LNH,

You are correct. First of all, why trade when I can fly around running escort missions in an unarmed hog 2 with absolutely no risk, and huge profits?

Second, why would I trade in Grey when I know there are pirates active? Perhaps if you eliminated the ability to know exactly who is on, folks would be forced to risk a bit more.

Third, I've tried the precious Grey routes. They are tedious, boring, risky when certain players are on, and in my opinion, not worth the bother. I'd rather do hive skirmish for a few hours and help my licenses while making a profit.

Fourth, traders do not owe pirates the opportunity to pirate them. They do however, owe the pirate his due if he or she catches them in a situation where they cannot out fight or run. Its part of the f-ing rp people. On the other hand, a player that makes good their escape shouldn't be hounded. That is also part of the rp imo.

I agree with the idea of bringing traders into gray, but I don't think that bringing back a buggy static weapons route is the way to go for several reasons:

1) there is only one route. which means that the details of the route will quickly spread to pirates, who will change their 'prices' and tactics accordingly, and new players who will likely be tempted by the large to try to complete the and become easy prey for the more experienced pirates.

2) traders are not the only people who have to take risks in order to get above average profits. in this model, all a pirate has to do is sit in their heavily armored ships in front of a wormhole and wait for a trader in a lightly armored and heavily loaded ship to come by. if you want some of the profits traders are making in nation space, go to nation space and try to pirate them there.

3) high profits don't guarantee trades will come to gray while the pirates are online.

4) static weapons routes don't give xp.

5) static weapons routes are unrealistic and unbalanced, no one has unlimited funds.

Also, there is no reason why the current map should be so clear cut apart from the low population.

Why shouldn't Initros also connect to Pelatus? Or Metana to Betheshie? Or Deneb to Nyrius? More routes makes for shorter runs, and eliminates choke points. Seems to me that the map imposes 2 dimensional rules onto what should be a 3 dimensional universe. Perhaps, and this is really getting radical, make a few rare sectors that have 2 or even 3 wormholes exiting from it.

Oh, and I'm not up on my physics, but is it absolutely necessary that every wormhole be a two way street rather than one way?

" a trader in a lightly armored and heavily loaded ship to come by"

Know what my favorite trade ship is for Grey Space? Prom MKII.... hows that for "lightly armored"? My other fave is the Atlas X... really hard to catch.

May I make a simple first point? Timezones and numbers. I live in the uk, and given the economic difficulties of Iceland I am unlikely to move closer to Wisconsin. Traders do trade in grey. I log in at tea time, there are a dozen real players on, I trade where I like. By the time vo gets busy in USA evenings I am away to my bed. It is no surprise to me that the two highest rated traders in VO are european players : we have little else to do.

I would agree with DF that increasing the availability of long distance whs would add to the game : this has been debated at length elsewhere.

But as a second point would high profit grey routes add to the availability of targets to keep genuine pirates happy ? I tend to doubt it. If a known griefer is hanging about in grey then a trader just isn't going to go there in a valuable XC, no matter how great the potential profit. I might well arrive in a combat ship and enjoy some pvp or a furball but in an fat unarmed target, no chance. Those XCs and mining moths are going to stay in Nation space.

So, the real question is how does the game allow honest pirates to have a go at honest traders without letting the " lets just kill lots of new players because it is easy to do despite the fact it puts them off VO " crowd have free reign ?

At the moment I feel that Nation space is too heavily protected, but the consequences of killing a low level player in nation space is too small. I accept that the turreted whs were put there to try to protect lower level players, but they have effectively divided the community into three groups , traders, pirates and griefers.

So , what is the solution ? Short term, there isn't one . Long term, a reworking of the faction system to ensure that the consequences of going into Nation space and killing low level players will deter griefers but still allow genuine pirates to threaten genuine rich traders must be the answer. Once that is in place the static nation defences should be reduced. I appreciate that this is being worked on but I do understand that it requires a lot of development work, both conceptually and in terms of coding.

So, in the short term accept that VO is divided into three groups. Accept that change comes when it does; ask nicely and the traders might throw the pirates a voy to play with ....

"ask nicely and the traders might throw the pirates a voy to play with ...."

I do that all the time. Anyways... ask around with the pirates... (as well as SKV and ITAN)... I trade in a moth... (or variant there of)... in Grey frequently. The risk is negated by doing something very simple... paying. Sometimes it gets me a 24 hour pass sometimes it gets me escorted to my destination. Its a simple equation...

150k ship+50 Sedina chocolates+ 50 Corvus holodisks+ the rest filled with items from Xang Xi= A ton of money= pay the damn pirate. Its called overhead or acceptable losses, I call it trading freely and not failing.

ryan you are one of the rare ones, alot of the traders seem to hold the attitude that pirates do not belong in VO at all.

It seems to me that perhaps there is a misunderstanding of what constitutes a trader. While there is an eternal arguement over what separates a pirate from a griefer, I don't recall seeing any discussion on what qualities define a trader. I would argue that there are in fact very few real traders that play regularly.

I don't believe the act of trading is enough to earn someone that designation. As I've stated many times in the past, my observations have led me to conclude that most 'trading' is actually new players or alts building up faction standing.

There seems to be a perception that if a player is not a pirate or guilded nationalist, then they must by default be a trader.

Certainly membership in a trade guild is a pretty good indication that one can be labeled "trader". However, that does not guarantee that said player will be active in that role every time they log on. I think the low numbers of active trade guild members during my last active stint- a small fraction of the number of active pirates at the time- suggests an imbalance.

I would also counter your assertion LNH, with the suggestion that many pirates seem to hold the attitude that traders owe them an opportunity to pirate. The whole 'bring traders to Grey' fails because it does nothing to motivate players to trade there. Sure there are great deals to be made selling Corvus Porn to Sol II. But it is not fun. At least I did not enjoy it enough to continue past my initial testing. The lack of decent return routes was discouraging as well. Essentially, I am not going to play to a script. Put enough good routes out there that run to and from multiple systems and stations and maybe. As it is, I currently find trade, piracy and nationalism boring, which is why I'm inactive. I'd love a good reason to trade or possibly even pirate again. Until that reason arrives, I'll settle for the occasional reactivation to build up a new character and see how the game has changed.

Sometimes this forum reminds me of Special Olympics.
Lot of heated discussions and arguments but no matter if you win or lose, at the end everyone is still retarded.

Just like in this thread... discussing about the best way to bring traders to Grey Space...
Trying to find a workaround solution without eliminating the main problem.

Poor pirates, nobody to shoot at and it makes you unhappy so you want more targets in grey.
Well, walk it off! It's your own damn fault.
If griefers among you weren't so trigger happy to blast every single noob the moment he showed his nose in grey VO would have a steady new playerbase growth and you would eventually have someone to shoot at and maybe have some really enjoyable fights with players who are able to defend themselves.
Yes, I know, killing lot of low level newbies looks good on your pk stats and if you allow them to learn to fight then, by golly, they will shoot back! We cant have that, no no, they might even kill you and you will lose your bragging rights.
In the old VO days we used to help and mentor newbies, encouraged them to stay, learn the ropes and get immersed in VO universe. Now, they are just targets and free pks.
Oh, yea, Incarnate is guilty too. He made a myriad of workaround partial solutions to protect newbies without eliminating the main problem: existing faction system.

VO needs some serious redux and it needs it now.
Rock solid new faction system & return of severe penalties for killing newbies under combat 3.

Incognito -

Firstly, you're a tool.

This is not going to be popular to hear, but it's still true: Pirates (players in pirate guilds) kill and agitate n00bs less than non-pirate players. Don't believe me? Read some 100 transcripts and count the number of players who respond to a n00b question with "type /displayshippos HAHAHAHAHAHA" or any number of other stupid jerkface replies (and there are many). I can't count the number of times I've seen 15 obnoxious non-answers to a question, and all of them come from non-pirates.

Killing new players is another version of the same, with one important difference: Pirates always take credit. Not so with traders and non-pirates. The other night some bunch of d-bags lured a n00b to sedina knowing full well it was filled to bursting with pirates. No warnings, no cautions, just laughter when he flew to his doom.

Now here's the kicker: Non-pirates always blame actual pirates for the non-pirates misdeeds. Further, they will always defend themselves by pointing out the misdeeds of pirates.

You don't need to take away the turrets to ruin the safety of nation space for the "money makers." Just sneak a few independent or "Unaligned" trading hubs into non-Capital systems of nation space. They would only supply repair, refilling, trading (triple KoS and not) and a few very basic (often limited) supplies. Since it would basically be a privately owned station, it probably wouldn't have any guards or defenses (and therefore wouldn't allow anyone to home there). It would be great fun for pirates and anti-pirates alike but would still keep pirating in nation space very difficult as the pirates wouldn't be able to respawn there. This idea is more than RP viable and would probably even answer some questions. It doesn't make sense that there aren't even a few "privately owned" stations in the universe and this format of station would probably be what's used if player owned stations are ever implemented. And about getting there in the first place with the turrets still up, it's not impossible. I've gotten through them by myself with a just my CV and some crafty turbo tapping; and if you've got a group of 3+ then it disperses the fire so much that it's pretty much a cake-walk (not to mention how quickly you can get through with say... a Hog MKII or a Greyhound). We'll call it the "Miner Bob's Space Station" Plan. All in favor?

-Chaakin Tockoa