(07-11-2023, 09:36 AM)Shimamori Wrote: Unlike POBs, those move and are less irritating. But I am actually all in favour allowing everyone to shoot the transports. It is actually ridiculous that pirates have to demand money and only up to a certain amount, which breaks the whole point of piracy if we look back at piracy in history. It looks more like the mafia's taxation.
Nice way to say you just want to grief transports for the hell of it. I could answer you with your same rhetoric, there's Wild Pawn ID which is the most powerful offensive ID right now, RP a nomad infected pirate/terrorist using that ID if you just want to shoot sitting ducks.
Pirates in Freelancer most of the time (not always) are looking for a quick buck or easy loot even since 1.0, you could get pirated by NPCs and they demanded you drop some cargo, same concept applies to RP in Disco.
(07-11-2023, 09:45 AM)Sally Wrote: Nice way to say you just want to grief transports for the hell of it. I could answer you with your same rhetoric, there's Wild Pawn ID which is the most powerful offensive ID right now, RP a nomad infected pirate/terrorist using that ID if you just want to shoot sitting ducks.
Pirates in Freelancer most of the time (not always) are looking for a quick buck or easy loot even since 1.0, you could get pirated by NPCs and they demanded you drop some cargo, same concept applies to RP in Disco.
I haven't even played a pirate in many years. And this rule is one of the reasons for that. It is just counter-immersive and not fun for a pirate to sit on the lane for 30 minutes just to rob a trader for 2-4 millions which I can make in 1 PvE mission with minimal RP efforts from the traders. Some people say that RP from the transports can be great, I haven't witnessed those. Even one time when a pirate asked the trader to sing a shanty, it was rather cringy. PvP = RP, the more opportunities for PvP, the better, IMHO. Powertraders already dominate the server hours outside of the peak. There are no threats or obstacles for them whatsoever. At least combat pirating can be more enticing for both the pirates and the traders who will actually have to Alt-tab back into the game.
(07-11-2023, 09:53 AM)Shimamori Wrote: I haven't even played a pirate in many years. And this rule is one of the reasons for that. It is just counter-immersive and not fun for a pirate to sit on the lane for 30 minutes just to rob a trader for 2-4 millions which I can make in 1 PvE mission with minimal RP efforts from the traders. Some people say that RP from the transports can be great, I haven't witnessed those. Even one time when a pirate asked the trader to sing a shanty, it was rather cringy. PvP = RP, the more opportunities for PvP, the better, IMHO. Powertraders already dominate the server hours outside of the peak. There are no threats or obstacles for them whatsoever. At least combat pirating can be more enticing for both the pirates and the traders who will actually have to Alt-tab back into the game.
Blame the player, not the game. People that plays pirates does it for RP mostly, not for profit, so if you give it the profit focus you're missing the point already.
(07-11-2023, 10:09 AM)Sally Wrote: Blame the player, not the game. People that plays pirates does it for RP mostly, not for profit, so if you give it the profit focus you're missing the point already.
The point is there should be available more options and more gameplay to keep the playerbase engaged. If transports can be treated as combat targets, will it prevent pirates who pirate for RP? No. But will it prevent pirates who are for PvP? Yes. Which option is more inclusive? Sapienti sat. The number of pirates who do it for RP is miniscule, hence there are also less targets for the lawfuls. Hence less incentives to play the lawfuls. Or will you blame the player in this case too for not being enticed to sit for hours in front of a planet as a lawful greeting silent power traders?
P.S. traders' RP is so mundane in 80% of cases that I can't even figure out why pirates would be going for that. Perhaps, it is my subjective pov but I haven't seen many pirates recently either, and this observation infers certain conclusions.
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The balance of the game itself should encourage piracy over ship destruction, which probably involves:
- Making the cargo traders move around have inherent value (a base price over a couple thousand credits) so cargo piracy is profitable whether the transport cooperates or not. Making it so pirates want to have cargo space also makes them fly ships that are easier to pin down for law enforcement, should they try to deal with the pirate.
- Making destroying a transport significantly harder. This would also make escorting (in the actual escorting sense - people seem to mistake scouting ahead for escorting in Discovery) viable.
- Adding a way to force a transport to drop a portion of its cargo (destroying cargo pods or portions of the ship that visually look like they are cargo storage) that is substantially easier than destroying the entire ship.
Admittedly these are not easy things to do. But I do agree with the sentiment that solving the "Transport griefing" problem with rules is, fundamentally, an inferior option to solving it with gameplay.
This already exists...All ores have fences, almost all with 7k+ giving you much higher profit than reasonable allowed monetary demands when you get 3kcargo. Almost all commods also have sell points on unlawful bases.
People prefer to use bombers for convenience. You'd have to ban that or make max demand like 3 million for people to use transports for piracy.
The big issue with making transports more survivable without being able to fight back is the brutally off-putting gameplay of second new star wars movie trilogy. Trade factions and powertraders also won't cut their profit by half guaranteed when flying combat ships and losing time on them instead of trading. Player list will always be supreme for them. Instead you need to be able for transports to be able to fight back - a bomber should lose to battle transports with high armor hands down, bad bomber should lose to cap ace on a 5ker, win after a fight on equal skill level. Cruisers (the only real issue for traders - thruster is OP now) should be nerfed heavily vs transports.
EDIT: actually if battle transports could just outclass a solo bomber and give 2 an equal fight, and normal transports would give 1 bomber a good fight and win vs weaker bombers, but their cargo or part of cargo was easy to shoot off - then you got a mechanic that could actually get used and push people into cargo piracy. You would struggle to kill the trader, have no chance if they have high armour and risk dying, but to rob them and take part of their cargo if e.g 50% of hold was in the "shoot off a part" mechanic and get out wouldn't be an issue for you.
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Because it counts as exploiting, and Disco has sanctioned people as far back as 2013 for cheating and exploits? You don't need to list every exploit to tell what is or what is not intended game function that gives great advantage
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