(10-13-2025, 07:09 AM)Culbrelai Wrote: Escorts are not financially viable. The escort is better off trading himself rather than getting paid less to escort someone else. It has always been this way. Also, 5ks have far too low of TTK so escorts are useless for them. Which will (hopefully) be fixed by the transport rework. The best "escort" currently is a scout that flies in front of the trader, tells the trader when he finds a pirate, and the trader either has to pick to go around (Which is very hard to do now with these awful chokepoints everywhere and 80 systems being deleted) or they just log off. Which is not fun gameplay. So there's that.
I agree with this. There's not much point in escorting. Plus there's not really enough people for the traders (+ escorts) -> pirates -> lawfuls loop. Maybe you can find enough players at peak hours, but surely not during 75% of the day. And not everyone can play during the peak hours.
As a trader during European mornings (that's when I was able to play for more than 5 minutes), I see the pirates' issue and I tried to interact to the best of my abilities. I vaguely remember something about traders not being allowed anymore to simply embrace death as it does not make much sense inRP? Maybe we should explore that path? But then again, what can a trader do when he's pirated by someone in a cruiser? Just blindly submit? That comes with it's own can of worms
True if you think about it in terms of money alone. And fair because even though this is a RP server you can do nothing without money. This is why an almost "passive" income method is needed, like powertrading. At least, this is passive in the way that they don't interact with roleplayers. They almost don't exist in the world.
A fighter squadron will always be in danger of encountering hostiles that want to fight. The powertrading version of that is piracy, the difference being the fighters may actually want that encounter but the trader obviously does not.
Money ruins things irl and in games, damn ;-;