A recent incident, where a NPC pirate just blew me out of sky, while I was maniacally dropping cargo, dodging asteroids on a belt and trying to escape him with my unarmed, mining specced T7, got me thinking:
There's quite a few things that can be improved with NPC Pirates.
As a general rule, NPC pirates currently are either a complete joke, or complete devastation of day's game enjoyment. Depending what you fly in, and if they get you interdicted or not. Either way, they do not contribute in getting me to play this game more.
I would prefer pirates:
A WAY more dangerous with interdiction, as now you can evade them in T7 with BOTH hands behind your back.
Ones that would pose a REAL danger in dogfight, with some sort of fine tuning based on ship I fly.
But at the same time, they should:
Essentially be after my cargo, not my life. Now they're WAY too trigger happy, shoot to kill and do not stop shooting despite how much you try to surrender.
I would prefer being interdicted and robbed in every third of my trading travels, as long as I would be able to save my ship and life (with some of the cargo left).
I read from forums that latest NPC Pirate AI should stop shooting if you drop cargo, or not shoot at all in first place if you comply to the requests.
For what ever reason, one who just destroyed me, did not do so. However, I assume this was just a glitch.
I was slow in dropping the cargo as I was trying to find right button and calculate, how many lepidolites are needed to get just over the requested 8500Cr. I could not make it in 15 secs. Then I just dropped all of them, worth 40k Cr or something, and he just destroyed me nevertheless.
I could not jump because of cargo scoops and whatnots open and T7 lasts about 20 seconds of laser fire.
Anyway, to concrete suggestions:
1. Up Interdiction skills. A LOT.
2. In everywhere else than total anarchy star system, get pirates to mostly just hatch break, get some cargo and escape, as long as they're not in danger by themselves.
3. Increase time to drop cargo, from current 15 seconds (felt like 5) to at least one minute, as long as I am not trying to escape or shoot.
4. Give pirates voice messages instead of that text, which is not even visible if I am browsing ship cargo menu, trying to drop something.
5. Increase amount of pirates in a wing. Make them come in groups - with wing leader, some companions and one hauler. Make them dangerous, but adjust the danger level as according to my threat level. For instance, make companion amount a factor based on my threat level.
6. If I am trying to kill them, make companions protect the hauler (their cargo) and Wing leader. Wing leader should mainly try to escape with their hauler and would only start shooting if companions are dead and their cargo is in danger. Essentially, turn Pirate wings into boss fights on a MMORPG - I'll need to kill the minions first before I can kill the boss and open the chest.
7. Like everything else in this game, Pirate hunting profit Cr should be equivalent with trade route profits. A quick peek to Inara.cz gets me about 20x more profit from grinding one hop trade route than anything else. Just face it, web pages like Inara cannot be avoided, everyone uses it, so please please please make other professions feel worth of my time!
8. Idea of being interdicted by a wing of pirates, defending myself, first killing companions, seeing Leader and hauler escape, then following them back to hyperspace, interdicting them instead just to finish their leader and reaping the cargo from pirate hauler would be so much more cool than those simple things we have now. However, AI should not be too much harder to code.
Pirate spawning to a mining ring and other local space instances should be improved. If I eject hyperspace to a gas planet ring, system spawns few pirates to have a look at me. I have nothing but limpets (obviously), so they leave me alone. Great!
I mine 3 hours straight, no one disturbs me. Boring!
I log out from the game, leave half-full ship to the belt. I come back later, system triggers some pirate spawns. A bit lazy coding and too obvious!
9. Make pirates more frequent in local instances, as along with other ships. Im on a Pristine reserve, making (supposingly) profitable work in a living galaxy - where the hell are other (NPC) miners, and people protecting them, haulers transferring their found minerals etc? If I am one jump away from a star system with x BILLION people, pristine mining space should be FULL of ships!
10. it takes 4-6 hours to fill T7 cargo with that special quest mineral (or most profitable mineral, just to get SOMETHING from my time spent) so game should tolerate the fact I need to take a break. Logging in and out cannot be a rule for a pirate spawn trigger. At least if they just shoot me to pieces. Only way for me to counter it, is to leave ring if I want to quit the game. This single issue makes mining with anything bigger than T6 awkward.
Pirates, like everything else in this game, should make my time more enjoyable. Now they're either so easy it's silly or so stupid and violent it's a complete motivation killer. Please put some Jack Sparrow to them, a LOT, actually!
I am seriously worried that those upcoming super-intelligent aliens are degraded to idiots who just pop up, blow their alien horn and try to shoot me to bits regardless of what I do.
Ok, i am off to play other games. See you on 2.4.
-Mikko aka CMDR Spintonik, People's Republic of Posse, Miphifa.
There's quite a few things that can be improved with NPC Pirates.
As a general rule, NPC pirates currently are either a complete joke, or complete devastation of day's game enjoyment. Depending what you fly in, and if they get you interdicted or not. Either way, they do not contribute in getting me to play this game more.
I would prefer pirates:
A WAY more dangerous with interdiction, as now you can evade them in T7 with BOTH hands behind your back.
Ones that would pose a REAL danger in dogfight, with some sort of fine tuning based on ship I fly.
But at the same time, they should:
Essentially be after my cargo, not my life. Now they're WAY too trigger happy, shoot to kill and do not stop shooting despite how much you try to surrender.
I would prefer being interdicted and robbed in every third of my trading travels, as long as I would be able to save my ship and life (with some of the cargo left).
I read from forums that latest NPC Pirate AI should stop shooting if you drop cargo, or not shoot at all in first place if you comply to the requests.
For what ever reason, one who just destroyed me, did not do so. However, I assume this was just a glitch.
I was slow in dropping the cargo as I was trying to find right button and calculate, how many lepidolites are needed to get just over the requested 8500Cr. I could not make it in 15 secs. Then I just dropped all of them, worth 40k Cr or something, and he just destroyed me nevertheless.
I could not jump because of cargo scoops and whatnots open and T7 lasts about 20 seconds of laser fire.
Anyway, to concrete suggestions:
1. Up Interdiction skills. A LOT.
2. In everywhere else than total anarchy star system, get pirates to mostly just hatch break, get some cargo and escape, as long as they're not in danger by themselves.
3. Increase time to drop cargo, from current 15 seconds (felt like 5) to at least one minute, as long as I am not trying to escape or shoot.
4. Give pirates voice messages instead of that text, which is not even visible if I am browsing ship cargo menu, trying to drop something.
5. Increase amount of pirates in a wing. Make them come in groups - with wing leader, some companions and one hauler. Make them dangerous, but adjust the danger level as according to my threat level. For instance, make companion amount a factor based on my threat level.
6. If I am trying to kill them, make companions protect the hauler (their cargo) and Wing leader. Wing leader should mainly try to escape with their hauler and would only start shooting if companions are dead and their cargo is in danger. Essentially, turn Pirate wings into boss fights on a MMORPG - I'll need to kill the minions first before I can kill the boss and open the chest.
7. Like everything else in this game, Pirate hunting profit Cr should be equivalent with trade route profits. A quick peek to Inara.cz gets me about 20x more profit from grinding one hop trade route than anything else. Just face it, web pages like Inara cannot be avoided, everyone uses it, so please please please make other professions feel worth of my time!
8. Idea of being interdicted by a wing of pirates, defending myself, first killing companions, seeing Leader and hauler escape, then following them back to hyperspace, interdicting them instead just to finish their leader and reaping the cargo from pirate hauler would be so much more cool than those simple things we have now. However, AI should not be too much harder to code.
Pirate spawning to a mining ring and other local space instances should be improved. If I eject hyperspace to a gas planet ring, system spawns few pirates to have a look at me. I have nothing but limpets (obviously), so they leave me alone. Great!
I mine 3 hours straight, no one disturbs me. Boring!
I log out from the game, leave half-full ship to the belt. I come back later, system triggers some pirate spawns. A bit lazy coding and too obvious!
9. Make pirates more frequent in local instances, as along with other ships. Im on a Pristine reserve, making (supposingly) profitable work in a living galaxy - where the hell are other (NPC) miners, and people protecting them, haulers transferring their found minerals etc? If I am one jump away from a star system with x BILLION people, pristine mining space should be FULL of ships!
10. it takes 4-6 hours to fill T7 cargo with that special quest mineral (or most profitable mineral, just to get SOMETHING from my time spent) so game should tolerate the fact I need to take a break. Logging in and out cannot be a rule for a pirate spawn trigger. At least if they just shoot me to pieces. Only way for me to counter it, is to leave ring if I want to quit the game. This single issue makes mining with anything bigger than T6 awkward.
Pirates, like everything else in this game, should make my time more enjoyable. Now they're either so easy it's silly or so stupid and violent it's a complete motivation killer. Please put some Jack Sparrow to them, a LOT, actually!
I am seriously worried that those upcoming super-intelligent aliens are degraded to idiots who just pop up, blow their alien horn and try to shoot me to bits regardless of what I do.
Ok, i am off to play other games. See you on 2.4.
-Mikko aka CMDR Spintonik, People's Republic of Posse, Miphifa.