Now I've only been in this game for a few days, but I've been merchanting up a storm. My bank balance is sitting somewhere around 1.5 million, and I have nothing to spend it on. Instead of continuing to make trade runs to gather money for which I have no use (until I really start getting into dogfights I suppose) I've been passing back and forth through grey space areas with ships laden with succulent goods to tempt any pirate worth his space-salt. It's the thrill of the chase, the shots across the bow, the uncertainty of whether or not I would live to make the next jump into hyperspace.

Or it would be, if there was some uncertainty. You see, my trading vessels can outrun or match speeds with virtually any pirate ship out there. Unless I get unlucky enough to find a pirate on my exact vector when I phase in somewhere, I can always accelerate and my Fast Charging battery will carry me to safety with a frustrated brigand following yet never able to close on me.

What I propose is this: give us caravans. These caravans would consist of one or more NPC-piloted vehicles that follow you, and essentially do nothing more than provide extra cargo space. As anyone that has attempted to make a 3-sector long trading route with a Wraith can attest, we need some more frigging cargo space.

If you've observed the various NPC traders puttering around in Atlases, I'm sure you've noticed that they're easy to catch. They're slow and they're stupid. This is exactly what I'm envisioning for these convoy NPCs. They don't fight back, and they don't bolt for the hills (although a token dodge maneuver when they get shot at would be nice.) All they do is follow the PC at a leisurely pace.

http://thereject.socialreject.net/pictures/lolbus.png

As you have determined by now, this would make these rich convoys quite attractive to pirates. Who could resist picking off one or two convoy ships? Not a pirate, that's for sure! So then the PC merchant is left with a choice: Do they attempt to defend their caravan and all it's valuable loot (not to mention expensive convoy NPCs) or do they run for the hills and leave their goods to the looters?

At this point we really start to give value to group tactics, guild warfare, and inter-PC hiring practices. Want to take a nice big convoy through grey space? You might want to hire a few other players to act as guards, lest you find yourself beset by hostile attackers.

Now we can't exactly give the traders and miners new toys without thinking of the pirates, now can we? Well technically they also benefit from the caravans, but that's beside the point.

Pirates are, for lack of a better term, "awesome." It's not because they steal, it's not because they kill and pillage, it's none of those. Pirates rule because they have style. They walk with a swagger, talk with a swagger, and their sense of dress is top-notch. Devs, I think it is high time we gave them a vessel to really complete the ensemble and secure Vendetta's position as the bestest space MMORPG of all time.

http://thereject.socialreject.net/pictures/pirateship.png

Devs, feel free to use this concept art in your marketing and promotion campaigns.

thanks for the laughs man

*giggles*

Blackbeard in space . . . now I truly have seen everything lol

And an excellent Idea too... it's BLOODY hard to catch people.

I generally have to run a stripped down valk, hit them several times while they're runnin for the wormhole, then jump with them and rely on those few extra seconds of acceleration to get the last hit. If I miss at all, I lose, since every bit of energy I have counts as extra seconds. Valuable training I suppose, but certainly tough.

This is actually a really cool idea...

The framework to hire cargo carriers would appear to support hiring NPC guards with little extra work... that might be kind of cool too.

Reject, you're a genius and I love your drawings !

[Edit] Thought I'd do more than just bumping.

I suggest that players do not appear on radar (only in the user list) as long as they are very close to a roid. For example so that I can hide my ship from other players by coming within 10 (or 0) m of an asteroid.

That would immediately promote ambushing, but also let victims hide in roids. Hide and seek in a roids field, anyone ? It's one more form of interaction with other players, so I think it'd be a good thing. We'd see more careful traders take the time to circle around fields to get to the WH, or plan a dash through it if they cannot avoid it. More strategy ! And it'd help miners hide from pirates, promoting a more active "searching" for pirates in response ;)

Im all for some more features for pirates, pirating now is a very unpromising career, the ability to hide/hijack ships/actually catch runners would be much appreciated, possibly even make the pirates a real faction, possibly broken up like the UIT

If you sorta ignore Chao's post, this is my favorite suggestions post of all those on the first page!

Actually, I love chao's idea of being able to hide your ship. A ships scanner should only be able to detect what it can see. Things behind asteroids should be very hard to see, unless they have a very high energy signature that can be detected. That can be a good way to balance hiding. Let the more powerfull weapons have high energy signatures that are easily detectable, so pirates would have to use intermediate and lower grade eapons if they wanted to hide and ambush someone, thus giving the victom a chance.

Why not make some sort of pirating XP system? Maybe have some kind of EMP weapon which will disable a ship for X amount of seconds, then give you the chance to board/steal things, maybe with some sort of "pirating beam" a little bit like mining. Conversely, traders could buy some kind of neutralizer for it, depending on their level. Maybe you could start out by capturing bots and things, until you get more "advanced" missions targeting NPCs and players.. just a thought.

Your idea for convoy NPC's hit it on the spot. Thats exactly what i meant when i posted before:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/7723

A lot of benefits would come from AI, especially in the early stages before the games population grows to a great great number.