Marauder stealing from stations?

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grapedog
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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by grapedog » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 13:58

I have an alert for L sized SCA ships, so my traders often find them when arriving at a station. The alert goes off, and i send in a ship from somewhere to destroy them. I would safely say at least once an hour ill find an SCA destroyer trying go collect its loot.

It wont pop when they are disguised, but i have nsver seen a fake faction ship robbing a station. Maybe they can't hack/steal without giving up the disguise?

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ADMNtek
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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by ADMNtek » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 16:33

the game seems to be cheating when it comes to this. i have seen several cases where my station dropped 200+ computronics. however the one that came to pick it up wasn't a marauder or a plunderer but usually a kestrel prospector.

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grapedog
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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by grapedog » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 18:34

ADMNtek wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 16:33
the game seems to be cheating when it comes to this. i have seen several cases where my station dropped 200+ computronics. however the one that came to pick it up wasn't a marauder or a plunderer but usually a kestrel prospector.
if he's prospecting for good deals, free claytronics is certainly a good deal.... though a kestral... can hold what, like 5 claytronics?

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ADMNtek
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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by ADMNtek » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 20:45

exactly i had just ordered one of my cargo ships to pick it up and then that ship takes it all. and i have seen it happen several more times. it happened so much that by now i setup a small trade station next to my HQ that only serves as a sell point for my computronics collection ships. sounds insane but losing around 1.6 mill each time piles up fast.

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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by Wraith_Magus » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:55

grapedog wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 13:58
I have an alert for L sized SCA ships, so my traders often find them when arriving at a station. The alert goes off, and i send in a ship from somewhere to destroy them. I would safely say at least once an hour ill find an SCA destroyer trying go collect its loot.

It wont pop when they are disguised, but i have nsver seen a fake faction ship robbing a station. Maybe they can't hack/steal without giving up the disguise?
You're probably just not looking for them, so you're not finding them.

When I was robbed twice at the same time, I decided to go on a little vengeance spree and wipe out every SCA plunderer. Turns out there's a lot of them, and they respawn faster than I can take them down, but hey, it's profitable! I managed to build a whole megafactory from the proceeds. (Protip: Selling ships straight-up has a massive nerf to it, so you only get about 1/3rd the value, but selling the parts and inventory at an equipment dock or shipyard still gives you full cash value, so with a little more micromanagement, you can squeeze another 3 million out of your selling a boarded ship. Half of these phoenixes have mk3 thrusters, which are worth 5mil alone! Oh, and shop around in shipyards to find one with the least stock/highest prices to offload your goods - that's worth another 3 million right there! Done right, you can get 12 million pre phoenix, which is pretty good money for something you can do in a 1.5 mil corvette with some troopship backup worth only 3-6 mil, depending on ship. In fact, you can make millions just running corvettes back and forth between shipyards buying advanced satellites in places where they cost 80k and selling them where they cost 120k...)

I don't know if there's a better way to do this, but I just go from sector to sector on the map with object list open set to ships, scrolled to just where the non-player units still appear (about one sector's worth of screen), and manually scan for "plunderer". I then set one of my scouts to follow any plunderer I find. They DEFINITELY still plunder, but they occasionally get scanned and attacked by police, and that's when they get flagged as SCA.

(Amusing side note: If plunderers are disguised as ARG, they will have the SCA "greenback" paint scheme, but the ARG logo even after you scan them and reveal them UNTIL you move far enough away that it despawns/respawns the model, at which point it has magically turned to the SCA logo painted on the ship. Likewise, a marine will quickly paint the player logo on the ship the instant your back is turned after boarding.)

In any event, following the plunderers closely, I constantly noticed plunderers basically doing nothing but sitting next to fields of ejected cargo crates near a station, punctuated by them flying to the next one in travel mode. Plunderers will do nothing else unless attacked by someone.

Oh, and minotaur raiders aren't worth the effort (I've shot them to death with a single ion cannon from 100% to 0% hull, which took 20 mins, all while using Comms to try to ask them to surrender, and they STILL refused, the stubborn jerks!), so I just flag them as hostile and destroy them. They're more effort to capture than the destroyers, and worth less a tenth as much, plus minotaur raiders SUUUUUUUCK, so there's no point in capturing them to use, either.

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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by Midnitewolf » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 22:20

grapedog wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 13:58
I have an alert for L sized SCA ships, so my traders often find them when arriving at a station. The alert goes off, and i send in a ship from somewhere to destroy them. I would safely say at least once an hour ill find an SCA destroyer trying go collect its loot.

It wont pop when they are disguised, but i have nsver seen a fake faction ship robbing a station. Maybe they can't hack/steal without giving up the disguise?
I am not sure. I am pretty sure I have seen them doing it while disguised but I will admit I could be wrong. However, if your right, then just setting your stations defenses to KOS SCA should do the trick in killing them off. I mean it won't prevent the initial hack but the second they drop the disguise, your defensive turrets should light them up.

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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by Midnitewolf » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 22:22

Pares wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 13:12
I wish there was a "Police area" command which would make your selected ship to scan every non-player non-hostile ship going through the area. Obviosly if there is a lot of traffic and few police ships, there would be a good chance for pirates to slip through. Lot of police ships? Little chance. The current "Police" command, as stated before, is utterly useless.
You can get that mod I mentioned earlier and it will actively try to reveal disguised ships.

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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by Midnitewolf » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 22:29

ADMNtek wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 16:33
the game seems to be cheating when it comes to this. i have seen several cases where my station dropped 200+ computronics. however the one that came to pick it up wasn't a marauder or a plunderer but usually a kestrel prospector.
It is because he is using a hack, not "selecting" what he wants. The hack just expels a random amount of a random type or several random types of goods. I have seen times where only 2-3 crates are spawned with very low quantities of good due to a hack and one time, when there must have been 50+ crates each with like 3000 goods in each crate.

One thing I will say is I am not 100% sure these goods are actually spawned from your inventory. For example when I had the huge hack of my Wharf/Shipyard with literally 1000s of each type of goods floating around out in space, I paused the game when it happened to just allow myself to get over the shock and then looked at my inventory levels on goods expecting the worst. However, all my inventories looked to be in good shape and well stocked, really no different than the way the inventory status had looked about an hour earlier when I last checked how things were running. Again no way to know for sure, but the hack sure didn't appear to have affected my inventory levels.

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ADMNtek
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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by ADMNtek » Tue, 20. Apr 21, 22:43

Midnitewolf wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 22:29
ADMNtek wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 16:33
the game seems to be cheating when it comes to this. i have seen several cases where my station dropped 200+ computronics. however the one that came to pick it up wasn't a marauder or a plunderer but usually a kestrel prospector.
It is because he is using a hack, not "selecting" what he wants. The hack just expels a random amount of a random type or several random types of goods. I have seen times where only 2-3 crates are spawned with very low quantities of good due to a hack and one time, when there must have been 50+ crates each with like 3000 goods in each crate.

One thing I will say is I am not 100% sure these goods are actually spawned from your inventory. For example when I had the huge hack of my Wharf/Shipyard with literally 1000s of each type of goods floating around out in space, I paused the game when it happened to just allow myself to get over the shock and then looked at my inventory levels on goods expecting the worst. However, all my inventories looked to be in good shape and well stocked, really no different than the way the inventory status had looked about an hour earlier when I last checked how things were running. Again no way to know for sure, but the hack sure didn't appear to have affected my inventory levels.
interesting but this far the only thing i have ever seen dropped is computronics. and it is also the only thing my collection ships collect. however i have not looked if there was an actual drop in my storage levels when it happens need to keep an eye on that.

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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by grapedog » Wed, 21. Apr 21, 08:38

Wraith_Magus wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:55

Oh, and minotaur raiders aren't worth the effort (I've shot them to death with a single ion cannon from 100% to 0% hull, which took 20 mins, all while using Comms to try to ask them to surrender, and they STILL refused, the stubborn jerks!), so I just flag them as hostile and destroy them. They're more effort to capture than the destroyers, and worth less a tenth as much, plus minotaur raiders SUUUUUUUCK, so there's no point in capturing them to use, either.
I would disagree with this, as for me personally, it is the easiest way to make early game money. Capping minotaur and dragon raiders, can be done in a kestral and only takes a few minutes. The only worry is if they are equipped with tracking launchers... if they don't have tracking launchers, they're pretty easy to make bail.

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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by Wraith_Magus » Thu, 22. Apr 21, 07:13

grapedog wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 08:38
Wraith_Magus wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:55

Oh, and minotaur raiders aren't worth the effort (I've shot them to death with a single ion cannon from 100% to 0% hull, which took 20 mins, all while using Comms to try to ask them to surrender, and they STILL refused, the stubborn jerks!), so I just flag them as hostile and destroy them. They're more effort to capture than the destroyers, and worth less a tenth as much, plus minotaur raiders SUUUUUUUCK, so there's no point in capturing them to use, either.
I would disagree with this, as for me personally, it is the easiest way to make early game money. Capping minotaur and dragon raiders, can be done in a kestral and only takes a few minutes. The only worry is if they are equipped with tracking launchers... if they don't have tracking launchers, they're pretty easy to make bail.
I've just had terrible luck with it, maybe, but they NEVER bail for me. I've destroyed the minotaurs after shooting them for 20 minutes with ions, as previously stated, and it's just impossible for me to get them to bail. Even when they did bail, it took 15 minutes or so of constantly bombardment. It's just faster (and FAR less boring) to make money nearly any other way for me.

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grapedog
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Re: Marauder stealing from stations?

Post by grapedog » Thu, 22. Apr 21, 08:11

Wraith_Magus wrote:
Thu, 22. Apr 21, 07:13
grapedog wrote:
Wed, 21. Apr 21, 08:38
Wraith_Magus wrote:
Tue, 20. Apr 21, 21:55

Oh, and minotaur raiders aren't worth the effort (I've shot them to death with a single ion cannon from 100% to 0% hull, which took 20 mins, all while using Comms to try to ask them to surrender, and they STILL refused, the stubborn jerks!), so I just flag them as hostile and destroy them. They're more effort to capture than the destroyers, and worth less a tenth as much, plus minotaur raiders SUUUUUUUCK, so there's no point in capturing them to use, either.
I would disagree with this, as for me personally, it is the easiest way to make early game money. Capping minotaur and dragon raiders, can be done in a kestral and only takes a few minutes. The only worry is if they are equipped with tracking launchers... if they don't have tracking launchers, they're pretty easy to make bail.
I've just had terrible luck with it, maybe, but they NEVER bail for me. I've destroyed the minotaurs after shooting them for 20 minutes with ions, as previously stated, and it's just impossible for me to get them to bail. Even when they did bail, it took 15 minutes or so of constantly bombardment. It's just faster (and FAR less boring) to make money nearly any other way for me.
The stronger the ship you fly, the harder it will be to get pilots to bail. I personally feel the asp raider is the best S/M capping ship in the game. Quick, super weak hull, and 3 weapon hardpoints.

I did all the math in another thread, but essentially the two biggest factors you can control for the every 30 second morale checks are

1. Total(not current) hull vs total hull. - the weaker your total hull is compared to theirs, the higher the modifier you have for getting them to bail.

2. Current Hull+Shield vs. Current Hull+Shield - keep your hull and shield at 100%, take their shield down to zero and hull to %70ish.

NPC pilots also have stats, you might be unlucky and only face 5 star pilots, but that is super highly unlikely. We all know how hard it is to get 5 star pilots, and i doubt ego cheats this. Most likely you don't have many modifiers in your favor, so the bail chance is very low.

Anyhow, making pilots bail is what I do. It's how i get my early miners and traders to put to work, and how I get cash by selling minotaur and dragon raiders. And ive done this in kestrals, rapiers, and jaguars... any super weak starting ship is usually a good option for capping.

The asp raider is probably also my favorite ship in the game, so fun to fly...

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