Piracy and Thievery

[TheSunsPariah]

At this point, gassing this thread is probably a mercy, since it's mostly edgelords going back and forth about theoretically pirating or not pirating in a game that isn't out and no one can play yet.

I tried to start a thread that rationally looked at the possible effects of piracy on the gameplay and how possible piracy would be in the actual game upon release...

I failed miserably...

We currently have the second most replied to thread on the forum consisting only of pointless debate over pointless topics.

Now can we PLEASE get over any outside games' clan. I would like to discuss piracy in relation to the game's mechanics, not which faction is the best.

 

[Azelous]

I tried to start a thread that rationally looked at the possible effects of piracy on the gameplay and how possible piracy would be in the actual game upon release...

I failed miserably...

We currently have the second most replied to thread on the forum consisting only of pointless debate over pointless topics.

Now can we PLEASE get over any outside games' clan. I would like to discuss piracy in relation to the game's mechanics, not which faction is the best.

You successfully started it, however it veered off on page 3.

I'm interested in knowing how easy it will to discover pirate identities. If I get attacked by pirates, will I be able to discover their username? This could potentially get their username put on a community made black list and cause them issues down the road. This could lead to the pirates not wanting to pirate if the black list gets adopted by a large portion of the community.

 

[Bolshenose]

You successfully started it, however it veered off on page 3.

I'm interested in knowing how easy it will to discover pirate identities. If I get attacked by pirates, will I be able to discover their username? This could potentially get their username put on a community made black list and cause them issues down the road. This could lead to the pirates not wanting to pirate if the black list gets adopted by a large portion of the community.

I'm gonna go all out with playing the role of pirate with my faction. I'm gonna try to get our name as pirates out there. I want people to know who we are when they see a ship with our logo on it. I think any RP in this game is gonna be great.

 

[Wicca]

I love Roleplaying, as long as the game mechanics encourage it in a very automatic way. I call that immersion, that the game mechanics and behaviour of the players aren't forced or pretending. But rather a natural response to the gameworlds rules and set up.

For example, with communication. You have too many restrictions on who you can talk to and the organization of in-game channels, people will opt for outside software such as teamspeak, discord or mumble. But if the game can go beyond what those services provide to some extent and very profoundly connect to the game world in a way no other service is able to manage, then it's immersion.

Assume for example all robots are given a sort of radio that communicates short range radio waves, and larger such devices on ships. You can have ship to ship and player to player interaction in local and from ship to ship. Which really isn't possible unless all players are on the same teamspeak/mumble etc. This creates immersion.

As for security, piracy or trade. The general reason why piracy was so succesfull in Somalia or in the 18th century, was the lack of communication or even the lack of ability to reinforce or help vessels in distress. You would have to create a truly vast universe to be able to effectively pirate, otherwise pirate groups will just too easily be found and deleted. Communication is still instant regardless, but if you could create very long travel routes, perhaps piracy would have a bigger chance of succeeding. That and a healthy trade between factions, stations and groups.

If the movement system in this game is based on gates, and there is no way around it, it would severly limit pirates ability to operate to only certain sectors, which again would just make it too easy.

My hope, is that movement will be as free and unlimited as possible, with the only restriction being range. If the game does plan to add gates and similar I think it would be too simple for groups to defend themselves against pirates. Now please I don't condone piracy, but rather the excitment of having to transport something from A-B is bigger if you have credible threats that might hit you. It's more fun I think. Then again it's not fun to die, but the game should contain multiple small win-cycles where you accomplish something. Hopefully since this is an MMO, losing a ship doesn't mean losing a 100 days worth of effort, but rather 1 or 2, I think that's manageable. Maybe someone who knows more about human psyche and games can tell us the optimal win-cycle.

In either case, the pirates and such behaviour would allow for bigger "boss-like" challenges to be met by the players. I think it makes the game much deeper and more fun, and I personally believe opening movement and range, and reducing speed is the best way to accomplish it. But I could be wrong

 

[TheSunsPariah]

My hope, is that movement will be as free and unlimited as possible, with the only restriction being range. If the game does plan to add gates and similar I think it would be too simple for groups to defend themselves against pirates. Now please I don't condone piracy, but rather the excitment of having to transport something from A-B is bigger if you have credible threats that might hit you. It's more fun I think. Then again it's not fun to die, but the game should contain multiple small win-cycles where you accomplish something. Hopefully since this is an MMO, losing a ship doesn't mean losing a 100 days worth of effort, but rather 1 or 2, I think that's manageable. Maybe someone who knows more about human psyche and games can tell us the optimal win-cycle.

In either case, the pirates and such behaviour would allow for bigger "boss-like" challenges to be met by the players. I think it makes the game much deeper and more fun, and I personally believe opening movement and range, and reducing speed is the best way to accomplish it. But I could be wrong

Although creating a well known pirate group goes against what I think makes efficient pirating, it certainly does add flavor to the game. I am sure the Cobrastan Cult will KoS if they actually practice what they preach, but I really don't think majority of factions will attack neutrals just because. Pirates create a permanent threat outside of the safezone for all players, and I think pirates will force players to prepare much better for voyages outside the safe areas of space. This threat will in theory increase the value of safe stations and any materials found greater distances away.

I'm gonna go all out with playing the role of pirate with my faction. I'm gonna try to get our name as pirates out there. I want people to know who we are when they see a ship with our logo on it. I think any RP in this game is gonna be great.

I am very curious how names work in the game. If you get killed, is there a log saying "A killed B" or "A [insert weapon used] B"? I guess people won't necessarily know it was due to piracy, but if you name pops up in the kill log often enough you gather a nasty reputation. On the split side, if there are no names, pirate groups like your will have a much harder time gaining reputation. Outside of a kill log, do names display above robots at all? Are they observable with the YOLOL tool? Do robots need to announce who they are?

 

[AkseliFB]

Did not have time to read the whole thread, but it seems some of the cocky big factions might be facing a reality check called logistics. I'm sorry, but you just can't compare Starbase to other MMO's on every aspect. Some things will play out differently. You will see.

 

[Messir Astaroth]

I feel there should be high-sec areas like in EVE. If its all unguarded space aside from the small safe zones then griefing and anarchy will run wild, while that sounds tantalizing for some people it does not bode well for player growth and retention.

No. There is no local, no probes and no and d-scan, so you will actually be able to hide in space.

Also more harsh and cold the space is - much better the space game is. Space is space. It must be dangerous.

P.S. I hope that devs will not ban ppl for just stealing other people's stuff, etc. The 'Griefing' in this game should be 100% legal thingie, lol.

 

[Vic]

Did not have time to read the whole thread, but it seems some of the cocky big factions might be facing a reality check called logistics.

As someone who engages in piracy in pretty much any game that makes it an even remotely viable option, I agree logistics are probably one of the top concerns for pirate players. Piracy requires a build that has enough endurance to seek out targets, enough speed to catch them if they run, enough combat felxibility to take them out without suffering too much damage and without destroying too much of the target's value (piracy is typically more risky and skill and knowledge intensive than classic PvP), and when the dust settles you'll still need enough cargo capacity to bring back enough of whatever you managed to get your hands on to actually make it worth all the time you spent and costs you incurred to get it in the first place.

In short piracy has a much higher opportunity cost compared to other forms of PvP and ressource acquisition methods you can find in a sandbox game. Of course most of the time you'll do it anyways, for the thrill of maybe hitting that once in 1000 hours of gameplay motherload of booty, for all the batshit crazy things people will try pull when you casually fly up to them and politely ask them to surrender their belongings peacefully, for all that PvP that typically ensues and the truckloads of salt that come with it, and of course, when it's all said and done, you'll do it just for the self-aggrandizing joy of calling yourself a pirate.

But running a self sustaining piracy op that doesn't rely on constant injections of ressources from other activities actually requires the in game meta to tick a lot of very specific boxes, and it's not obvious yet to what extent this game will make piracy viable.

 

[Vic]

Oh just finished reading the whole thread and realized it had been so thoroughly derailed we weren't talking about logistics pertaining to piracy anymore at the point where I got on.

On a side note I can't wait to meet these Ark/Atlas people in game. The "it doesn't matter how much ressources we lose to more skilled PvPers because we farm so damn hard" mindset is positively mouthwatering.

 

[Vampiricdust]

Pirate crews could survive on just wrecked ships, let alone the millions of asteroids around them. They won't need to farm so hard, they can just destroy & deny resources. There are so many ways to cripple a large faction with a station that won't work against pirates.

They're going to feed pirates more then deter them.

 

[Burnside]

Maybe a hidden kill switch could be possible? (Press a hidden button at the opposite end of the ship and it refuses to turn on until the button is pressed once more.)

What do you think?

You can hypothetically hide a chip reader in the wall that throttles certain systems to zero, like coolant, thrusters, and reactors if it can't find another chip that's named properly and possesses an access key, remove that key and a thief has to realize there's a yolol command throttling one or more critical systems and then either find that master chip and dupe it or rename the device fields on the affected systems so the masterchip can't throttle them anymore. If you set up secondary controls like, say, another line of code that locks down piloting controls if it can't detect the namefield of those critical systems, you've given a pirate a very long and irritating debug task that they may not be mentally or educationally equipped to handle. And for any slacker that can diagnose this issue and solve it will still be faced with the effective task of having to reprogram a ship before it can be stolen.

And keep in mind that because of how the data networks functions as a general blob, you can hide these antitheft lockdowns anywhere you have a nook or cranny that can be sealed off or disguised, even a server room full of multichip readers is a complex indexing task if the lockdowns aren't all placed next to each other. And remember, so long as the power/control discrepencies allow it, you can subdivide and long-chain lockdown commands down to individual parts if you're paranoid enough to deem it necessary- lockdowns can even be slipped in between spare lines of code on any yolol chip with the room for one if you don't mind an extra .2sec delay in the execution or recursion of that particular chip.

 

[Kmank]

I agree we need piracy, the Republic is going to have fun dealing with those pirates