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[Jonlissla]

Don't want to sound like a broken record, but I'm still hung up about the whole Pirates thing, with them being potentially locked at being hostile and representing deserters among others. It feels wrong to have so many groups being tied into a faction called "Pirates". At this point, would it not be better to rename them to Lawless?

[Inventor Raccoon]

Everything folded under "pirates" is functionally identical. They're all outlaws to the major factions and they all attack and rob people. Gameplay-wise, they're an always-hostile faction of weaker fodder for the player to fight. Same reason why smugglers, scavengers, bounty hunters and local government patrols are all "independents". They're all separate from any other major faction and gameplay wise they're usually a faction that's always friendly to the player outside of certain circumstances (scavengers turning pirate, player actually attacking independents)

[Megas]

The only pirates that do not feel right being pirates are the deserters.  They feel more like the faction they came from than pirates.  Probably would be better if they were a darker, evil colored version of the faction they came from or a red/faction color hybrid instead of being lumped together with the true pirates (that use pirate faction ships).

I have no problem with pirates being permanently hostile because they have mostly junk for sale and you do not need reputation to dock at their markets.  They are clearly designed as lowlife or vermin for low level players to kill.

Actually, if pirates are permanently hostile, it would be nice to eliminate open market and just have only black market for pirates.  Open market is a ripoff when you can use black market without consequence (because pirates are already murderously angry), and military market is pointless if you can never access it (again, due to hostility).

[Chaos Blade]

Everything folded under "pirates" is functionally identical. They're all outlaws to the major factions and they all attack and rob people. Gameplay-wise, they're an always-hostile faction of weaker fodder for the player to fight. Same reason why smugglers, scavengers, bounty hunters and local government patrols are all "independents". They're all separate from any other major faction and gameplay wise they're usually a faction that's always friendly to the player outside of certain circumstances (scavengers turning pirate, player actually attacking independents)

I disagree, it is not the same a rebel to faction X, that faction W could woo to undermine faction X by proxy, or a corsair pirating for a faction than a more indiscriminate pirate taking loot and plunder. from a gamer POV, a more detailed pirate factions could serve as a way of making profit (you could gun run for rebel factions, at a distinctive mark up) and that would be different than your vanilla pirates.
Mind, I am totaly fine with having just "pirates" and be done with it, but look at the 4x Distant Worlds and see how the pirates act there... (course, in the early versions of that game pirates were just pirates, they become what they re now after an expansion focused on them, which is why I am totaly fine for generic pirates for 1.0, but hope we will see some depth added to them in the future)

[crawlers]

Long time lurker saying hello.

It seems quite sad now that we probably wont be able to be so feared and respected that they will keep distance friends with pirates anymore .  Its already bad enough that the pirate gameplay seems really difficult  as there is no way to get credits beside selling valuable goods, but even this will not give much.  Bounty hunting for other factions kind of breaks immersion for me.  Where did the pirate-style bounties (hit list by pirate bosses against people they hate) go?

On a different note,

I wish there was some kind of way to make it so npcs, especially pirates get the message that messing with you is not profitable, so small time ones will stay away due to fear and only the occasional large attack by people who think they are strong enough to challenge the player would happen.  I understand of course that this would more to pirates and indies and less so to main factions (or pathers since they have different motivations).  Some one who npcs just saw blow up 3 fleets in single combat and then a few more should not be someone they think "hey, lets go commit suicide against them too!"

[Deshara]

As far as the player being friendly with pirates, I don't know. In theory the code should handle it, but game-design-wise, that possibility is becoming more and more troublesome. Frankly, I could see just hard-locking the player-pirate reputation to -50 at some point. You don't need to be friendly with pirates to be a pirate yourself - or to deal with pirates - and since pirates cover *such* a huge range of possibilities, it doesn't make a lot of sense to be friendly with them in the first place.

(Also: I may or may not have plans to do something mechanically related with the Luddic Path.)

the player is -incapable- of being on good terms with local rebels opposing the rule of law? Even if the player is on said rule of law's ***-list??? It just seems weird that the pirates would be a broad variety of different factions rolled into one label, and -all- of them are permanently hostile to players.
What if pirate relations are locked to -50 if you're on good terms with the local rule of law, and opening hostilities with the faction that they by-default are opposing unlocks the possibility of becoming on good terms with them?
Orrr what if the pirate factions relations with the player are fluid and change on a system-by-system basis? This is the solution I like the idea of the most, where there isn't a sector-wide "pirate relations" but a system-by-system system, where a player who lives in Magec could be on good terms with Magec Pirates but once you leave Magec all of the relation boosts you've gotten thru goodwill there cease to be a help. I don't know if the game already keeps track of a fleet's system of origin but I think that'd be the only real gameplay change that'd be needed to accommodate that, and if the pirate factions -did- respond to a player's affiliations with the primary factions it'd give consequences and complications to declarations of war-- a player with a commission for faction x but who has worked to be on the good side of pirates who are on good terms with faction y because faction y opposes faction x's rule in their sector (I'm imagining a dynamic like the Valhalla system...) could be given pause at the call of war bc they've gone out of their way to get on the good graces of local pirates to get the "pirate activity" debuff removed from their colony ("Oh, don't raid convoys from that new colony, they make hefty donations to the coffers of our Pirate Lord and you don't want to be the one to cause their leader to make an angry call to our Pirate Lord about why they're bothering with these donations, while you're in the same station as the Pirate Lord and easily executable in front of the videoconference") and if they go to war with the primary opponent of the local rule of law then it'd make the pirates' job harder

also, I'm a huge fan of the idea of a pirate base with no external affiliation (IE they aren't rebels or anyone with a goal associated with other factions, just regular ol pirates) flipping relations with the player if the player reduces their stability to 0 and keeps it there long enough.
All of these systems would work excellently with the character system the game has in-place and currently barely uses. With the last idea of flipping pirate factions, you could run into Independent-aligned Deposed Pirate Lord characters whose goal is to reduce the local pirate faction's stability to 0 and keep it there until the current Pirate Lord character gets changed to Independent-aligned and the current Deposed Pirate Lord becomes pirate-aligned and becomes the current pirate lord, with that character's personal relations with the player populating into the local pirates' general relations with the player
that system would also give players the opportunity to recognize that a Deposed Pirate Lord who -hates- the player (like, if they helped topple an already-instable pirate regime early on for easy coin) is nearing reclaiming power and would give the player a reason to set aside what they're doing to aide the local pirates in restoring stability and resisting the coup to keep on their good side

[Sy]

i opened a suggestion thread about the pirate faction/relation topic here.

[Zavek]

Since pirates are getting such a large rework i cant help but to think back to old 1700s piracy and their relation to goverments.
Namely through letters of marque, Someone who held such a letter was a licensed pirate and was to be judged as prisoners of war if captured, rather then simply hung.
These privateers as they became called were indipendant but at the mission of a sovereign, they were also instructed to only turn in the cargo/ships they seized at ports belonging to sovereign nation that issued their letter. The diffrence between a pirate and a privateer was very obscure and it was not uncommon that some pirates had letters of marque from several nations at the same time and they only used them as a legal shield and sold their hauls at freeports.


However ingame mechanics i belive it should be possible to turn in goods and captured ships to your ''employer'' and build up a bounty that you can collect at the end of the contract.
This way you would be able to build up sour relations with a faction untill your trusted enough to do formal agreements (such as current commisions) and not force your relations to follow your employers relations.

Example i go to the luddic church which has a -50 standing with me.
I cant get any particular missions but i can do privateering on their behalf.
The only relations i hurt are the factions that i target during my privateering contract.
I turn in all/some captured goods/ships to the luddic path and build a reward-pot during this time aswell.
At the contract end i get relations boost and a cash reward based on how much cargo/ships i turned in.

I recive for example 10 relations with luddic church (which is now -40) so i still cannot get formal contracts but still a juicy payday.
There is no monthly salary/insurance like being part of the faction, nor do you have accses to the military stocks like commisions allow.
but you have it easier to build up relations.

This would also allow for a play with a smaller fleet that focus more on sneaking around and attacking mainly merchants/miners/salvagers/prospectors as your bounty is not tied to ship classes destroyed but rather the goods/ships you capture and turn in at their port, this also add to the risk of hauling alot of ''junk ships'' with you making other pirates or patrols keen on attacking you.


This is a pretty big change so i fully understand if its not inplemented, it was merely a thought passing through my madness.

[ChaseBears]

just chiming in to say it sounds like these mechanics would be directly transferable to major factions. just rename it to a 'staging base' and change the impact on the target system.  A faction invasion could potentially be exponentially more dangerous to a player colony... and could serve as objectives in inter-faction conflicts, both for the player to attack and maybe even defend.

[KingsHand]

One cool design I thought of is if their was a special ship designed to essentially be a mobile base, maybe a literal starfortress, that you could use to create a mobile colony in exchange for burning metric tons of fuel to actually transport it across sectors.