Suggestions for Pirate DLC

[mr.WHO]

I hope it will be like this:

Pirate DLC - two unique Pirate clans and one small (following the pattern of two previous DLC).
free patch - kitbashed pirate raider variants for existing pirate factions (SCA, BUC, FAF, YAK).

[Tempest]

agree w. most of the previous posters.

the pillars of a pirate economy:

- a salvage mechanic needs to be in, we have hulks that remain after ships blow up, we have abandoned ships. easy pickings for a pirate making a living, no reason hulks shouldn't have a decent yield of "Shiptech" wares.

- "functional" piracy, all the way through bringing back plunder (as per OP's point #2)

- a handfull of illegal goods already exist in-game, have them activly trade said goods (same for prisoners, easily tied in with certain Split factions)

a pirate faction (not a fan of the label, as mentioned by most, they are individuals) should have their equivalent of a "Nassau" where they sell their plundered goods, TEL feels like an obvious faction choice for a legitimate but shady trading partner.

a nobody pirate captain should be denied access to ANY combat vessels via regular faction shipyards (just like the player initially) even TEL Shipyards should not be selling L-class combat vessels, maybe they could sells some S/M covertly, but a Phoenix Vanguard flying pirate colors leaving a TEL Shipyard? thats just dumb. "virtualy captured" Destroyers as they are now seem fine, although without obvious prefixes per OP's point #3.

easy ship registry/IFF spoofing (out of radar range, not while actively being engaged by Police/Offended party) make a clean getaway ? they should be home free, although this would invalidate a need for a place to drop off plunder... a system tagging cargo as "illegally aquired" seems difficult.

feels like there should be some mechanic between compliance & non-compliance, i.e. non-compliance (not dropping cargo) resulting in a shipwreck seems counter-productive, maybe have them eat into the targets hull a fair bit, or even try boarding / taking prisoners. (as mentioned, might be a pain dealing with this as a player, but not really sure how i should feel about un-escorted traders) a non-complaince situation might then give me time to react (ship commed "home" while they're being harassed)

[Tamina]

Another idea for pirates: Make stolen ships be detectable as stolen by police scans and turn hostile.
Faction police should ignore the stolen status if last owner was an enemy faction.

And give players a way to buy a spoofed licence from pirates

[dtpsprt]

Other Pirate related things that need fixing...

Player and NPC ships need to NOT come out of travel drive because a pirate harassed them. That's pretty much the dumbest thing ever... if up comes an issue where pirates are not able to do their piratical things because of this... then another solution needs to be found. Dropping out of travel drive to stop your ship so you can tell a pirate to F off is a dumb mechanic...

This is a non issue, all you have to do is make default behaviour "Escape" and uncheck the "Notify me" icon. This way they enter Travel Drive immediately after the first harassment without wasting time waiting for your answer.
As far as the post goes though, it's for piracy to be a viable gamethrough not about how to avoid it...

[grapedog]

Other Pirate related things that need fixing...

Player and NPC ships need to NOT come out of travel drive because a pirate harassed them. That's pretty much the dumbest thing ever... if up comes an issue where pirates are not able to do their piratical things because of this... then another solution needs to be found. Dropping out of travel drive to stop your ship so you can tell a pirate to F off is a dumb mechanic...

This is a non issue, all you have to do is make default behaviour "Escape" and uncheck the "Notify me" icon. This way they enter Travel Drive immediately after the first harassment without wasting time waiting for your answer.
As far as the post goes though, it's for piracy to be a viable gamethrough not about how to avoid it...

I already have all those settings set, and yet I still lose ships to this mechanic.

And I am aware of what the post was for... for the piracy DLC... but there are things about piracy currently that need to be fixed as well. A discussion about piracy and suggestions for the DLC should also include current issues that need to be addressed.

[S!rAssassin]

non-compliance (not dropping cargo) resulting in a shipwreck seems counter-productive, maybe have them eat into the targets hull a fair bit, or even try boarding / taking prisoners.

If Egos realize boarding by pirates (or maybe and by all factions?), it will be great! Currently onboard marines are useless at all, except boarding by player.

[dtpsprt]

I already have all those settings set, and yet I still lose ships to this mechanic.

And I am aware of what the post was for... for the piracy DLC... but there are things about piracy currently that need to be fixed as well. A discussion about piracy and suggestions for the DLC should also include current issues that need to be addressed.

When it happens to me it is about 1 out of 20-30 times, so I consider it acceptable... Of course all my M traders are equipped with ARG MK3 Combat Engines (I find them better that the TER ones because of superior speed both in normal and travel mode) and MK3 Thrusters... They zoom out fast and get into Travel Drive, of course this does not works well against Xenon on the rare occasion that they meet, but the Xenon hardly classify as Pirates.

[Tempest]

if only there was an easier way to assign a fighter escort to very large numbers of non-combat vessels.

an optional section in the shipyard interface perhaps.. a simple dropdown box with assign x-number of "unemployed S/M craft" just like the "assign builder" interface. ..

[NightmareNight91]

My suggestion would be to re-enable the ability for NPC ships to cause other pilots to bail as it was in 4.0 beta. And for pirate L ships to attempt to board (and recycle) other ships. They would need a proper pirate shipyard/wharf though (thus allowing a real pirate playthrough without buddying up to one faction just to get blueprints)

[LameFox]

if only there was an easier way to assign a fighter escort to very large numbers of non-combat vessels.

an optional section in the shipyard interface perhaps.. a simple dropdown box with assign x-number of "unemployed S/M craft" just like the "assign builder" interface. ..

Did they ever upgrade the patrol command? I think last time I used it, ships only blundered around and attacked what they stumbled across with their own sensors. I feel like updating that could help with both khaak and any hypothetical expansion to pirates. IMO a patrol should use sensor data from player property to track down enemies in its patrol sector, and respond to attacks on player property within that sector.

I would probably use that before escorts, personally, because a few fast ships could cover a whole sector and save the later game performance of giving escorts to my many miners.

[grapedog]

if only there was an easier way to assign a fighter escort to very large numbers of non-combat vessels.

an optional section in the shipyard interface perhaps.. a simple dropdown box with assign x-number of "unemployed S/M craft" just like the "assign builder" interface. ..

Did they ever upgrade the patrol command? I think last time I used it, ships only blundered around and attacked what they stumbled across with their own sensors. I feel like updating that could help with both khaak and any hypothetical expansion to pirates. IMO a patrol should use sensor data from player property to track down enemies in its patrol sector, and respond to attacks on player property within that sector.

I would probably use that before escorts, personally, because a few fast ships could cover a whole sector and save the later game performance of giving escorts to my many miners.

No, patrol is still pretty much completely useless. You'll have ships all the way at the sector edge investigating spacedust while 20+ kha'ak ships are harassing your ships and stations in the much more relevant areas of the map.

[Tempest]

i've had moderate success blanketting a sector, by just setting 1 craft to patrol, and then have 256 others to Mimic. (they seem to scatter quite a bit then)

as you said, they'll happily ignore hostile craft visibly in radar range (how that does work anyhow? NPC don't seem to have access to the entire sensor-net like we do, for my own craft i would expect that to be the case)

[S!rAssassin]

And "Defend leader" command should make defenders attack hostile before they hit leader. And response attacks against themselves correctly - leader should no ignore attacks of it`s fleet.

[S!rAssassin]

So, we have some pirates factions in game. And more to come?

Why they do not fighting each over for spheres of harassment? Pirates stations should have analog of admin module and should claim sectors in their confrontaction as well as official factions claims their sectors in official wars.

So, one sector should have one official owner and one dark, pirate, owner. Official owner may destroy pirate station in central sectors with high police and military presence.

[Tamina]

a secret owner of a sector. That sounds cool.

[humility925]

I was hoping boron, but Not sure, I forgot,

As for player's trader a.i ship always losing to pirate, once pirate attacked them, yes, I know it's frustrated and very tense, pirate often had faster, more combat, more number than trader ship do, I did warned about this when we was talking about jumpdrive is more helpeful than harm to removed it and along with game over screen as well to avoid it.
unfortunately, some don't listen to reason or think without jumpdrive is better but not. I know jumpdrive help trader ship to combat danger zone since trader ship lack of speed, bigger target, less firepower and cost more than combat ship for size even. Oh, well, it's been kind of fall on deaf ear.

Trader ship had no way out of forced combat zone and are petty much screwed, only hope to had jumpdrive to away from forced combat, unless trader ship got huge buff of speed, firepower, hull, shield to beat pirate combat ship, that is, after all, trader ship is costly than combat, and it's cheap to destroy all those lot of credit.

[SpaceCadet11864]

I was hoping boron, but Not sure, I forgot,

As for player's trader a.i ship always losing to pirate, once pirate attacked them, yes, I know it's frustrated and very tense, pirate often had faster, more combat, more number than trader ship do, I did warned about this when we was talking about jumpdrive is more helpeful than harm to removed it and along with game over screen as well to avoid it.
unfortunately, some don't listen to reason or think without jumpdrive is better but not. I know jumpdrive help trader ship to combat danger zone since trader ship lack of speed, bigger target, less firepower and cost more than combat ship for size even. Oh, well, it's been kind of fall on deaf ear.

Trader ship had no way out of forced combat zone and are petty much screwed, only hope to had jumpdrive to away from forced combat, unless trader ship got huge buff of speed, firepower, hull, shield to beat pirate combat ship, that is, after all, trader ship is costly than combat, and it's cheap to destroy all those lot of credit.

Are you saying that your trader ships are all dying to pirates in your current game?

[NightmareNight91]

How about we re-enable the ability for NPC vs NPC ship bailing...as it was in the beta before COH.

[Treycore]

Biggest things that I want in a pirate update is…

- Pirates building their own ships (SCA spawn from thin air still)

- Freeport’s having more use, maybe a wharf for building pirate ships?

- Pirates actually looting loot/capturing ships and then selling them at Freeports (Both Loot and ships could be sold at Freeports and the empires can buy the loot back)

- More NPC ships bailing and pirates scooping the bailed ships

- Illegal goods having some sort of use rather then just a tradeable good

- NPC Boarding of other NPC ships

- Better AI/Faction Logic of Pirate factions, they should have their own goals and strive to stay alive in the galaxy
—————————————————
- Also trade stations having some sort of interaction with pirates would be nice too, I feel like trade attracts pirates and would be a natural place for illegal wares/services to meet at

Empire Trade stations should be able to sanction piracy for the empire against the their enemies and offer these kindve missions and can be a progression point for players looking to do piracy while working for one of the major empires

Small numbers of ships could be assigned a piracy role for each empire that only pirates their enemies and brings back loot/stolen ships to a trade station that empire they work for owns

[S!rAssassin]

- Also trade stations having some sort of interaction with pirates would be nice too, I feel like trade attracts pirates and would be a natural place for illegal wares/services to meet at

Yes! Why the only way to interact to black market on stations is missions? Black market diler should be found as NPC idling at station and beaware security.
Yes! Station security should be exist too! They may stop you on foot and initiate ship/inventory inspecting!

Empire Trade stations should be able to sanction piracy for the empire against the their enemies and offer these kindve missions and can be a progression point for players looking to do piracy while working for one of the major empires