Are you kidding me?Respawn in 8-16hours??How can we pass grey then.

maybe by outrunning or traveling in armed groups? Greyspace is supposed to be dangerous, and flying alone is/should-be silly. These sentiments have been repeated for a while now, stop being surprised.

should start adding pirate special drops, such as ffsa, FCP, etc. I'm willing to waste time.

Drops will come as well, in time.

Ah good.If they drop rare things,im willing to kill them.

Yaaaaaay!!!

Unrats but better!

Because the npc rats are FUN! >:D

Wait, were NPC pirates readded?

yeses

yes and no; these pirates are a dynamically expanding group centered on a pirate trident (I think its always been in odia so far?), and the fighters all use the new hardcore AI. the pirates respawn around every 8-16 hours I think?

The Trident has 1 Capital Swarm launcher, 1 Capital Gauss Cannon, and I think one capital railgun. it doesn't move, but is protected by a group of 10-20 pirates.

The individual pirates come in three varieties:
TPG Raptor with Dual-LENBs
TPG Raptor with Positron/PCB
Warthog Territorial Defender with Flare/GatII

when there are active pirates, they can also be found in some greyspace wormholes; they readily destroy hive bots or blockade convoys, and they can shred through capital ships quite easily. Their unique AI is near-impossible to beat solo, too, encouraging pilots group together to take down the swarm.

To find the Pirate's Trident, you must injure one of the fighters at a wormhole to reach low health, then follow it once if breaks off from the rest.

"Make VO better!" ........... "Just don't challenge us in any particular way"
The strong shall inherit grey space.

I do not fear this new challenge. Rather like a true warrior I will rise to meet it.

I've been enjoying the hell out of these new NPCs. The NPC Dent most definitely moves, and the fighter AI while in a "base" sector will act differently than the same ships at a WH. I think you could bump the respawn rate, and or start packing them with some goodies.

Awesome, I have a lot more widespread plans for this kind of thing. We're still debugging some weirdness with the AI behaviour, but lots of plans for.. more intriguing types of NPCs. Not all of them terrifying, but certainly some more in various roles.

Also, the escalation I've mentioned before for the pirate clan bases. Probably eventually upgrades from Trident to Constellation and so on, more escorts, depending on how long the clan has "survived".

Honestly if the base ship is going to increase we are going to need better player capships that are combat oriented.

Perhaps. Or maybe your tactics will evolve. Or maybe we'll have more torpedo types. Or.. any number of other combinations and variations of other factors.

It isn't really possible to make definitive "X then requires Y" statements about evolving gameplay like this.

You know what would be cool? All hive/dropped weapons having slight variations in their stats. So one isnt better than the other.

"Perhaps. Or maybe your tactics will evolve"

Perhaps the game will evolve into encompassing real capship combat for those that have gone through the insane grind (some more than once) to build them only to find out they are glorified cargo barges.

There is no "only to find out." It was known in advance. You either chose to undergo that grind anyway, or you didn't bother to do your research before making a significant time investment. Either way, you're lumbering around in the bed you built. No sense blaming Inc for your poor decision making.

It was known in advance? Well shit point me to the sign or thread that said that before I built mine.