Fixing Piracy

[SnakThree]

Piracy is fine as it is. Trade routes need to change to provide a better atmosphere for trader/miner-pirate-lawful interaction cycle.

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[Highland Laddie]

Piracy is fine as it is. Trade routes need to change to provide a better atmosphere for trader/miner-pirate-lawful interaction cycle.

Which, as many might suggest, necessitate a shrinking of the universe overall.

Other options would be:

1. Pirate/Unlawful players should be more aggressive against PoBs that are near or in mining fields.
2. Buff ore or commodity prices more frequently to promote more mining/trading activity (which is the basis on which all non-military activity hinges).

[[FC]Flox]

Why does everyone keep bit***** about sh**???
You want this nerfed...oh look thats to OP...
blah blah blah...Why does the game need to be constantly " "Balanced" "???

Places such as jump gates, which would be guaranteed places to net traders, became heavily defended and destroyed all piracy at gates

Piracy isn't supposed to be easy...
Obviously lawfuls want to protect traders so they're going to have weapons on the gates.

Traders are far too strong against pirates. It's so very easy to just charge straight at a pirate as a trader and easily kill him whilst keeping your hull intact.

OMG OM*G you have got to be kidding me...If you cant take a transporter out with a bomber then you shouldn't be pirating...plain and simple.

Lawfuls fiercely hunt down unlawfuls, allowing them little time to actually do any piracy

Wait what? So you mean lawfuls aren't supposed chase down unlawfuls?

Increased scanner ranges make detecting pirates far too easy. Being able to detect traders yields little benefit for pirates in comparison to traders being able to detect them

Ill give you that one.

[St.Denis]

Well piracy is basically dead. It's really news to any of us, it's been pretty stale for quite some time.
Therefore, how can we solve this game play crippling problem?

I have yet to see that Piracy is dead. I come across plenty of them.

[*]Pirates aren't pirates anymore. A lot of unlawful characters tend to be roaming around for quick pews with lawfuls.

Maybe it is because that is what they want to do. People in other threads keep mentioning that this is a Space Shooting Simulator.

[*]Silent traders, power traders and those traders who go "shoot me, it's cheaper if I die" ruin the immersion in a pirate-trader encounter

You can't do much about Silent Traders and those that say 'shoot me'. Putting Barriers in their way and they will just find a way to go around them. Power Traders? I have never understood this one unless you are using it to describe Barge Jumpers.

[*]Piracy is generally harder. They have less places to pirate, scanners have ridiculous ranges, traders are fiercely armed and lawfuls are much more tenacious. The average lone pirate can't cope.

Life is not meant to be easy, adapt your strategy to suit. Stop wanting everything handed to you on a Silver Platter.

[*]Lack of traders for pirates to pirate, so they prefer to pew lawfuls

You must be looking in the wrong places as I see plenty of Traders when I log in to the Game. As for some pirates they have killed the Golden Goose by permanently sitting in the same area. Even Traders with limited intelligence are going to learn to find another route, or in certain circumstances Miners and Traders avoid certain areas.

[*]Unless they're carrying high value cargo, Traders mostly have zero risk with pirates. As shown by Spazzy some traders even go out of their way to not give any RP to pirates

Touche.

This can also be said about some Pirates with their one liner of '5 mill or die'. Don't try to change things because some Traders don't lie down and roll over everytime you turn up. Because I am sure that the Trader's argument will be don't change anything because of the bad RPing Pirates.

[*]Increased scanner ranges make detecting pirates far too easy. Being able to detect traders yields little benefit for pirates in comparison to traders being able to detect them

I am sure you were one of the people complaining about Battleship Scanners and Traders. Wasn't this part of 4.86?

[*]Traders are far too strong against pirates. It's so very easy to just charge straight at a pirate as a trader and easily kill him whilst keeping your hull intact.

Really? What are you using, a Starflier?

[*]Places such as jump gates, which would be guaranteed places to net traders, became heavily defended and destroyed all piracy at gates

I have seen Pirates sitting on the otherside of the first Trade Lane. They seem to be able to avois getting shot by the Gate and when a Trader comes through the Gate the Trader has no where to go as he can't use the Gate for 30 seconds.

[*]Lawfuls fiercely hunt down unlawfuls, allowing them little time to actually do any piracy

I am sure that that is their job as your job is to Pirate.

So those are the problems above. Disco is plagued by these, and until we can solve them things aren't going to get better.

I don't see a problem other than people trying to change things everytime they want things to be served on a Silver Platter.

Double the buy and sell prices of all commodities
Traders have no risk when trading with some of the cheaper commodities. This prompts them to have the choice of simply 'accepting' giving the pirate a blue and resuming peaceful trading for themselves, where they can then completely avoid the interaction next time. This makes for easy trading for traders and boring/unfair piracy for pirates. It's unbalanced. Therefore, if we double the buy and sell prices of all commodities, traders will think twice before simply accepting death and giving the pirate a blue, or trying to silently cruise off without RPing back. This won't affect profit margins, so the trader can still trade and make the same profit as he did before. However the difference is that he'll suffer a bigger loss if he dies. Ergo, this will introduce more risk into trading.

As explained very nicely above your arithmetic is all wrong.

Revert Scanners back to how they were in 4.86
Seriously, what was even wrong with Scanners back then? Since .87 we've engaged in constant Scanner re-balancing, in order to make them unique. However, we didn't need to fix what wasn't broken, and what we have now is absurd. How on Earth are pirates meant to get piracy targets when they can be seen from 17K away?. 4.86 had balanced Scanner ranges for everything. Sometimes simplicity is simply excellence.

I think I covered this somewhere above.

Nerf the combat effectiveness of larger trading vessels
Ships with equal to or more than 4,200 cargo space are far too effective at self defense. Higher cargo trade ships should focus on armour over guns. A traders intention in an encounter with a pirate shouldn't be to kill the pirate, but to run and get to the nearest base as soon as possible.

Really? A few of the big Trade Ships have limited Guns. If you give them more armour aren't they more likely to reach their destination?

Remove guns from Jump Gates
It was a silly decision to add them initially. Doing so simply killed activity, it didn't stimulate any more activity. It only caused harm to gameplay. You can look back to the older updates and the evidence is there: Jump Gate piracy was a good thing.

Hmm....Silver Platter time again.

Buff Bomber cruise speed to 375m/s (same speed as fighters)
Bombers are the typical ships of pirates. However, currently they can be easily chased down by fighters. Furthermore, a fight which is a bomber vs a fighter will 90% of the time end up with the fighter winning. There's little for a bomber to do when engaged by a fighter, other than attempt to desperately try to flee. However, with the recent update this decreases a bombers survivability even more, meaning that it's much easier for a pirate to die and be booted out of a system for 2 hours, which can effectively ruin his piracy run. If we make the cruise speed of bombers and fighters the same, this will actually give pirates more of a chance to focus on piracy, rather than being gunned down extremely easily in combat.

Really? Bombers have been given this great fire power, if you believe previous threads, so they can take down Capital Ships. Just recently there were threads saying that Snubs should have a faster cruise speed to catch up running Trade Ships. That was implemented. Now you are unhappy that Bombers can't outrun a Fighter, I am sure that Fighters are supposed to be anti-bomber ships. I am afraid in life you can't have your cake and eat it also.

One more thing, don't give me the crap about how pirates should be pirating in groups. Why should they be forced to work with others? Traders can trade alone, Freelancers can hunt alone, Lawfuls can enforce the law alone, Terrorists can commit terrorism alone etc.

I have seen plenty of Pirates pirating alone and they seem to be quite successful. Maybe because they adapt their ways. I am sure that, and I may be wrong, you have been one of the people saying that Traders should work in groups with scouts etc.

Improvise adapt and overcome. All is achievable if a little thought is applied without having the need to nerf everything.

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'I would like to be half as clever as some people like to believe they are'
Life is full of disappointments, it is how we handle them that helps to define us, as a person

[Veygaar]

I agree with the OP 100%.

I've loved the idea of making the cost of cargo higher and the sell higher. Everything should be like the Gallic Artifacts are now.

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Veygaar for Admin Moderator 2013!!!

[Jayce]

Use one of these. Piracy has never been easier.

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[Misfit]

Use one of these. Piracy has never been easier.

I can makez Fatter.Than.Fat.Clydesdale ?

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[Johl45]

Completely Agree with you man.

One Advice from me.

Restrict Transports to mount only upto UAU8 armor so that transports are unable to mount creapy CAU7's or CAU8's and get to nearest station before bomber can even take it down or get backup from lawfuls.

[Jayce]

Completely Agree with you man.

One Advice from me.

Restrict Transports to mount only upto UAU8 armor so that transports are unable to mount creapy CAU7's or CAU8's and get to nearest station before bomber can even take it down or get backup from lawfuls.

Aha, so because you're too bad to kill a Transport, you should cripple us?

I can kill a CAU8 Bison in 30k with my Percheron. You're just pirating in the wrong spots, with the wrong ships.

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[SnakThree]

Completely Agree with you man.

One Advice from me.

Restrict Transports to mount only upto UAU8 armor so that transports are unable to mount creapy CAU7's or CAU8's and get to nearest station before bomber can even take it down or get backup from lawfuls.

If transports cannot equip CAU armors, which they have to earn money for by using said trade ship, they will be rarer in space. So far CAU armors on transports are rare.

And if you would want to force CAU off the transports, why not force AU8 on them by default then? Because if CAU armored trade ships are too hard, then unarmored ones are too easy.

To sum it up, your idea is bad and counter-productive.

What is the most fun for me in piracy is that it now is challenging and keeps a pirate concentrated and this is excellent. You cannot be always the victor as that creates no motivation for traders to continue on such path.

The piracy is damn good now. The era of 4.85 is long past, when you could destroy trade ships in less than 20k without risking anything yourself.

Ach, sweet memories of Hackers tormenting my IC ship and me unable to do anything about, being absolutely helpless and complying to all of their demands. Empowering trade ships was a good decision.

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