this thread boils down to "i want easy money, so dont pirate me"
I am not a pirate.
I have no pirate characters.
I have a trader.
This makes me SICK. I'm coming from EVE, where pirates do not have to RP or Honor ransoms. Stop whining and solve the problem intelligently. Solutions:
Well, Too many People just drop your cargo and blast it............I cant lawfully trade now..... Or the 10m ar DAI types. Im about, to sic Uber prinny baal On them..........
EDIT TO RESPOND:
Quote:1.hire escorts
2.move in convoys
3.carry countermeasures
4.use the TAB key to thrust away when CDed
5.make sure you have a cheetah thruster
1) you Pay escorts almost the same as pirates take
2) Not everyone is online all the time
3) Dosent work on the majority of trade ships
4) Go ahead and thrust, dosent help you doge a SNAC
5) Its an OC thruster that cost nearly 20 million, AND can bs shot off easily. I am aware you can purchase it on barrier gate, But it is still a Primarilly OC thruster
In real life this sort of piracy would do two things:
Drop profits which would be moved into real escorts--as in, "We split the cargo profit 50-50."
Organized groups and associations would form to resist pirates more effectively (actual convoys and military patrols).
In WWI and WWII, ships that didn't want to run with a convoy usually didn't make it. They generally had to sail slower and be easier as a group to find but they were able to defend themselves collectively.
The situation here is no differnt than that of early WWII when the US refused to mandate convoys and German U-boats were having a field day off the US coasts. It took staggering ship losses for the allies to finally adapt.
Ten ships from house corps with some indy btraders sprinkled in and military escorts could really hamper piracy. If the pirates formed battlegroups then there is your job for the Bounty Hunters Guild and navies. A decisive victory can be won on a daily basis due to the 4-hour rule. Every pirate downed is one less to worry over for four hours.
Also, imagine a ten or fifteen ship cargo offering 20% of its profits to a few escorts.
Any old timer on Disco well tell you that power ebbs & flows constantly. When I first came here the navy clans were pretty powerful, this in turn meant that that youd see a lot of traders in their trains. But after a while it was the pirates who came back in force & took their slice of the pie from the numerous soft targets. Give it time it will change again supply & demand. No need for yet more rules.
Certain players will eventually group up as legals to formerly fight pirates &/or some pirates will realise that there are too many fishing rods in the pond & do something else. Id also recommend using 2nd best trade routes, to cut down on 80% of your piracy problems.
Really, people that get pirated a lot, you only have yourselves to blame. I do a lot of trading, and recently with Cryer, a large chunk of it has been down lanes in vanilla house territory, prime pirate space. Often I will go out with the express purpose of being pirated. Even then, my Cryer has been pirated four times. My other three traders have been pirated once between them. I honestly don't even know how you guys are getting pirated so much. Do you only fly through leeds magellan and california? just back and forth at peak times? Seriously, if piracy is that much of an issue for you, just change your route. If the pirate is good, being pirated is an oasis in the desert of trading. If the pirate is bad, you lose very little. Probably 10-25% of your gross profit for that leg, at worst you lose your cargo or life, which sets you back what, 10 minutes? If you flock to the powertrade routes, the very best routes going, you will run in to pirates. Like Taffic said, if you drop down a profit rung, even something very minor, you'll stop seeing them. You'll probably make more money.
I get the feeling that the people moaning constantly about piracy are really doing trading all wrong. No effort, no roleplay.
As I read this thread, I saw, many times, "Trading Sucks"
Trading is grinding, and it its boring. The new system leads much to be desired after the novelty of it wears off, and making it any more organic than traffic control would require hundreds or thousands of hours of labor (or a computer program, a reasonably simple one, which I expect the freelancer devs used).
Traders are the bottom of the food chain, which fuels the rest of the standard RP structure (exceptions abound). Trading again, sucks. You're prey, and you're constantly running, because, in most every case of piracy or lawful interdiction, you have almost no chance of winning. If you're CDed, you've lost. You can bring friends, but your oppenets are stronger on a 1:1 ratio, and they keep that advantage as numbers increase. They have every imaginable combat edge, in a myriad of forms. So traders lose.
If traders are so important to the server that the administration spends its effort making sure people do not earn credits above 30 million an hour(and more than making sure it doesn't happen, removing credits earned, except for arms dealing..which is considered fair.), that the mod devs raise prices, why are steps not taken to make trading fun? I know, I know, the new tradesystem is supposed to be more fun(I much preferred the last), but I'd make the argument that its -goal- is not to liven up trading so much as to saturate traders throughout sirius, so every region gets a bit of the prey.
Piracy, many people claim, is the most fun part of trading. I agree, its quite exciting..But I've discovered that even in a Shire, or a liner...outside of the rp, which is generally better in a stronger ship, that a pirate encounter, after the RP has ended, is something I might as well lose. I come in to every hostile encounter with the expectation of losing. Trading Sucks.
If the server RP and action is founded on trading, why can't trading be fun? Why isn't it made more fun? Easy way to make it more fun? Give transports and even chance at -winning- a fight. Not escaping, or surviving, but bloody well succeeding in the encounter.
Nobody wants to play the losing side every time. Of course people hate trading.
Smuggling is a billion times easier, Pirates actually HELP you (ussualy) and lawfuls are just plain slow. Its far easier. Trading DOES suck, for what? To get that battleship? Yes. Of course. Its for financing other characters. The high price of capital ships was meant to deter pvpwhores and lolppl from getting them.
It didnt.
They tried to do it again with the Guard ID thing.
Didnt work.
Lesson Learned?
Nope.
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