So I came back on the forums to read around and see whats new, and I've come to the same conclusion as always.

There is no incentive to be a pirate. At all...

The major teams will chainpod you on sight, block you off and about a billion other things. This is because of the way the game is designed.

We need some real honest discussion about game mechanics in order to facilitate this "Hostile" universe that is the selling point of SS. Honestly, I feel that there needs to be a way for a pirate to be able to slip through the universe unfettered. Honestly, raising the ceiling of rewards and lowering the floor of penalties for being a pirate would do a lot to change the prevalence of piracy and give the universe a dangerous feeling.

Two things, IMO, would be to change the bounty system so that its actually worthwhile for a large team to slap a 5billion credit bounty on someone, AND change the way death affects the person who has the bounty on them.

When you have a bounty on you, and someone kills you, there needs to be some hard penalties for dying.

Thoughts?

1. You currently need bases to progress. It is hard to survive, as a team, without bases. Lone pirates are all fine and dandy, but if you want real dangers, you need pirate teams.

EF showed the world what happens to pirate teams by besieging Protean. No pirate team has gotten off the ground since.

Solution: Alternative ways to obtain gear would have to be done via missions. Specifically powerful class locked gear. Primal/FT gear can stay base built.


2. If a player figures out where the pvper/pirate/team has docked, they can put a base in the gal, or camp it with the other non pvp carebear teams until the target quits or pays back 10x what they dealt in damages.

When a team loses a war, it tends to be that they also lose their docked ships gal(normally, this is what causes them to surrender in the first place). And when this happens, as said in the above paragraph, they can pay big bucks to remove the enemy base(by paying the enemy much more than they used to deploy the base), or they just quit.

Most teams end up doing the latter. Pirate and Carebear teams.

Solution: Ships have to be packaged up and moved from one place to another, in one single move. Not including all those storage ships; just standard combat ships.


3. Static credit income is greater than Mobile credit income. This encourages massive galaxies and carebear non pvp teams sitting in said galaxies. At least 75% of the money made comes from colonies. And that is just wrong.

Solution: Make Mobile Income(dungeons, missions, and prospecting) greater than Static Income(colonies, extraction, MFM slaves), at least credit wise. Extracted commods will still be very useful for builds, but colonies should never be the top dog credit maker in game; it should be the lowest, or just above MFM slaves.

I agree with every single point you just made, especially static credit income being stupidly profitable...

The point about pirate teams and bases are also along the lines of what I was thinking needed to be changed as well. Its too easy to simply chain-pod a pirate on sight, and a pirate team that can pose a REAL threat can be smited in a matter of minutes by a collaboration of teams.

I think one of the biggest changes that needs to be made is to give pirates a place like Sol. Maybe a galaxy called the Black Market? If you don't have a certain level of Infamy, you get attacked on sight by the *police*. That's where a large majority of those missions for higher end gear and items and augs could come into play. And anything that you scoop up from a dead players ship could be sold there, albeit at a reduced price.

they soo need a pirate locked ship and gear that is like idk makes the target drop more cash or some other cool stats that would normally only be obtained by being part of a large team. let the pirate use t21 gear /ships if they have a certain amount "glory" stat, if they stop killing stuff then they cant undock that t21 ship unless they get t21 skills the hard way. the more "glory" they attain more missions open. like the way a seer gets w4 for free. theres trade skills, what about faction skills! soo much to come in this game once the subs can pay for content devs

I don't think "content" is the answer. There is already plenty of pirate related content; no one USES it though.

They could tweak the items to give pirates more incentive to use them, but the core problems are the mechanics of the game. The way the game is designed INHIBITS piracy.

You can't hide your name, ships don't have unique identifiers (Meaning when you switch ships everyone stills knows exactly who you are, which is stupid because if your a pirate your not going to tell everyone who you are), its far too easy to stop piracy because of how small the community is, and infrastructure is too damn precious meaning people aren't willing to risk anything.

Making bounty system meaningful? Awesome

Idk how to. Bounty on me ATM? Killing myself and keeping the cash.

/signed generally

Bounty board (so you stalk the most valuable players) sounds fun tho.

Team bounties? Gal bounties? Hq bounty?

Gear sounds lame. Cash or not imo.

Bounties need to mean something. Having a bounty on your head needs to be an "Oh shit, gotta be stupidly careful." situation or its just not worth it.

It can't be something you can easily get rid of by having a friend or a friends alt kill you. It needs to be taken seriously.

Team bounties/Gal Bounties and HQ Bounties are all good ideas, they would require a fundamental change in the mechanics of the game.

How do you acquire the bounty? Do you cause the team to disband? Do you destroy all of the galaxies bounties?

In that situation ownership rules and mechanics are going to be an issue.

As a pirate in SS you go on your own risk and you WILL definitely get some hate towards you and you will get most of the teams to war you.

Its profitable. The reason I have been pirating on and off on 3 accounts is your proof, its of all fun, its damn fun so to say. Those who havent tried it should and those who have know what it is and why they continue on doing it.

Who blocks you from who? You can venture forth in peril space freely and pick of people who autopilot, people who fight AIs, thats where you take the advantage and strike. Most of the times people get confused and dont fight back, theyre all crippeld and dont know what to do.

Interesting analysis. How do you go about funding your escapades?

For a reason there are always people who see money in you, money makes them smile, money makes everyone smile.

If you want the cash/items and arent hardheaded youre gonna trade with me. The first gear you get by playing "legit" and simply play along with the flow of the game until you get some nice items and say: thats it ill shoot everyone on sight and that means everyone. Everything was worth killing back then, from scoutships to lions, at this point in game I dont know if its worth doing it as scrap parts are useless.

Somebody may call you a dickhead for killing a scoutships but bitch please tell that to my hand when I kill a dumbass who just dropped a couple of bil.
If people complain pirates are fags for killing scoutships well you may just aswell complain to the people that carry 10b+ on them and when they die drop it, thats why I killed scoutships.

I have never ever lost, thats how I felt during my rampage, but that is in all aspects true. You become a pirate youre always a pirate, well not always just maybe on that account but yeah people have different opinions on different pirates.

Exactly, this is the only thing I'm talking about.

By becoming a Pirate, and by being indiscriminate with those of whom you target, the entire player base will make it their duty to make your experience impossible.

The only thing I'm asking to be changed is for a change in mechanics.