Unfortunately even with a bounty on my head you or anyone else will never be able to force me into a battle that your likely to win* Because I will allways jump away if the odds are not in my favour. Much as id expect any other sensible pilot to do.

If there were no safe zones, and a way to actually follow/track ships down, then bounties would work, and would be a nice addition to the game, as would some sort of law-level system



* Unless i forgot to put a ship in a safe zone while offline, or i get distracted and leave a ship in orbit too long ie, only when I mess up.

I have to admit the attack confuses me somewhat.

Its not unusual for the defender to actually open fire once the timmer has counted down, however Jaqvaar did so here with no weapons powered up on his ship, I guess thats a downside to powering equipment up and down as required, in the heat of the moment it could be overlooked.

Or i wonder if he had any Nukes onboard that were set to hold fire. All i can do is wonder.

it is just foolish to leave a ship just sitting at a planet where it can be attacked. It is just asking for trouble.

As they say, ask and ye shall recieve. Were just giving people what they wanted ;)  or why would they ask?

We dont hide, but can you find us?

In this case the modules were either cleared by the defender (a smart move) prior to the attack, or they have already depleated all of the assigned resource on that planet.

In this case i assume the former since the defender had a ship in orbit.

Only when the assigned resource is fully depleated does a capture/destroy attack make sense.

Yeah the thing is Vipers are crap at defense,

Interestingly i disagree with you here ;)

Weapons in General are pretty bad at defence, That is after all what Shields and Armour is for.

However Vipers with their 500 crew members provide significantly more HP to your ship than does a Laser or Railgun. So actually they improve your ships ability to take damage more than any other weapon available. 

doesnt mean i install vipers over railguns though, weapons are, after all, not there for their defensive abilities.

I would like Kerbos's suggestion if it was somehow linked into a Crew Moral System. However i think that is probably way beyond the level of complexity that is being modeled in this game.

Though I am liable to make enemies in the process.

Oh so you like to be popular too?

ooc: Couldnt agree more, just because i choose to play the game one way doesnt make me a bad guy... well except in game that is.

Lemme know when your Newb protection has expired, id like to explain how donations to 'the cause' function ;)

Thankyou for the big update.

Will test it out over the coming weeks.

I like the additional update to the combat missions, its about time that the NPC pirates figured out that they can also carry a CDR. Should make the combat missions a little more interesting, and less like playing 'I win'.

Ah a love letter.

One would perhapes hope for a little more poesy, but its better than nothing.

not even his ship, Sheb. This game is designed so that whenever someone makes the mistake of investing on an immobile target (such as a mine or orbital station), the pirate can attack with no risk at all, as many times as he wants, until he eventually wins. There is nothing the base can do except have a huge and expensive ship move it away. The pirate however can move as he pleases, and find a different base to pick on.

The fact that there are no repercussions or risks whatsoever for piracy, as well as the fact that there is no other profit-making mechanism in the game, means that it's safer and more profitable to just attack anyone than try and plan, build, expand or explore.

OOC:

I agree with you Jaqvaar that the game as it stands makes it too easy for a pirate to destroy the work of others. That was why i was fully behind Bomales suggestion to modify things so that modules could be plunderd rather than destroyed. If i read a recent post from Sir Emi, then that suggestion is being implemented right now. There are also not that many ingame repercussions or risks, your right. Its impossible to track someone in game. Even if you could track people the game space is chock full of safe zones where you cannot attack. I would love the challenge of evading a tracker, or playing cat and mouse with a bounty hunter. However dont forget that the same technology should be available to us pirates... I would love to track down a nice big fat transport ship and plunder it.

On one point however you are wrong. Piracy is not some golden lotto ticket that leads to untold riches. Actually besides returning a poor profit its also self defeating. If i successfully raid in a system, then that system will be no good for raiding again for a good while. Even if i do have a successfull raid, then the return is pretty small. We get around a 10-20% return on the minerals used to manufacture a module. Sure if i attack a single or a small group of undefended modules on a planet then the risk reward for that particular attack is weighted in my favour. However the defendant either gives up completely, or learns to fortify their modules, there are plenty of lanetary instalations out there that i am unwilling to attack because the risk of damage to my ship is too high.

Regarding other profit making options. From what i gather, NPC pirate hunting turns a good profit, when you can get the jobs. Mining minerals must also be very profitable, because there are plenty of people doing that that are climping the top ranked players much faster than me...and my ships are laid out for combat, not economics, so other than me shutting down a few weapons all of my invested power is on display in that list.

Scion himself is a living proof of that: 0 skill, 0 investment, 0 effort, 0 risk. Just random attacks. Worse case scenario, he jumps away from the planet, big deal. Click on the target again. Repeat until successful.

Thats a little unfair. Just because the current system doesnt allow me to demonstrate my true abbilities... Im still here playing, that represents a reasonable investment in time, does it not? I deffinately dont consider myself a griefer either. I raided a few of your planets, thats true, we had a few games of cat and mouse on some others, but then i move on and looked to other players. I could have just continued to target your planets... but i didnt. I also try to be fairly egalitarian with the noobies. I may hit them a few times, but i dont keep going back over and over. Unfortunately you and a few of the other top ranked players in the game currently make 'big targets'... I imagine you have to deal with others besides me. Just one of the downsides of being at the top of a small heap.

Piracy would be a welcome addition to a vibrant economy, with rich corporations that could afford bounty-hunters and mercenary wingmen, and risks but also big profits for the pirates living on the edge. The merchants would have big profits, and a lot to lose, and therefore might invest in counter-measures. The pirates would weigh their options.

That would be cool wouldnt it... perhapes sirEmi will eventually get us there.

Yep, You notice that although you have the superior weapons what happened was you had LIGHT, MISS, MINOR, LIGHT, MINOR hits on target.

So althought your Potential to inflict damage was clearly superior, on the day you shouldnt have handed out extra rum rations before the battle, the rum should allways come after the battle that way your crew might actually able to operate the weapons effectively.

(ooc IMHO It is silly that a miss, minor etc have equal chance as a direct hit... the direct hit should be much more likely than a minor hit)

There are certainly a few other changes yer could make to that rust bucket of yours to make her a wee bit more effective. some shields and Armour would be a good start.

But dont be discouraged, we could make a decent pirate out of you....if yer interested.

LOL, Now i may be a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them.

Its about time the lads and i took another shore leave. The Wraiths rum stocks are running low, and she could do with some repairs, and perhapes a repaint, so well be taking a leave of absence aand heading out to the outerrim for some R&R.

So please just store up your donations untill we can be along to collect them.

@Sheb,

Yeah i sort of agree, however there is a 'game play' elegance to having the entire battle carried out in one User Interaction... If a battle was carried out in a series of steps/rounds then the online attacker gains a significant advantage in their ability to modify tactics depending on the ongoing battle. .. But simulating multiple rounds in a single battle would be interesting. ... although we sort of have a simplified version of that now with the laser shoots first, then marines, then civs... perhapes the extension could be that we continue to have ranged attacks until the ships somehow close range, by winning a CDR comparision roll perhapes, captains could also set a battle tactic in advance eg close fast,  stay ranged, etc similar to how we change weapons settings. However if your going to allow that sort of thing then ships might need to become significantly more robust compared to the damage weapons inflict, or not... heck you could even allow captains to set when their ship flee's (unless the crew overrule it by mutiney)... possibilities are endless.

I think i can rightly claim to be the most experienced player in terms of engaging in player to player combat at the moment.

There are a number of issues that probably need to be addressed.

1) The Expected outcome of Ship to Ship combat is to all intents and purposes 100% predictable. Once youve installed a few lasers, the outcome is totally dependent on the CDR level in your ship. One level higher than the opponent and your guaranteed the first shot, and unless your unlucky youll likely do enough damage to drive them from orbit, one CDR level lower than them and your a sitting duck, so the only realistic opportunity is to jump away before combat starts. You can potentially try to negate a first shot advantage by carrying a massive amount of armour, and dramatically increasing the number of crew in your ship, but this is easily countered by adding just 1 or 2 more high powered weapons.

2) The Expected outcome of Ship-to-Surface&Station Combat is totally random*, whoever gets lucky and gets the first shot is likely to win.  (* Unless the ship completely and totally out powers the opponent )

3) The Damage inflicted by Weapons can be highly upredictable. So although The Expected outcome is in your favour, if the combat is actually engaged, the outcome then is highly variable. Your warship with a battery of 6 lasers manned by trained marines may well get thrashed by a bunch of civilians with a single laser, because either they got lucky with their shot, or all of your shots went wild or were minor.

4) Damage actually inflicted by weapons is highly misleading, the wepon description gives one figure, but in combat they can actually inflict significantly more.

It may seem like these balance each other out, but they dont, in combination what they do is ensure that you are only ever going to engage in voluntary combat if you completly outclass the other person. In ship to ship, you will allways jump away, unless you both have a much higher CDR Level, and Your weapons totally outclass the opponent. If your CDR does outclass the other player or your weapons and armament are significantly stronger you may decide to risk combat to defend something, but it is very risky.

For ship to surface&station opperations, it means your ship/fleet needs to have a massive advantage over the target, or the outcome is a toss of the dice.  Your only going to ever engage places that had no chance.

5) The combat calculate timer is becoming an unreasonably long delay. Even with a reasonable small warship with what is a relatively low power level, the calculation time is well over 20 minutes, go up against a medium sized ship and its quickly out beyond 30 minutes. I expect we would see delays of several hours even with a reasonable weak large Warship. I understand that the delay is there to give the opponent time to react. But either they are online or they are not. If they are online then with the higher level ship drives they dont need hours of time to get a ship there to help defend, if they are offline then theyre unlikely to get the attack notice anyway.  A smart player will do some background research and identify when a player is likely to be online/offline, and simple time their attacks to suit.

6) In the game Currently Bigger is allways better. There is absolutely no advantage to having a smaller ship, Any one that plays long enough is going to end up flying around in a bunch of Titans, and simply adjust the crew levels to manipulate their current power level. Their modules are going to be the highest option that they can build/buy

7) Currently the ships configuration is fully displayed just by looking at the ship (the screen where there is the option to do an active scan) ... i can see exactly what level each module is in the ship / station / planet. From that i can easily determine the Expected Outcome of any battle. I could also theoretically determin if any of the modules are not fully staffed just by comparing the expected generated power against the actual power level displayed for the ship.... although ive never actually bothered i just assume all modules will be fully powered. Being able to easily determin the expected outcome of a battle means i can be a lot more discerning about which battles i chose to fight.

Some of these problems are more systemic than others. However i think addressing them would greatly improve the combat experience in the game.

Firstly I think something needs to be done about the first shot... for ship-to-ship it shouldnt be completly dependent on who has the highest CDR level. My suggestion would be to come up with a formula that gives each combatant a percentage chance to get the first shot off. at its simplest it could simple be bassed on CDR ratio, so if i have a ship with CDR 10 and the oponent has CDR 20 then they have a 67 % chance to get first shot ( and subsequently i have a 33% chance ) however if you read on i prefer a slightly more complex variation.  For Ship to Station and Planet Combat i dont think it should be completly random there should be a way for both participants to increase their chance of getting the first shot it.  However ive not come up with a simple solution within the current game mechanics (Perhapes others have a good simple solution here) My suggestion is to add an additional Module type called 'Target Control' that can be used to increase your chance to get in the first shot (amoungst other things) ... You can then add a Target Control modules to your ship / station / planet to improve you chances of first shot... I also think it would also be worthwhile including ship size into the formula to simulate smaller ships being harder to hit.

So your Chance to get first shot would be bassed on your Ships CDR (its ability to move around a lot) its size (smaller is harder to lock onto/bigger easier) and the level of its 'Target Control' module. (planets and stations dont have CDR, but could perhapes get a Target Control bonus to reflect it being easier to target something if your sitting still) At the end you still end up with a chance to get first shot... so it shouldnt be guaranteed But if your CDR and Target Control are significantly higher than the opponent then you have a good chance to get the first shot away. (Adding a TargetControl module could not only affect the first shot but also influence your weapons chance of actually hitting the target in addition to the weapons setting youve chosen.)

Secondly i think something needs to be done about the damage inflicted by the weapons, Currently the decision to actually carry through with an attack rests heavily on the Expected Outcome... but then what actually happens in the combat is seriously random in outcome. I think that if a weapon hits its target then its range of inflicted damage could be narrower, to reduce the randomness of the actual outcome somewhat. I still think there must be an element of luck, but it would be nice if it wasnt the overriding aspect. One way to do this would be to use the Target Control Module, CDR, Target Size & weapon setting to determine wether each wepon attack actually hit... but if it hits then its damage is in a narrower band.

Thirdly the Combat timer needs to be modified, if the intention is to give the defender time to defend, and to give them a time bassed on investment, using the power level as a rough gauge of that, then that is fine, but it could be logarithmic instead of linear, especially if when corp combat comes in you were able to issue the attack notice to all corp members. With high power levels every man and his dog is going to be able to turn up and have a picnic while they wait for the battle to actually start.

Fourth, Currently Once the next level of armament has been reached the previous one becomes more or less obsoleet. It would be nice for instance if vipers were counted best by titanium armour, lasers were countered best by iridium armour, bu that iridium armour provides only limited protection against vipers... it would allow us much more scope for customisation of our ships, and the combat tactics that we use.

Finally I also think the Mark Level of modules should not be displayed when just looking at a ship, station or plant. You should have to carry out an active scan ( and wait the 60 minutes ) for that information. But even then the power level is going to give a lot away. (there is an opportuntity for another sort of survelance/espionage class of module here, scanners & scan blockers, but lets not get carried away) Although this is only really relevant if ship size was used to affect the game. (either in giving a dodge advantage in combat, or a fuel economy advantage in travel) it would allow crafty captains to make their smaller ships pack a surprise. And would make guessing an expected Outcome very difficult.


Some of these issues could be addressed relatively easily, others potentially require more fundamental changes. or expansion of the game. Im certain that others could help come up with at least a few simple quick fixes that could address at least some of these issues, while we wait for a (hopefully) more complete solution that further enriches the game play.

Note Im not looking for an 'I WIN' button here, rather a 'MORE FUN FOR ALL' dial.