My opinion is either go all the way and remove cruisers and battleships from shooting any transport or keep it as it is. I'll try to list my reasoning behind this below:
1. For me being blasted in 10 seconds by a pirate cruiser and experiencing the same by a Naval ship is exactly the same experience. In fact sometimes being busted with contraband is more harsh than being pirated - you get your cargo destroyed and you pay a fine for breaking the law which is a double punishment.
2. The same way pirates should be able to pirate traders efficiently in smaller ships, the navy/police/special forces should be able to do so in equally smaller ships. As much as I imagine traders don't like meeting capital ship pirates, I equally dislike meeting lawful capital ships on my unlawful ships.
3. There is already more to do with a lawful cap than with an unlawful one. Both can participate in pvp and shoot transports (the reason we got this thread), but the lawful side gets the extra perk of just roleplaying a captain of a space battleship/cruiser/etc. Sure you can do the same with a pirate cruiser, but there is no audience so you will be doing a monologue as pirate bases are a lot less populated than lawful hotspots such as say Manhattan, New London, New Berlin, etc. Currently being able to pirate offers you that interacting audience for your roleplay in the form of ships that drop out of the lane you're pirating.
4. We already buffed transports enough that most of the time if they invest into armor they can just run away from a 1v1 encounter.
When i am on trader ship i like to see pirate cruiser much more than pirate bomber . You cant win against either of them , but at least you have a chance to run away/outmaneuver cruiser !
If you're in a battle transport and know how to turret steer even a little, bombers are easier to deal with than one might think.
Back on topic, I agree that cruisers being able to engage transports is pretty bogus. Even with Charons, fighting any cruiser is a bit one sided, unless you are running cap armor or fly a turret steering Pelican.
(04-27-2016, 01:43 PM)Karst Wrote: It was not the right decision, in my opinion. I understand the issue of smugglers going "lol can't touch this" to lawful cruisers, but allowing piracy in cruisers was a harmful decision.
By only 1 P.M. today I had encountered and destroyed three pirates in Rheinland - all of them cruisers. Rheinland in particular seems to be suffering from this.
While I do believe a skilled pirate should have the upper hand against transports, there's just no balance possible between cruisers and transports.
I wouldn't go for a re-introduction of the full on ban on engaging transports with capital ships, but something a long the lines of "cannot engage in piracy when flying a cruiser or battleship" would certainly improve things.
So how do you counter IMG lolgank cau8 transports stronger than gbs. Flying in convoys.
I can see this is a bit of a touchy subject for people. Can I suggest the conversation not get out of hand however?
I'm sure we can all agree that there should be a bit more balance in regards to this - but for now we should go along with the rules as they are. Regardless of what balance is struck however, I'm sure there's going to be someone annoyed at it.
(04-27-2016, 01:43 PM)Karst Wrote: It was not the right decision, in my opinion. I understand the issue of smugglers going "lol can't touch this" to lawful cruisers, but allowing piracy in cruisers was a harmful decision.
By only 1 P.M. today I had encountered and destroyed three pirates in Rheinland - all of them cruisers. Rheinland in particular seems to be suffering from this.
While I do believe a skilled pirate should have the upper hand against transports, there's just no balance possible between cruisers and transports.
I wouldn't go for a re-introduction of the full on ban on engaging transports with capital ships, but something a long the lines of "cannot engage in piracy when flying a cruiser or battleship" would certainly improve things.
So how do you counter IMG lolgank cau8 transports stronger than gbs. Flying in convoys.
That's probably why the IMG do it, after all isn't the usual advice for anyone being pirated, fly in a convoy/with scouts and buy armour? I can understand pirates factions using caps beyond House borders but bringing them to pirate is basically giving traders a no-win situation and thats just bad gameplay.
I disagree that it's a no-win situation. I agree with @ sasapinjic, a bomber is a more potent threat than a Cruiser is. You can outmanuver a cruiser, but not a bomber (of course I'm the kind of person to bait a bomber into shooting me in the first place so that I can kill it (: )
(04-27-2016, 01:43 PM)Karst Wrote: It was not the right decision, in my opinion. I understand the issue of smugglers going "lol can't touch this" to lawful cruisers, but allowing piracy in cruisers was a harmful decision.
By only 1 P.M. today I had encountered and destroyed three pirates in Rheinland - all of them cruisers. Rheinland in particular seems to be suffering from this.
While I do believe a skilled pirate should have the upper hand against transports, there's just no balance possible between cruisers and transports.
I wouldn't go for a re-introduction of the full on ban on engaging transports with capital ships, but something a long the lines of "cannot engage in piracy when flying a cruiser or battleship" would certainly improve things.
So how do you counter IMG lolgank cau8 transports stronger than gbs. Flying in convoys.
That's probably why the IMG do it, after all isn't the usual advice for anyone being pirated, fly in a convoy/with scouts and buy armour? I can understand pirates factions using caps beyond House borders but bringing them to pirate is basically giving traders a no-win situation and thats just bad gameplay.
(04-27-2016, 06:28 PM)Lythrilux Wrote: I disagree that it's a no-win situation. I agree with @ sasapinjic, a bomber is a more potent threat than a Cruiser is. You can outmanuver a cruiser, but not a bomber (of course I'm the kind of person to bait a bomber into shooting me in the first place so that I can kill it (: )
That depends entirely on the situation but I'd consider how solo pirates use gunboats and bombers compared to pirating with a cap shp that requires a second person to CD, I think we can safetly say the cap version is a no-win for the solo trader.
Piracy is only good so long as it doesnt harm gameplay, to consider it otherwise is self-destructive and ultimately defeating.