I will never forget the thrill of leaving the safezone for the first time. Greed brought me out in my freshly made Mormont. More risk, more reward! I saw flashing in far away clouds, fearing it was a battle, i steered in the opposite direction. I wanted to get some of the juicy stuff and then get out quickly, and get out I did, and it felt great. On a later trip I beelined straight for zone2 and got shot down. "This game is for real" I felt, believing that the pirates probably earned a lot from killing me and my ship.
Unfortunately, Piracy isn't profitable, I was just getting griefed. I like the idea of risk coupled with reward, but considering the earning potential of asteroid hauling or mining ( especially with capital ships) pirates praying on miners and haulers for profits isn't a thing, if someone will pose a threat to anyone, it might as well be a tiny newb miner.
As I see it, the main culprits of global piracy inefficiency is as follows( no particular order):
Ymrionic Storms are massive asteroid belt weather phenomena, visible from the other side of a belt if looked for, or at least reasonably visible to specialized vehicles.
They "coincidentally" tend to spawn in areas far away from space stations and capital ships. The few times that it does spawn on a station, the station is temporarily disabled. Their violent weather also makes it impossible to make stations near it, nor to warp close to with a capital ships. Although It's hard to tell how common these phenomena has been throughout history, It's believed that the activity of Endo Warpcore Technology has provoced storms of higher frequency and magnitude. These stormclouds vastly alter the properties of space, most notably, it is believed to be the source of all Ymrium and Corazium. In these stormclouds, there are two kinds of asteroids; pure shell ore ones, and those filled with high value ore. The high value ores themselves are highly radioactive, and soon decay into common ores of equal distribution to the normal asteroid field.
This, paired with a lower frequency of precious ores in the asteroid belt would create hotspots relative to the playerbase guaranteeing a consistent risk/reward scenario with the possibility of balance by several factors such as volume/endo, profitability amongst other things.
Strong ymrio-magnetic effects increases space friction for Precious Metals, releasing energy in the form of heat. Although some energies are more prescent in the mids of stormclouds, the areas' heat density is significantly lower than in normal regions
This makes valuable cargos slower and easier to detect.
Due to the volatility of the could, ship transponders aren't working properly, and require to be paired with transponder recievers of allied ships prior to entry in order to work. Due to the limitations of this new technology, only 5 transponders can be paired at a time.
This reduces the level of trust amongst players in this danger-zone. A 5-ship limit to a squad also makes it harder for bigger companies to synchronize and dominate these areas.
This would cause several things: First of all, it would create a pvp dense area with high risk high reward. Bringing fighters to a mining operation would be incentivized by many reasons. First of all, there's the safety aspect, but there's also the opportunistic one, since killing a miner or a hauler would cut your own risktime shorter. Because of the relatively higher time spent looking for high yield ores, adding a fighter with a resource scanner contributes about as much to the mining operation as a miner would. The juicier the haul a miner would get ( or maybe an armored hauler) the easier it would be to intercept. Because of a forced travel distance back to the capital ship, you'd get full trips, further increasing the risk, further increasing the utility of armored escorts, further increasing the risk for others.
The transponder issues will cause trust to go down, making shoot on sight more likely for ships outside of the squad. "Friendly players" also get plausible deniability for not recognizing faction specific ships acting "very aggressively".
The rim of this area would also be a decent place to parallel park your capital ship next to someone you have beef with. Maybe to do some embargo/ strategical fleet reduction or collect protection fees. Keeping up intel on who's where and who can get the fastest nav-chip fairly close to a new stormcloud would be massive.
That's it. A repeatable hotspot event with stakes. I would personally to spend a gaming session on a stormcloud excursion with friends. Bringing friends would have a tangible value, and the mining wouldn't be as much of a "I could as well do it myself, it doesn't really matter." I'd love to hear it if anyone has any thoughts on it.
Unfortunately, Piracy isn't profitable, I was just getting griefed. I like the idea of risk coupled with reward, but considering the earning potential of asteroid hauling or mining ( especially with capital ships) pirates praying on miners and haulers for profits isn't a thing, if someone will pose a threat to anyone, it might as well be a tiny newb miner.
As I see it, the main culprits of global piracy inefficiency is as follows( no particular order):
- Hauler speed. A current meta hauler at max speed can't be intercepted. This removes risk and interactivity through all trips. Pre-capitals, the upgrade from a giant miner to a hauler for hauling was measured in credits per hour, not credits per risk hour. I think more risk, less hours would make for more engaging gameplay. Both for the hauler as well as potential pirate gameplay.
- Cargo value. The less the traveltime*risk a hauling operation has, the worse resources it can afford to haul at competitive rates of income. This reduces the value of seizing one. If the ore value is average, the only difference a piracy operation earns is skipping a simple non-discriminating mining trip. That's not enough to justify a payoff. If some hauling trips were incentivized to be of sorted ores, a pirate strike would earn the equivalent of much more mining time.
- The ability to find ships. With no effective detection method availible for any area, It's hard for interactions to happen. I look forward to seeing the heat radars tweaked and balanced to fit a healthy meta.
- The relative even distribution of juicy resources. You can mine Corazium, Ymrium etc at equal rates anywhere where they're available. This ties into #1 - cargo value. There is no asteroid belt place at which pirates can look for high value loads. It would be nice if we had something similar to craters, but it's prevalence limited to the number of active players.
Ymrionic Storms are massive asteroid belt weather phenomena, visible from the other side of a belt if looked for, or at least reasonably visible to specialized vehicles.
They "coincidentally" tend to spawn in areas far away from space stations and capital ships. The few times that it does spawn on a station, the station is temporarily disabled. Their violent weather also makes it impossible to make stations near it, nor to warp close to with a capital ships. Although It's hard to tell how common these phenomena has been throughout history, It's believed that the activity of Endo Warpcore Technology has provoced storms of higher frequency and magnitude. These stormclouds vastly alter the properties of space, most notably, it is believed to be the source of all Ymrium and Corazium. In these stormclouds, there are two kinds of asteroids; pure shell ore ones, and those filled with high value ore. The high value ores themselves are highly radioactive, and soon decay into common ores of equal distribution to the normal asteroid field.
This, paired with a lower frequency of precious ores in the asteroid belt would create hotspots relative to the playerbase guaranteeing a consistent risk/reward scenario with the possibility of balance by several factors such as volume/endo, profitability amongst other things.
Strong ymrio-magnetic effects increases space friction for Precious Metals, releasing energy in the form of heat. Although some energies are more prescent in the mids of stormclouds, the areas' heat density is significantly lower than in normal regions
This makes valuable cargos slower and easier to detect.
Due to the volatility of the could, ship transponders aren't working properly, and require to be paired with transponder recievers of allied ships prior to entry in order to work. Due to the limitations of this new technology, only 5 transponders can be paired at a time.
This reduces the level of trust amongst players in this danger-zone. A 5-ship limit to a squad also makes it harder for bigger companies to synchronize and dominate these areas.
This would cause several things: First of all, it would create a pvp dense area with high risk high reward. Bringing fighters to a mining operation would be incentivized by many reasons. First of all, there's the safety aspect, but there's also the opportunistic one, since killing a miner or a hauler would cut your own risktime shorter. Because of the relatively higher time spent looking for high yield ores, adding a fighter with a resource scanner contributes about as much to the mining operation as a miner would. The juicier the haul a miner would get ( or maybe an armored hauler) the easier it would be to intercept. Because of a forced travel distance back to the capital ship, you'd get full trips, further increasing the risk, further increasing the utility of armored escorts, further increasing the risk for others.
The transponder issues will cause trust to go down, making shoot on sight more likely for ships outside of the squad. "Friendly players" also get plausible deniability for not recognizing faction specific ships acting "very aggressively".
The rim of this area would also be a decent place to parallel park your capital ship next to someone you have beef with. Maybe to do some embargo/ strategical fleet reduction or collect protection fees. Keeping up intel on who's where and who can get the fastest nav-chip fairly close to a new stormcloud would be massive.
That's it. A repeatable hotspot event with stakes. I would personally to spend a gaming session on a stormcloud excursion with friends. Bringing friends would have a tangible value, and the mining wouldn't be as much of a "I could as well do it myself, it doesn't really matter." I'd love to hear it if anyone has any thoughts on it.
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