New pirate scanner idea

[Wraga]

Give pirates the same chance to see traders like they got.

Its not about pixel money, its about balance and interactions.

If we speak about balance, that is a little bit unfair when traders buy their battleships than start shooting on those pirates who had no chance to catch them due of this situation about bs scanners.

I had a spyglass on my pirate char, than it went poof due of changes. So at the moment I have -100 millions ( I had to sell it for cheap since its a crap now) and a character what has far smaller scanner range than traders.

So summary I support the idea.

Give the same scanners for the pirates.

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[Troyan12345]

The best solution has always been:

> Rename the BS-scanner to "Extreme long range scanner"
> Enable it to be mounted by all classes (it's just an ultra-good high-tech scanner - npnp)
> Reduce scanner range to 18k
> keep the huge price tag

=> equal chances for everybody who wants to pay for that bit of advantage
=> no favouring of large transports that need no guns anyway
=> no favouring of 75 % nerfed pirate GB pirates over pure-tech GBs who would not take such a scanner
=> no disadvantage for snub pirates (snubs are disadvantaged a lot!)
=> enables LF scouts with high speed and enhanced scanner range
=> money sink open for every character (Disco needs ways to get rid of money!)

Give it to me !

[Apollon]

Agreed, BS scanners for traders kills the piracy and player-player unlawful interactions, Pirates needs a good scanner, to ninja traders with, the only way to make this work is to Nerf it with ID as it works with Pirate/Unlawful IDs only, great idea, It would bring back balance to game play between Lawful - Unlawful interaction.

[Redon]

Then you are a horrible player and should just leave without dragging the rest of us down with you.

except for the whiny babies that could only drag down others

Despite all of the problems disco's suffered from in the last few weeks people are still determined to drive it into the ground.

Are you done? Good. Let's have a little recap of recent events from someone else's perspective.

• Traders spend years on disco without 25K scanners. Trading is fun. Pirating is fun. Everyone is happy.
  
• 25K scanners are introduced in a beta. Because of game limitations, they're mountable on all ships. Everyone and their dog grabs the opportunity by the neck and slaps one of these wonder scanners on their transport, fighter and toaster so they will never have to meet another pirate again.
  
• Congratulations! Some players now feel entitled to their transport battleship scanner because they spent credits on it. They will cry even about a 75% nerf. It later becomes apparent that the scanners are here to stay.
  
• Players ask for their removal. Four months pass, nothing changes. Players start walking away.

Therefore, players asking for the removal of BS scanners are ruining the community! Mhm, seems right to me.

Note that I'm not blaming the decline in players directly on the scanners, I'm pointing out that stating the opposite, that removing BS scanners would in any way harm this community, is ludicrous.

People around here think that the number of posts they have make them better or more 'right'.

These guys just think that their amount of posts indicates that they know what they're talking about.

Where do you get this silly idea from? Nobody cares how many posts you have. They care about how well-thought-out and contributive your posts sound.
Please stop trying to turn this into a personal issue, or to dismiss other opinions by playing a victim of 'vet discrimination'.

Although I now realize I'm probably dealing with a bunch of kids that don't even actually care about balance.

Read above. Your personal attacks aren't really helping your credibility. Keep them out of the discussion.

In fact, let me suggest this: Try to come up with a post arguing your point of view that contains none of the following:

• Everyone who disagrees with me is a whiner.
  
• Everyone who disagrees with me just does so because I have less posts.
  
• Everyone who thinks BS scanners are op simply needs to get good.
  
• Everyone who complains about them is just mad that they lost.
  

Instead, name a single positive thing that the introduction of transport battleship scanners have brought to this server, I'm genuinely curious.

---

Who are you to say what was ever supposed to be or not though? Letting people use BS scanners the way they have was one hell of an oversight on the part of the devs and admins for a very long time in that case. Actually it was no oversight, its that there was no big problem with the way it was,

Leaving your mid-paragraph 180 aside, I put it in such an absolute way because I was under the impression it was common sense that BS scanners on transports were a stupid idea. Apparently it is not. There is a big problem with the way it is now. It's the fact that for a laughable 250 million credits, any competent trader can buy a life-time insurance against interactions with pirates.

Save for a few rare unlucky exceptions, there is no way anyone in a BS scanner transport who knows what they are doing will ever end up getting blown up by a pirate.

See a red signal on your scanner? No problem, just drop out of the nearest lane ring and take it back to the station you came from, chances are the pirate didn't even see you anyway! But maybe he does notice, comes after you, and somehow manages to cut you off! Oh dear, you are now about 25K from the nearest station, there's no way you'll ever make it back alive, especially not with the buff on transport guns!

I think ALL of these 'many' traders using what's allowed ( and accepting the nerf) that are 'ruining' disco by doing so should just leave if they remove BS scanners for traders. I know I will. Then these bomber babies will have lots to pirate.

But most don't seem to be able to get better as players, and support removing all of the good and fun things about disco just to give themselves advantages over others that have worked for those advantages.

I'm not sure if you realize, but 25K scanners haven't been a thing for very long. Things always worked perfectly fine without them. Solo pirates stood a reasonable chance against solo traders. Nobody said "this mod sucks because I can't see if there's a pirate down this lane before I enter it".

To say traders would leave because they can no longer mount 25K scanners on their trade ships is ridiculous. They're broken, they should have never existed, and the fact that they do now is a very bad reason to tolerate them any longer.

Also, try to avoid making the assumption that everyone who opposes BS scanners is just a butt-hurt pirate who wants to make their own life easier. I've been a trader for a long time, and pirates were perfectly fine until transports were buffed to the point where they have more damage output than a bomber and see twice as far as one.

EDIT: Besides, this really reeks of conspiracy. You do realize that even a trader with a 16k ranged scanner can still hire a scout and still manage to avoid you bomber squads steaking out the lane/gate? Hiring one scout can make all of these proposed changes totally useless and you'll be back to square one. *facepalm*

Conspiracy!!1 Facepalm right back at you. That's precisely the point. That's what scouts are for. This encourages player interaction. Whether it be between the traders and the scouts, or the scouts and the pirates they run into.
The ability to mount a BS scanner on a transport makes all this useless, the trader no longer needs the scout to look down the lane, and the pirate will no longer even get a scout coming his way, because the transport captain decides to completely skip the interaction and take his psychic powers down another lane instead.

I think they're done changing the scanners for a while to appease the minority.

I'm pretty sure that, the way it's looking right now, you're representing the minority in this thread.

Even when some are using BS scanners, you can still catch many IF YOU ARE TRYING and playing the game, instead of sitting by a gate 'RP'ing'. If you want to succeed in piracy, worry less about your RP and more about your ability to pirate.

I'm honestly not sure if this statement is even worth responding to. Are you trolling? You realize this is an RP server, correct?

---

Since I see the rest of your posts as, to put it bluntly, a repeating mush of the following few points, I'll save myself the trouble and respond to these instead:

Traders still get pirated and killed, therefore BS scanner transports are balanced.

Just because there's ways to put up with the situation does not make it fun or balanced. Just because you managed to pirate a trader who messed up or didn't know what he was doing doesn't mean it's not a problem. Does that make sense?

I still kill traders even in my transport, so bomber pilots need to stop crying.

Congratulations. So you can 'put up with a nerf' after transport guns were buffed more than your nerf will ever cost you. Do you want to push all snub pirates towards flying transports because that's the only way they can keep up? Is that your idea of variety, fun and balance?

Pirates in transports can have BS scanners too, why are you complaining?

One unbalanced piece of equipment is not a justification for another one. I don't want both parties to have high range scanners, I want neither to have them. They don't need them, and it harms trader/pirate gameplay. What sense does it make for a trade vessel to have scanner equipment that can keep up with that of a battleship?

On top of that, range does not counter range in the case of piracy, as I have said before. If both trader and pirate spend 250 million on a scanner, it'd make sense for their mutual advantages to cancel out, correct? They don't. the trader still gets the ability to move an engagement from a gate to the middle of the lane, and significantly improve his chance of survival that way.

A pirate will never gain as much from a BS scanner as a trader will. And then there's the fact that pirates need to rely on their firepower, while many traders don't.

People really spent a lot of cash on this scanner so it would be unfair to take them away.

Stop pretending as though 250 millions are such a big deal. Spending pixel money on something does not justify the existence of unbalanced gear. By the way, how do you justify fighter pilots losing their BS scanners? It was kind of silly of them to expect to keep a battleship scanner on a fighter, right? That's the way I think about transports, too.

Battleship scanners on transports are good and fun because I say they are, and people who would remove them hate fun.

I'm not convinced.

---

I proposed a way that would make it fair, keep the money sink and open it to more people without making it op.

But they are overpowered. Anything that allows traders to look down all the way to the other end of a lane without even lifting a finger is overpowered.
If you justify their existence with their price tag, you may as well start selling admin cannons and tell people they're balanced because they come at a billion credits a piece.

Yes. Because it is just a stupid name.
A name plus infocard can be fixed incredibly easily.

I find it totally stupid to say: "It is called BS-Scanner, so it can only be mounted on BS".

The name is supposed to give you a hint about its original use, and the fact that the beta let you play around with it in a silly way does not change that.

Of course it's "just an infocard", but what else is left of a piece of equipment if you remove the infocard? Just numbers.

If I had to take a bet, I would guess that the day the new scanners were introduced, the dev team did not envision fighters, freighters and transports flying around with 25K scanning equipment that had always been roleplayed as a battleship scanner.

[Jack_Henderson]

Sorry to say... but many in here are so damn narrow-minded!

We finally managed to break one of the problems that scanners did not work. It was coded and it works now.

And then... we just stick that nice, nifty little new tool... on 1 % of the ships.

My suggestion is not OP.
I think, no one has even read it.

The best solution has always been:

> Rename the BS-scanner to "Extreme long range scanner"
> Enable it to be mounted by all classes (it's just an ultra-good high-tech scanner - npnp)
> Reduce scanner range to 18k
> keep the huge price tag

=> equal chances for everybody who wants to pay for that bit of advantage
=> no favouring of large transports that need no guns anyway
=> no favouring of 75 % nerfed pirate GB pirates over pure-tech GBs who would not take such a scanner
=> no disadvantage for snub pirates (snubs are disadvantaged a lot!)
=> enables LF scouts with high speed and enhanced scanner range
=> money sink open for every character (Disco needs ways to get rid of money!)

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+ IMG| IS RECRUITING: Click to find out more!

[Veygaar]

I feel like shorter range is better across the board. It prevents the common: "Red on radar, turn and cruise to edge of system"

Which happens even at 15k scanner range. I'd get that back as the limit personally.

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Veygaar for Admin Moderator 2013!!!

[Binski]

I've played since early 2012 and the BS scanner was always mountable on anything since as long as I've been on here. Call it a beta, if its like this way most of the time, its not a beta anymore. Its just the game. Beta's don't go on for years at a time.

I made no personal attacks on anyone in particular. They were mere generalizations based on my observations and I know I'm not the only one that sees that happen quite often.

A BS scanner on a trader does not guarantee they will 100% of the time evade pirates. It gives them an advantage that can easily be worked against in game without needing to change the current set up.

25k is not as ridiculous as so many of you seem to think it is. At cruise speed, two ships moving directly towards each other will close in within a minute. If both had the same 25k range, the odds of managing to keep up with the evading ship by moving in the same direction are as even as going the wrong way. The gap can be closed pretty quick.

Give the same scanners for the pirates.

Ironically, before the nerf, the playing field was equal to everyone, which is why i never understood why people wouldn't just mount one themselves instead of having the high and mighty pretentious sentiment that it 'doesn't make sense' like they are telepathically linked to the game somehow.

Everyone who disagrees with me is a whiner.
Everyone who disagrees with me just does so because I have less posts.
Everyone who thinks BS scanners are op simply needs to get good.
Everyone who complains about them is just mad that they lost.

No, it is very much so whining by people that feel they don't win often enough when they fly around with duel novas looking for a big fat slow transport to grill.

Snub piracy is NOT in ANY WAY, SHAPE, or FORM skewered in favor of bombers. Transports can thrust away mid lane to the nearest base. They can cruise away with the help of BS scanners and the pirate bombers are too slow to catch up.

Whoever thinks that transports can just fly away from bombers in just insane. So you think a transport that runs into a bomber mid lane will just 'cruise away to the nearest base with the help of BS scanners, and that somehow the bomber will not destroy that transport regardless of its scanner, and most certainly catch up to any transport.

Actually, speaking from my own personal experience, using a BS scanner has ensured I have had more player interactions. I've helped others track evading ships while in a group to help the group pursue the other ship.

Also it has made sure I can catch up to other ships in pursuit of piracy by knowing where they before they know I'm there. It works to keep my numbers up and I can prove that. All of this over some transports that can ditch the lane nice and early. It just seems excessive, and hardly as op as its made out to be.

Yes, as a trader, this scanner would be used to successfully evade possible pirates when cruising or using the lanes. Again, nothing a scout won't achieve as well, but they aren't always available now are they? And being a little pro-active rather than camping can compensate for ships dropping from the lane at a safe distance.

And then as well it gets suggested to give snubs a magical long range scanner which would also be op. Battleship scanners being OP because of their name and infocard are no less op than a CAU8 on a gunboat. It was practical to have a long range scanner for everyone, which kept the playing field level, just like how the CAU's are able to be used by any ship with the cargo space. Can't use a CAU8 on a bomber? Of course not. So same with the BS scanners now? Ok, thats not that crazy. Everything transport/gunboat up seems reasonable with the new nerf system.

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[Redon]

I've played since early 2012 and the BS scanner was always mountable on anything since as long as I've been on here. Call it a beta, if its like this way most of the time, its not a beta anymore. Its just the game. Beta's don't go on for years at a time.

Except it didn't have increased range and nobody cared because it was just an overpriced prestige gimmick with no advantage at all.

The scanners with new stats were added during the 4.87 beta.

[St.Denis]

What is the ratio of Traders using Battleship Scanners vs the Traders not using them? In my experience most Traders do not use BS Scanners. I can almost guarantee the figure comes out heavily in favour of the ones not using.

I have plenty of Traders and only 1 of them, a Liner, uses a BS Scanner. The reason this Liner uses a BS Scanner because it travels through very dangerous Territory and carries Marines to the War Front. Hence there is an RP reason for this.

I have seen recently quite a few threads asking for Traders to be nerfed in one way or another. Reduce their cruise speed when they are not on Trade Lanes was one of these. Trust me, Ladies and Gents, Traders can and will avoid Pirates if they want too. It doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to work out if there are Pirates around when you see Death Messages with the same Name attached to them. Or even if it is the same Name sat in the same system(s) hour after hour, night after night. Traders soon learn who to avoid and if they want they will drop off the TLs and just dive under or over even if you reduce their Cruise Speed.

I have also seen where a Trader has 1 or 2 Escorts and have come across a Pirate who decides to pirate the Trader. Some of these 'Pirates' turn out to very good PvPers, in bombers, and so they ignore the 'incompetent' Escorts and still explode the Trader for actually having the affront to have those Escorts. Then he turns around and destroys the 'incompetent' Escorts just because they had the affront to shoot at him and dent his shield a little.

InRP the pirate would probably look at two Fighters and a Transport ship vs his Bomber and get out of Dodge. But we all know that the good PvPers are not going to RP their characters as an 'Average Joe' and leave the area quickly. So the RP value goes out of the window as the 'Pro' gets 3 blue messages and complains that the Trader and his Escorts didn't RP!

Until the average Pirate doesn't sit all day, everyday on the Trade Lanes hitting every Trader that appears on his scanners for a stupid amount of money and RPs a bit more that 10 millordie you have 5 seconds to respond BOOM then, in my opinion, the Trader needs every advantage he can get.

The Traders get to know very quickly which Pirates do the the decent RP and they don't go out of there way to avoid them. I even paid a Pirate when I was sat at a Jump Gate even though I knew that on the other side of the JG was a Base on which I could dock before getting blown up. This was because the Pirate was willing to converse and spend a bit of time at the RP.

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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

[Pavel]

Redon does have a point that special scanner for pirates won't help if traders still have acces to 25k range BS scanner, I think the ideal solution would be make BS scanner unmountable on transports.


Imo the bigger transport is, the worse scanner it should be able to use, with 5kers flying only with crappy Deep Scanners. Alone they'd be practically blind, they would have to fly with some scout.