As I understand this, if we want to increase trader/pirate interaction we need following:
A) Motivate traders to trade
Although there should be other comparable credits/hour sources of income, like PvE. Because we want traders to recruit from people who actually like trading, not because it is the most profitable way of generating credits.
- Ore trading is profitable and tied to mining and/or POBs which make it quiet fun to do since it can be a group activity.
- Another way would be to make trading more challenging. For example very profitable route, which leads through "enemy" territory. Route where 5k transport just can't survive without heavy armor upgrades and/or player escorts. Giving a feeling of achievement and engaging while on the route. Again potential group activity.
B) Motivate pirates to sit at tradelanes/gates.
What does motivate pirates to wait for traders?
- Interesting RP sure, but that is hard to affect by gameplay changes.
- Making pirating profitable and engaging. No one wants to wait for hour or more for one single encounter while having nothing to do in the meantime.
- Pirating NPCs would give additional profit and give something to do while waiting for players. (Special "Pirated Goods" or credit cards, allows pirates to get profit even when flying ships with low cargo space like VHF/B.)
C) Increase the chance of pirates encountering traders.
- Making system changes that would force choke points, but that would hurt gameplay in other ways.
- Channeling traders through choke points by preferably circular trade routes that stand out profit wise, to create fairly predictable trader behavior.
We already have stuff like: Pristine Ice <-> Iridium, Aluminium <-> Gold, He <-> He3. And faction bonuses for certain commodities.
- Discouraging traders flying around choke points by making the route not profitable. Either by making it take too long, or by requiring heavy armor upgrades and/or player escorts which cut from the profits or making it outright impossible. Although this could potentially hurt smugling.
As for preventing abuse of NPC transports:
Special commodities that can be only sold on certain bases could limit this to local pirate groups only.
Maybe special stations next to existing bases for sale of pirated goods that would allow docking only ships of the said pirate faction.
If this is not possible to be restricted by ID directly, it could be by special faction reputation that would be forced on IDs.
Example:
Liberty Rogue ID would force Reputation_LiRogueSellPoint = 1, all other IDs would force it to be -1.
Special pirate goods docking port on Buffalo Base would allow docking only ships with Reputation_LiRogueSellPoint = 1
Definitely not ideal but a start for a discussion I guess.
