My step-dad just had this idea. It’s basically the interstellar-piracy version of dye packs in money/stores. Pirate interdicts you, you’re in a slow and weak ship. But you planned for this, and you’ve got [x] tons of live explosives disguised as valuable goods. You drop those, pirate scoops them, and explodes (or takes engine damage).
It wouldn’t be foolproof, though. You’d have to drop the amount of cargo the pirate demanded, or they’d still attack. So you’d need to decide each flight how much cargo space you wanted to set aside for decoy goods. Also, damage to the pirate would depend on things like hull/module reinforcements, ship type, and how many tons of decoy goods they asked for/picked up.
If you manage to destroy the pirate using decoy-sabotage, you get a bounty you can cash in (of course).
It’s not really a necessary feature, because there’s already another way of dealing with pirates when you’re flying a slow and/or fragile ship: carry some “throwaway” cargo which you can dump unless the pirate specifically wants your high-value cargo (or wants more tons or more creds worth of cargo than can be met by your throwaway stash).
But I think it’d be neat, no?
It wouldn’t be foolproof, though. You’d have to drop the amount of cargo the pirate demanded, or they’d still attack. So you’d need to decide each flight how much cargo space you wanted to set aside for decoy goods. Also, damage to the pirate would depend on things like hull/module reinforcements, ship type, and how many tons of decoy goods they asked for/picked up.
If you manage to destroy the pirate using decoy-sabotage, you get a bounty you can cash in (of course).
It’s not really a necessary feature, because there’s already another way of dealing with pirates when you’re flying a slow and/or fragile ship: carry some “throwaway” cargo which you can dump unless the pirate specifically wants your high-value cargo (or wants more tons or more creds worth of cargo than can be met by your throwaway stash).
But I think it’d be neat, no?