Too high rewards for delivering bailed pilots?

[Diegoteijeiro]

So, when a pilot bails, you can pick the floating astronaut, and they appear in your cargobay in the "person" section.

If you go to one of them, and hit info, and the end of the new screen they have a destination and a reward. If you dock on that station you get that amount of credits into your account. Seems good, you saved the guy hours of spacesuit time, like a good person.

The issue is that some rewards seem a bit high (hundreds of thousands of credits). If the destination where on the other side of the galaxy, like their homebase or pirate base if they are pirates and the like, cool, the journey is long. But they almost always want to go the the closest station, where they intented to dock while in the spacesuit.

This gets a bit ridiculous with "defend the station from pirates" missions. They go head on for the station, you pick them off, and you can take your time and collect the pilots while in combat if you want, as long as you don't hit the other they only care about the station. At the end of the fight, there can be a few claimable ships, and as many pilots in your cargo hold. Now, i've seems rewards upwards of 100k (i've seem more than one million) for taking ONE of them to the station they were attacking, paid to the person that made them bail.

There are stupid cases like this example: little M5 pirate all hyped up that he is going to destroy a station, finds me in the path in my nemesis with 4 PBEs, 1-2 seconds of shooting on my side "okok, i'm leaving the ship, don't kill me". He thinks he is safe, he "gave me" his little ship in exchange for his life. I pick him up at 200m/s in my way to the next incoming pirate whose career i'm about to trounce. After the short battle i claim and repair the bailed ships and go check my passengers. I ask where they want to go, "well, the closest station. Please don't kill me nor sell as a slave, i'll pay for the trip!". I say "The one you were attacking? The one 5km away? okay, sure". After i drop them off at the station a few seconds later (docking extension yay!), he thanks me and gives me SEVERAL TIMES the value of his little ship. Because the pirate in the M5 had a million in his bank, money that could expend in buying an M3 and be a more successful pirate, sure.

Is there any reason to slaves anymore, apart from roleplay??? a few k for selling them in a pirate station seems not worth if you can just take them to the closest station where you picked them up and have orders of magnitude more credits. I guess my combat skills really made them scared to death of me, but goddamn. This is way more profitable than the mission reward plus selling the bailed ships, like WAY more. Even one bail from an M5 in an easy 50k credits mission can be from 100k to 1M for that tiny taxi ride.

And they don't seem to have a time limit, so you can take them on a field trip around the galaxy, they don't seem to mind the tour. I may have forgotten some dudes in my cargo hold for hours, just maybe.

TL;DR: Rewards of 100k+ credits for delivering a pilot, one that you just forced to bail out of his M5 or M4, to the closest station seems a bit excessive.

[Hwitvlf]

I always thought bailed pilots had potential so I'm glad to see that FL is trying something interesting with them. Personally, I don't find 100K too excessive. How much would you pay to avoid being a slave to Split pirates? Even if the reward is more than the mission was paying, 100K, or even 1M doesn't buy anything too wonderful and ships don't bail that often. Balance is always a pain, especially in a game where you have a wide range of levels/ships/abilities. If pilots paid less, they would become pointless in later game when you have more money.

Personally, I think the ideal method would be for them to choose a random station as destination - if it was a hostile station and the reward was big, it would give the player a reason to change alliances. Other rewards could be rep boost, an extra agent, or even random floating item/ships as rewards, spawned and coordinates given to the player when the pilot is dropped off. They could range from crummy 'cleaning bots' to extra tunings. Similar to the Unfocused Jump Drive secotor mod (was that Cycrow's?) [EDIT: No, the UFJD mod was Roguey's HERE ]

Everyone has wonderfull ideas (especially me ha ha ) , but implementing them is the hard part.

[chip56]

Honestly i like it.
I personally explain it that its not actually the pilot paying the bill but rather the authorities for delivering them. And i guess if a group of pirates managed to inflict enough damage the authorities might be very interested to get some pilots alive to collect intel.

Also i think the value of the astronaut depends on the worth of the ship BEFORE you destroy almost everything in it to get them to bail and with those mk1 turbo boosters even an M5 is worth millions.

[Milite Ignoto]

Agreed. It's fine to give rewards, but not that high.
The slave economy is a problem too. XRM solved it by paying 50k for each slave in Pirate Bases, but on higher levels that too became pocket change.
Personally, I believe that raising the price for slaves to 50k-60k and leaving rewards in the 15k-50k range is a good compromise. You can make a fast profit by leaving bailed pilots on nearby stations, or you can enslave them to get more money at pirate bases, with the usual risk of getting scanned by police.

[Cycrow]

The pilots with high rewards are actually ones you can use as a trader with Trade command software MK3.

As they can come with high starting levels. So they are potentially more valuable to keep.

[Fulgrymm]

That's good to know! Kind of amusing that you can conscript NPCs in this manner.

[dony93]

I personally love this feature! The new bailing system is one of the finest additions IMHO. It adds a lot of immersion in the game.

[Diegoteijeiro]

Personally, I think the ideal method would be for them to choose a random station as destination - if it was a hostile station and the reward was big, it would give the player a reason to change alliances. Other rewards could be rep boost, an extra agent, or even random floating item/ships as rewards, spawned and coordinates given to the player when the pilot is dropped off. They could range from crummy 'cleaning bots' to extra tunings. Similar to the Unfocused Jump Drive secotor mod (was that Cycrow's?)

Yes, thats what i meant with:

The issue is that some rewards seem a bit high (hundreds of thousands of credits). If the destination where on the other side of the galaxy, like their homebase or pirate base if they are pirates and the like, cool, the journey is long.

If the destination is far away or is a challange in any way to deliver that person to their destination, everything is okay for me. Its the "take this hundreds of thousands of credits for giving me a ride of a few minutes" i find excessive.

The pilots with high rewards are actually ones you can use as a trader with Trade command software MK3.

As they can come with high starting levels. So they are potentially more valuable to keep.

Oooooh, okay then , i will have to look at that screen more carefully in that case... you know, in case some job interviewing is necessary followed by an offer they can't refuse...

That explains some of the amounts, if they are known sucessful traders, they really don't want to be slaves and they know their worth.

Can you elaborate on other things that affect the rewards amount? Player fight rank? if you are a known pirate prone to selling people to slavers, they might want to offer more to reduce the chances of that. Ship value before bailout, as stated earlier by chip56? Expensive ship equipment could relate to available cash of the pilot and makes sense they would be willing to pay more.

I have not tested this properly, so i can't say that there is a pattern.

[Cycrow]

the main 3 things that effect the price are Trade Skill, Ship Value and Random

while enslaving or killing them doesn't effect their payout, it does effect your future bailing chance

[Thurak]

The pilots with high rewards are actually ones you can use as a trader with Trade command software MK3.

As they can come with high starting levels. So they are potentially more valuable to keep.

Pirate attacks station -> you shoot them down -> you pick them up -> you put them in a ship worth millions (due to trading mk3 software basically guaranteed) -> Profits?

LOL, yeah, no, I don't want to entrust my ship to an ex pirate.

Then a solution for OPs problem might actually be simple: Make sure bailing pirates are terrible traders -> minimum reward. And we could still be lucky when we pick up random astonauts/ex traders floating around.

[johneh77]

I just noticed this last night after buying a couple ships and decided to pick up the guys that had them, an M5 and M3. I was curious about enslaving even though I wouldn't do that and checked their info one was 5K the other 9K. I was like cool the ride home almost paid for the M5! He must have really wanted out of that ship.

Will defiantly be picking more up now I am in the market for some good trade pilots!

[Midnightknight]

Oh god this is awesome, but all my bailed pilotes actually do not offer me any place to deliver them so far. Maybe because they are all Yaki?


So if we bring them back where they want the bailing chance will go up? Cause i tried to capture Chokaros all the day with no luck lol.

[shameless creature]

Cause i tried to capture Chokaros all the day with no luck lol.

TM class ships must be boarded...

[zamiel]

Considering up until now if I pressed on the dude is was to enslave him and sell him for pittance, or ejected them in xenon sectors for the laughs, I'm pretty sure they just love to pay me a few hundred k for dropping them off instead.

[blazenclaw]

the main 3 things that effect the price are Trade Skill, Ship Value and Random

while enslaving or killing them doesn't effect their payout, it does effect your future bailing chance

I've been keeping an eye on prices, and I'm not sure this is quite working as intended, or at least it would probably make more sense for Trade Skill to have more of an impact than random or ship price.



Both of these were acquired from purchasing used ships for less than 1m (can't recall exact prices unfortunately, but I believe the expensive one was ~800k and the cheaper one 30k-ish), but the Rank 20 Trader is offering 8k and the Rank 0 Trader is offering 111k. Although then again, maybe this is the skilled trader using their skill on me to reduce how much they have to pay...? It's not a serious bug or anything, but definitely something that makes me go

I guess it wouldn't also make that much sense for a highly skilled trader to sell their ship, then try to buy a taxi ride to the nearest station for some multiple of how much they sold their ship for, lol.

Maybe the trade rank of a bailing pilot should be random(0, min(max_trade_rank, ship_price/200,000)) or something like that if it's possible to implement, then tie the price more strongly to trade rank. Just my 2 cents.

[Snafu_X3]

As you may have noticed, higher rank (potentially recruitable) bailed pilots increase their initial 'dropoff' value considerably!

I've not tested this, but ISTM that pilots jumping out of 'used'/bought ships also have a higher value for their 'dropoff' depending upon their ship's resale value at current hull %age (hence increasing with class value)..

See also other ppls speculations above

[edit - spelling]

[Hwitvlf]

The pilots with high rewards are actually ones you can use as a trader with Trade command software MK3.

Can anyone tell me how to 'promote' a bailed pilot to a trader?

[Thandrall]

The pilots with high rewards are actually ones you can use as a trader with Trade command software MK3.

Can anyone tell me how to 'promote' a bailed pilot to a trader?

Have him be on a ship you are not on, and right click on his name in the cargo hold, it'll give you an option to promote him.

[birdtable]

Am I right in assuming that a ship I wish to transfer him/her to needs cargo life support before I can promote to pilot.

[Thandrall]

Am I right in assuming that a ship I wish to transfer him/her to needs cargo life support before I can promote to pilot.

Of course, otherwise you wouldn't be able to transfer him/if you do he'd die instantly. It's annoying but it is what it is I guess.