Smuggling and piracy need to be readdressed

[Redrick Schuhart]

Pirated materials (of any type) pay not in credits but it in engineering mats/modules?

Might stop relogging too!

If you mean exchanging pirated commodities for engineered stuff, then... well, as much as it might ease the grind (and stop relogging), I doubt that it's a great solution. As an option, maybe. But when you have all of the engineered stuff, your only real incentive is credits IMHO.

 

[T200]

what about hijacking ships?
ransoming prisoners, etc..

if they don't want to develop boarding by hand they should at least let one hire a crew that can board for us (though that would require NPC wings).

 

[Redrick Schuhart]

what about hijacking ships?
ransoming prisoners, etc..

if they don't want to develop boarding by hand they should at least let one hire a crew that can board for us (though that would require NPC wings).

It would be great, surely.
But as it was mentioned above, we have to at least start with small things first. Since ship interiors are not planned, it's unlikely we get that sooner than 2-4 years later. We have to fix what we already have

 

[Spacelumbus]

I'd really love to outfit a Mamba for drug running or blockade breaking.
But as it is now there is really no reason to do so, because there is no real gameplay and no reward around that.

 

[Redrick Schuhart]

I'd really love to outfit a Mamba for drug running or blockade breaking.
But as it is now there is really no reason to do so, because there is no real gameplay and no reward around that.

I feel you, mate. I've always wanted to smuggle stuff and pirate in my cobra III and to just have fun... still waiting

 

[DemiserofD]

Expanding No-Fire zones could be a good way of accomplishing that. Stations can be 7ls from the star or 700000ls from the star, so why can't the no-fire zone vary in size, as well?

Vary it based on system security level. Anarchy stations have no no-fire zone. Low-sec has the current 7.5km no-fire zone, medium-sec has a 10km no-fire zone, and high-sec has a 15km no-fire zone. Players drop in just beyond the no-fire zone, giving cops a much longer window to scan you and making docking more dangerous with larger, slower ships.

You might allow friends of the faction to bypass the security restrictions and drop in at the normal distance, as an indication of good faith. But if a friend gets caught smuggling, they should take a BIG hit to their reputation.

 

[rootsrat]

Small ships could be made viable for smuggling with a bonus to avoid being scanned and with silent running on.

With the right modules fitted anyway.

Give us low weight high value items like gems, jewellery, art and plans to move around the galaxy.

Smaller ships actually do have a smaller chance of being selected for security scan.

This was introduced a while ago now.

 

[Redrick Schuhart]

Expanding No-Fire zones could be a good way of accomplishing that. Stations can be 7ls from the star or 700000ls from the star, so why can't the no-fire zone vary in size, as well?

Vary it based on system security level. Anarchy stations have no no-fire zone. Low-sec has the current 7.5km no-fire zone, medium-sec has a 10km no-fire zone, and high-sec has a 15km no-fire zone. Players drop in just beyond the no-fire zone, giving cops a much longer window to scan you and making docking more dangerous with larger, slower ships.

You might allow friends of the faction to bypass the security restrictions and drop in at the normal distance, as an indication of good faith. But if a friend gets caught smuggling, they should take a BIG hit to their reputation.

A good point indeed, added that to the thread for posterity

 

[Redrick Schuhart]

Smaller ships actually do have a smaller chance of being selected for security scan.

This was introduced a while ago now.

And yet we don't have high-value low-quantity commodities for that to actually be even close to viable gameplay (compared to other gameplay loops, it's absurd). That's the main point anyway.

 

[rootsrat]

And yet we don't have high-value low-quantity commodities for that to actually be even close to viable gameplay (compared to other gameplay loops, it's absurd). That's the main point anyway.

Yes, I know. I don't disagree with that.

 

[Erei]

One of the issue that makes smuggling unattractive is how poor the profit is on the goods. The commodities with the highest profit per ton are all legals : agronomic treatment, various minerals and ore, even wine for Rakam's peak.

Max profit right now, on Inara :
-slaves 6200/t
-the new drug (Onionhead Gamma Strain) 4300/t
Onionhead (the old one) is classified as a rare commodities, so I assume it works like the others, and have a flat increase in value for distance travelled, up to a cap.

Meanwhile, the other kind of slaves, the more legal one (imperial slaves) is 16800/t (nearly 3times more). And the very legal agronomic treatment is 34K/t.

Not only it's too low for trading, but it's too low considering the risk.

If you want smuggling to be attractive, you need it to be some of the highest profit/t. Risk/reward thing. Especially if you use smaller ship. Why would I bother to run illegal good in a small ship, when I can carry hundreds of tons of more profitable legal good in a t9 or imp cutter ?
Something high enough to make you go "damn, maybe I should try", but not too high either to not break the balance and stuff.

Obviously, they'd also need to make the whole "heat sink and you're safe" go, and that kind of stuff.

 

[Marcus Seldon]

I agree with all OP said, I think those improvements are necessary to make PVE piracy more fun and interactive.

 

[Kira Mikamy]

well this is a good idea so im sure everybody should ignore it as always.

 

[Elliot Coleman]

Just can't give this enough likes.

I actually like piracy in ED. So much so that I bought, built, and engineered a ship specifically for it....unfortunately it'll take years to get a return on investment with the current state of piracy.

So, sorry little Cobra...looks like I'm taking the mining Conda out again.

 

[Nuke Messiah]

What's wrong with smuggling and piracy today?
1. It's abysmally low-income compared to other gameplay loops.
2. PVE Piracy is somewhat non-existant. LTD\valuable cargo ships are very scarce, hence barely anyone is interested in this kind of gameplay. Private courier vessels do carry rare commodities, but it simply doesn't pay enough, considering the 'gameplay' you have to participate in (described below). And you always get your cargo stolen, which is even less credits (which makes sense, but with current amount of ships carrying cargo, it's too dull)... Piracy is pretty much out of the picture (in terms of fun\credits ratio), and it's not hard to see why.
3. PVE Piracy gameplay is ridiculous for multiple reasons:

1. While NPC Pirates make demands, players can't. This could have allowed players to avoid brute force and get what they want by just scaring your target (just like in PVP Piracy)
2. Hatch Breaker limpets are useless if you can't effectively stop ships. If you disable the drives, ships keep drifting away, making it almost impossible to scoop the loot. Players end up having to ram the target ship to stop it from drifting (doesn't it sound ridiculous?).
3. If that's not enough pain, you can only effectively pirate ships that are below novice, because high-rank NPCs can reboot their ship, rendering all of your attempts to safely hatchbreak the cargo futile.

4. PVP piracy is better in this regard (you can at least negotiate with your target), but in any case, the gameplay\credit flaws apply to this type of piracy too. But, I'll be honest, seeing how 'many' players are in open, it's not a relevant issue. PVE Piracy is, however
5. Smuggling is... well, it's part of piracy. It's just there... you get lower income for stolen goods, and you have to avoid scanning. That's it... Well, great. It's irrelevant beyond irrelevant, because it's not profitable.

@DemiserofD said it better than me:



Here's my proposition:

1. Add ability to negotiate with NPC targets and to threaten them
2. Add some kind of tool to stop target vessel if their drives are offline
3. Make it more profitable, by adding more targets with truly valuable cargo. More profitable theft missions too? More smuggling opportunities? Make rare goods more profitable!
4. It's high time Fdev combined all of the limpet controllers into one module. I fail to see how that's not a better solution, far more user-friendly, allowing to save up more optional internals space

Here are some other propositions from other CMDRs (all somewhat related to piracy and smuggling issues):
@ethelred

Spoiler: Piracy categories AKA Fun

Piracy gameplay should fall into one if the following categories:-

1. Heist. We've got a tip off that valuable cargo X is travelling through Y at time Z. We may or may not have someone on the inside who will disable the ship once we've gotten rid of the escort/reduced module er, W, to 0%. Cargo X is either stolen to order or high value (not only in credits but rep or engineering mats) to make it worthwhile. Ideally in gameplay a CMDR can be a pirate, the cargo ship or the cargo ship escort.

2. Carribbean 17th century. This area is rife with high value goods, with very poor policing and loads of competing factions. I might even have a letter of marque from one of them and I've been given an arbitrary time period to gain as many goods as I can on that time. We operate out of a lawless system where a sophisticated trade network turns stolen goods into aforementioned high value mats.

Pirates need disabling weapons and a system of notoriety/reputation so their victims can negotiate in good faith on a percentage of cargo to give away.

Traders need insurance that kicks in once they have at least tried to escape.

Fame (in terms of online leaderboards) is a strong incentive - though out of game - to a CMDR who can show they've stolen X amount of cargo with no pirated vessel "kills" either PvE or PvP.

@DemiserofD

Spoiler: NO-FIRE ZONE EXPANSION and smuggling

Expanding No-Fire zones could be a good way of accomplishing that. Stations can be 7ls from the star or 700000ls from the star, so why can't the no-fire zone vary in size, as well?

Vary it based on system security level. Anarchy stations have no no-fire zone. Low-sec has the current 7.5km no-fire zone, medium-sec has a 10km no-fire zone, and high-sec has a 15km no-fire zone. Players drop in just beyond the no-fire zone, giving cops a much longer window to scan you and making docking more dangerous with larger, slower ships.

You might allow friends of the faction to bypass the security restrictions and drop in at the normal distance, as an indication of good faith. But if a friend gets caught smuggling, they should take a BIG hit to their reputation.

Spoiler: Rare Goods and their impact on piracy

A good start would be making Rare Goods and piracy goods much more valuable.

A big problem with Piracy atm is you basically just want to find a single T9 with 300 LTDs on it and pirate them all, which requires disabling and stopping the target, all of which is pretty boring. Who really WANTS to sit there for 15 minutes slowly stealing 300 LTDs? Sure it's fun at first, but only because of the dopamine from the profit, the actual gameplay is negligible.

But there are ships that carry 5-20 rare goods like antiquities/rare gems/antique jewelry. That's a small enough number they could be stolen without disabling them. So just buff the value of these goods approximately 10x, to 1.0-1.5m each, and pow, you've made piracy more fun and more profitable in a single move.

The same goes for Rares. They're just nowhere near profitable enough to be worth stealing atm.
[...]
Unfortunately, the current meta for trading is moving 794t of Agronomic Treatment back and forth to stations with zero demand but high prices anyway. It's pointless for a pirate to steal that, because the entire business model is based on being able to acquire it instantly and move 6-10 loads per hour, while it takes the pirate probably an hour just to steal a single load worth.

Reworking rares to actually be worth trading again could have a profound impact on piracy as well as trade.

@Screemonster spills the truth here

Spoiler: Core commodities = Piracy that makes sense

The biggest problem with piracy in terms of earning is simply that the highest value thing you can obtain from piracy is something that you can obtain faster and more reliably by mining, and unlike mining there's a massive dropoff in value to the next most valuable thing. If you go platinum mining and probe a rock and see painite, that's not a wasted rock because painite is still pretty valuable, same with osmium and a few other minerals. If you manifest-scan an NPC then as far as value is concerned, it either has LTDs or it doesn't. Even if it does, the time you need to spend siphoning it (and fighting off NPC pirates or system sec, depending on where you found it) is insane compared to the time it takes to fill your hold mining.

The easiest fix to piracy would, oddly enough, be similar to the fix that made mining go from "okay" to "the best activity in the game for credits" - prior to hotspots and cores, it was impossible to target any particular material beyond "go to the right ring type, preferably pristine". Hotspots made it possible to locate particular places to go for materials, and cores added never-before-seen extremely-high-value commodities.

Adding the core commodities to mining ships (in limited amounts) would make targeting those ships worth it. Adding unique stealable commodities to signal sources and scenarios would make going after convoys actually worth it. One of my favourite scenarios to play out is that one with half a dozen T7s where a bunch of pirates jump in and you can either defend the convoy or join the heist - the pirates are only after something like superconductors or insulating membrane, but the T7s have other cargo as well that's a little bonus cherry on top if you're there with some collectors - usually it's some dross like consumer technology, but imagine if it was something actually worth stealing?

Anyway, convoy dispersal patterns should carry stuff that's actually worth your time to hatchbreak, even if it's "lob a hatchbreaker, grab the 10t or so of stuff that drops, and run" without needing to disable them and strip them of everything in their hold thanks for coming to my TED talk

@Rubbernuke does a wonderful job of showing many ways to improve both PP and Piracy/Smuggling here:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/threa...ing-mechanics-to-allow-power-collapse.586689/

"Agreeeed." - Captain Barbosa. Piracy and smuggling are both a ton of fun. So much fun that I do them without regard to profit. So, what do I do for profit? I engineered the hell out of my T10, stack Massacre missions, and let it run AFK... But is that what you want?

Why not make the already fun gameplay also profitable? I'm hesitant about any communication with NPC's, simply because I think doing it believably is more trouble than it's worth. Instead, increase the number of ships with profitably pirated goods, and let me make a premium for smuggling them into white-picket-fence starports. Even in IRL drug syndicates, it isn't the kingpin that makes the highest margin. He makes the highest profit, but the highest margin is made by the street-corner dealer. Let me be the street-corner dealer smuggling my stolen goods into the white-collar, Jesus loving suburbs of the galaxy - and making a killing from it.

 

[Redrick Schuhart]

Just can't give this enough likes.

I actually like piracy in ED. So much so that I bought, built, and engineered a ship specifically for it....unfortunately it'll take years to get a return on investment with the current state of piracy.

So, sorry little Cobra...looks like I'm taking the mining Conda out again.

I started out in ED with piracy life in mind with my Cobra III. Then I realized Cobra wasnt good enough (too little space to make profit at least above 1 million), so i gradually moved all the way up to my Cutter... And I still feel cheated by the harsh reality of the current state of piracy.
Cutter fully outfitted for piracy... to be fair, returned my investments back in the day when mining was viable, doing exclusively opal\LTD PVP piracy (earned me about 1 billion). And now both PVP and PVE are dead, so I'm stuck with a ship I can't even properly use. Shame

 

[SamePanda57]

I started out in ED with piracy life in mind with my Cobra III. Then I realized Cobra wasnt good enough (too little space to make profit at least above 1 million), so i gradually moved all the way up to my Cutter... And I still feel cheated by the harsh reality of the current state of piracy.
Cutter fully outfitted for piracy... to be fair, returned my investments back in the day when mining was viable, doing exclusively opal\LTD PVP piracy (earned me about 1 billion). And now both PVP and PVE are dead, so I'm stuck with a ship I can't even properly use. Shame

A cobra can easily make over 5 million per hour doing PVE piracy. As for PVE piracy being dead, you just know where to look

I think the issue with the current PVE piracy is that it is too hard to reliably find miners with LTDs unless you already know where to look. After the fleet carrier update when they changed the spawn rules it took a couple of months to work out what the rules were.

I think a simple start to improve PVE piracy would be to firstly increase the number of systems where LTD miners spawn, and secondly to greatly increase the quantity and value of the cargo in Private/Military couriers to bring the profit opportunities in line with other activities. I don't think increasing the value of LTDs would be viable as it would also affect mining (which is why it was reduced a while back)

I don't think there is A quick win for smuggling. No matter how much you increase the rewards the gameplay is so simplistic that it is only slightly more challenging and risky than smuggling. To really fix it would require some major effort and FDEV have much bigger issues to fix at the moment

 

[Screemonster]

I think a simple start to improve PVE piracy would be to firstly increase the number of systems where LTD miners spawn

the problem there is using the same commodity that miners use, where any buff to piracy would be a buff to mining and any nerf to mining is a nerf to piracy, along with all the demand getting obliterated by miners whenever there's a good price for them anywhere.

If anything I'm tired of LTDs being the only thing worth stealing, giving us more places to find them wouldn't solve that problem.

 

[SamePanda57]

the problem there is using the same commodity that miners use, where any buff to piracy would be a buff to mining and any nerf to mining is a nerf to piracy, along with all the demand getting obliterated by miners whenever there's a good price for them anywhere.

If anything I'm tired of LTDs being the only thing worth stealing, giving us more places to find them wouldn't solve that problem.

I agree, but adding non-mined commodities would have people screaming about their immersion! (even though it still happens)
Thats why I suggested increasing the value and quantities of couriers. These are not miners or mined commodities

 

[rootsrat]

They could incrase the prices for rare goods and make them matter again. And then insert those rare goods into trading vessels. Or some specialist courier ships.