The Problem With Piracy

[Lemon]

A pirate's perspective.

The problem with piracy isn't so much the pirates themselves as their victims. @Emperor Tekagi was right: right now, about 90% of servers prefer farming. Everyone has their preferences, but with such huge numbers, almost every third encounter ends with a completely inappropriate reaction from the victim.

And then it escalates to the point where it's your fault the guy gave up so quickly and stopped playing in your presence.

Dude, you've had 100,000 credits taken. In today's economy, that's 1/100th of your profit. For the next 24 hours, no one will bother you. Don't react to me or others as if all your real-life possessions were taken.

I also didn't care who are whose friend. If I took 100,000 measly credits from your friend, then go flame about me somewhere else. This is an RP server, and the best interaction is the one that is objective.

But why do you need to take 100,000 - he trades for the money, you don't pirate for it? Is your goal of piracy to make him go further away from his objective? Why not make RP demands, small cargo shenanigans and/or ask for 1ks if you have to ask for money? (Boring as hell if you ask me) Or - give them the option - RP with me OR pay money...well or die

My pirate gameplay rarely involves using information for profit. The last time it happened was here.

But overall, my character pursues only one goal: profit for the sake of survival. I generally charged that amount because the man's cargo was expensive. If he had something cheap, I'd, of course, lower the price. But the reaction was often the same: silence or simply shooting, just because.

There are also angry guys who didn't like the fact that someone got in their way. This is an online server, and everyone can do whatever they want here.

Yeah but Player A trades for money
Why would I, player B who pirates for sport, demand non-symbolic money from player A if I want said player not to avoid me?
"My character does ABC and his cargo was expensive so I ask for 100k" will get you put on bot list - why not adapt, give out propaganda, make them sing, symbolic fines, RP demands?

Anyone who flew with @Connor back in the day was up for a comedy session when they saw him pirate on his Rogue - like 7v1 pirate, he asked for 6 units of rum and everyone RPed drunk and we let the trader go hah - this stuff, making people sing, give out info, tell jokes - do the service for the trader not against them - and if they even then silent fly away, shoot them the hell down and don't bother ever logging when they come on again

We need to reward RP from traders and pirates alike, change the culture

[Eternal.Journey]

But why do you need to take 100,000 - he trades for the money, you don't pirate for it? Is your goal of piracy to make him go further away from his objective? Why not make RP demands, small cargo shenanigans and/or ask for 1ks if you have to ask for money? (Boring as hell if you ask me) Or - give them the option - RP with me OR pay money...well or die

You don't get it, do you?

The issue isn't the amount, its the fact the guy got pirated at all. It doesn't matter if you ask him for 10k or his discarded toenail clippings from underneath the co-pilot's seat, you still get put on a "log off before meeting" list that involves "Departing Player: Powahtraydah". It's almost ALWAYS the same. The less interaction they get, the better in their mind. And they make it so it's that miserable that no one wants to interact with them; A win-win from their perspective.

Address the Cause, not the Symptoms.

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[Perfect Gentleman]

But why do you need to take 100,000 - he trades for the money, you don't pirate for it? Is your goal of piracy to make him go further away from his objective? Why not make RP demands, small cargo shenanigans and/or ask for 1ks if you have to ask for money? (Boring as hell if you ask me) Or - give them the option - RP with me OR pay money...well or die

You don't get it, do you?

The issue isn't the amount, its the fact the guy got pirated at all. It doesn't matter if you ask him for 10k or his discarded toenail clippings from underneath the co-pilot's seat, you still get put on a "log off before meeting" list that involves "Departing Player: Powahtraydah". It's almost ALWAYS the same. The less interaction they get, the better in their mind. And they make it so it's that miserable that no one wants to interact with them; A win-win from their perspective.

Address the Cause, not the Symptoms.

This.

No matter what you ask a trader for, the very fact that they're charged a pittance and react with such outrageous anger is the problem.

And I, as a pirate, have no complaints here. You want to know the reasons. Here's one of them: the merchants' inappropriate response. We'll continue to pirate. And the powertraders will be bending over backwards to earn an extra 100/10/1K credits.

Moreover, half of them apparently don’t even suspect that they are on an RP server. Don't tell me you're AFKing by the IRL. That's a lie. Only a few from the list provided do that. Everyone else flies silently, reacts silently, and fires silently. And those are the majority.

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Discovery is a server of dreams.
And I'm a big dreamer.

[BobMacaroni]

A decade ago we had an average of 200 players of which most were traders and miners printing money and none of these issues were a big deal because there was always someone out there more than willing to replace whiny powertraders, or maybe there were so many of them it wasn't a big deal because you found plenty of victims anyway even if a bunch avoided you. The point is we didn't need to fix this back then, it wasn't a problem and still isn't, the low player count is the elephant in the room, the player retention sucks and there's many factors to blame, but mostly it narrows down to the fact the game is ancient and a chore to install on Winblows 11, the culture of this community is comically toxic and minors which are the ones that could fill this gap the best because they have plenty of free time would rather play gameslop like Fortnite, Rocket League, Minecraft, Helldivers, CoD... You get the point.

This. When 5.0 was first released, I actually made a pretty good racket pirating traders in the Omicron Theta - Delta corridor, just because there were so many traders passing through. That was about the only time I found piracy to be a viable way of making money, however - when there was a consistent stream of players to pirate, which is just not realistic with the current player population.

The Piracy Problem™ is the result of a long list of other issues - (pointed out by many others in this thread) - not something that can be individually fixed on its own. The biggest one I see, though, is what Sally said - there just isn't enough players on the server to allow for a lot of gameplay aspects, especially piracy, to reach its intended function.

But in the current state of discovery, I don't see any reasonable way to make piracy viable again. If you want to fix the piracy gameplay loop, you'll have to first address the many other issues of the game which caused the problem in the first place. It can't be solved by a blanket fix of changing one rule, or modifying the player list, etc

[Lusitano]

This discussion isn't new, and I've had it here several times, and nothing has changed. To begin with, about 90% of the time, the pirate basically says "stop. Give me X or die," so you won't get much of a response. Also, honestly, standing in a place waiting for a target... isn't a big deal, but whatever! To be honest, I've never done piracy, even when I played for unlawful factions, but if I did, I never asked for large sums to begin with. 100k is already a large sum, to be honest, and that avoided unnecessary conflicts and promoted good interactions.This only leads to interactions being avoided, and for a game that claims to be roleplaying and not PvP, that's bad... It's funny that a "VIP" player told me that it's the trader's fault if they get caught by a pirate, and that they should avoid it at all costs... but anyway, who am I to say otherwise?

take care and have fun

[Sam101]

pirates don't understand that a trader has no winning option other than paying, Good news is the team has built trader ship that can fight back but I'm not sure if anyone of them have a 50/50 chance of winning and people are not good when they know they are screwed. The day comes the trader has a 50/ 50 chance of winning a pvp incounter with pirate they will get more interactions.

[LuckyOne]

Sorry I didn't take the time to read all comments but basically:

- destructible cargo holds and pods are cool and good and should be applied to more transports
- make matrices cheaper -> easier to get jumping reinforcements (works for both sides)
- make ships hiding in nebulae and asteroid fields appear only as region on the in-game list, or make cloak last longer
- cargo insurance! Basically, an interaction-meter bar. A perishable commodity that takes little space, and while it's present and the player dies, the player respawns with all cargo and no cargo is dropped. This would mean pirates would have to talk before shooting if they wanted to take cargo (by force or by choice). It would also add a commodity for IC reps to sell in-person to people in a pinch. Ideally killing components would still drop cargo, but it would mean a simply killed trader would be teleported back home with 0 credit loss.
- make escorts worth it. And by this, I mean give tools that give bonuses to escorted traders. One way would be to allow formation with smaller ships and give speed bonus to escorted traders flying in formation. Other way would be to make it possible to go full pulse loadouts and keep the assailant suppressed enough time for the transport to escape unharmed
- give a way to suppress trade lanes to pirates without having to constantly shoot them while typing
- give more unlawfuls (partial) TLAGSNET (cargo only)
- give ways for transports to defend themselves long enough without the possibility to destroy the assailant (something like defensive EMP flak - kills shields and core, but no hull damage - they'd need an escort to kill the pirate)
- more lane chokepoints

[Eternal.Journey]

- cargo insurance! Basically, an interaction-meter bar. A perishable commodity that takes little space, and while it's present and the player dies, the player respawns with all cargo and no cargo is dropped. This would mean pirates would have to talk before shooting if they wanted to take cargo (by force or by choice). It would also add a commodity for IC reps to sell in-person to people in a pinch. Ideally killing components would still drop cargo, but it would mean a simply killed trader would be teleported back home with 0 credit loss.

This is an atrocious idea. All this means is the trader gets to ignore a pirate in its entirety, get destroyed and still keep their cargo.

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[Traxit]

transport rework
traders dont like getting pirated because they have no chance unless theyre lighter than 4,000
the issue of silent powertraders will never go away though, give a stork six hailstorms and the silent trader would still keep their habits

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The best Video Game OST
Just Got Better

[The_Godslayer]

- make escorts worth it. And by this, I mean give tools that give bonuses to escorted traders. One way would be to allow formation with smaller ships and give speed bonus to escorted traders flying in formation. Other way would be to make it possible to go full pulse loadouts and keep the assailant suppressed enough time for the transport to escape unharmed

When I first started flying BHG, shortly before the Piller Man event, escorts were very much an easy cash farm. I could offer to escort someone to a specific jump gate and easily rake in about 10mill (or 100K in today's cash) from each ship. If that happened today, I'd be looking at about 300K for escorting someone from NY to Manchester and likely not seeing anyone.

I think if I offered 100K to escort someone from Texas gate to Cortez gate in Manchester, I would be told to fuck off in no uncertain terms. Death of escorting is very much a powertrader attitude problem.

- give a way to suppress trade lanes to pirates without having to constantly shoot them while typing

Once, forever ago, I said that Lane Hackers should be able to nodock people for trade lanes and jump gates. I got called an LH~ shill and told to shut up. I still think LH~ and Ageira should be able to nodock people on Sirian gates and lanes, and EFL should be able to for Gallic Gates and Lanes.

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I'll do something about my superiority complex when I cease to be superior.

"Whatever happened to catchin' a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whoopin and gettin' your shoes, coat, and your hat tooken?"