Interesting question, one I've mulled over now and then. I reckoned it was a bad idea on these counts:
1) At the moment, coming from Liberty experience, gunboat spam is a concern due to pirates enjoying a vessel they can bring in packs of four that can deal handily with virtually any situation without much fuss. They can pirate with them, take down lawfuls with them and then complain about incoming cruisers with them. Most situations can be handled with a good combination of dragonfly missiles and conventional turrets.
If one could pirate in a cruiser, those four gunboats would become four cruisers overnight. If you could pirate in a battleship, you can bet a silver penny that one of those cruisers would become a battleship. If you've ever had an Osiris fire on your Whale you know that you're in six kinds of trouble with one of those things on your six, good luck thrusting out of range before you're eating respawn button.
2) Escalation of force/stats. Most transports are fodder before a gunboat. 90% of the time it comes down to being able to survive long enough to reach safe harbor or going down in flames/payoff. I ran with a C-trans for a while that did rather well against some of the weaker gunboats out there, but was six kinds of fat target for bombers. If I was to reasonably expect to come up against honest ships of war, I would expect to be provided with a fighting chance against them, while would further obsolete the roles of smaller craft in combat/piracy deployments.
Those are my practical concerns in reply to the idea of anything larger than a gunboat being allowed to practice piracy.
Edit: In reply to the ease of pirating in a gunboat: I did it for a day, I felt dirty afterwards.
In reply to escorts: Escorts are awesome, the IND employs them to great effect. Here's the secret: They fly -ahead- of whomever they're protecting. The badden is either distracted by your presence or sufficiently dis-engaged from the act of maintaining piracy vigil to allow the trader/convoy in question to pass on by.
A gunboat sitting there with a bomber escort and a transport right in front of him is going to, simply put, make you pay for snubbing him like as not. Lawlz on you if your escort is a VHF.
Kambei, all of your reasons can just as easily be applied to pirates and the military, and the police, and you're -only- applying them to traders, and, besides, its a tangential argument.
Tarzuras...I think the nations are already in a state of full out war with the pirates...And the thing about Law is, whenever there's a vaccume, the strongest person is the Law, and pirates, they have the option of blowing you up to get at your cargo (which, actually, some do, but, see, its against the rules to kill the trader without giving the trader the chance to capitulate and survive, again, a fairplay thing, and not an RP thing.) Or demand your money, and since, by being the strongest people, they've sacrificed cargohauling capabilities, they find its more profitable to demand protection money(like any 'legitimate' government does, actually).
As for the Military transports, etc, discussion, I'd argue that the Transports actually cost more in most cases than gunboats do. The fact that they earn cash here is irrelevant. They cost more than gunboats, but surely a big empty space and an engine system isn't more expensive than sophisticated weaponry? My reasoning, then, is that they cost more because they're designed to be as strong and safe and secure as possible. The Atrain costs 110 million credits, while the largest gunboat costs under 30.
Transports in Freelancer cannot be compared to Airplanes or ships, nor can any other ship. They are their own objects, and much closer to wooden sailing ships than today's ships in any case.
As for the 'Escorts' Argument, I say, again, that every single group benifits from having either buddies or hired hands around, and as thus, it can't be used in a comparison, unless you assume both sides have it.
' Wrote:I also would like to add that in a real universe in any area with a consistent lack of government or law enforcement pirates wouldn't just tax you, they'd blow the $%!^ out of you, so try and be a little happy about that.
Contemporary and historical evidence suggests to the contrary.
Wow, I feel smote, and for the most part rightfully so. Regardless, to me it feels like we're losing focus a little bit here. Unselie, your main point is you think capital ships should be allowed to pirate? If so how do you relate to dusty's escalation argument?
Besides that I have a few other points:
I was aware of the no kill b4 extort rule and thank goodness it's there. If it wasn't it would matter a whole lot less that pirates have less hauling capability cause then they would just have P-Trains sitting right next to their gunboats (or what have you) ready to eat up goods.
As for the cost, yeah, doesn't really make RP sense, just needed for balance.
In regards to escorts if your un-happy with needing one I don't think there's much to do about that. For balance and RP reasons you dont want people flying around in a bunch of invincible money making machines (which liners are getting close to if i'm not mistaken, maybe you should buy one of those Unselie ;-) ) Although I suppose you dont want GB's to become the same thing.... shoot I just partially defeated my own argument. Regardless there is an RP way to stop it which is to band together and hire escort pilots into your faction, offer an incentive like a free ship, it's how my faction recruits transport pilots. This will not only help counter pirates directly but also help reduce the number of players who are pirates. If you want to be an independent trader well then you'll be at a disadvantage, just like most real independent traders, which is where smuggling might come in.
Finally I would like to say that an all out war cannot happen in Freelancer. In an all out war there is an approximate line of scrimmage that is not static. First of all there aren't enough players consistently online to maintain battle lines and they're probably a little too divided among the many factions. Secondly in a real all out war the line moves, territory is lost and gained, installations are built and destroyed. New facilities change the line. Here pirates can't be driven back or even held back, there just aren't enough players to cover the vast amount of space in the game that can't be defended by anything else (like a new installation or the NPC's around it).
Alright, I think that's it, I'm curious to hear what you all I have to think (or if you get bored of this discussion).
I'm not unhappy with needing one so much as I am with the suggestion that one group of players should need them, while another should not...And, anyway, I have some of the superhuge ships. Right now, I have a Ctrans, a Royal liner, a Pirate Train, Two Advanced Trains, a Camara, an Armoured transport, and a Firefly. In the past, I've had a Prison liner, a Lux liner, an Ltrain and a Train, Transport, Large transport, Percheron, Rhino, Bumblebee, Kusari Liner, Dromedary, the Heavy lifter, and, very briefly, The Mammoth.
Anyway, the best moneymaking machines are rather more vulnerable than the best fighting transports, and I'm not advocating that gunboats lose the right to pirate, or that Cruisers and Battleships gain it, merely pointing out a discrepancy to spark a discussion.
I don't think, either, that the prices are there just for balance, and I'm really not sure what, exactly, they're balancing. The time it takes to get the biggest transport? I think, to some extent, they do make sense in RP. IT does take some manner of sophistication to provide an enormous cargohold along with 140000 armour and unlimited powersupply for 6 turrets, as well as decent turning (the Atrain costs 110 million), and I can imagine it would be a great deal less expensive if you put the same thrusters on a similarly sized cargohold (4700) with only about half the armour(75000) and one small turret. (Whale costs 65 million.) The same thrust array can provide the manuverability for the lighter craft, and the extra 45 million? Armour and powerplant, weapons systems.
Unselie - Well you are definitely far more experienced with ships than I. I just like trying to reach a consensus and take action myself but I like arguing (discussing, whatever) as well, something I would guess you are familiar with. And promoting discussion definitely helps bring out new information which means im gonna stop talking on this thread for a while cause i think i've said everything useful I have to say on the topic for now. I look forward to future discussions with you though.
Sindroms - as for the OC capital ship scenario it's just as likely they'll go lawful or that the pirate will use the money he's earned to play a lawful character. At least it should be just as likely. The goal is for the server to find a natural balance I think and from my limited experience on the server it seems like that's happened.
you dont need an adv train doing the diamond run to buy a sabre or a liberator.
People powertrade only for capital ships, a few, to rp. Mostly its caps and caps. Think about this, my moto is "Save your fighters from BCs, pirate a trader today"
Last thing i want to feel is, after blowing up a trader for opening fire on my greyhound without a word, after a few moments, a police taged Albatross comes in and opens fire.
Trading=caps.
and while that trader may be a future OC dessie, it may as well be a BHG BC or something else that will be camping Malta or Manhattan docks.
The question isn't what the player will eventually do what the credits earned, it's what works for a situation of mutual good times within the game environment.
The biggest thing for me reading through all the arguments is survivability.
Disregarding escorts, a 1v1 scenario starts. The "fighting Transports" as they are called (Ctrans, Liners, PTrain, and lesser the ATrain) all stand a reasonable chance at surviving a fight against a VHF, Bomber, or Gunboat...1v1. The less-armed Transports (I fly a Whale myself) are pay or pray, but that's the design. You don't fly a 1-gun wonder like the Whale for it's combat survivability, but you DO use that reason to fly a Liner.
Now, look at the scenario with a Cruiser. Most of these Combat Transports are now pretty much toast. There is a hugely-reduced chance of survivability. It's not impossible, but the chance of escaping a Cruiser, properly equipped, is very little (I believe all cruisers mount a CD?).
While yes, GB and Cruisers have the same thrust speeds, etc, the GB has about 1/2 or less hull-strength, and 6 turrets (max) to shell out the damage, while Cruisers are roughly on par hull-wise, 2.5x the shielding, 8+ turrets that dish out a lot more damage than the GB turrets, and you've pretty much got your answer, at least to me.
It all comes down to survivability of the encounter. Dusty's right in the scenario he posed, and I'm pretty sure there'd be more pirate cruisers and battleboats than BHG caps if this rule was disregarded.
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