Aliens killing transports without a demand is bad for gameplay

[Lythrilux]

If you want to make this personal, go ahead.

I'm not making it personal. I'm just frustrated because I don't think you're actually reading and keeping up with the thread, or if you are there is a critical lack of understanding. Although you've actually made one interesting point finally. Dare I say it actually looks like you have finally acknowledged my point that escorts in this discussion are useless, albeit you don't want to be overt about it.

Everything you've proposed is making economic access easier when it should be more difficult given the region. This is looked at logically and from a gameplay standpoint. The game should not be easy. Don't make it so.

Space is dangerous. The edge of civilization out in the Edge Nebula double so. Things should be tough out there and it has always been designed to be tough and unforgiving.

The thing is, difficulty/risk should scale with rewards. That is completely absent as these ores and routes give equal profit to all the other standard routes in the game. Why bother pursuing them if you can get the same or greater profit elsewhere, where there is less risk? Also, consider that cloak disruptors become mandatory for almost all activity in this region, and that's a huge additional cost on simply being able to trade. Now, one thing people proposed was to buff these routes and ores (not only would you have to buff the ores, but probably most of the sell points for goods in the Omicrons too). The bump we run into, however, is that you can't balance risk/reward around players (especially in Disco) - these routes would simply be broken during low-pop, or when any other factors affect the Nomad playerbase.

The only way to balance this in a way that keeps everything fair is scaling Alien engagement lines in-line with other IDs. There is no other ID that can so freely destroy transports without prerequisites, and do it in capital ships in a huge ZoI, other than the Nomad/Wild IDs. This is just not healthy for gameplay (there is a reason why Xenos have been denied gunboats for so long).

Also, once again, I don't see why the Omicrons have to be dangerous for humans and not for Nomads. Besides, there is already the risk of Azurite being demanded by Core and Order IDs, Iridium being demanded by Core (and AI?) ID(s), and Corsairs/OC pirating whatever is on the menu. I don't see why Nomads deserve to be given an exception and permission to grief. They're not adding danger, they just make people not want to trade there at all.

It's been designed that way and intended for nomads to be as hostile as possible when the indie Nomad ID was put in.

When the Nomad indie ID was introduced, it could engage without notice and use cloaks freely. Both of those factors of the ID since then have had serious gameplay adjustments because they've proven to be problematic. At that time Omicron ores were not a thing, and they're still a fairly recent thing. It's high time for another review.

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