So the idea behind this is to make space a little more active (while also boosting player activity), by having occasional active NPC convoys travelling through all parts of space, sort of like CtC, but it doesn't affect anything, however could affect a dynamic economy if there ever is one.

I feel that this should obviously have a scale to it, each tier with higher difficulties and higher rewards, and what affects the scale could be a number of different things the scale being as follows (Explained in tiers for convenience):

[NOTE]: When I say fighter escort, I don't mean the useless ones associated with player voys, I'm referring more to a fighter wing, like the ones that follow capships out of capitol stations.

Tier 1: A single moth or atlas, carrying low value goods such as [ore, and/or commodities]

Tier 2: A single moth or atlas + single fighter escort. Slightly higher value goods, [Rare ores (Helio, lanth, pentric, etc), Corvus Holodisks, Corvus Textiles, etc.]

Tier 3: Multiple trade ships, 3 or 4 man fighter escort. [Mainly Weapons]

Tier 4: TBC

Tier 5: Goliath + Fighter and repair escort. [1 FCP or 1 FFSA]

Tier 6: Goliath + Larger fighter/ rep escort. [1 FCP + 1 FFSA]

Tier 7: Goliath + Moth

Tier 8: Trident

Tier 9: Trident

Tier 10: Capella + 35 Man fighter wing of mixed ships. 5 Centaur repair team. [2 DBHA or 2 EPA or 10 FCP/FFSA or 4 IBA and so on.]

One scaling system that I have in mind, is an incentive for pirates to not destroy these NPC voys, so that they can earn greater rewards and it is as follows:

As a set number of Active NPC convoys reaches it's destination, it slowly works it's way up to higher tiers. So lets say 5 tier 1 voys reach their destination, this spawns a tier 2 convoy, and it lowers the requirement so that it now requires 4 Tier One voys to reach their destination before the next T2 and so on. After 5 T2 voys have reached their destination a T3 spawns, and this cycle continues.
HOWEVER, if the voys are shot down and destroyed, it takes it back a little because 'The trade routes aren't safe for higher tiers'. So lets now say it's currently T5 voys roamin' the hood and it needs 2 more to reach T6, ye shoot one down because Yarrr! it'll now require 3 T5's, and so on.

The defending fighter AI should have a similar AI to that of Furies and NPC Pirates, Where they defend their convoy from any players who attack them, and should split in groups when there are multiple attackers.

Edit: The fighter wing should also stay about 300m away from their escort to avoid Iron Meme to kill the escort with avalons. I should also make a point that these aren't meant to be some easy "aggro the fighters so I can pop the moth" and that the final tier isn't meant to be some easy PCB avalon duo. This lazy mentality makes it kind of pointless. PCB should also trigger aggression.

And for the memes: -1 WORST idea ever!

-1

It's extremely easy to pcb a capella and stop it from jumping with no retribution. 30mins= dead capella+ manu items. Just.. No from me

literally a living meme.

Ironlord im honestly interested if you ever read an entire suggestion post, he clearly had stated that 35 additional NPCs with that cappella and a further 5 taurs repping it. thats a bit more than 30 minutes of shooting a static capella with no shields in an empty sector.

I did, and two man team with one spamming avalons from a centaur with a capship and the other with pcbs would handle it easily. Since pcbs aren't consider damage weapons the npcs won't react to that. I'm interested in how far ahead you think on how easy it would be to do it

oh what is that? now you need:

* one additional player with an uncommon bot drop weapon (who would agro the bots)
* a capital ship they can infinitely reload at
* for you not to damage the capella while they do all the work
* do all this while in greyspace with no one else showing up.

seems like its quite a bit more involved than "lol its just 30 minutes of shooting"

Not really. A pcb and the avalon stocks of the shops, other players selling, and the few hundred I have stocked up rn? That's about 30mins of shooting

+1
Sounds really good and it would mean we could get manu items without doing boring manu and instead fight

+1

Every time you go to a station a massive convoy arrives but you never meet them en route anywhere where you can attack them.

This is still in my opinion just a shortcut to making a capship without most of the actual work and effort you need to put in

It's also an alternative to a more fun way of making a capship, by shooting stuff and not painfully hauling for hours on end

Your response to danger -- scaling back -- is the opposite of what real world shipping does. When things are safe, you just send off individual ships whenever it's convenient. When things are dangerous -- pirates or war -- you delay sending any ships until you have a large group of them ready to go, you add a big naval escort, and you send the whole group out as a convoy. So more danger results in bigger convoys but less frequent shipments.

yeah I like incs suggestion of having to make it dangerous. I like the tier idea, maybe players have to keep killing a certain number of convoys during the week to progress to the next tier and eventually get a capella to spawn that would get a bunch of players online to kill.

The frame work for some of this is already in game with CTC an in game alarm can go off announcing the convoy and have it on a set schedule, lower tiers could be one system hops and become longer as tiers go up culminating with the capella armada going from edras to helios.

I feel like thats a pretty fair effort people have to put in to get a chance at a capship part dropping.

There a difference between capship manu dropping, and small bulk dropping. Even unrats rarely drop any manu. I like the idea just not the cargo it's carrying. Maybe make it so larger ones have a small chance to drop manu. And make it so that every time the escort wnrers a new sector it's units refresh/reinforced again. And pcbs make it see you as hostile and the escort attacks you.