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Preventing Piracy


Jon1812

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13 hours ago, Jon1812 said:

It doesn't make logical sense. 


Do you mean from a lore perspective, or a gameplay perspective? Because from a gameplay perspective having the npc disappear from all the areas player congregate in makes no logical sense. All the hubs would be void of content. Where would new players learn the ropes if the noob areas have been swept clean of npc? So I'd expect you can push the npc back to the edges of the system where they don't harass players, but they'd always keep spawning. It's just one of those small illogical things where it is that way because of gameplay, there needs to be content for the pve crowd.

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14 hours ago, Swiftsure said:


If the pveers are not diligently shooing the npc pirates away then they will move their positions up. Perhaps attack the refueling station? Perhaps set up a stronghold in the abandoned exploration or fps stations and start spawning evermore npc? So if left alone sooner or later they will start posing a severe problem for our traders and require us to send in a pve fleet to spend a week pushing the npc out of all these positions and finally reactivate the satelites. That would be the optimal dynamic universe experience we'd expect a few years down the line. But I don't think you could ever push them beyond the satellites, they'll always be out there nibbling at the edges waiting for the pveers to slack off.

And then on the other side you'd have the pirate players, who'd get missions to go help the npc turn the satellites off. Most the time it'd be npc security v npc pirates, and then a player comes in and tips the scales. But every so often two players would get opposing missions to the same satellite, making it essentially a pvp mission because only one side can achieve their objective and the other one fails. 

So a lot of our anti-pirate activity would be these pve missions to make sure "our" npc faction keeps the upper hand

I like this theory-crafted mechanic.  Very cool idea.

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7 hours ago, Swiftsure said:


Do you mean from a lore perspective, or a gameplay perspective? Because from a gameplay perspective having the npc disappear from all the areas player congregate in makes no logical sense. All the hubs would be void of content. Where would new players learn the ropes if the noob areas have been swept clean of npc? So I'd expect you can push the npc back to the edges of the system where they don't harass players, but they'd always keep spawning. It's just one of those small illogical things where it is that way because of gameplay, there needs to be content for the pve crowd.

Both. You misunderstand what I am saying. If players start killing pirates in a given system, those pirates are dead, they will never come back. However, CIG has a system that will introduce new NPCs back into the game, new NPCs that probably won't be the same as the old NPCs. They will try to maintain a certain population in various systems, but it will also change due to game events. Say, if pirates start wrecking that system, then a lot of merchants and traders would probably move to a new system. Or if pirates are being slaughtered in a system, they will also move to new, more profitable areas. Migration will be a thing. I am not saying that one day, every pirate in the system will move to a new location, but over time, migration will happen. It is a pretty simple concept.
Wouldn't it be bizarre if they kept spawning pirate fleets in Terra, even though the UEE has military and police patrolling it and killing those pirates? It doesn't make sense from either a lore or a gameplay standpoint.

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9 minutes ago, Jon1812 said:

However, CIG has a system that will introduce new NPCs back into the game, new NPCs that probably won't be the same as the old NPCs.

I'm 99,99% sure the "new" NPC will look and act just like the old one. But with a different name.
It will probably take some decades until it's really possible to create procedural and unique characters/NPC's that don't look like a copy of another one...without filling a whole drive just for characters...

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11 minutes ago, Wyvyrias said:

I'm 99,99% sure the "new" NPC will look and act just like the old one. But with a different name.
It will probably take some decades until it's really possible to create procedural and unique characters/NPC's that don't look like a copy of another one...without filling a whole drive just for characters...


That's not what I'm saying. Obviously NPCs will be procedural and will look/act like other NPCs somewhere in the verse. My point is that it won't be an exact reskin of the NPC that died. If NPC A (a murderous pirate) dies, then NPC B (the replacement) may not be at all like NPC A. He could be a merchant from Terra come to try his luck in one of the outer systems, or an engineer looking for work in this particular system. His skillset and backstory will most likely be different. So consistently killing pirates in a system, would result in a lower pirate population in that system, assuming no other major factors.

 

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7 minutes ago, Jon1812 said:


That's not what I'm saying. Obviously NPCs will be procedural and will look/act like other NPCs somewhere in the verse. My point is that it won't be an exact reskin of the NPC that died. If NPC A (a murderous pirate) dies, then NPC B (the replacement) may not be at all like NPC A. He could be a merchant from Terra come to try his luck in one of the outer systems, or an engineer looking for work in this particular system. His skillset and backstory will most likely be different. So consistently killing pirates in a system, would result in a lower pirate population in that system, assuming no other major factors.

Ah, so you're actually talking about the balance. Somehow I only caught the NPC replacement part. Damn my sleepiness.
But yeah, I guess that is how it will work if it works like CR is promising it to us. Would be awesome for sure, and (hopefully) it keeps the repetitiveness down.

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I would say some addition information that we need on convoy defense is how you pull ships out of quantum warp and how quickly can they go back in.  If it is easy to pull ships out and hard to escape, ambushers will have the advantage.  If it easy to pull ships out and easy to escape, we should have a changing protocol of warping out the major asset.  Say you warp for 1 minute, rotate 72 degrees right and 54 degrees up and then warp for 1 minute.  You relay your coordinates to the defenders who go different angles to the new locations.  It is hard to pull ships out and hard to get out.  We craft zig zig quantum warps in 3D and prepare to defend only at transit points.  If it is hard to pull ships out of warp and easy to get them out, we just go with the previous protocol for warping out.  

 

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19 hours ago, Jon1812 said:

Wouldn't it be bizarre if they kept spawning pirate fleets in Terra, even though the UEE has military and police patrolling it and killing those pirates? It doesn't make sense from either a lore or a gameplay standpoint.


No more strange than terrorists keeping spawning in the middle east, even though NATO and Russia have police and military patrolling it and killing those terrorists. Or criminals keep spawning in Chicago or New York despite all the law enforcement and harsh prison sentences.  

Crime, piracy and terrorism all come from a series of complex societal factors, and you can kill loads of them all you like. If you don't address all that complex societal stuff you'll just have more coming. 
 

I suspect any attempts at fully purging hostile npc from a system will be roughly as successful as when NATO tried to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. In theory it seemed like you'd just use all this superior firepower to kill all the bad guys and thats it. Reality ended up that the best NATO could to was chase the bad guys up into the mountains and keep the cities/lowlands relatively safe. Second NATO started leaving, bad guys came back and took the city of Kunduz with a few hundred men despite it being guarded by thousands of Afghan National Army soldiers. And so NATO had to send in the airforce and special forces to get it back.

Imagine NATO is the pve players, taliban are the pirates, and the ANA are the idiot npc security forces who for some reason can't keep anything safe without player help.

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I iust read through the thread, and must say that I found it highly interesting. I will love coming up with tactics to deter our enemies. OP, I assume you completed the guide you mentioned initially?

 

Some of my thoughts on the subject: We will not know how best to deter pitates, both npc and player, until the actual game mechanics come out which describe how these interactions will play out. I think some of the crucial knowledge that this will rest on will be:

  • Tracking devices/the stalking mechanic. If it is extremely easy to track ships through Quantum, we will have to plan accordingly. If it is difficult, then planning odd routes through space will be key.
  • NPC AI. NPCs might view larger convoys as better prey, and hit them with more force. If this is the case, obviously we will want to break up our convoys into smaller pieces which the AI will view as separate- then if one is jumped. Reinforcements from others can jump in to help overpower the pirates. I think this tactic will be effective vs players as well- Pirates will have to pick which small convoy/convoys to focus on, and while they do the other merchant ships will jump out with small escorts, while the remainder of the escorts go to reinforce. It might also be nice to have a group that is solely military watching over the train of smaller convoys. They wouldn't even have to be focusing on it, just a few minutes jump away in-system. If pirates know they'll get swarmed by every imperium member within 10 minutes jump, they won't be hitting us for profit and then we'll just have to worry about the griefers and killjoys. 
  • ^on the flip side, if NPCs don't scale according to convoy size, we'll want one giant convoy sub-divided into groups which take a pre-planned course of action if something happens.

 

  • Chokepoint mechanics. I think it is fair to reason that most piracy on trade ships will occur going into or leaving port, when you KNOW the location of the fleet (and when leaving, presumably the fleet is still organizing itself and thus weaker) and at jump points- all three are critical locations where the convoy must remain in real-space and can't just jump out if they are headed for their objective. Thus defensive efforts should be applied heavily at jump points and we should work on incentives for pirates to not attack us while we are there.

 

  • Cargo moving mechanics. If it takes a long time for pirates to move cargo from our ships to theirs while pirating, then the only viable option for medium-large ships will be to steal the entire ship. I DO NOT think that groups should intentionally self-destruct upon piracy. Doing so will discourage "legitimate" piracy, the RP guys and the dudes who are going for profit (IE the predictable and negotiable ones that won't senslessly kill). I DO think that crippling our ships quantum capability would be viable- pirates would then have to repair it or transfer cargo. I doubt that "nice" pirates as defined above will want to destruct cargo either.

 

  • I focused my thoughts on convoy tactics. I think thst most piracy will actually occur vs solo ships being stalked as they leave port. I see mining vessels as particularly susceptible to piracy- the players will be focused on mining, not sensors, so ships can sneak up in an asteroid field and disable them. Particularly for valuable ores which are likely to be found in the fringe worlds. Here, I think that bribery is the best method. IF a respectsble pirate group controls the area, we can buy "mining rights" from them- assumingly a credit fee as well as a portion of the refined ore. There just has to be a balance to keep it profitable for us. Of course, some of the burden of security would be rested on the pirates that we had dealt with- if other pirates are operating in their space and trying to hit our orion fleets, they will lose the "free" income stream as well as having a large org (us) angry at them. This one all depends on how territory actually plays out in-game. Working security for miners will be boring- i hope that we can set up security "pickets" and surround a field before we begin mining, then grab them when our group is done with that field, so that security forces don't have to sit on the job.

as a side note to mining, I think a very specific/standardized piracy will occur vs mining ships- if a pirate catches one, they'll extract XX% of the ore and leave peacefully. If they try to take too much, players will stop mining and the pirates won't make as much as they would extorting or taking a fee for ships they catch. 

 

I probably had more thoughts that I lost while writing. We will need to pay careful, careful attention to the mechanics CIG implements, as well as to the methods most used by pirate orgs. I am not in intelligence, but at the least we will need players to act as double agents in every major pirate org as well as having semi-official "liasons" in-game with the larger pirate orgs (kinda like known alts that can relay messages in-gsme rather thsn have to use official channels). By having officer-level spies, we can learn of the tactics pirates are currently using and plan accordingly. (Which reminds me of the enigma code, where they knew about a specific ship about to be hit and couldnt savw it because that would give away the fact that they had cracked the code, or here, that we had a spy. Spies will watch a lot of our fleets burn and have to say nothing, lol).

I hope these thoughts are useful in some way.

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6 hours ago, Swiftsure said:


No more strange than terrorists keeping spawning in the middle east, even though NATO and Russia have police and military patrolling it and killing those terrorists. Or criminals keep spawning in Chicago or New York despite all the law enforcement and harsh prison sentences.  

Crime, piracy and terrorism all come from a series of complex societal factors, and you can kill loads of them all you like. If you don't address all that complex societal stuff you'll just have more coming. 
 

I suspect any attempts at fully purging hostile npc from a system will be roughly as successful as when NATO tried to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban. In theory it seemed like you'd just use all this superior firepower to kill all the bad guys and thats it. Reality ended up that the best NATO could to was chase the bad guys up into the mountains and keep the cities/lowlands relatively safe. Second NATO started leaving, bad guys came back and took the city of Kunduz with a few hundred men despite it being guarded by thousands of Afghan National Army soldiers. And so NATO had to send in the airforce and special forces to get it back.

Imagine NATO is the pve players, taliban are the pirates, and the ANA are the idiot npc security forces who for some reason can't keep anything safe without player help.

I see what you are saying, but the income necessary to be a pirate org and operate ships is much larger than guerilla fighters.  Also, bottom conscience pirates cannot survive a general peace with active enforcement see the end of pirates of the caribbean. 

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33 minutes ago, Cincinnatus said:

I see what you are saying, but the income necessary to be a pirate org and operate ships is much larger than guerilla fighters.  Also, bottom conscience pirates cannot survive a general peace with active enforcement see the end of pirates of the caribbean. 


My bottom line is really this; npc won't go away. Because it's a game and your proposal would be bad for gameplay. All these missions they have to hand craft and suddenly there's no more npc spawning? With the exception of game story arc changes driven by the GM devs I do not believe you will ever see macro changes is npc spawning. Possibly micro, like where in a system they spawn but not dynamics driven extermination from an entire system. It makes 0 sense for gameplay that the newbie areas are wiped clean of anything to do because killed all the npc. Same as exploration, no matter how much you explore a certain area there will always be new exploration sites spawning. Because the alternative is running out of content for the pve crowd. Much like how CIG have decided that we can affect trade a certain amount but not to the point of being able to destroy markets, the same will probably be true for npc spawns. (something, something, 90% npc)


 

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I focused my thoughts on convoy tactics. I think thst most piracy will actually occur vs solo ships being stalked as they leave port. I see mining vessels as particularly susceptible to piracy- the players will be focused on mining, not sensors, so ships can sneak up in an asteroid field and disable them. Particularly for valuable ores which are likely to be found in the fringe worlds. Here, I think that bribery is the best method. IF a respectsble pirate group controls the area, we can buy "mining rights" from them- assumingly a credit fee as well as a portion of the refined ore. 


I suspect, looking at PKing in most other sandboxy games, attacks will be concentrated around chokepoints, as you say. In most games these are stuff like gates or towns. SC seems to have a broadly similar outlook with safe stations, jump points, etc. Most everyday PKers are both lazy and unfair fighters and thus prefer camping. So the question becomes to what degree we can either circumvent, or ourselves dominate these points? Combat patrols are an obvious activity for our pvpers, taking a longer route around said points is my preferred stategy.


As to your idea of "mining rights" no. That is giving in to extortion and robbery, and will only end with others trying to extort us further. If a band of pirates are so present in a certain area that they effectively control it as theirs, then they are easy to find and hammer with combat ops until they yield. They can pay us to not get blown up as far as I'm concerned. On the other hand if they are a "legit org" we could probably work something out, but then I'd ask why we're not mining in some area we ourselves dominate so we actually get to keep the fruits of our labors. But not pirates, no. We'd just be making our enemies more powerful.  


 

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I DO NOT think that groups should intentionally self-destruct upon piracy. Doing so will discourage "legitimate" piracy,


Apparently hacking and EMP/suckerpunch guns will be able to stop self destruct (or rather pause/disrupt the self destruct until system comes back on). And larger ships take longer to self destruct. So it's not like it's just gonna be a big "you lose" button. There's going to be a race against the clock for the pirates to turn the S-D off, and you actually have to hold them back until the last minute. Unless people will just click self destruct the second a cutlass drops out of warp. :P

 

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This one all depends on how territory actually plays out in-game. Working security for miners will be boring- i hope that we can set up security "pickets" and surround a field before we begin mining, then grab them when our group is done with that field, so that security forces don't have to sit on the job.


I suspect static defense will have to be ourselves, and possibly npc depending on their utility and how they affect the bottom line. PVP players are in it for the action, so the way you want to structure defensive actions are as active hunts/patrols. Not babysitting us, but rather sending them out to sweep the obvious chockepoints leading to where we are, where they can intercept and fight pirates before they head to where we are.

As for pickets, I think any self respecting MMO nerds will have scout alts on a second screen. Simply sitting there and hitting the scan button, so we see potential threats before they can see our mining op. 





A related note to all this, the devs have said a few times now in different multicrew discussions that big ships are supposed to be crewed by several players. And many ships are made specifically to have weaknesses that some other ship complements to reward team play. Players. Not npc. Someone always brings up npc crew in those threads, but it's obvious the devs think of that as a complement for player crews, not a proper replacement. 
I suspect a very large part of the troubles we'll see will be because we simply insist on bringing more big ships rather than working together onboard one. The temptations are obvious. Why Be 3 dudes + some npc on a mining ship when we can each bring our own mining ship. The devs tell us we're supposed to work as a crew, but we are all greedy/prideful/individualistic and probably won't listen. As a result we will be operating below capacity, multitasking heavily, and once things hit the fan we'll be unable to respond properly. And turret npc will be unable to do anything but pew at whatever the closes target is. 
We are already seeing plenty of people getting wrecked in solo Constellations/Retaliators. I fully expect the pirates prime victims won't be proper player fleets, but rather solo players trying to play npc admiral and soloing an Idris+ escort.

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15 minutes ago, Swiftsure said:


My bottom line is really this; npc won't go away. Because it's a game and your proposal would be bad for gameplay. All these missions they have to hand craft and suddenly there's no more npc spawning? With the exception of game story arc changes driven by the GM devs I do not believe you will ever see macro changes is npc spawning. Possibly micro, like where in a system they spawn but not dynamics driven extermination from an entire system. It makes 0 sense for gameplay that the newbie areas are wiped clean of anything to do because killed all the npc. Same as exploration, no matter how much you explore a certain area there will always be new exploration sites spawning. Because the alternative is running out of content for the pve crowd. Much like how CIG have decided that we can affect trade a certain amount but not to the point of being able to destroy markets, the same will probably be true for npc spawns. (something, something, 90% npc)

A related note to all this, the devs have said a few times now in different multicrew discussions that big ships are supposed to be crewed by several players. And many ships are made specifically to have weaknesses that some other ship complements to reward team play. Players. Not npc. Someone always brings up npc crew in those threads, but it's obvious the devs think of that as a complement for player crews, not a proper replacement. 
I suspect a very large part of the troubles we'll see will be because we simply insist on bringing more big ships rather than working together onboard one. The temptations are obvious. Why Be 3 dudes + some npc on a mining ship when we can each bring our own mining ship. The devs tell us we're supposed to work as a crew, but we are all greedy/prideful/individualistic and probably won't listen. As a result we will be operating below capacity, multitasking heavily, and once things hit the fan we'll be unable to respond properly. And turret npc will be unable to do anything but pew at whatever the closes target is. 
We are already seeing plenty of people getting wrecked in solo Constellations/Retaliators. I fully expect the pirates prime victims won't be proper player fleets, but rather solo players trying to play npc admiral and soloing an Idris+ escort.

Swift, you don't understand. We aren't saying that NPCs will stop spawning, but rather that the NPCs who spawn may be very different from the ones who died. If a region has a lot of policing, whether by players or Advocacy officers, then it will be harder for pirates to succeed in that region and they will move elsewhere. So the ratio of pirates to citizens will be lower. The population may/may not change, but it is mainly the percentage of pirate NPCs that I am talking about.
Besides, if they keep getting slaughtered, they will go to systems where they can conduct piracy without fear of losing any cargo they steal. 

As far as NPC crew, they said it WOULD be feasible to run ships with NPC crew. You will not be able to use all stations on large multicrew ships and the NPCs might not be as effective as player crew, but they will be available. I plan to have enough escorts not to have to worry too much about the skill level of the NPCs/players flying them. NPC crew might not be for everyone, but they will be very helpful. 
If player crew are not always available, then people will have to turn to NPC crew. That is not to say all NPC crew will be bad though. There will probably be a lot of very skilled NPC gunners or pilots out there that we can hire. They will just be more expensive. 
 

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42 minutes ago, Jon1812 said:

Swift, you don't understand. We aren't saying that NPCs will stop spawning, but rather that the NPCs who spawn may be very different from the ones who died. If a region has a lot of policing, whether by players or Advocacy officers, then it will be harder for pirates to succeed in that region and they will move elsewhere. So the ratio of pirates to citizens will be lower. The population may/may not change, but it is mainly the percentage of pirate NPCs that I am talking about.
Besides, if they keep getting slaughtered, they will go to systems where they can conduct piracy without fear of losing any cargo they steal. 


 

You have mentioned this several times. Has anything like this been confirmed by CIG? In a town hall, I believe, they mentioned that the game would try to keep a "steady" number of pirates in-system, but this was meant to mean that the game is going to detect players taking on pirate missions and when a player moves in, an npc moves out. I suppose that the core worlds will be relatively player-pirate free, but it would make no sense for CIG to not have npc pirates/to move them out of the systems as they are attacked- the core worlds will provide mercenary positions for players too, i would guess, so there should be pirates there as well. I doubt that NPC pirate factions will move based on players attacking them. It seems like CIG has plans to keep that fairly constant.

 

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1 hour ago, Karmaslap said:

You have mentioned this several times. Has anything like this been confirmed by CIG? In a town hall, I believe, they mentioned that the game would try to keep a "steady" number of pirates in-system, but this was meant to mean that the game is going to detect players taking on pirate missions and when a player moves in, an npc moves out. I suppose that the core worlds will be relatively player-pirate free, but it would make no sense for CIG to not have npc pirates/to move them out of the systems as they are attacked- the core worlds will provide mercenary positions for players too, i would guess, so there should be pirates there as well. I doubt that NPC pirate factions will move based on players attacking them. It seems like CIG has plans to keep that fairly constant.

 

The economy is a supply and demand model and the NPCs look to work similarly. Jobs will be created based on their need and NPCs will pursue work that they specialize in. If there is little opportunity for work, then it stands to reason that the NPCs would pursue that work elsewhere. 
The economy as the have explained it would not work correctly if every system has a static number of merchants, engineers, pirates, etc.. It would never really change much because the players could only make slight temporary changes and the economies would just bounce back to their original state. A dynamic economy requires the ability to change the NPC population or at least the way they are distributed. If you listen to how they explain that then it becomes pretty evident. 

I am not saying that players will just stroll into a system and kick NPC pirates out at the drop of a hat, but if for example, there was a large player contingent that drove the pirates out of a system, pirates would not spawn at the same rate in that system. 
We will see the populations of the various systems change as various world events (like a Vanduul invasion) change them and the devs have made it clear that players can have a similar effect on them. Perhaps not easily, but they can.

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11 hours ago, Jon1812 said:

The economy is a supply and demand model and the NPCs look to work similarly. Jobs will be created based on their need and NPCs will pursue work that they specialize in. If there is little opportunity for work, then it stands to reason that the NPCs would pursue that work elsewhere. 
The economy as the have explained it would not work correctly if every system has a static number of merchants, engineers, pirates, etc.. It would never really change much because the players could only make slight temporary changes and the economies would just bounce back to their original state. A dynamic economy requires the ability to change the NPC population or at least the way they are distributed. If you listen to how they explain that then it becomes pretty evident. 

I am not saying that players will just stroll into a system and kick NPC pirates out at the drop of a hat, but if for example, there was a large player contingent that drove the pirates out of a system, pirates would not spawn at the same rate in that system. 
We will see the populations of the various systems change as various world events (like a Vanduul invasion) change them and the devs have made it clear that players can have a similar effect on them. Perhaps not easily, but they can.

I think it would be a worthy 10FTC question. The economy that they have described is certainly dynamic, with an increase in operations or decrease in operations corresponding to supply and demand. The increasing and decreasing economic activity is what decides how many missions there are in a given area- how many trade runs, security jobs, pirate missions, etc. as well as (Assumingly) the pay for each of the missions- so players will migrate towards where the pay is best, and keep the system changing. I think I understand the system they have planned. You're a T&I specialist, you certainly do.  

What I don't understand is your conclusion that players will have an impact on the long-term levels of NPC pirates. It has seemed like this number will directly respond to to overall wealth flowing through a system- more missions overall means more pirate missions as well and as far as I have understood from what Chris and Tony have said this seems to be the only thing affecting the levels (unless CIG manually changes them for whatever reason). Pirates in a system will constantly be killed as part of the mercenary/security missions anyways- I think Tony said that the number of pirates in a system would be decided by the "back end" economic model, and security missions created based on the number of pirates that that model had. So when a pirate in-game dies, the game looks to the back end model for what to spawn next. Efforts taken to remove piracy or change the game will have to focus on how that model interprets data from the game. 

Based on this it seems like pirates will spawn into the game when the mission is created- they won't just be sitting in space for us to kill without a mission. At least, it seems the pirates that the game generates for missions will spawn like that. It wouldn't surprise me if there were a second 'type' of pirate in-system-there could also be pirate areas I suppose, where pirates always/tend to appear not as a mission, but because it's their local base (saying they don't specifically spawn there for something, they are already there) or such. If so, then it would follow that attacking those pirates constantly would prompt the gradual removal of pirates in-system as you have been saying as hitting those pirates, which aren't only there for the mission, is likely to be what changes the back end model. 

What matters, then, is if the game views the two groups (if there are two groups) as separate, or one, or as separate but influencing each other. I would argue that the game is likely to break the pirates into these groups of specifically mission-spawned, and area-spawned. This is due to the fact that the mission-spawned pirates will be constantly killed by players taking on security jobs- the game will expect these pirates to die if a player takes on the mission, and consider them dying as "normal". Because the pirates have such a high tendency to die anyways, I would doubt that concentrating efforts to repeatedly kill them would have any noticeable effect- they would repeatedly die under normal conditions anyways. Therefore, I don't think that it will be possible to directly affect the number of pirates spawned for missions by killing them. If the game also has that second group of pirates that is more connected/has more impact on the economic model, then targeting them would have an impact. I think the difference that would make one group change the pirate levels and the other group not is that the game will be expecting one to constantly die, and ignore that, whereas the game won't be expecting the other to also die- because it isn't generating them for missions where they "should" die. If the game views the two groups as separate, then mission-spawned pirates will continue to generate at the same rate, but "Area" pirates will leave a system. If it links them, then pirates will gradually be removed (and come back at a later time in full force, I'm sure). 

 

I think that makes sense. TL;DR The game expects mission-generated pirates to die anyways, so I would find it doubtful that killing those repeatedly would have a noticeable impact on NPC pirate levels. Based on this, I think that the game will have a mechanic in place separate from the deaths of mission-spawned pirates to detect "changes" in pirate level that should be sent to make changes in the back-end model, in the form of another group of pirates that we can kill which the game won't (often) give specific missions against- they will exist for players to make changes to. 

 

I also think that we're unlikely to get more than an extremely vague answer from Chris on how the actual mechanic of it works- they want to keep info on how to make changes to the game tightly protected so that players can't easily mess things up or exploit them. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

as I said before, somewhere in this thread, I think it's impossible to completely avoid piracy. Also, as going out there in 0-sec means higher risk/reward for non-pirates, actually going into high-sec would likely be a high risk/reward scenario for pirates. Space is big. Even with the UEE patrolling certain sectors there's no way they can monitor everything. There's bound to be some pirates bold enough to risk it.

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I had originally thought that barricading doorways with cargo might slow or prevent infiltrators, but with the confirmation that cargo will have "hooks" or "slots" where it can be placed on the floor, my plan is foiled.

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On 12/6/2015 at 6:41 AM, Johnny Holiday said:

Piracy is a fated to be doomed concept, IMO. Sure, some our members will end up paying more of the bill then others, but pirate organizations have one major flaw. They often value military strength before economic strength. And Ships don't fly without Cash, not for long, and certainly not well. I think even the most successful pirates will be pretty far behind the curve from an established and an economically well rooted organization. They'll be most effective at release, and only get weaker from there on out.

I mean, will we collectively and individually take loses? Sure. But it boils to that old Vietnam quote “You will kill 10 of our men, and we will kill 1 of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it.”. Even in a Pirates best day, one of their ships is certainly worth more to them then a few of us to ours. IMO, I think the key is purchasing power and a righteously vicious campaign against the larger pirate organizations. Desecrate their community altars, ruthlessly destroy their flagship organizations, make them sing songs of the horrors of thieving from Imperium.

The more effective PvP ones will get the hint. Or they wont survive, either way. Wont be attacking our ships.

I feel Player piracy will be completely the opposite. They will kill or loot 10 traders before one of them is lost.  Pirating is cheap, a fighter costs less than a hull transport and will likely be a whole lot more effective in a fight. There is no economic curve to fall behind. Shucks, a LTI Super hornet will let you kill traders...forever.  What would they need loot for? Just vape the trader, laugh and move on.  The real danger is that piracy seems a lot more fun, than running food and water crates across the galaxy for a mark up. Remember, its a game and not every player will see it as a life simulator. So if something seems more fun... that solves about any potential disadvantage.  They wont play for money per hour, or the most over clocked lasers, or the gold plated origin super yact.  They will play to have fun. They wont go away.  They wont need communities, flagships, or things you can take away with military might.   Imperium will lose plenty of ships to pirates but, it will be fun.  It will be ok. Pirates are supposed to be scary, that is a part of why trading is fun.

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            Piracy Deterrents While Mining


Ship: MISC Prospector
Mining Status: Solo, Looking for that diamond mine $$$


With this scenario you would have to be a sneaky basted. Stealth is key.
Logic says if your a dodgy miner and you blow up one of those compressed pockets of gas your going to attract attention.
Also if you make a delivery or two of some expensive materials that you have been mining, that's going to attract attention too.


Solution: Herd Mentality
A herd of 10 Prospectors and maybe an Orion should be enough of a deterrent for a pirate surely. Assuming they work solo.  Although its all just speculation until we understand how the AI operates. It's the human pirates that I'm worried about.

All i can say at this point is when you find those diamonds its going to be safer to let the org know right away so heaps of people can join you mining.
It will also be cheaper this way regarding escorts. You might only need a couple of fighters patrolling the mining area and the shipping lane. If someone runs into trouble and there's no escort nearby they just have to send out the call and keep their ship alive for a couple of minutes till the cavalry arrives.

 

 

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On ‎25‎/‎04‎/‎2016 at 1:35 PM, Fizzlefuse said:

as I said before, somewhere in this thread, I think it's impossible to completely avoid piracy. Also, as going out there in 0-sec means higher risk/reward for non-pirates, actually going into high-sec would likely be a high risk/reward scenario for pirates. Space is big. Even with the UEE patrolling certain sectors there's no way they can monitor everything. There's bound to be some pirates bold enough to risk it.

I'm not sure what high reward pirates would get for going into a high security area. I believe the idea is for Traders to venture into low security areas because that's where the real valuable trade runs and goods are. They can stay in high security areas but the runs aren't as profitable.

This would mean that a Pirate would make more profit per attack in a low security area. The only trade off being that there are less targets and more competition in low security areas.

Ofcoarse the concern would be that in a low security area with lucrative trade opportunities, there could be room for a monopoly. If a pirate faction makes operating in a certain area extremely undesirable to players then those pirates may become traders themselves to capitalize on the vacuum that's exists. Although this would depend on NPC factions and whether or not large, powerful orgs want a stake in the area.

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15 minutes ago, Minted said:

I'm not sure what high reward pirates would get for going into a high security area. I believe the idea is for Traders to venture into low security areas because that's where the real valuable trade runs and goods are. They can stay in high security areas but the runs aren't as profitable.

This would mean that a Pirate would make more profit per attack in a low security area. The only trade off being that there are less targets and more competition in low security areas.

Ofcoarse the concern would be that in a low security area with lucrative trade opportunities, there could be room for a monopoly. If a pirate faction makes operating in a certain area extremely undesirable to players then those pirates may become traders themselves to capitalize on the vacuum that's exists. Although this would depend on NPC factions and whether or not large, powerful orgs want a stake in the area.

I would tend to agree. I suppose that many people in a high security area would transport larger amounts of goods with a much smaller escort. So if the pirates could avoid the system security, they could probably take down cargo haulers faster and get away quicker. However, I do think the most benefit for pirates will be in low security fringe space.

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11 hours ago, Minted said:

This would mean that a Pirate would make more profit per attack in a low security area. The only trade off being that there are less targets and more competition in low security areas.

I would disagree with this. (Depending on if you're simply comparing high/low or saying low would be the 'most' profitable). The best expensive goods/escort ratio would probably be found in middle security systems. High security will be designed to keep pvp type pirates out in the fringes, but a well-run pirate operation should be able to get into medium security space. Goods will likely flow between medium and low, where action that requires expensive cargo is all found, so I'd say that there would still be the same shipments happening in medium security space.

People in higher security regions would likely feel safer than in low, and be more prone to take risks such as forgoing an escort or taking the direct and obvious path. It would most likely be a lot harder to pull of a succesful raid, but pirates who had dodging security and a good system down would peofit most preying on unprepared players in medium sec. 

I'm also going to guess that in lower security regions the payout for the same actions would be higher than in better security areas, because those legit missions will need to fund both the pirate players and the regular ones. Depending on how this and how escorts and paranoia end up, low might be more profitable (especially vs NPCs)

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  • 1 month later...

Fun topic!  Okay, I haven't read every single post, but I wanted to add in a few years of Eve experience.  

General rules of behavior: pirates are sneaky and cowardly by nature.  They are a minority in every universe, and will not survive on a direct confrontation-they know this.  That is not a disadvantage either, necessarily... they just have to adapt to the situation and plan accordingly.

It is rare that you'll see large fleets of pirates, due to their nature.  Eve Online community saw the creation of pirate corps and later on the larger alliances, and while they'd have large numbers to produce fleets of significant size, the goal is still to take from you.  Most of the time, you'd see groups of small ships... something medium and capital ships have trouble dealing with.  I'd bet that SC will see something similar: cheap groups, squads, or even blobs of small craft designed to swarm and overwhelm without completely annihilating the target.  Pirate losses are usually never even close to the losses of their targets, because they are here to take what you have... you have the valuables, not them.  

Food for thought: I remember hearing about the incursions of small pirate fleets into high sec areas to suicide attack against the miners in prolonged campaigns..... just to drive up the price of those same mining barges so they ultimately profit.  This is a good example of a long term piracy tactic that wouldn't necessarily follow in traditional smash and grab stereotypes.   It might be difficult to determine the exact goal of such attacks, if there are even any patterns.

I would suggest the main escort/prevention effort to look towards dealing with groups of small craft, occasional medium, and very rare large/capital fleet actions.  Is there even a defense against a group of 10 kamikaze Aurora or even Hornets?

Piracy won't be limited to fleets in space, either.  Stationary/planetary targets will be at more risk, but expected to have tougher defenses.  

I'd also suggest that fielding the same types of escorts will eventually lead to a total loss... soon as a group becomes reliably predictable, the risk will increase greatly.

This is an interesting side of the game to watch develop!  I think we'll have more to risk against large rival corporations than random fleeting pirate bands, though.  Those larger corporations will have the resources to make things frustrating, no doubt.  But those guys will be easier to find than roaming pirates :)

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