bump.

That is all.

+1

Yes please.

Step one, Bring back the unrats!
Step two, make them talk less like characters in really bad movies.
Step three, ..........
Step four, profit!

Don't you dare change my beloved Un-Rats! Not the whacky vocabulary, and not the awesome snowflake patterns!

The "unrats" were written in Lisp, using old, unreliable infrastructure (not just Deliverator, but the way it interfaced w/ everything else), and will never return as they were. As Inc has mentioned, we're going to make pirate "clans" which will be much more interesting. That design has a number of required features/changes, though; some of them we've completed (eg. stations you don't just find because of radar), and some of which we haven't yet (eg. the faction redux).

Everyone knows the faction redux is a myth, Like the boogyman and Micheal Jackson

Crazyspence, everyone knows that YOU are a myth. :p

mom: Would it be possible to just make some pirate NPC's that fly around grey and shoot anything that isn't tri-KOS, or something, as a stopgap measure? At this point, we just desperately need anything to shoot stuff in grey. The playerbase isn't large enough to have as few NPC's as we do in grey.

One problem associated with this that I have noticed is that noobs fly in, see that there's literally no one around, assume it's perfectly safe, and then get all worked up when I happen to come across them a few days later and blow them up in their most expensive ship. Grey needs to feel more dangerous, and though CHRN does a pretty good job of that when we're on, Guild Software isn't paying us enough for that to be our full-time jobs.

The playerbase isn't large enough to have as few NPC's as we do in grey.

Truth.

Even thinking, it would be cool to see NPC Nation fighters flying around, just killing enemies of their nation. Serco: (itani, uit) Itani (serco, uit) and UIT (serco, itani). And then we have NPC unaligned being spawned from random greyspace stations every now and then.

One possible implementation:

The hive observes real rats, learn and evolve a new activity:

BOT RATs

They are not humans, nor guises. They are the newest treat from the hive. Instead of mining a sector, they go (systematically or Randomly) from sector to sector hunting for preys: miners, traders, convoys, fighters, rats... anything!

Each pack is composed of a few transport, a few assaults and some nastier bots. Maybe even the hive develop a new bot, more proper for that. They even tend to group by more used WHs...

That would fit better on now existing VO Universe, and make gray more dangerous when real rats are in RL...

Alloh, the Assault Class Bots were designed for that, however, i don't see why the Hive would randomly attack, or hunt, for that matter.

Goodies. Process them they will.

on step 2 the hivepack learned or recorded a few hails from the nastier pirates in universe, then started playing it back just before attacking their unexpecting prey. Sometimes sounding like those ancient pirate's B movies...

Even big convoys escorted with tridents will being attacked. But no money offer seemed to stop the bots. Even real pirates are nothing but resources to collect...

MOTH pilots learned that they are slow, so turbo as fast as you can. Consider dropping part of your cargo to preserve your ship accelerating faster. Or hire some gunners.

That's when stations starts offering a mission for "NewBot Core" from a hivepack...

Do you have any idea how much more fun this would make doing escorts? And we can actually get some kill rewards...

It'd be much more fun to actually have to worry about something other then storms during escorts, I agree Kierky. To Ladron, why make them not shoot tri KOS? Pirates are Pirates not withstanding the current guilds in game (which do on occasion shoot each other anyway) . Why would a NPC rat care what your standings are? Im all for em, just make em shoot EVERYONE.

But I'd prefer them to be Hive Bots, preferably with a new model, than plain NPCs. And more immersive for today's VO universe.

Just make the bots behave exaclty like pirates: Hail, demand credits (but makes no difference if you pay), attack and loot the remains.

For the hive, it is just another source of resources...