I went through a few sectors and saw 18 piebots in one sector sedina o6 and 16 bots on the latos side of the wh

Apparently that can happen if they're allocated to chasing an existing convoy, and happen to be passing through. But, according to Michael (just now at the meeting), they won't attack anyone.. since they already have allocated targets.

heh, I forgot to post this last night,

I was at the sedina side of the sedina/odia WH when i got challenged by a pirate bot.

There was an orion convoy passing by that KILLED the pirate bot in question, yet he continued to demand money from me vis-a-vis the 45 second limit messages.

Since he was no longer in sector i couldn't pay him, and while attempting to type the name of a different unaligned bot in the sector my 45 seconds ran out and they wasted me...

there needs to be some case handling for situations such as this, it was kind of amusing but i'd really like to see new pirate take over the countdown if the one extorting you is killed by someone else.

How about this scenario:
a large group (~40 piebots) are chasing a convoy. One piebot is camping the wormhole. You come out, he asks for money. You kill the piebot. Do you carry on happily or get killed by the piegroup?

Spellcast:
Uh, yea, <sheepish-grin>, I guess I forgot to retract those future messages. I'll probably fix that today.

Antz:
Some of the group will come after you; how much of it is a matter of damage done by you vs existing attack priorities and also relative distance. Does it seem like they peel off their convoy targets too easily? I can adjust that, but it can make them a bit unresponsive when they, themselves, are attacked.

Does it seem like they peel off their convoy targets too easily? I can adjust that, but it can make them a bit unresponsive when they, themselves, are attacked.

Not at all, that was a theoretical question. I have never been brave enough to attempt attacking a piebot with that many friends in the sector.

Saw just over 30 bots at the Odia/Bractus wh today. And almost the same number on the Bractus side.

Right, but they aren't going to attack you. See my post to this thread on Monday.

is it possible to have the bots group up and be hostile to other groups of bot pirates?

itd keep the numbers down, and let people through if the bots were scrapping with each other, like hyenas over a carcass...

It's just odd to see so many pirates in one spot. It looks like a pirate battle fleet. Though I guess I'm getting into cosmetics now.

Edit: Other things I've noticed: Myself and several others were consistently getting hails from bots that were not in the sector. Kind of like what Spell was talking about, except these bots weren't killed mid-message, they just weren't there. Thus, there's was no consequence for ignoring the payment demand.

When partaking in the liberation mission, all the pirates hailing you at the same time really spams the chat and makes it very confusing as to what is going on and who is on the "account". Maybe if there was a way to check who is on the account mid-mission it would help the confusion. Also, when you pick up cargo during a liberation mission, the pirates still try to kill you.

On a side note, the majority of convoys seem to get slaughtered now with the quantities and efficiency of the pirates. I rarely see convoys make it through grey unless they have a trident or teradon. I understand that grey is supposed to be dangerous. But if so many of the convoys were completely obliterated, it seems that there wouldn't be so many of them trying to pass through grey. IMHO, convoys (without teradons and tridents) are always so severely outmatched by the pirates, that it seems to be a slaughter rather than a battle. Maybe if the number of pirates per convoy were decreased, it would help to balance it a little bit. Just my 2c.

Well, the convoy's defenses are supposed to be reactive. So if a given number of convoys don't get through, successive convoys will be more and more heavily armed, until they do. The number on all of that probably still require some tweaking though.

Also, I would think the Corps would stop trying to send non-capital convoys through if they never made it.

How do you pay them at all? /givemoney didn't work for me, it said the guy didn't exist (although it was the exact same name as that of the bot that told me to pay up).

Just start to type their name, beginning with the '*', and hit tab. You probably either didn't use the * or didn't put it in quotes, but autocomplete is your friend.

I must be pretty incompetent, it worked now. I apologize for the useless question.

edit:

Although I did use %target% instead of autocomplete, this time around.

:edit

I think it demonstrates the need for an EZ Pass system. One simpel key stroke to pay off the pirate.

Having to pay at every sector or fight huge numbers at each sector is becoming sort of a drag. One thing I've noticed is that b8 is now almost always empty when I go there (of players not pie-bots), since dueling there is now impossible. Has a new arena sector ben discussed?

Grey space should not be filled to the brim with pirates. I agree more with what someone said earlier about having two or three roving bands that were strong but not always present. Also do the roving bands cooperate, have territories, or fight over turf? One overlapping sector of territory could make an occasional fun show for us if they fought. Also if a bunch of us grouped together to fight one of the roving bands, it's recovery should be slow, kind of like a hive infestation of a sector.

Station SF should go after the ones that follow me to a station.

Just my $0.02

Dunno if this has been reported as a bug, but some npc pirates on the live server will /msg "<insert pirate threat here>" or language similar to that. fyi.

That sounds like Developer humor to me. :)

I'm guessing momerath was working on Deliverator or the pirate code a bunch this evening, since the pirate bots were not issuing threats or attacking anything unless shot at first. Pirate bots were not respawning to take the place of their fallen comrades, and no Liquidation missions were being called out on pirate hunters.

I destroyed every pirate bot in Grey Space this evening (unless I missed some hiding in a station sector...). I was kinda curious how big a price that might have put on my head. Too bad the rest of the universe was busy blowing each other up for no reason in Deneb.