About Space and Ship PK

Arsentar

After reading the newly-minted HELP SHIP PK, I have a few questions. One of the things I specifically remember were mentioned while we waited for the release of SM (and that I and a few others most looked forward to) was that there would be ship piracy. Yet by the aforementioned file, it basically prohibits any piracy as such from happening. Did you guys change your minds, or is this something that is going to get re-visited once everything else falls into place?

@Tecton @Garryn @Eukelade

Dorc

In my opinion they should have just made safe space be the stations and adjacent sectors, barring homeworld stations in raid/war, and entering a homeworld station sector and attacking instantly flagged you as lawless for X period of time.

Kax

Ensuring that your faction maintains piercers along major routes of travel would allow you to pirate freely, though I don't know how many piercers are suitably positioned for that. And currently that only works for Song pirates. And I don't know how many people actually fly through open space vs. use void gates. 

Yeah I dunno.

WyldeKarde

I feel like PK in space should be always a thing outside of the Aleph Sector.  Assign some big, mean police ships to Aleph near Omni and make it a safe zone.  Other than that, I say space combat should be open season — that’s what insurance is for!

Fyrel

Except insurance doesn't cover vitals like astromechs, repair kits, scoops, and ammunition. Also, I'm not sure why you think pk rules would change in a situation in which you have MORE to lose.

If "I'm mugging you for your junk" doesn't fly on land, why would "I'm space mugging you for your space junk"?

Flipilaria

Fyrel said:

Except insurance doesn't cover vitals like astromechs, repair kits, scoops, and ammunition. Also, I'm not sure why you think pk rules would change in a situation in which you have MORE to lose.

If "I'm mugging you for your junk" doesn't fly on land, why would "I'm space mugging you for your space junk"?

Because spaaaaace

Tecton

We definitely want piracy to be a thing, but there's needs to be a balance.

There's many elements of the game that require players to fly around, especially the main quest line. If free PK extended to everywhere, you'd have people just sitting in places that people on the main questline frequent - think Gallen, Wuntoklan, or the areas around Reshi station, picking off the lowbie characters who come to do that. What would that really achieve? 

As it currently sits, you can freely pk in over a quarter of space, which people will frequent if they're doing incursions, hunting for gasses and asteroids, and we're going to make those activities more lucrative in terms of rewards if they're in a free pk area.

I'm sure there's going to be some refining and tweaking of these as time goes on, as we would definitely like to expand this into more zones, we'll see how this plays out first.

Satomi

It might be okay for piracy to have one of those things where it works more in the Rim, instead of the Core, and you have to identify your desire to pirate them, giving them a chance to hand over their space junk, flee, or fight. Then what happens in space stays in space.

Then again, it could also be a terrible idea.

Cubey

How to make ship PK a thing:

Introduce high risk high reward space stuff. Probably trade related: here, buy this crate of precious stuff in Reynolds for 1000 marks, sell it in Benu for 2000 marks. The problem is, while you have the cargo on board, you're free to be PKed and everyone knows it, because there's a list that shows up as the goods resonate on scanners or some other made up bullshit. The cargo of course sticks around after your ship blows up so the pirates can retrieve it and sell it themselves. Would probably need a personal timer so people don't farm marks effortlessly during off hours when all the PK types are asleep.

Now let's complicate matters. These were normal goods, you could also introduce black market goods for all the smuggler types out there. Better rewards but if you dock on any other but the destination station, the goods get confiscated. Also smuggling would probably be forbidden by Song and Celestine laws, but that depends on the players. Scatterhome I see not giving a shit as usual.

Just my idea.

Arsentar

Or could just make it so that home sectors for each faction are safe from piracy but everything else is free game or something alongside that idea. A bit like high-sec and low-sec from EVE. Just make normal cargo or a fraction of it perdure after a ship gets blown up.

Tecton

Arsentar said:

 ..normal cargo or a fraction of it perdure after a ship gets blown up.

This is how it works

Arsentar

I know. Was more meaning that there's no real need to add anything else on top of things on that regard since we already get cargo if we manage to destroy the ship it is on.

Squeakums

@cubey I love that idea. Honestly from the Q&A sessions when starmourn was in development I had pictured that was how it was going to work out already.

As somebody who can only play during the off hours, I'd prefer if no such restrictions were in place though. Just wanted to weigh in on that bit--many of us who play at weird times don't choose to do it that way, it's just our only available time. Unless I misunderstood what the suggestion for the timer was.

kamyr

Was discussing this earlier with some folks. I have no idea why you guys didn't just copy EVE's style, @Tecton , since you gave them the open credit in the dev blog. Faction armadas in the always-controlled zones (hisec), weaker versions in cosmpiercer zones (lowsec), no protection beyond that (nullsec). Then let the force of Armadoooouuken keep things running smoothly for lowbies while offering a playground for late game.

Also in our discussion: Space quests (cargo, combat, and collection). Illegal quests (eg carrying drugs or unsanctioned slaves). Team Space Police (cargo scanners for detecting contraband). NPC 'patrols' or activity (for random space activity and stuff for Space Police to do outside of incursions). Generated bashing zones outside of the normal ones that you have to fly to and land, with more valuable zones in more dangerous space.

Fyrel

Omni, iota, selubir, and gallen all require extended trips through non-faction-controlled space to reach by ship. If you want to have all out space pk, it's probably best to keep it behind either the current system wherein cosmpiercers are open, since they're not in the way of most worlds, or keep it behind an opt in and supply some form of rewards for opting in. Some people would probably like to be able to run space errands without you being able to shoot them in the face for no reason.

Tye

I think ship pk is definitely important, but I am concerned about opening it up too much. Maybe tie it in to Captaincy level, where you can only initiate an attack on someone at or -1 your Capt. level, but can be initiated on by lower? Once they start locking on to you you're free to lock back or whatever. I'm sure that wouldn't be easy to do, and it may not even be a good idea, I'm just spitballing ideas.

Matlkael

Cosmpiercers are presumably just the first of the civ-wide, space-based combat systems. I'm sure the space PK zones will expand in due time, maybe even to the point that only the station zones are actually closed to PK.

Tecton

kamyr said:

Also in our discussion: Space quests (cargo, combat, and collection). Illegal quests (eg carrying drugs or unsanctioned slaves). Team Space Police (cargo scanners for detecting contraband). NPC 'patrols' or activity (for random space activity and stuff for Space Police to do outside of incursions). Generated bashing zones outside of the normal ones that you have to fly to and land, with more valuable zones in more dangerous space.

Yep, lots of this stuff planned for the future As I mentioned above, we'll likely change things as we have more systems in play. We've been open for three weeks, there's many years of continued development to catch up to the other IRE games, EVE, and those other games that have been in active development for 15+ years.

Kirin

I almost feel that Cosmpiercers should be ship pk oriented and actual stations/ planets should be PvE PK oriented thematically