Piracy 101

[maclypse]

No, you misunderstand. For one, I have never called you stupid. Secondly, if it is truly your intention to pirate not for profit, but RP alone, then kudos. But if you are pirating for profit and not just RP, then I believe that your philosophy is not going to exactly make you very wealthy.

I make a profit, and not a bad one either. Nothing close to what a 5000 cargo trader does, but... so what?

I obviously understand what you mean, but quite frankly, I can very possibly make the same amount of money through piracy alone. Why should I get a trader, and not a pirate?

Honestly - if you are makin as much money on piracy as you would on trading - I think you are leaving a trail of very unhappy players behind you. I feel piracy is a lot more fun that trading; trading feels like a job. That's another good reason to let them keep a big chunk of their profits. Do I, with my fun job, really deserve to talk half the profit from everyone else, that are willing to do the boring grind? Clearly you think so.

The "worst" pirate behavior ever? I've demanded codename weapons off military ships before, and I've taxed vulnerable Police and Navy/Armed Forces transports before. Why shouldn't the pirate do that? This isn't the twenty-first century, this is Sirius, and hell, space is really, really dangerous place.

Demanding code weapons, fine, even I can see some kind of twisted logic in that. Police transports? Fine. I can see a logic in that. I'm talking about taxing bombers, fighters and gunboats with no cargo - solely to initiate RP, to legalise the attack. In Omicron Beta, or Vespucci - great going pirates! In a trade lane in New York? Hell no. Outside Fort Bush? Hell no.

1) How you would prove that he/she did this.
2) Why this would be wrong the minute he/she CDs you, and begins an extensive RP with you, and is not a "2mil or dai" pirate.

It'll be extremely difficult to prove. The reason it's wrong, is that another character is doing surveillance for the offline character in the system. Feeding your own offline char information on a traders progress, with the intention of teleporting into a trader's path - how do you possibly justify this as good rp? If you want to catch a trader - catch him! Don't hide on other characters to make traders think you have logged or left the system. No matter of RP initiated makes teleporting ok.

I'm not an admin, and maybe the admins don't consider it cheating - but they should. That's my opinion. I think it's a tragic shame you consider this a legitimate tactic.

The problem that people have piracy is this: They feel like the pirates are stealing their money, the money that they worked very hard for. Meanwhile, they don't need to consider how much they're ripping off the NPCs when they sell Luxury Food at exorbitant prices, because they're NPCs. Trust me, if there were actually players who sold their materials to other players, there would be posts titled: Don't Rip People Off, Be Nice.

You just equated Mr Morris, sitting in his bedroom in Dresden, Germany - with an NPC in a game! Are you for real? I'm talking about being kind to other players, and this is your argument?

Piracy is very different from trading, however. Unfortunately, the money made from piracy is money made at the expense of others. The thing is, however, this money, believe it or not, is also very easily recovered by ripping NPCs off. Player pirates on the server act as a cash sink.

Yeah, it is very different. Aside from hard-working traders - pirates are the only people that expect a massive profit. Police, Navy, Bounty hunters, escorts... no one else makes much money, and need to finance their habit through other characters. The pirate at the same time is the one character type that can really destroy a civilians day.

Here's my counter question: What makes the pirate so much different from the police, the navy, and the others? What gives him a god given right to make a massive profit when so many others do not? What gives the pirate a free pass to ignore other player's feelings?

mac