I spent a bit of time over the weekend pondering pirates while doing rares trading in my Asp.
The largest issue (well, second-largest, putting interdiction escape aside for the moment) that comes to mind is how illegal should piracy really be? My initial gut reaction was that pirates in Fed/Emp/Alliance space should pretty much be given killed-on-sight priority from the respective security forces. This would push pirates out to anarchy systems obviously. This exposes a major issue though, which is also a problem with my next thought.
The second issue is that NPC pirates vs. players are handled by an abstract system that doesn't require any specific pirate to be in any specific location; when a player enters a system, every X seconds there's a chance for a random NPC pirate encounter. This type of system can handle a player in ANY location, doing ANY sort of activity, and generate suitable conflict and risk.
The problem with these two issues is that the Elite
angerous universe is HUGE; a player-controlled pirate could go days without seeing another player in some of the far-flung anarchy systems. Most games seem to funnel people into high-conflict areas, like the Barrens used to be in WoW, while Elite, for some mind-boggling reason, is doing the opposite with the recent supply/demand trading changes. How can you encourage conflict while forcing players into secretive, far-flung trading routes where their very livelihood is in jeopardy if they ever share their location?
So with those considerations, I have to backtrack on my initial instinctive "get pirates out into anarchy systems" mentality. I don't think that's a plausible scenario. What we need are workable mechanics that allow pirates to do their pirating thing alongside and inside Federal/Empire/Alliance territory.
My proposal is three-fold, starting with least developer intensive to most developer intensive:
Step 1: Alter interdiction behaviour, and no longer clear WANTED status on player death. Submitting to an interdiction causes hull damage to interdictor only, and automatically ejects XX% of interdictee's cargo.
If someone attempts to evade the interdiction and fails, attacker takes no damage, target takes hull damage and has a lengthy FSD cooldown.
If cargo is minimal or no cargo, or target is WANTED, there should not be an option to submit to the interdiction.
This change would completely remove the ability for traders to evade interdiction scott-free. It's not perfect, only a very rough idea; there are considerations that have to be made for explorers, and to keep people from buying 5 hydrogen fuel cells to benefit from the submit behaviour, but in general it would at least give pirates a more reasonable expectation of either some profit or a fair fight, and help minimize the submit-and-scoot method of evading ALL financial risk.
A WANTED status should last for a period of time (one hour? One day?), although the bounty should only be collectible once.
Step 2: An honest-to-god pirate career path, with titles/ranks/missions/jolly roger ship decal/etc. Alongside Naval progression quests and empire progression quests add pirate progression quests. For example: "Hey <cmdrname>, we heard that the Federation has a T9 full of <somecommodity>, take out the engines and we'll split the profits." The kill involves a T9 with three NPC Cobra MKIII escorts. Killing Federation/Empire/Alliance security forces could even be considered as having a "bounty" for pirates. Would be nice with the Wings update.
Also, progression in the pirate ranks could give access to special pirate weapons and possibly even pirate ship variants/customizations?
Step 3: Pirate-specific shadow systems; systems and stations that exist alongside normal trade routes/faction space that only pirates can see and access. They should be completely safe havens for pirates to reload, restock, sell goods, accept kill contracts, upgrade ships, etc. etc. etc. Non-pirate stations should revert to immediate hostile actions against wanted players. Note that this wouldn't affect smugglers; black markets would still exist for players bringing in illegal goods/etc. Outposts could possibly remain independent and non-hostile to pirates. Shadow systems should be relatively rare and require travel through normal non-shadow systems to get from one to another.
Step 4+ would involve some sort of long-term WANTED/MURDERER status. Something akin to Ultima Online's murder system, or GTA's wanted system, where kills have cooldown and exceeding a total of X murders in X days puts the player into OUTCAST status. Once Outcase, for the next seven days they will be consistently harassed by powerful npc bounty hunter groups and system defence forces will pursue even into anarchy systems/opposing faction territory. Interdiction by a Federation anaconda with a wing of Federation security vipers would be simultaneously a massive negative and potentially huge monetary boon for a pirate of sufficient daring. Being killed would not clear OUTCAST, you have to wait until the timer is up.
On a related note, I'd like to see cargo insurance, where for an extra X% up-front cost (I'd suggest 25 - 30%) on commodity purchases you insure your cargo against total loss, and if you're killed by a pirate they could get a cut of that. Killing a T7 full of beryllium could net a pirate a few hundred K in profit (232*<palladiumcost>/10), and cost the player significantly less. If you find a nice, safe trading route turn off the commodity insurance option and you'll make more money but at the risk of losing your entire cargo value. This has the obvious drawback of encouraging the "shoot to kill" mentality from pirates
The largest issue (well, second-largest, putting interdiction escape aside for the moment) that comes to mind is how illegal should piracy really be? My initial gut reaction was that pirates in Fed/Emp/Alliance space should pretty much be given killed-on-sight priority from the respective security forces. This would push pirates out to anarchy systems obviously. This exposes a major issue though, which is also a problem with my next thought.
The second issue is that NPC pirates vs. players are handled by an abstract system that doesn't require any specific pirate to be in any specific location; when a player enters a system, every X seconds there's a chance for a random NPC pirate encounter. This type of system can handle a player in ANY location, doing ANY sort of activity, and generate suitable conflict and risk.
The problem with these two issues is that the Elite
angerous universe is HUGE; a player-controlled pirate could go days without seeing another player in some of the far-flung anarchy systems. Most games seem to funnel people into high-conflict areas, like the Barrens used to be in WoW, while Elite, for some mind-boggling reason, is doing the opposite with the recent supply/demand trading changes. How can you encourage conflict while forcing players into secretive, far-flung trading routes where their very livelihood is in jeopardy if they ever share their location?So with those considerations, I have to backtrack on my initial instinctive "get pirates out into anarchy systems" mentality. I don't think that's a plausible scenario. What we need are workable mechanics that allow pirates to do their pirating thing alongside and inside Federal/Empire/Alliance territory.
My proposal is three-fold, starting with least developer intensive to most developer intensive:
Step 1: Alter interdiction behaviour, and no longer clear WANTED status on player death. Submitting to an interdiction causes hull damage to interdictor only, and automatically ejects XX% of interdictee's cargo.
If someone attempts to evade the interdiction and fails, attacker takes no damage, target takes hull damage and has a lengthy FSD cooldown.
If cargo is minimal or no cargo, or target is WANTED, there should not be an option to submit to the interdiction.
This change would completely remove the ability for traders to evade interdiction scott-free. It's not perfect, only a very rough idea; there are considerations that have to be made for explorers, and to keep people from buying 5 hydrogen fuel cells to benefit from the submit behaviour, but in general it would at least give pirates a more reasonable expectation of either some profit or a fair fight, and help minimize the submit-and-scoot method of evading ALL financial risk.
A WANTED status should last for a period of time (one hour? One day?), although the bounty should only be collectible once.
Step 2: An honest-to-god pirate career path, with titles/ranks/missions/jolly roger ship decal/etc. Alongside Naval progression quests and empire progression quests add pirate progression quests. For example: "Hey <cmdrname>, we heard that the Federation has a T9 full of <somecommodity>, take out the engines and we'll split the profits." The kill involves a T9 with three NPC Cobra MKIII escorts. Killing Federation/Empire/Alliance security forces could even be considered as having a "bounty" for pirates. Would be nice with the Wings update.
Also, progression in the pirate ranks could give access to special pirate weapons and possibly even pirate ship variants/customizations?
Step 3: Pirate-specific shadow systems; systems and stations that exist alongside normal trade routes/faction space that only pirates can see and access. They should be completely safe havens for pirates to reload, restock, sell goods, accept kill contracts, upgrade ships, etc. etc. etc. Non-pirate stations should revert to immediate hostile actions against wanted players. Note that this wouldn't affect smugglers; black markets would still exist for players bringing in illegal goods/etc. Outposts could possibly remain independent and non-hostile to pirates. Shadow systems should be relatively rare and require travel through normal non-shadow systems to get from one to another.
Step 4+ would involve some sort of long-term WANTED/MURDERER status. Something akin to Ultima Online's murder system, or GTA's wanted system, where kills have cooldown and exceeding a total of X murders in X days puts the player into OUTCAST status. Once Outcase, for the next seven days they will be consistently harassed by powerful npc bounty hunter groups and system defence forces will pursue even into anarchy systems/opposing faction territory. Interdiction by a Federation anaconda with a wing of Federation security vipers would be simultaneously a massive negative and potentially huge monetary boon for a pirate of sufficient daring. Being killed would not clear OUTCAST, you have to wait until the timer is up.
On a related note, I'd like to see cargo insurance, where for an extra X% up-front cost (I'd suggest 25 - 30%) on commodity purchases you insure your cargo against total loss, and if you're killed by a pirate they could get a cut of that. Killing a T7 full of beryllium could net a pirate a few hundred K in profit (232*<palladiumcost>/10), and cost the player significantly less. If you find a nice, safe trading route turn off the commodity insurance option and you'll make more money but at the risk of losing your entire cargo value. This has the obvious drawback of encouraging the "shoot to kill" mentality from pirates