Piracy

[Unseelie]

Smuggling is a billion times easier, Pirates actually HELP you (ussualy) and lawfuls are just plain slow. Its far easier. Trading DOES suck, for what? To get that battleship? Yes. Of course. Its for financing other characters. The high price of capital ships was meant to deter pvpwhores and lolppl from getting them.
It didnt.
They tried to do it again with the Guard ID thing.
Didnt work.
Lesson Learned?
Nope.

I've found the RM to be brilliant against smugglers...

Or at the very least, [RM]Chezberger.

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[Exsiled_one]

actually, pirates shouldn't help smugglers unless they share a faction.

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<span style="color:#33CC00">I AM GIVING AWAY MONEY TO CREATIVE MINDS*</span>

[Athenian]

this thread boils down to "i want easy money, so dont pirate me"

I am not a pirate.
I have no pirate characters.
I have a trader.

This makes me SICK. I'm coming from EVE, where pirates do not have to RP or Honor ransoms. Stop whining and solve the problem intelligently. Solutions:

1. hire escorts
   
2. move in convoys
   
3. carry countermeasures
   
4. use the TAB key to thrust away when CDed
   
5. make sure you have a cheetah thruster
   

I really wish people would read the whole thread before posting.

But let's take your suggestions:
a. What use is an escort against three gunboats?
b. What use is a convoy against three gunboats?
c. What use are countermeasures against three gunboats with CDs?
d. Show me someone who doesn't hit thrust 24/7.
e. Ugh...a what?

As for Eve. Well, as you put it yourself, it's not a RP game so comparisons are moot.

It's not so much a question of how to trade without getting pirated, more a question of how trading can be any way enjoyable at all. I think the way in which piracy effectively has rendered every single smaller freighter a pointless addition to the game is an issue as well.

As I read this thread, I saw, many times, "Trading Sucks"

Trading is grinding, and it its boring. The new system leads much to be desired after the novelty of it wears off, and making it any more organic than traffic control would require hundreds or thousands of hours of labor (or a computer program, a reasonably simple one, which I expect the freelancer devs used).

Traders are the bottom of the food chain, which fuels the rest of the standard RP structure (exceptions abound). Trading again, sucks. You're prey, and you're constantly running, because, in most every case of piracy or lawful interdiction, you have almost no chance of winning. If you're CDed, you've lost. You can bring friends, but your oppenets are stronger on a 1:1 ratio, and they keep that advantage as numbers increase. They have every imaginable combat edge, in a myriad of forms. So traders lose.

If traders are so important to the server that the administration spends its effort making sure people do not earn credits above 30 million an hour(and more than making sure it doesn't happen, removing credits earned, except for arms dealing..which is considered fair.), that the mod devs raise prices, why are steps not taken to make trading fun? I know, I know, the new tradesystem is supposed to be more fun(I much preferred the last), but I'd make the argument that its -goal- is not to liven up trading so much as to saturate traders throughout sirius, so every region gets a bit of the prey.

Piracy, many people claim, is the most fun part of trading. I agree, its quite exciting..But I've discovered that even in a Shire, or a liner...outside of the rp, which is generally better in a stronger ship, that a pirate encounter, after the RP has ended, is something I might as well lose. I come in to every hostile encounter with the expectation of losing. Trading Sucks.

If the server RP and action is founded on trading, why can't trading be fun? Why isn't it made more fun? Easy way to make it more fun? Give transports and even chance at -winning- a fight. Not escaping, or surviving, but bloody well succeeding in the encounter.

Nobody wants to play the losing side every time. Of course people hate trading.

Agreed. But how to make it fun? Give traders a better chance? Let's ask some people.

actually, pirates shouldn't help smugglers unless they share a faction.

Oh but they do. They treat each other as one huge happy family. It's appalling. No back-stabbing. No double-crossing. No robbing each other.

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Former member of "the most paranoid group of people in the community"
Discovery Community Forum Rules

[Exsiled_one]

their fault man, their fault. For me, thats competition

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<span style="color:#33CC00">I AM GIVING AWAY MONEY TO CREATIVE MINDS*</span>

[Guest]

actually, pirates shouldn't help smugglers unless they share a faction.

Well, for example, its our RP to help smugglers.

[captainjack]

It seems that I have been quite fortunate with the pirates I have met so far. There have been a few with excellent roleplay (Corsairs, if I remember correctly). One of them would offer you a game to play. If you didn't want to play the game, you had to pay 2 mil. If you did, then you would pick two numbers and he would roll a die using the /dice command. If it landed on one of the numbers that you picked, he would let you go absolutely free. If it didn't land on one of your numbers, he would make you pay 3 mil. I found this quite enjoyable as it added a lot to the RP and the suspense of the situation. The nice thing was that when I did pick a correct number, he let me pass without paying anything. Another pirate I encountered once did a similar game, using a form of "Twenty Questions." These were both good experiences and I would strongly suggest that pirates use something like these to make the encounter enjoyable for both parties involved.

As for being pirated, when you're in a 40 mil ship and the pirate asks you for 1 mil, it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to give him the money. Sure, he may be taking away some of your profit, but how much is he really making in an hour compared to you? Even if you only make 10 mil an hour, a rather small amount for a trader, it seems unlikely that he can make that same profit. He would have to pirate a transport for 1 mil every 6 minutes to get that income rate. Unless he is constantly changing spots or sees a lot of activity in his area, it seems rather unlikely.

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If nothing's ventured then nothing's gained

[reavengitair]

I in fact, love being pirated, so long as the pirate RPs properly.

My 1 bar of hull left makes it quite tempting.

However, I do feel offended when a pirate says halt, then says pay.

ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY DON'T SAY HOW MUCH.

Then I sit there, they yell pay pay pay, and I yell how much how much how much...

Then they blow me up.

[Exsiled_one]

You must be some generous pirates when your rp is to aid all the smugglers around. But that's all fine and dandy, if everyone actually did their job, I couldn't trade around so easily.

Everyone has it's price.
Tho escorts should lower it.
Since they're so expendable, and have nothing to do to earn money anyway.
Belonging to a faction is a win as well.
Last night i got pulled over by a molly what made me lose all my haul and I was forced to turn around.
I returned 3 minutes after that with gunboat and a fighter escorting me.
Because I can.

Let me just remind you gents. When you destroy a pirate, he has no business around you for next 4 hours. So... Escorts aren't something you need to pay all the time.

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<span style="color:#33CC00">I AM GIVING AWAY MONEY TO CREATIVE MINDS*</span>

[Alley]

There was no challenge. No interaction worth remembering. Just "pay or die."

That's the FLAME! members:D

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Alley was right.

[Exsiled_one]

I for one don't ask for the price until i get a response from a trader and his engines basically cut down.

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<span style="color:#33CC00">I AM GIVING AWAY MONEY TO CREATIVE MINDS*</span>