A few suggestions:

1) Shorten the countdown time to sometime between 10 and 20 seconds, with the pirate NPC still giving chase as the countdown goes (as currently).

2) If you warp out, make the unnies give chase! (As per the old rules, ie they chase to Latos O-12 then turn around but if you're going from Sedina to Bractus, they chase all the way)

3) Allow unnies to shoot you as you warp out, but not in. This is mostly for gameplay as it's rather unfair given how the warp in procedure works ("Argh! Warping in! Stuck in animation for three seconds!") Make an unnie at the destination sector (If there are any) begin giving chase immediately though. (ie I go from B-8 to Sedina O-6 ignoring threats. So 1 unnie from B-8 plus 1 unnie in O-6. If I go to Odia B-13, 2 unnies chasing add a third from B-13. Try to go through all of Corvus space and you have a Strike Force sized force after you) This'll tie in to the next suggestion...

4) Wait, I said it in the example above... let me state it as a seperate point anyway. For every sector you go to that has unaligned pirates, add one to the count following you, provided you broke one of their rules (Didn't pay up, blew one of them up, etc).

5) If this were to be implemented, and only if, implement higher pirate fees BUT make them one time while in "Corvus" space. So if you stay in Sedina-Odia-Bractus, you'll be fine if you pay 50,000 once. If you leave to say Latos and come back however, it's a new cycle and you must pay up again or dodge.

6) This is controversial even in my own head, but I'd like to voice it anyway: If you avoid unnies but going to say Sedina L-2, the station sector, they should message you something along the lines of "We'll be watching you". If you go to a sector with unnies in them, the chase begins anew as a new cycle (So if you had five unnies after you before and you go to a station as a detour before a wormhole, at the wormhole you'd have one pirate IMMEDIATELY on you, no countdown).

My 2¢

So you want to get ganked by 5 unnie TD hogs?
Go make your own mission for that you ninny.

1) Maybe- 45 seconds was what seemed reasonable to me. I'm always open to feedback on *any* arbitrary number like that.

2) They chase you anywhere you go in grey space (or should). What exactly would you have me change?

3) This can't currently be changed on a per-bot basis. However, I think the way you specified is what always happens.

4) This is exactly how it's supposed to be working right now. Is it not?

5) I've had *some* input on the fees, but more is welcome. Something I intended as an easter-egg, which I think is fairly well known now: If you pay them more than twice what they ask for, you are buying a long-term pass- how long depends on how much more you give them. I think it's around 10 credits per minute.

6) This is also how it's supposed to be working, more or less. The message is different, but they are supposed to chase you to station sectors in grey, taunt you, and then leave. The only difference being that they revert to the standard reaction to you in future (trying to shake you down). I could make them immediately hostile if people think that would be more fun.

PS - It would be very helpful if people tested the pirates, both by being victims and taking the liberation mission, on the test server. The work I've been doing has touched a lot of code that all missions depend on, and I haven't yet thoroughly tested the missions I haven't been working on.

For 2) They just say "Arr! We'll get ye next time" and let you be. I haven't been chased in maybe a month (and by chase I mean multi-sector, sorry if I didn't make that clear :/)

For 3) same thing. They say "Arr! We'll get ye next time!" and let you go, without firing.

Cool on 5)! Never knew. Guess that's why it's an easter egg :)

I'll get on ye Olde... I guess ye New test server tonight, try out your modifications.

So you were chased between sectors a month ago but not since? I haven't changed the production code for longer than that. I'd go try to figure it out, but with the new version being so close to release, I'm just going to make sure it works there. So hopefully at least the multi-sector chasing, which I know worked when I released it, will work again when I roll out the new escort missions.

Cool :D It just seemed so lame that they just sat there if I used the wormhole to warp out.

Oh- there is another limitation to them following you I forgot to mention. One of them has to be within 1000m when you warp, or they don't know where to follow. There is no provision made for them assuming you went through the wormhole, but there are usually pirates within 1000m of it anyway. I don't know if that explains them not following you, but I thought I should mention it.

Oh, I know. But even when within 100m, if you warp out... they just give up :/

eh hell, why not? not like anyone uses grey space for anything.... I'm just curious though, how would you plan to get an Agresso Taur to sedina/latos then? it can't infiniturbo, and the only chance you really have of making the wormhole is to outdistance them before they reach 45 seconds and get really aggressive. Currently it seems the other bots don't even begin to give chase until the 45 second mark is reached by the way... and this can be a good thing.

EDIT: we really need some kind of counter-unrat force in the Sedina/Odia area... perhaps some NPC pirate hunters that patrol at random to thin down the presence when it gets too big... or just more frequent well-armed convoys that players can follow for cover.

How would I plan?

I'd pay the fucking pirates, like the point of having pirates there implies.

Some of us are very experienced pilots, so the Unaligned bot behavior might not be quite as dangerous to us as it would be to newer pilots. I too find the timer to be a bit long, and some of the bot behaviour to be a bit ponderous - but I think the level of aggression might be just about right.

I come on at night and thin the Unbot herd in and around Sedina. I usually don't have a great deal of trouble if I'm careful, though the warthogs do scare the hell out of me with those rockets sometimes. They are good enough to present a challenge in groups. I only wish they wouldn't break off and run after fresh prey while I'm trying to kill them.

(1) As we've seen in recent events, newer pilots have zero business in Gray. They should be handily dispatched by the UnRats ~90% of the time. The current level of aggression is insufficient to acheive even half that kill rate.

(2) A simple Y or N response should be added to make paying faster and easier, much like when you query the mission computer and it asks what you want. They'd be better pirates if I only had to open chat, hit tab and type Y or N.

Indeed, unnies don't chase anyone any more. They attack if you linger near them, that's all. The timer is actually not too long, see how long it takes you to type in their name and the correct number in if you try paying them.

Another unnie-related feature that I think is a bug: when a player is taking liberation mission they should be able to pick up liberated cargo. If unnies get to keep all the loot there is not much point doing liberation.

1) Got the same feeling about the timer, but if you shorten it, we need a quickpay button or something. I don't know how fast you guys type, but I'm slow, real slow, and 45 secs is useually just about right to type in the payment.

lecter:
When we have more content in safe-space, we'll feel much more comfortable making grey truly dangerous.

I could do the y or n thing- I thought about it- it's just that it implies a sort of electronic contract system (else how would sending 'y' or 'n' to someone enable them to take your money). I'd very much like to make such a thing that players and bots can use alike, but that's a large-ish project that's obviously not too high on the list. I guess I could just do the npc-only kludge- it feels *wrong* to me, but I guess my problem with it is aesthetic, which doesn't matter so much to most players. I'll think about it.

antz:
You know you can tab-complete their names?

There's supposed to be another pirate mission where you go around collecting the cargo and get a cut. A couple of major problems with bots picking up cargo have been standing in our way, but hopefully not for much longer. I didn't want to make it possible to take the cargo by being on the liberation mission, because then you could just take the mission and sit around in a moth collecting cargo and getting all the profits. The pirates doing the booming are being paid per kill- that comes from (currently imaginary) profits from the sale of the dropped cargo as well as from the extorted money.

Yes, you can tab-complete their names, but they clash with other names more often than not, so most of the time you will need to type a large part of their name manually. To a lesser extent the same problem applies to player pirates asking for money.

/requestmoney <name> <amount> is a possible solution, as long as there is a simple way of replying yes or no, that is not ambiguous, and can not be used to prevent the player from flying effectively.

We definitely will do *something* to fill that need- I see it as part of a bigger project that we can't focus on right now, but we have discussed kludgy ways of getting something in there now. If we think of or read a solution that is both very quick to implement and not-totally-lame, I expect we'll have it in there in short order.

The principle problems are not with presenting the contract (a pirate doing so can reasonably be assumed to have some experience), but with presenting the option of accepting to the player (including new players) in a convenient, clear, non-modal way without designing and building something that would begin to resemble the more elaborate mission and chat interfaces we have planned.

"I only wish they wouldn't break off and run after fresh prey while I'm trying to kill them."

Yes and yes! And it is not only unrats that do that, it's bots too.
Very annoying - and confusing in storms...