Well I try to pick my targets, but yeah about that ratio. Lots of rich noobs about with unshielded stock condas. To be honest I don't have an issue with experienced cmndrs being hard to pirate, that's (mostly) fair enough. My real issue (aside from clogging which shows no signs of being addressed) is with comms being too easy to miss
PvP The problem with piracy
- Thread starter Thebooglar
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I've never encountered a genuine pirate but have encountered lots of gankers. How does a ganking build differ from any other? Obviously the FSD Interdictor and I'm presuming something to stop the victim running away? Otherwise just a regular PvP build? With SLF in the form of two buddies in their gank-mobiles?
A manifest scanner, collector limpets, hatchbreaker limpets and a cargo hold are on my pirate ship. A PvP build will have none of that, it will probably have HRPs or MRPs instead
Exactly.
Any transport with a small investment in defensive mods, a modicum of understanding of the distributor, and an ability to do more than fly in a straight line for 45 seconds or so is just gonna walk and there are pretty much two things a pirate can do to compensate for that: jack and #$&@.
The more powerful/durable/survivable ships become the less useful interactions there are to have in that window before highwake occurs, and that window is flippin' tiny compared to the game's exceedingly long TTK's (when your target is attempting to do more than their best impression of a drone target, anyway).
It's worthwhile to have FSD scramblers as well, but you're damn right they won't. They'll also have an extra shield booster, or a PDS, or heatsink launcher, or chaff launcher in place of the scanner and another pair of HRP's and a second MRP in place of the internals. If they're not doing the interdicting, that'll get dropped for more armor too.
Yeah, I have never even lost shields in a fight that I didn't want to be in. It's just too easy to walk away
Direct CMDR comms has actually become less distinguishable. It used to be bright yellow, and more lines of text used to fit in the chat window, which made direct comms hard to miss.
Anyway, I found a few examples of old encounters with pirates, or probable pirates...not the ones I was looking for, but might be interesting none the less.
These are from 1.2.x:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=512bytyifhw
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M7ZmJ6UEng
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUqeYCnKbp4
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkTX769A5HI
And these two are from 1.04:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_7yUpMB3Zo
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jitSaQbpXTs
Those are all more than five years old. I'll try to find some other examples when I can spare the time. In any case, escape has generally become easier, and the time it takes to even deliver a macro demand is usually enough to ensure the target is gone before they have opportunity to comply. That's a big reason why piracy has become significantly more violent...you have about eight seconds to cripple a ship or it's gone...there is almost no way to do this against anything but soft targets while you have overwhelming firepower.
Also, a much more recent, but much less representative example. If I thought there was an actual threat here, I would have just left, and that ~6k hull corvette with buttloads of countermeasures and well protected, high integrity, internals will escape, probably with all of it's cargo, unless you packhound the cargo hatch from multiple directions during an FSD reboot (I do know how to roll a ship, to protect the soft bits and point PDTs in the right direction):
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hckjcsQ1SDM
Anyway, I found a few examples of old encounters with pirates, or probable pirates...not the ones I was looking for, but might be interesting none the less.
These are from 1.2.x:
And these two are from 1.04:
Those are all more than five years old. I'll try to find some other examples when I can spare the time. In any case, escape has generally become easier, and the time it takes to even deliver a macro demand is usually enough to ensure the target is gone before they have opportunity to comply. That's a big reason why piracy has become significantly more violent...you have about eight seconds to cripple a ship or it's gone...there is almost no way to do this against anything but soft targets while you have overwhelming firepower.
Also, a much more recent, but much less representative example. If I thought there was an actual threat here, I would have just left, and that ~6k hull corvette with buttloads of countermeasures and well protected, high integrity, internals will escape, probably with all of it's cargo, unless you packhound the cargo hatch from multiple directions during an FSD reboot (I do know how to roll a ship, to protect the soft bits and point PDTs in the right direction):
For piracy of the sort Elite Dangerous "wants" to work, it'd need robbing a ship to be much much easier than killing it, as opposed to requiring a lot of extra equipment, a finely-tuned attack, and a target with no idea what they're doing.
Far easier would be to just go back to the Elite/FE2/FFE piracy - you blow up a ship, you get about 10% of its cargo surviving the blast and ready to pick up. You don't want your cargo stolen? Don't get blown up. You don't want blowing up? Dump 10% up front and run so they don't have to scoop while under police fire. Hatchbreakers and cargo hatch malfunctions would still have a place - megaship/installation heists, for example - but wouldn't be the key thing.
Far easier would be to just go back to the Elite/FE2/FFE piracy - you blow up a ship, you get about 10% of its cargo surviving the blast and ready to pick up. You don't want your cargo stolen? Don't get blown up. You don't want blowing up? Dump 10% up front and run so they don't have to scoop while under police fire. Hatchbreakers and cargo hatch malfunctions would still have a place - megaship/installation heists, for example - but wouldn't be the key thing.
Why collect 10 percent under police fire if it's easier to follow you?
Why ask for 10 percent if it's easier to just kill and take 10 ?
In this scenario the pirate wouldn't ask beyond the implicit hostility of the interdiction, they'd just open fire like they did in Elite/FE2/FFE. The ease would be:
- easiest: trader immediately dumps lots (probably >10%) of cargo as soon as they drop to normal space, and runs away while you're picking it up - opening fire is then a bounty offence rather than just the fine for interdiction, and if the pirate follows the trader to kill them for the 10%, the trader can at least probably drag the battle out of sensor range of the first set of cargo. Meanwhile the trader should be able to get far enough away from the pirate while they scoop up to get to the station before being interdicted again.
- easy for some targets: pirate destroys trader and gets 10%
- still incredibly difficult: pirate carefully disables trader and hatchbreaks them for 100%
The NPC pirates already basically act like it works this way - they have hatchbreakers, but they rarely bother to actually use them.
Yeah, if I can get a small amount without using a hatchbreaker or opening fire I'll absolutely take that since it makes it a lot easier to stay in the system if I don't have a bounty on my head.
I can hardly imagine piracy on the Frontier, circling the ship with a 20 mega watt laser, that's all.
I didn't get it at all at the FFE with his computer battle.
For that, I remember Elite One well. It was called milking Python.
You attach yourself behind Python, you dig him with a laser, he dumps the load and you pick him up... You kill him when the load's over.
I'll give you an example.
This is my PvP phantom. There's nothing on it other than weapons, armor, shields and a bit of chaff and is built to the absolute maximum stats for the phantom (ish).
Coriolis EDCD Edition
A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io
I also have collector limpets to pick up my loot, a hatch breaker for when my demands aren't met as well as cargo space.
Coriolis EDCD Edition
A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io
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Is there a difference for a gank build? So drawing a difference between not killing someone to get their stuff to actively trying to kill them?
If you are ganking I reckon you want a speedy kill above anything? Those that I've met seem to favour beams to drop shields fast? I'm guessing pirates like rails or FSD disruptor like you have on your build?
Funny enough I met a pirate today, he wanted me to sing him songs, I declined so we had a duel which went on for ages, he was in a hull tank t7 with Prismatic and I had my PA/ burst lasers. He eventually won but I had lots of practice landing hits with my PA! If I landed with more regularity I would have broken his shields.
It was quite a good t7 build actually, I think he had a stack of shield banks, shame I had no rails equipped! That would have really helped! Or phasing, with those SCB's the hull can't have been all that. And this fight was way too long!
Just waiting for my pacifiers on Thursday. I'm thinking they might work really nicely on an FAS with the top and bottom class 3 hardpoints?
If you are ganking I reckon you want a speedy kill above anything? Those that I've met seem to favour beams to drop shields fast? I'm guessing pirates like rails or FSD disruptor like you have on your build?
Funny enough I met a pirate today, he wanted me to sing him songs, I declined so we had a duel which went on for ages, he was in a hull tank t7 with Prismatic and I had my PA/ burst lasers. He eventually won but I had lots of practice landing hits with my PA! If I landed with more regularity I would have broken his shields.
It was quite a good t7 build actually, I think he had a stack of shield banks, shame I had no rails equipped! That would have really helped! Or phasing, with those SCB's the hull can't have been all that. And this fight was way too long!
Just waiting for my pacifiers on Thursday. I'm thinking they might work really nicely on an FAS with the top and bottom class 3 hardpoints?
Frags are almost universally the fastest, they just have issues against agile targets or where the target is durable enough to make frag ammo pools problematic...this is probably not most prospective piracy targets or gank victims.
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No, not really. Gank builds are just PvP builds. Depending on how serious the ganker is about making sure he kills his victims, sometimes they'll sacrifice a medium hardpoint for a Grom bomb. That's why gankers are usually the best guys to PvP against when you're ready to try it out or test a new ship or something. When I'm bored I'll go to ganking hotspots to pick fights with other gankers.
If you're doing wing PvP battles in San Tu for example, there are some minor differences in ship builds though. We will usually swap out our interdictors for a hull reinforcement and our 5A FSD's for like a 2D or something for less weight.
This is my Chieftain I use for flyin around picking fights... and ganking
when I'm not in San TuCoriolis EDCD Edition
A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io
Coriolis EDCD Edition
A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous
coriolis.io
Also, pacifiers are probably my favorite weapon in Elite and there's so many ships that can really utilize them well. I have 3 of em on my Krait II that are deviating but I really don't like the K II. I Have a Vulture with 2 of them that I've actually heard a couple people say they won't fight against it anymore because it's a bit absurd lol. But my favorite ship to use pacifiers on, by far, is the Anaconda. FOUR pacifiers on that bad boy and it just eats everything except cutters for dinner. The first time I fought a Vette with my 4 paci Conda my jaw actually dropped at the amount of DPS I was doing. I think you're gonna love pacifiers. They're so awesome.
By the way, the T7 can get something like 6500 armor with all HRP's and two MRP's.
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Depends on what you're flying, who you're ganking, and how long you plan to stick out a fight.
Shotguns when you can run down your target are just about always the best option. PA's of course.
I generally use a boatload of multicannons and a couple small seekers on the Challenger. If the multicannons are struggling to shred the target's shields I bail 'cause it probably means I'm gonna be in a fight and not a one-sided massacare and that's something that ship config just ain't setup to handle or the target has heavily engineered defenses and, tbh, taking 5-10 minutes to chew through them if I'm likely to succeed is simply far less enjoyable than watching paint dry. If I am able to shred their shields in a hurry, I'll pop their drives with the missiles then circle and taunt them until they self-destruct, usually helpfully pointing out that there's no way for them to get their ship back online and the only options are to forever drift there or destroy themselves.*
If I see the same potato repeatedly, such as a naked and armorless Type-7 I picked off one night, I'll disable them a second time, explain to them why their setup makes them easy meat, and then explain how reboot works as I leave. Sometimes.
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@Sir Ganksalot I've bookmarked those builds, I've got all the bits necessary back in Colonia, will try it out against @Bigmaec!
Shhh, don't tell him!
Shhh, don't tell him!
@Sir Ganksalot ill be around Shin all this week after 8pm UK time, I think that's about 4pm Eastern in the US? If that works for you let me know and I'd love to see how quick you wreck my ships!
It's strange when I meet gankers, they tend to attack at least three.
Those who intercept on one seems not similar to gankers as ask about a duel, ask to disconnect the message on murder and other and always put me in difficult position
As to me it is very difficult to print from a game-pad.