Pirates CAN make as much as traders, you just need to snag there cargo and sell it where THEY were going to sell it. Why else would the trader be out there hauling all the cargo. You will never make as much as a trader by pirating, that's the pirates life. You ever seen a pirate in a nice suit and a fancy car, NO, you see them on beat up old ships hitting the weakest and or oldest ship in a fleet, like a preditor in a herd of animals.

john: that's totally impractical for a pirate. Most pirates don't fly ships that have the cargo space to grab everything a trader was carrying, and on the average, traders can make runs faster and more consistantly than the pirate can snag them.

crippled if they flew a ship like me I would duke it out and the best may win.

If they fly a ship agaisnt which I don't stand a chance, it is logical I will try to run.

Or maybe we just need a weapon which can just stop the use of a turbo but has a serious cooldown. Meaning you can stop a ship from turboing for 5 mins, but you can only use this ray again 15 mins later on the same ship, this weapon will also drain 50% of your total batterycapacity and give this 50% to the target. Meaning you have 2 shots to hit the target, if you miss the person can run and you lost your bounty. Don't know about the need for autoaim or not...

I haven't decided yet on what porttype it should be. And it is just a raw idea. Don't know if it is feasible nor the easiness that it can be abused. But the idea behind it is to give pirates the time to incapacitate their prey without killing them.

As a failsafe, we need something to discourage using it to grief people... But haven't got an idea how yet, maybe any of you has an idea. Or we could just dispose of the idea. Since it might completely make the life of traders impossible, dunno...

EDIT: although 5 mins may be a bit to much just used it to put colour the idea, but for good measure and as a starter use a 1 min stop with turboing, 3 mins cooldown.

If you made it a missile launcher and only allowed ships to load 2-3 missiles, then it would be difficult to abuse. It would need to be a very fast missile.

Renegade: how does that have ANYTHING to do with what I said?...

John was saying that if pirates grabbed all the cargo of every trader they snagged, they could make as much money as traders.

I said that they can't, because the frequency at which they get money from traders isn't nearly as high as the frequency at which traders can earn money.

And then you said that if they flew a ship like you, you would fight... I still haven't figured out why you decided to direct that comment at me....

a ship like mine.

Meaning if they fly the same ship as me, I'll fight in stead of run. Meaning the chance to first of all snag a unit will depend on the better pilot. Meaning if they come after me in an atlas while im in a wraith, ill fight, same vice versa. If you come after me in a marauder while im in a marauder, ill fight. If you come after me in a marauder while im in a wraith, ill run. If you come after me while I was flying the old centaur and you are in a valk or a vult, I'll run

While before the better pilot needed to hope on the trader not running or on taking it by utter and complete surprise.

I hope this made it clear, just some bad word- and punctuationplacing.

cheers

So how is anyone supposed to catch you?

That was part of my second explanation martin.

you had 2 charges on your special turbodisabler, if you didn't hit me, I'd be gone, if you hit me I would be unable for starters to turn on turbo for 1 minute (as a starter). However the pirate can not use the weapon again after a cooldown (3 mins).

PS: or you can make it any other number of mins like I stated, normally in 5 mins you can kill somebody who is not able to use turbo at all and has no escorts. Former ctf made that more then clear.

I hope this helps martin. And the advantag eis that you can disable anybody being undependable on ammo although having some disadvantages like the possibility of not being able to ever catch them if you miss 2 times (or make drain 33% and you have 3 opportunities)...

cheers

OK so presumably you want both of us in equivalent ships, for example, 2 Centaurs, but my Centaur will have this turbo disabler in it so I lose the small port. It would have to be a small port device I suspect, seeing as the Corvus specials have small ports only.

So they wouldn't be equivalent..........

Not to mention that a turbo disabler would probably be rather exploitable or just downright annoying.

Edit: Saw you mentioned a few posts back about making it difficult to grief people with this turbodisabler. Sounds like a lot of tricky coding to me.

Piracy at the moment is uneconomical, difficult and dangerous. We rarely catch someone who runs and the odds are also stacked against us with the growing use of swarm Centaurs and Ragnaroks cruising around. It really isn't much of an issue.

Not tricky at all. YOu just have to make it a missile with an ammo capacity of 2. You get two shot, and then you need to go back and dock. No need for any fancy coding at all.

There will be more energy available to fire your two large port weapons and for you to maneuver if you don't have a small port gun.

I just had a cool thought as to how this is going to affect piracy.

Pirate in Centaur shoots trader with anti turbo missile.

Pirate shoots swarms at trader from 400m away. Trader can't dodge in his turboless Centaur and goes boom.

OR Pirate dashes around trader and drops Lightning mines. Trader can't get clear and goes boom.

Trader fires swarms at pirate in response before going boom. Pirate turbos off and lets their own swarms finish the job.

Sure sounds like that's going to be fun for traders. I don't know about you guys but I don't know many people who can dodge swarms with a loaded centaur without turbo and I really don't know anyone who'd find that fun or amusing.

* you could pay them off to not kill you.

* countermeasures

* dodge the missile

The whole point is to give the pirates a chance to pirate. If it's easy for ships to escape, then pirates basically have to kill them to get anything. A trader who finds himself stuck and unable to escape will probably pay the bribe rather than die. Sure it could be sorta abused, but then maybe there shouldn't be any weapons that can kill a large transport in one shot. If you reduce the time that turbo is disabled, a pirate might be able to bring you down to 25% hull.

Bottom line is that any change like this would need to be balanced in the game.

But as it stands piracy is more fun than effective. If someone runs they normally get away. It's only polite people who find us amusing or people we catch totally off guard who pay.

I'd like to see piracy remain as hard as it currently is, otherwise the universe will be full of pirates and that wouldn't be very fun.

people would just have to adjust their tactics and perhaps hire escorts more often. It would add a little danger to greyspace, which right now isn't nearly as dangerous as people would lead you to believe.

I like the idea that Corvus should sell a weapon for pirates that targets the turbo engines without destroying the ship. A pirate could conceivably hijack the ship at some future point, flying off in it along with the cargo and sending the trader back to his home station.

Or, if you fire at the backside of a ship you damage the turbo thrusters first, since that's where they are located. The trader would learn that their engines were hit and stop to give money, then limp to a station. Along these lines, if your right side is severely damaged, it would follow that your right side weapon might not work. That would be cool!

-Oort Cloudburst

What if you could get paid to pirate?

Seems to me the Itani and Serco nations should try out the system that European nations used 500 years ago [or so]: privateering. You'd get a letter of permission from your government, saying "You have our permission to make war on the enemies of our nation, and keep all but 11% of the proceeds". In VO, it should be against those with negative faction standing vis a vis your nation, I suppose.

In VO, I'd imagine you should get a faction standing boost from your nation to make up [if it can?] for the 11% tax you pay your govt. for the privateering permit. You could conceivably take privateering permits from other factions, without each faction knowing of the others. That could get UIT players involved, since various UIT factions might want to sponsor privateering against their competitors[?].

What do you think?

Ah yes :) Letters of Marque

Oh, I like this idea (Letters of Marque).

Maybe you can make it into an Medal reward : get 5 bounties (or kill 5 bounty hunters) and earn a Letter of Marque where you actually get paid to Pie-Rat!

Except the letter of marque actually taxed the pirates. All it did was afford protection to the pirate from a certain government for a fee. They didn't pay them extra.

Since people seem to have a hard time making money pirating as things are now, this would only make it worse. It would also prevent you from pirating members of one house, which would reduce your number of targets by about 1/3.

Eh, that already happens. I had to take a SEVERE cut in my ability to fly around the universe in order to attack all 3 nations. Many choose not to.