greyspace has a banner saying how dangerous it is.. but is it?

how about unrat instances in the three systems, instead of it being a random spawn..

no more 4 to 12 hours and selecting one location.. 4 to 12 hours for each of the three systems.. the potential to have pirates in all three simultaneously (sedina, odia, bractus) becoming a thing.

mmm tasty snacks. unrats will be a tiny bit more unpredictable, enough to matter.

Along those same lines, I've always felt that nation space is too safe. There should be groups of 1 or 2 unrats that are weak, like a Kannik Collector, that will ambush traders who think they're "safe" in nation space. Something that'll make them sweat and encourage escorts, but not so bad that they shut down all trade completely.

yea nation stuff would be fine, except that the way things work are a little inflexible.. like npcs having protection from players.. as if they were players.. for instance.. latos.. when the event fires there are bots around the station and killing them usually entails tanking your standing cos they have nfz protection and such.. same was the issue with long ago when bots streamed out of the stations, hive invasion etc.

making them unaligned wont work because the voys will wreck them. etc.

so until things like that are addressed..

ps. we did love the hive invasions and it brought people together to re-open the stations.

ive also already had messages regarding my suggestion.. and my reply is no.. its really not that bad. 10 years ago there were seven or eight fully active pirate guilds running, every wormhole was on lockdown.. and.. you had to work for it.. so i dont see any difference at all.. and the unrats can be removed where as the players keep returning over and over.

by comparison this is easy mode even with all of grey covered. it also presents a risk to wormhole campers.

I like this idea, especially if they are more along the lines of the Bractus Ace or the Odia collector. where there are NPC "Aces"(for want of a better term), groups or special bots that spawn or roam grey attacking players.

also I think suggested before but it would be neat if the unrats infestations grew like the dynamic hive does, so if nobody clears them their numbers increase until they have blockades at their systems wormholes scaling up similar to the Serco/Itani border blockades with capital ships eventually blocking all traffic.

this sounds cool, more drops! :D the unrats could also have different flavors/loadouts they prefer based on where they spawn, or even just in general, like the usual pcb raptor/flare hog that appears, then some rats that use "stolen" proms or valks even or rev c whatever the hell

- Ashanti of The Sands

More peril! Yes!

+1 Grey is too safe. Unrats in all grey systems, all 3 Latos wormholes included. Moar unrats, moar fun.
Make grey spicy again!

unrat instances in the three systems, instead of it being a random spawn.
+1
GA

If the swarm of unrats hung out around the wormhole instead of aimlessly patrolling in the "middle" of the sector they'd be plenty more dangerous, biggest reason they're more or less harmless (to competent capship pilots anyway) at the moment is due to the fact that when a player enters the infested system they're typically a ways away giving plenty of time for the capship in question to build up speed.

I'm gonna start putting my credits in TU manufacturing futures... just in case; hehehe.

TL;DR: Unrats in their current state aren't a serious concern for capship pilots and increasing their presence/drops without making them more difficult for players with capships will increase the divide that already exists.

I'm not opposed to more unrats, but I'd rather see unrats behave like "real" space pirates instead of just cranking up their numbers. (giving players the option to pay for passage one way or another would also be really cool but yeah)

The unrats of old were unforgiving the new ones are harder given the PCB raptors/gatflare WTD's but half of us are running around in capships that accelerate faster than my ass reaching for a bag of free chips but unlike my ass they've got a rear facing turret and pretty beefy shields! The lack of speed on the dent isn't really much of an issue given the fact a dent pilot doesn't have to buy time by turboing the million hitpoints on the hull takes care of that for em, granted it's fitted with capgauss and/or a TU mine It'll typically make it out of the sector alive. (Capship commands and the sector going to sleep is a different can of worms but I'm getting ahead of myself here.)

I'm veering off a bit here suggestion because I can't help myself; if a player were able to temporarily hold unaligned standing (barring all the difficult bullshit that would come from implementing this; mission conflicts/abuse... etc) It would also go a long way to making the far end of greyspace that much more dangerous, particularly for cap pilots which for all intents and purposes are "invincible" in practically all PVE scenarios granted they know what they're doing.

As far as unrat drops are concerned; I can't really see a downside outside of the fact that unrats are already particularly easy to deal with for capship pilots so it further tilts the "balance" of the game towards the established players.

That said the current incentive of getting the odd Pylon/RBA once in a blue moon seems like it's plenty to me, particularly if unrats capships proliferate and start to spawn more frequently.

Nation space is too safe but I could argue that'd be best saved for another thread! That said odd npc pirates up would be super fucking cool though, that said it would be even cooler if they behaved like "real" rats and would attempt to ransom the player instead of just being another npc to kill!

PS: Fucking 15 minute edit rule...

greyspace has a banner saying how dangerous it is.. but is it?

I think the idea of pushing greyspace to be more dangerous has some merit. It's something I expected to evolve further with our Persistent Events, but I've been so buried in more basic, fundamental development this year I haven't been able to put much time into it.

I'm not against adding more unrats, but honestly I'd be more interested in re-evaluating the entire mechanism and feel of greyspace.

It's also not that difficult to add greater risk to usage of capships. It's not something I would seek to do trivially, or in an unbalanced way, but it's something that will probably evolve in due course.

I'm not going to focus on the risk of Nation Space as part of this thread, that really belongs somewhere else. Nation space also has different parameters (like teaching newbies).

But, I agree with the general notion that "greyspace should probably be more dangerous" is worth examining, and I'm glad to hear that people are generally on-board with it.

Leave it to spidey to kill a thread with his anti-capship rhetoric. SMH
If he had his way we'd all be flying only EC107s, with no capships available.
LOL

Don't get me wrong I'm not opposed to the idea in the slightest, just that greyspace is already unforgiving for a newb and adding a couple more unrat infested wormholes on their route is probably going to discourage them more than anything. (at the end of the day that's not really my problem but I'd argue it's something worth considering)

Capship pilots on the other hand are going to keep doing what they're already doing they'll just be able to do it... even more (It's not inherently bad but it's not great either)

If it were to be implemented I'd be satisfied with the Greyspace disclaimer adding a little blurb for "a fast high endurance ship is recommended"

All that to say the suggestion is good and I'm all for it but I'd rather see it implemented in a way that makes it specifically harder for capships, particularly if there's going to be increased incentive behind splodin' em.

If the thread dies... It's because it ran it's course! (And yes I would happily trade my capships for spacequake but at this rate that's wishful thinking!) :P

i never really took the drops into account either.. adding them across space would kind of amplify that and we definitely dont want a reduction in chance to drop, its pretty reasonable as it is.. as someone who straight up has free reign on them for years you definitely need to do a lot of killing to get those juicy ones.

i think may be i jumped in prematurely, but at least its prompting other perspectives so i can rethink things as a whole. (me, impulsive, never..hehe)