A well-armed Centaur is the *canonical* aggressive trading ship, and the Tunguska variant is the obvious choice if we're going for best in class.

The Greyhound may be the canonical pirate ship, but nobody brings one to a serious fight on purpose. It's been tried in the NW before and works poorly. The Warthog Mk. II, on the other hand can chase *and* fight. Pirates should be allowed it.

At first, I was all set to agree that the Biocom Vulture is significantly disadvantaged against the Corvus version. This is certainly true in a duel, but this isn't a duel. As we've seen in the Nation War, the ability to run away is as useful as the ability to fight. The extra turbo thrust and relatively low drain could be a large advantage in a group fight like this. I say it's a fair match.

It also doesn't have to be perfect the first time around. Getting balance right usually takes a couple tries in things like this.

I agree with zak regarding XT effectiveness. That is precisely why I prefer to use the SVG in Nation War rather than the Corvult. The CV fights better, but if you're using a light ship in a group battle, you can't afford to stay in one spot for long. You have to keep moving. Especially with the vulture, because of its huge profile when caught from above or below. The vulture's profile is great for duels, but a liability in group combat.

this is why x1 performs so well in nw, it has massive thrust and not much drain plus good profile.

also, why not allow rev c and chip in another ship for the pirates? maybe something not corvus but still piratey if thats even possible.

I like pirating in the convoy guardian, when I'm just raiding npc convoys. It has a delicious irony about it.

I was thinking of a variation of your idea that would force traders to act like traders and pirates to act like pirates. Essentially it would be a scavenger hunt to fill a moth with items available only in gray space (list to be provided at the start of the event.) Each team would have to find ways to get the items and protect the team moth at the same time. Otherwise anything goes. This should make gray space an interesting place for the duration of the event.

At the end of the event a cargo scanner could be used to determine which team managed to get the most items on the list.

I don't know if this would work or if anyone would be interested but I thought I would throw the idea out there.

Problem with that is that people could set up stockpiles of random goods in advance. They might not know which specific goods will be requested, but it wouldn't take all that long to store a mothload of each grey item at Sedina L-2 or wherever. Especially if they collect it as a team. Compared to the hauling they've been doing to build Tridents, it would be nothing.

True. It wouldn't be too hard to gather it but you would still have to get your team's moth safely to the end point. I was thinking more that it would force each team to try to destroy the other team"s moth, creating two ongoing battles for each moth.