Piracy, where art thou?

[Nocturnia]

Am I the only one who actually likes not being pirated all the time?

Its not about liking.
Its about the fact that pirates contributed to the RP by doing their work, pirating. Now we have traders going left and right with the only thing possibly stopping them being embargo or bad luck.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Send your warm regard to the devs who were ignoring all the attempts to discuss the problem about pirating being reduced to nonsense. This problem wasn't born today and topic was already risen for quiet a few times and still there is not a single change towards the good.

Well, I guess we're getting the meaning of the gameplay on the server wrong. If everything is alright then it's about silently powertrading for capship and then flying that capship pointlessly. Play the game correctly guys.

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Where the end starts | Submergence | Awaken | Scarlet D(a\o)wn | Remilia wiki page
BECAUSE YOU DON'T SAY SLAUGHTER WITHOUT LAUGHTER

[Coin]

Am I the only one who actually likes not being pirated all the time?

yep. piracy creates lawful activity, and bunter activity and escort activity, and bands peeps together for factions for mutual defense. factions band together to form houses, and houses make a community.

buff piracy to boost server activity. its not hard to follow the reasoning.

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A Day in the Life of an NPC | Coin | The Journal of Caius Oakley | Build Your Dream Boat

[sindroms]

We are currently at early 84 levels, when it comes to the unlawful-lawful population. I wouldn't say it is a bad thing, however. It also highly depends on where you usually play. NY has a very high unlawful concentration, while the Omicrons are rather deserted. Activity generates activity, really.

Piracy is also not as fun, these days, when there are so many gallics to shoot.

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[Pancakes]

Depends where you go honestly.
Shikoku still have a large amount of pirates due to the combination of long lanes and it being a choke point.

Though in general,to effectively pirate alone transports, at the moment you need a transport.

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BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD

[Highland Laddie]

I'm not getting any real clarity on the issue based on what I'm hearing.

If there are so many traders out there now, then there should be plenty of opportunity for pirates to be active, even if piracy isn't as "easy" as it used to be.

I guess the answer is there's no piracy simply because people are choosing not to play pirates. Simple as that. If the only thing keeping you from playing a pirate is for it to be "easier," then...meh. Whoever said piracy is supposed to be easy?

I'd suggest you try to form a little pirate raiding party of 2-3, pick a spot, and go to town on all those traders.

[EisenSeele]

Sad fact is we just don't have 199/200 on for eight hours of the day anymore. Proportionate losses means we're gonna lose pirates as well.

Also, you saw a pirate flying a scimitar? Holy crap.

It's not proportionate in the least. You can still see lots of traders and lawfuls, pirates are almost entirely absent.

It's not like we didn't see this coming, either. Transports got great survivability buffs, every gunboat is now a (relatively) low DPS solaris layout because cerbs and basics can't hit anything smaller than a barge reliably, and bases have been steadily popping up without the addition of new gaps for piracy.

Snubs did get a rather large DPS boost across the board, but bombers remain stagnant even in the face of transport buffs.

There's an easy fix, but it won't make RP sense on its own. Without the need to re balance any ships or equipment, just reduce ship compat of BS scanners with transports to zero, making shield regen and possibly thrusters useless, and consolidate border world lanes into super lanes. Border world bases can be placed far from the middle of the lane system. The same can be done with house systems. This easy, traders are feasibly targets, but travel times and ship balance remains the same. Also, ditch the notion that solo actions shouldn't succeed. Traders are the only class that have been exempted from this, leading to a boring situation

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FEEDBACK

[Highland Laddie]

Snubs did get a rather large DPS boost across the board, but bombers remain stagnant even in the face of transport buffs.

This is also because back in 4.86 people were complaining about how OP bombers had become with the SNAC, capable of killing any class vessel. GBs were mostly useless back in 4.86, so I see that change as a bit more in a positive direction.

I wouldn't mind seeing BS scanners made incompatible with transports, or at least making it have some kind of adverse effect (slower cruise speeds, or make it take up some decent cargo space)

Also, there's needs to be a bit addressed about how close some bases are to the lanes. I'd use Ontario as an example. Hamilton Station is literally sitting like 500m from both the Jump Gate to California AND the closest trade lane entrance. That's way to claustrophobic. Maybe space out distances between lanes and bases a bit would help.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Snubs did get a rather large DPS boost across the board, but bombers remain stagnant even in the face of transport buffs.

This is also because back in 4.86 people were complaining about how OP bombers had become with the SNAC, capable of killing any class vessel.

GBs were mostly useless back in 4.86, so I see that change as a bit more in a positive direction.

WAT MY WAT YOU WAT MATE? ))

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Where the end starts | Submergence | Awaken | Scarlet D(a\o)wn | Remilia wiki page
BECAUSE YOU DON'T SAY SLAUGHTER WITHOUT LAUGHTER

[Pavel]

Lower pirate activity is connected with pirate factions losing leaders. I'm in RHA, and faction's more or less on life support after Diamant grinding became boring. Blodo and majority of old leadership left, current leader is busy studying and in the result activity is rather low.

- I remember that same happened with UN| Unioners, so long as there was active leader we had activity close to VWA-levels, after he vanished faction just died.
- VWA is active because faction got few motivated interested people, good roleplayers in addition, who happen to be leaders/HC members in other factions and as such are capable of organising activity, even when Lunatic is offline.
- Mollys have various periods of moderate activity and total extinction since Jeni left. Lack of motivated, interested leader backfires at the entire faction.
- There are Gaian players on the server, but attempts to create active faction failed. Gaians easily could be VWA-like thing, with moderate activity and good roleplay quality, but from what I see they lack leader.
- Dunno about Kusari and Liberty unlawfuls, but afaik Kusari lacks organised pirate factions for a long time now.


This pattern applies not only to pirates, but to all factions in general; after Summer went MIA, Jonathan took over CR. Today I noticed 5 of them online, something I didn't see in few good weeks.



tl;dr version:

We are a small community. Activity of factions depends on activity of their leaders. When leaders due to RL massively leave or become inactive, and no one else in the faction is capable of leading, factions die. Imo we're facing period when many leaders in short time left/went AWOL, and we're experiencing the results of that. Plus playing lawful always was easier than pirate, and here we go.