A Bit Of A...Shift...

[Eppy]

That's in a Trade Lane. It's simple to get out of that if you're watching. In a run though open space, all they need is two people, and they can have you dead to rights. If you ran into four going through Coronado you'd be a dead man or several million credits lighter. Also, listen to Allocutus. I shouldn't have bloody bothered posting this thing anyway. What an total idiot I am, I should have known something like this was going to happen.

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Quick comment - we thought that Panzer was the Leader, Swift. -Agmen

Which Dreadnought was that?

One of your nine.

[alance]

Many of us play a certain way... that being not spending half an hour of our 60 minutes login time looking for an escort who is going to ask for more money than we'd pay a pirate. There are only THIRTY to FORTY people logged in and spread all OVER sirius when i log in most nights, my chances of a timely and economically viable escort are small.

Now, I'm not asking to nerf pirates, I'm asking to roll back SOME of the speed on the Train CD. SOME, not all the way back to 4.83, SOME.

HIRE AN ESCORT and DROP OUT OF TRADE LANE EARLY spouted over and over and over on here does absolutely nothing about the fact that the CMs on the mid-to-small sized Transports are useless. The CMs that are on these ships to give them an edge in smuggling and blockade running... remember those?

CMs need to have a reasonable success rate or what's the point of them. Were they too good before? Yeah I'll give you that. Are they nearly worthless now because of CD speed? Yes.

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"To gain a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence;
to subjugate the enemy's army without doing battle is the highest of excellence."

[RickJames]

It seems we often try to keep the spirit of the original FL going here.

Well, how many trading ships in the original FL flew around without escort.

heh...the very first mission was escorting a trader from manhattan or maybe the next trade lane to pittsburg.

And folks think massive trade ships should have it easy passing through entire border systems all by themselves?

Trading is way dangerous and the only way to make piles and piles of money.

Hire escorts. Besides. It is a lot funner for everyone the way it is now. Yeah, traders need to do a lot more work now, but they also rake in so much money its insane.

Just my take.

[RickJames]

Oh. And if your just in it for the RP of sticking it to pirates. Buy a fighter or gunboat, load with commodity of choice, then go kick some pirate ass. If money is the issue, again, hire some escorts.

[Othman]

I believe CMs on freighters are useless. They could get hit easily even by the lowest level npc fighters. And the trains should be harder to hit since they do not already have CMs and they are large in size. Gunships are being a real pain and I am aware of that too..

Upto an extent I accept that trying to find an escort among 40 people online could not be a practical solution for most of the time but the problem is in my opinion most of us prefer to fly solo while trading. There are lots of escorting and bounty advertisements all over the forums but we are just too lazy to spare some time to read them and spend some cash in the name of RP. Are not we?

I dont think that mercenaries and the people advertising demand too high wages for the jobs to be done. You can find reasonable offers if inspect them carefully enough.

The quarrel to keep the balance will always go on and this is the need of its nature. But C'mon, we need to keep pirating alive. Have you ever seen any person who does not trade but generate cash with only pirating, especially after the monumental tau paradise?

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On the uncharted lagoons of anguish, I sail with a canoe made of my sins.

[Equinox]

The fact is the traders are used to having it to easy, now the tables have turned and they don't like it, and im saying that as a Trader and a Pirate!..

Its not hard to avoid pirates, and its not that hard to get away from a gunboat, ive done it this version a few times in my CTransport and the engines are at the back and easier to hit than the train.

Just pay attention to where the pirates are and avoid them or hire a merc.

Ive never met a merc charge anything stupid like its been said in this thread, my mercs on quite allot and you no how many times ive been hired? once.

Guys just because something doesn't go your way doesn't mean you have to nerf it.

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[P*Funk]

I think Kress hit the balance there. Problem I see is that everyone is arguing vehemently for their side. The outcomes are always like parliamentary political battles. 4 years of this extreme followed by another 8 of the other extreme, taking back their ideology out of disgust and retribution.

I think we can make pirating work much better but the way it is now the CD is far too much of a handicap I think. At the very least they should have some diversity in them so that a Train CD isn't an immediate toll booth.

I think the bench mark should be having both CDs and CMs work. If either isn't at all useful then we are doing something wrong.

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Out of hibernation. Gauging the winds.

[Juan_Arquero]

Regarding the main topic of this thread: The balance between pirates and traders has been heavily disrupted by uber CDs that have effectively nerfed the CMs. The CDs obviously need to have their speed lowered.

If you're views held true, Eppy, The Queen Mary II modern cruise liner would have Depth Charges, Missile defence and a few good ol' shell guns to kick the crap out of people with. Or howabout the Massive SuperTankers you see? They should have orbital bombardment cannons, the way they're going these days.

a small gunboat with a few Torpedo's could easily take out a Cruise Liner or Supertanker these days, but they don't because the:

A) Shipping lanes are secure
B) The political fallout would be massive

If I saw, as a pirate in space only loosely controlled by the autorities, a massive ship containing riches to last me 10 years, 'course I'd go ahead and say "Your money or your life".

Real world examples don't always work to make effective comparisons with Freelancer. However, if you're going to use real world examples to make a point, you need to get your facts right. You claim that "Shipping lanes are secure," but that's not true. Piracy is alive and well in the real world in 2007. In fact, a cruise ship was attacked by pirates near Somalia in 2005. Here are links to some news reports regarding that incident from CNN, CBS News and USA Today.

The pirates used two small (25'), fast motorboats with 4-5 pirates per boat and attacked with machine guns and an RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade). They didn't have anything near the size of a gunboat. Note that the CBS News article says "Piracy along the Somalia coast is common several ships a month are attacked or hijacked, with valuables stolen and crews held for ransom." Interestingly, the USA Today article mentions that the cruise ship crew defended their ship with a sonic weapon.

If you want to know more about modern-day piracy, take a look at these articles by CNN, Wikipedia and BBC. Asia and Africa seem to be the major locations for modern-day piracy, especially near Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, India, Vietnam, Somalia and Madagascar.

Regarding your claim that "The political fallout would be massive," I think you're wrong there. I haven't found any political fallout regarding the cruise ship attack, as Somalia has no government. Iran and Syria have been major supporters of terrorism for decades. How much political fallout have you seen them endure? Not much. Planet Earth in 2007 is a pretty chaotic planet.:crazy:

[RickJames]

Chart of Global Piracy attacks and attempts in 2007, in the real world.

http://www.icc-ccs.org/extra/display.php

Brought to you by the ICC, International Chamber of Commerce.

http://www.iccwbo.org/id93/index.html

[Doom]

oh just one thing...escorts cant help traders if pirate in GB wants them dead..they will be dead...

Not so long ago i managed to kill lux liner and container transport who both had fighter turrets, capital armors and battleship in their escort

(and my GB has only two hull weapons)