I gladly pay them, though. A pirate charged my Ryuujin 5 mil. Did I gripe? A little. Then he made it very clear he was going to lose me the rest of my cargo. I HAVE to pay in order to get the 2 mil profit. At least I get SOMETHING instead of losing EVERYTHING. Trading is just that desperate.
"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THESCIENCEIS LEAKING OUT!"
OH would it be but a beautiful world if that were the case.
Show me one pirate that's in it for the RP, I will show you three that are in it for the money. And LOTs of money.
The sad fact is that many pirates are definitely out for the quick buck. I will admit that there are several well played pirates, out for an RP encounter and a little scratch on the side.
But by-and-large, at least in my timezone, you can easily find at least one pirate asking for 7-10 million at least once a night, and nary a "roleplaying" pirate around.
Here's one pirate in it for the RP. My demands are usually around the 500k to 1 mil range. You know the funny thing though? After meeting and RPing with traders, I usually get around 2 mil. And a lot more fun than blowing ships up.
Well, when I was a really active trader in .84 (more trade ships than anything else) I convoyd a lot. That was also when most of the pirates I encounterd had a GB, and the convoy usualy had even odds of running them off or killing them (of course, that was before transport guns were what they are now, too) thru massed fire.
Personaly, I think we need to move towards making things like trade lanes, for the MOST part, a lot safer. Static non-dockable stations (some actual stations, some using the models of various caps from the house they're in) and the like at semi random spots (or just cruisers even.)
This would make piracy in house space a LOT harder, as there would be fewer places to do it at.
This would make the border worlds the really dangerous places, or flying w/o using trade lanes (lets face it, if the trader is half decent, he can run for 20kish or a tad more, and hug the non-dockable/non-killable static gun platform roughly in the middle of most lanes.
That's one angle of a fix.
The other angle is the players.
Some people pirate for RP. The LR- and various indies (Baltar's ex molly LR indie is a good example of this) are one prime example of this. The problem is those that do it to blow stuff up.
Those people DONT care if they get paid even, they just want to blow people up. The more time/credits the people they blow up, the better in their viewpoint.
Now how do you deal with those people ?
Well you dont get escorts. Not that that is a bad idea, but there AINT ANY 95% of the time. And those that are around tend to be newer players that are not that skilled and are only really best used as scouts (and even that isnt always useful, during the colo silver rush Kusari indie unlawfuls metagamed with miners and haulers and escorts in colo 'joining' convoys and setting up ambushes were the only demand was 'give everything or dai').
So, how do you fix that ? Simple, to quote neo.... 'guns....... lots of guns'.
Give the super transports more guns rather than less to go with that 'extra' armor that even a lone bomber can blow thru like a goverment thru other peoples money.
For the 5k supertransports, if they're unarmed give them nearly the base armor of a BS so they take for freaking ever to kill (for the zoner whale, halfway between a BC and a BS prhaps, it turnes too damned good and is too small to have THAT much armor)
For the rest, think of the shire and how well gunned it is (you NEED bombers for that one, a properly kitted shire can eat a GB for breakfeast)
Give them a limited ammount of GB guns AND the power to fire the heavy GB weps, and in arcs that actualy make sense. For the heavy armed transports up to 5 GB guns tops (2 fore, 2 aft, 1 360). Imagine a shire with a 360 missle, and fore/aft GB razors. along with a mix of transport turrets.
That, or give transports their own missle turret. About the same shield damage as a GB missle, but significantly less hull damage. That would enable the lone transport to quickly strip the shields of a target, and do hull damage.
Also, to use an IRL example...... Q-Ships. Essently armed merchantmen. Take various house corp only ships and give them a limited number of cruiser and/or GB guns in addition to a stronger core and more transport guns. The pirates would be forced to actualy operate in a team, because they would not know if it's just a easy target or not.
' Wrote:*raises hand*
Here's one pirate in it for the RP. My demands are usually around the 500k to 1 mil range. You know the funny thing though? After meeting and RPing with traders, I usually get around 2 mil. And a lot more fun than blowing ships up.
I tend to ask no more than 3mil, sometimes 4-5 if they have ore. This is for the larger transports (3k+ cargo) of course.
However I'm also very easy to talk into lowering my price..... if it's RPd and not just a 'plz tax les' whine.
That sad I Pirate for the fun of it. Fun RP with RPing tarders. Lulzy cries from loltraders that realize that I REALLY DID mean stop. Actualy, the cries of the loltraders can be pretty damned fun, but thats just a ....... perk. Kinda. I view my flying as a pirate as a way of culling the loltraders of their cash before they can buy a cattlebruiser or what not (cause so many of them F1, or get mad and cuss you out.... or both). It's hilarious AND benefits the server. Plus a victim that RPs back can be fun all around (ask Agmen, I made 'em mine me 1k ore once)
(04-01-2010, 12:05 AM)hribek Wrote: Speaking of the calculator, here it is. It's a bit basic and made mainly for gunboats, because those have the highest effective damage output. Bombers are almost equal, but slightly below, fighters do really less damage, compared. Most efficient gunboat weapons are primary guns, sometimes, like for light gunboats with 6 slots, your best choice are basic turrets, since they're most efficient but still drain your powerplant. For heavy gunboats there's some room for guns with higher dps, but if the efficiency gets lowered significantly, you will see the trader running time and distance grow.
Distance between trade lane ring pairs usually ranges between 6000 and 8000m.
For shorter lanes like the one in Magellan, from California gate to Freeport 4, there's only 5 ring pairs, so 4 segments. if you get stopped in the middle, you've got about 15-16K to the nearest docking point (FP4 quickdock or California gate, there's a border station on the other side)
(10-09-2013, 10:51 AM)Knjaz Wrote: Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)
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