@Nighthawk and Swift

[DataPhreak]

Again, you are missing the point I am trying to make. It's a two way street. Just as:

unless a pirate can either type at rapid pace or has a /setmsg, the trader will usually be gone by the time they can notify them and then launch a CD, or at least cruising away.

Unless a trader can either type at a rapid pace, or has a /setmsg, the pirate will usually have hit them with a CD by the time they can notify them and launch countermeasures.

I have continually said this, in almost every post, that I am not opposed to roleplaying with pirates at all. Quite the contrary. Nor are my intentions explicitly to destroy a pirate upon comming out of a trade lane. On an individual level, I have nothing against them and have even said that I will likely be of an unlawful alignment. If anything, as I expressed in my example from the first post, firing on a pirate is primarily to force them to take evasive action, lowering the likelyhood of them firing an accurate CD. The only time I could ever forsee actually making a kill in a trade vessel is in the situation where we are both stopped. In that situation, I would speak with the pirate, if for no other reason to imply that I do intend to cooperate.

As Derk said earlier, dropping your shields below 50% is considered engagement, and by all means you have every right to destroy my vessel. But the off the top of your head figure of 5000+ or so is still not quite enough to do that with the shields most pirates are going to be toting, further, you must take into account that depending on your location in relation to my vector, likelyhood is half of the turrets will not fire anyway.

What is in the same boat, is that in order for a trader to defend himself, by your own words, we must go from a "relatively" favorable possition, that is, as good of a possition as one can be after a tradelane is shot out from under us, to a much worse possition before we can take any action at all in defense.

Finally, in closing, I am, again, in no way, whatsoever, (are we clear on this yet) saying that I will not roleplay with a pirate, so lets drop that arguement right there. What I am saying is that if I intend to escape, I will not engage in what you call "RP", which wrongly excludes anything but text, until I am in a position where either I have sustainably escaped, be it through tradelane, or cruise, or there is no possible possible way of making it to one of those two positions. I.E. the first 30 seconds of an encounter, give or take. After it is settled, either one way or the other, then I will most definitely entertain the notion of roleplay with said pirate. I will, however, not compromise my escape, just so I can feel better about how you think of me.

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We need 600m/s and 700m/s Debilitators.