was advertised. Open allows me to team up longer term or adhoc with other players. Unfortunately I also need the likes of Cmd Majinvash to make the game experience the way I want it. I still reserve the right to call him a scurvy pirate though - he might report me if I called him a griefer ;-)

Simon

 

[Muetdhiver]

Overall, I think putting more serious consequences from murder of clean CMDR's (and clean ships in general)
is a huge opportunity to improve the roleplay for both open and solo.

Here is how I would go at it :

• Large increase of Bounty for murder, with escalation mechanics. Say starting at 50K, but doubling for every murder till topping at 1M per kill. Both for clean players and NPC murders.
• Escalation : both in juridiction (area where you are wanted) and response (how actively and nastily the NPC's will go at you).
• Juridiction : Once your Bounty with a minor faction reach a certain threshold, you become wanted at the power level. At an other threshold, you become wanted at the major faction level. (so minor > power > major, with potential skip of the power juridiction). This means that anarchy systems and PP unaligned independant systems will be the best places to evade the hammer. As it should be. Upon escalating juridiction, all bounties in said juridiction are merged**.
• Response : The bounty in the appropriate juridiction determines the NPC response. Using thresholds and security level* to determine what is dispatched (local cops / swat team / counter terrorism military wing) and how long they will track you down before giving up the chase (local system, 50lyr bubble, whole power, whole major faction). To spice things up, add in Bounty hunters coming after you anywhere once you reach certain bounties. (even in anarchy).
• Docking rights : once wanted in high sec, forget about landing in major ports and outposts, in med sec allow players to bribe for landing rights on outposts (but not large stations), in low sec allow landing on outposts and bribe for large stations. In anarchy none of this matters Of course juridiction applies, e.g. cannot land in most large imperial space port. tough life I guess.
• Rebuy costs : for clean CMDR murders in non-anarchy / non-CZ, add the killed party rebuy cost to the killer rebuy costs, with a minimum of the murder Bounty (so 1M minimum after 11 kills, that ensures that even killing noobs in sidewinders has consequences). I mean, CMDR insurance is run by the pilot federation. So if it knows that player A killed B unlawfully, it makes sense that when A comes begging for insurance they say "ok, but you got to contribute to what we paid to repace B's ship".
• Piracy Tools : allow to use the FSD interdictor module to slow down the FSD cooldown, and add in much improved limpets. If the cost of killing your preys is high, then adding Tools to disable / slow their escape is not an issue since your will not be very keen to use those to kill clean players for fun. Make it use a lot of weap power. Also : add in NPC's with valuable cargo for piracy, just sayin'
• Put juicy trade opportunities in low-sec and anarchy systems to lure traders in there.

*once the juridiction reaches the power level, the response will be one corresponding to high security, however, it might be a while before the swats arrives, so initially the local cops should interdict you and keep you busy until the cavalry arrives.

**this means that evading to pay bounties turned to fines will become very hard at some point.

 

[dxm55]

This would indeed turn the game into a place so safe that it would become boring.
Did you really think more than a minute of what you wrote?
Like a pirate, who already earns peanuts from his activity, would lose over 100 millions upon destruction of his Python.
And if you think that, wit the current tools available for piracy, you can be pirate without killing...well, try it yourself and you will see.

Sorry man but your list of suggestions has lost all credibility with that one. What next? Banish players who commit too many murders? Mail them real fines to be cleared out via Paypal..?

This means that pirates stay away from heavily policed core worlds, and stay more in anarchy, frontier or border systems, where they can flit in and out of civilized space.
Besides, if you were that good a pilot, with your 4 x railgun equipped FDL, you would probably make short work of NPC cops, or the odd bounty hunter.

Besides, which RL insurance company would insure a wanted murderer?


Or.... Alternatively, if you die where you're wanted (Wanted in Fed, die in a Fed system) you get no rebuy.
But if you die in Empire or Alliance space, you're still entitled to a rebuy, but with added costs.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Pirate needs more tools at his disposal beyond a smile and a gun.

Cargo Hatch jamming, which can be countered by chaff, hatch breakers which can be countered by turrets, FSD overload which makes the FSD has to charge again so the pirate has more time with it's victim. Cannot be countered, but the pirate needs to keep the target in his sights. Stuff like that.

All these to give the pirate options beyond: "Stop or I'll shoot". Make the encounter a gadget/electronic warfare, where one move can be countered by another.

 

[dxm55]

Pirate needs more tools at his disposal beyond a smile and a gun.

Cargo Hatch jamming, which can be countered by chaff, hatch breakers which can be countered by turrets, FSD overload which makes the FSD has to charge again so the pirate has more time with it's victim. Cannot be countered, but the pirate needs to keep the target in his sights. Stuff like that.

All these to give the pirate options beyond: "Stop or I'll shoot". Make the encounter a gadget/electronic warfare, where one move can be countered by another.

Or just make cargo hatches weaker and susceptible to being broken. Once shields are gone, it's only a few well placed shots before the hatch goes and cargo starts pouring out the ship into space.
At that point, the pirate can break off the attack and focus on salvaging the spoils.

 

[Derath]

Crime/Punishment is a difficult road to tread, primarily because the way the game systems are setup currently doesn't leave a great deal of wiggle room to have a realistic reaction to crime. Majinvash is right about the security you could make 15 condas jump instantly on interdiction and FDL railers would still trash people and escape, the amount of firepower you have to bring to stop a competent player from ignoring the consequences of his actions is huge, and if they put that in you'd essentially be saying no crime, which isn't the point.

They are going to have to go with something positive instead of negative, treat piracy like a real profession (they should do this to all of them to be honest) should be perks for whatever role you fulfill if you stick with it. Tie this in with a rating that indicates how dangerous you are and make it glaringly obvious on the HUD with different colours for serial player killers so everyone knows when ones around. Obviously keep the increased punishment for crimes the bountys help give bounty hunters something different to do and reward people who actively combat player killers in PvP.

Just be careful with security responses it isn't too difficult for us to end up with the psychic guards from oblivion and apart from parody they were extremely unpopular

- - - - - Additional Content Posted / Auto Merge - - - - -

Or just make cargo hatches weaker and susceptible to being broken. Once shields are gone, it's only a few well placed shots before the hatch goes and cargo starts pouring out the ship into space.
At that point, the pirate can break off the attack and focus on salvaging the spoils.

Hatching targets currently works fine they take damage and start dropping cargo at about 80%~, the irony is once it hits 0% it actually no longer functions and won't drop anything. It is however very difficult to hatch someone doing anything other than fleeing in a straight line, limpets also have this problem, spinning stops them attaching even if your target has no point defence, they are also slower than a majority of ships.

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Fold

You can find some excellent suggestions in this thread, you may know the author: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=235327&p=3620525&viewfull=1#post3620525

My own personal feelings are here: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=235327&page=14&p=3675686&viewfull=1#post3675686


Now please go and do something 'emergent' in the game that causes some dramatic forum threads. I'm bored!

 

[Sandmann]

Pirate needs more tools at his disposal beyond a smile and a gun.

Cargo Hatch jamming, which can be countered by chaff, hatch breakers which can be countered by turrets, FSD overload which makes the FSD has to charge again so the pirate has more time with it's victim. Cannot be countered, but the pirate needs to keep the target in his sights. Stuff like that.

All these to give the pirate options beyond: "Stop or I'll shoot". Make the encounter a gadget/electronic warfare, where one move can be countered by another.

Another idea might be some sort of "heat ray" that would increase the victim's ship's heat making it impossible to fire up the FSD without exploding, counteracted by heatsinks (or possibly by dodging the ray similar to the interdiction minigame, made harder by buying gimballed heatrays?). Point defence and ECM modules have basically been ignored of late since very few people use missiles or torpedos, these could be re-valued by creating pirate tools that they'd defend against too.

Or just make cargo hatches weaker and susceptible to being broken. Once shields are gone, it's only a few well placed shots before the hatch goes and cargo starts pouring out the ship into space.
At that point, the pirate can break off the attack and focus on salvaging the spoils.

All these are ideas that are worthy of merit. I wouldn't want it to be just a single method, nor would I want any of them to be a foolproof method. The greater variety of tools the pirate has at his disposal the greater the variety (and hence enjoyment) the game has, and a method that can be avoided/circumvented by the trader (with the purchase of appropriate modules, or with appropriate tactics) makes it a mini game that can also be fun for the trader. BOTH sides have to get something positive out of it if you want both sides to be willing to undertake it. Make it all about sadistic perpetrator and helpless victims (the way it is now) and the victims will just stay where they are (as they are doing now).

An argument that's frequently used for "foolproof" piracy methods is that if you make a method counterable, all the traders will simply counter it and leave. This is true, which is another reason to put in a variety of methods which would require a variety of counteractions to defeat them all. That means that a trader who typically wants to maximise his cargo space and jump range has to then choose between these and putting in defences like shields, chaff, heatsinks, and so on. A pirate (or a pirate WING) with 3-4 methods available would only be defeated by a trader who could counter them ALL by having a large ship like a T7 or T9 with a lot of defences.. and a large ship isn't going to be "one shotted" so could also be intimidated by damaging it in the way a hauler or an adder would be. (Besides, why would a scurrilous pirate with a FdL or a Clipper who ONLY wanted booty and DIDN'T want a murder bounty even both attacking a sidewinder or a hauler? anyway? They'd be too small to be worth the trouble.)

Another point that needs to be addressed to balance all this is a BGS/Trade point... black markets and trade markets in anarchies (especially dangerous, pirate lair tpye anarchies) should be paying MORE than the standard ones on the "main street", simply because fewer traders are willing to supply them, and scarcity of a resource makes it more valuable. This would encourage traders who were more willing to take the risk to trade in "pirate waters", the increased profit would offset the greater losses they face there, and the increased black market prices would make legitimate piracy more attractive and viable.