You log a pirate, and wait at a jumpgate to catch some fish. It's been 20 minutes, and at last, a ship comes in. You demand that it halt, and hand over... 100k. The trader mulls it over, and begins docking with the gate. You engage, follow them through, and cut-off their escape via the lane. In another 5-10 minutes, you blow up the transport which never fires back, but uses all of its regens. You are back to square one, but no more fish come, and you receive a nice message from the trader you killed. In another 20 minutes, you're accosted by a pair of lawfuls, make your exit, and log off.
You log a pirate, wait 10 minutes, and get a fish. You demand 100k a quickly get the transfer. You jump over to a nearby system and harass a few miners for 100k a head. It's been about 25 minutes, and you're up ~400k - a great day. You catch no one else as people avoid your fishing grounds. You consider asking for 200k per head next time, but are afraid of getting sanctioned.
The trader that passed you is up 2mil by finishing the first leg and taking a different route back. They are still pissed at you and add your character's name to a list of enemies using a discord bot.
How do we close this disparity?
Remove names from the player list? Allow pirates to make unlimited demands? Reduce the time it takes for a single pirate to kill a trader?
All of these have their own issues that have been discusses before, but maybe it's time to revisit them? The transport rework is coming eventually, but in some ways it will make the issue worse.
The idea here is to incetivize pirates, which incentivizes lawfuls and escorts, which themselves incentivize more trading. A nice ecosystem, if the gameplay for all its parts is sutainable.
Joking aside you describe the problem with piracy fairly accurately. Above all it's just really boring to just sit there and wait for hits. NPC piracy could fill the gap there but bounties are too low, the loot tables are too trash and too random and the opportunity cost for potentially missing a mark cause you're moving a full load of Liberty Ale or whatever somewhere it barely sells for 30c per unit just isn't worth it.
Ideally traders should be easier to find and intercept for pirates but harder to actually pirate. With current server pop pirates need something that's actually worth doing between interactions, cause the profitability of the act will never match trading by itself. No trader is ever gonna let themselves be pirated for more than their profit or full cargo, they'll just let themselves be killed. At least until there's actual costs associated with dying.
But I personally think that the issue is not really the requests made by pirates, but the traders themselves. Why? Well, I do notice that some traders are silent, quiet or they just drop one line: ''Greetings.'' People are too focused to powertrade that they just skip the RP and act as: ''Take my money and go away'' or ''Kill me, I don't care.'' That is killer mood that just make pirates killing traders.
It might be a bit cliché, but with a guide of how to RP or at least recommend to RP or even training how to RP can be a solution. But that's my two cents.
If I ever do piracy it's not for the money but it's for the interactions, and maybe it's just unlucky me but the vast majority of traders I caught were uninteractive pricks ignoring you in every way possible and dashing for virtual cash like headless chicken.
I was thinking about this earlier but in regards to Smuggler Gameplay. One idea is I have noticed that (I think) Nomad Players have a way of "cloaking" themselves on the player list (sometimes I'll see a Nomad Tagged ship in "Kusari" or "Gallia") Perhaps there could be a way to tie this to an equipment? Personally I hate the idea of adding another PoB equipment for people to have to farm but it is something I had considered. It would allow Pirates (and smugglers?) the ability to essentially "Cloak" themselves on the player list. it would be a lot harder to dodge someone (or catch in the case of Smugglers) when they are simply "Omegas" or "Bretonia"
I do agree though something needs to be done to aid the Pirate Gameplay Loop as Amba put it there needs to be something for them to fill the time gap Shooting NPCs is fun and all but it does actually get old eventually.
As one of the "Triumvirate of Activity" in my eyes:
(Traders Trade -> Pirate Pirates Trader ->Law Enforcement Engages Pirate.with the latter two flipping when Smugglers are involved)
I feel it is one of the few that hasn't received much in the way of help in recent years with traders getting invaluable tools like DarkStat, faster transports, etc and Lawfuls getting well, everything lawfuls get (TLAGs Net, Caps etc) Not sure though short of better Guns/Ships or some sort of equipment as previously mentioned there I am at a bit of a loss.
if a pirate makes a 100k demand I'd pay and return to pay again
if a pirate asks me for 2000 cargo (+500k) I'd avoid it with my bot as not all characters works with the one provided by darkwind
the problem is not the low demand but the fact that players can avoid it if they want to, which means economy is not made for a server population of 20-40 players but ~300 players
we need to force players go through same systems otherwise it's just one gameplay loop: trading
So, let me get this:
> When there were active pirates on the server and people were getting pirated, the Discords were in flames with pings to log and kill the bastard (me) and the forum was active with bounties. Players were not happy being pirated, cause "Profit tears"; "Silent Power Trading Tears" and "AFK F2 Tears".
> Now that I've had it with being ganked by 2-5 people each time I Log in my pirate ships; the devs are not happy cause there are no pirates.
Make up your mind already!
I wasn't doing it for profit, I was doing it for the principle of pirating and the fun of it. I learned fast that the interactions were "Stall and ping Discord" or none.
I agree with:
Quote:If I ever do piracy it's not for the money but it's for the interactions, and maybe it's just unlucky me but the vast majority of traders I caught were uninteractive pricks ignoring you in every way possible and dashing for virtual cash like headless chicken.
Maybe work on mitigating that first.
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.
so far what i have seen out of pirates is that they have been pretty reasonable. So for me it's nothing to worry about. only bad one are the one's that just say your my enemy you must die now when you have no chance to win a fight, or when they say your in my space so now you will be terminated.when the ID says pirate. whole point to the game is role play, but its easy to get caught up in the structured goal of what your working on and don't have time to stop and screw around.
Piracy shouldn't be about money, it should be done for sport so both sides enjoy the encounters. Create a rewards thread where pirates (or, better yet - the traders on their behalf) can submit creative encounters logs, and then get exceptional rewards by staff. Forget money, the mechanics do not work and will never work so long as player list exists.
Reward the roleplay aspect, not try to hurt traders even more which is gonna make them more likely to log off.
