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Author Topic: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player  (Read 6466 times)

nomadic_leader

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Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« on: December 10, 2015, 03:02:41 PM »

Pirates should take your stuff until you've really vexed them, and you should be able to take money from other people. I've been thinking about this more, because the rep hit you get from fleeing pirates irks me. If somebody is so angry they chase you down and kill you, why in heavens would they care whether you fight or try to run? As a pirate playtester I tell you this is truly vexing.

Also being punished with a rep hit for something done to you rather than something you did is a gameplay problem that causes various difficulties. For example see this post.

We already have similar mechanics with the patrol captains and Luddic path, so why not pirates. It'll make campaign even richer, and give a couple chances to avoid death for newbies.

Pirates want money. It makes no sense to kill you and get 10 tonnes of salvage rather than 40 tonnes of intact cargo. Every pirate who catches you should first demand value from you. The value depends on the ratio of your respective fleet strengths.

They demand one of the following:
-Some/all of your cargo
-A bunch of cash (if you don't have enough cargo, of if they haven't enough cargo space)
-One of your ships (if you are trying to be sneaky by not having cash or cargo)
-Your ship, sorry (if you have only one ship and no cargo/cash)

So they catch you and tell you what they want. Then you have some options:

a) Comply and give them whatever.
This results in no negative rep. You get positive rep with the pirate captain. Maybe even +1 rep with pirate faction, but not beyond inhospitable? (not sure about this though). i.e. if you're  good dupe and regularly pay out like you're told, they accept you a little bit. You come to arrangements.

d) Haggle
Try to bargain them down. This may or may not work depending on your relative fleet strengths and the personality types of the pirate officers.

if it doesn't work you can:

b) Run (or entering combat and retreating)
This results in the -2 rep with pirates. But you get negative rep with the pirate captain so that he'll kill you next time he can catch you.

c)Fight
This gives you like only -10 with the pirates since they're so loose knit, / modified by your transponder status. But that particular captain will become your sworn enemy (if you both survive the combat. if you die and go into the escape pod he won't care).

If you kill a lot of pirates and become vengeful, your name is known among them and they just try to kill you.

You taking stuff:

On the flipside, whenever the player catches a pirate fleet they should be able to demand money from them. Or from the fleet of any faction they aren't favorable with. The rep hit for doing this is adjusted by your transponder status, however its more than smuggling, but less than fighting/killing.

Once you get down to vengeful status though, everyone assumes it is no quarters given and people don't even trust you enough to bargain with you, and its just fight or flight.
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Cik

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #1 on: December 10, 2015, 03:42:24 PM »

why limit this to just pirates only? sure, faction patrols are obligated to shoot enemies, but i feel like trade / civilian / transport fleets should be extortable, or have some sort of surrender mechanic. it makes little sense that some starliner captain, once caught and surrounded simply allows himself to be turned into a ball of flaming debris.

i'd like piracy to become more than "like working for a faction, except your equipment is worse"

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nomadic_leader

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #2 on: December 10, 2015, 04:15:37 PM »

Yes, at the bottom of the post I suggested just that Cik.

Right, this mechanic would allow you to realy be a pirate or a privateer or whatever. I don't know how much rep the pirates would give you for extorting their enemies. I leave such details to the developer.
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StarSchulz

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #3 on: December 10, 2015, 04:24:03 PM »

definitely want something like this eventually. Though they better not demand all my supplies or they will instead get harpoons.  ::)

Dabor

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #4 on: December 10, 2015, 06:12:48 PM »

Being able to demand money from enemy fleets feels iffy, in part because it'll be weird to balance. Here's the various issues that can come up:

If you can only demand money if you're hostile but not vengeful, then it means that any player fighting an enemy full-out will just demand money and then attack anyway in the process of going after the fleets of a faction they're happy to kill and get vengeful with.

If the pay-out is actually good enough that it's worth the supplies/fuel it takes to hit up fleets as a primary activity, then making a fleet that's intimidating and fast would be worth more than one actually good at combat - and even if this is a sustainable playstyle, it seems like it shouldn't be.

Given that you can moderate your deployments, it would feel weird for a player to need this. In practice, it's no different than just autoresolving a fight in which you sent only a portion of your fleet out.

There is a narrow role I can see this play - a player would have an "honor" stat or such that represents things like "not attacking fleets that have paid you off (recently)" which would apply globally and, for the sake of game balance, probably still take a hit to some degree if your transponder is off. If your honor is too low, enemies wouldn't offer/take parley.

When a fleet is retreating - possibly after a fight, as well as upon initial engagement - they'll offer to bribe you not to pursue them, by dropping cargo and/or transferring credits as they fly away, so you can pick it up afterwards, but while making sure you're not actively following. In this sense, rather than a way to "mug" you could have an organic scenario where you attack a trade fleet, it fights back, you take out the combat ships, and then the cargo ships remaining offer you their cargo in exchange for being able to keep the ships and crew themselves alive. This seems like a natural development - it's one thing for a pirate who tries to mug a fleet and kills those fighting back, it's another when you take out retreating civilians when they've offered you their goods anyway.

But I want to stress that I can't see this really work too well as a primary source of income - if it's sustainable for a player to just go around with a fast fleet quickly tapping and getting a bribe from every roaming pirate/trader. If nothing else, you should at least experience a huge temporary loss of speed after taking a bribe, to prevent you from pursuing that fleet as well as other fleets, leaving you vulnerable to retaliation and the like.

To emphasize, I don't mind getting mugged BY pirates. It's just that letting the player do it would require a lot of extra balancing for not much reward - against most enemies, there would just be an objectively correct answer between 'take their bribe' and 'send some fast frigates to pursue them' in terms of which has better pay-out, seeing as usually neither has any risk.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2015, 06:16:24 PM by Dabor »
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nomadic_leader

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #5 on: December 10, 2015, 07:16:36 PM »

Hmm some good concerns Dabor but actually they can be dealt with pretty easily.

Remember one big balance factor: You don't get XP from doing this.

If you can only demand money if you're hostile but not vengeful, then it means that any player fighting an enemy full-out will just demand money and then attack anyway in the process of going after the fleets of a faction they're happy to kill and get vengeful with.

There is a narrow role I can see this play - a player would have an "honor" stat or such that represents things like "not attacking fleets that have paid you off (recently)" which would apply globally and, for the sake of game balance, probably still take a hit to some degree if your transponder is off. If your honor is too low, enemies wouldn't offer/take parley.

It's true, word would get round that you kill people after they pay you, and they'd stop doing it.

But we don't need an "honour" stat, just this: If you kill someone from whom you extorted money in the last 10 days, or whatever is reasonable time for them to flee to the nearest market and despawn-- then nobody of that faction will parley with you for a few months (possibly modified by how bad your rep is).

That way I don't think we even need to make it about vengeful status or not. You should be able to keep mugging people even when you are vengeful anyway- as long as it's known that paying you off will help people save their skins.


Quote
When a fleet is retreating - possibly after a fight, as well as upon initial engagement - they'll offer to bribe you not to pursue them, by dropping cargo and/or transferring credits as they fly away, so you can pick it up afterwards, but while making sure you're not actively following. In this sense, rather than a way to "mug" you could have an organic scenario where you attack a trade fleet, it fights back, you take out the combat ships, and then the cargo ships remaining offer you their cargo in exchange for being able to keep the ships and crew themselves alive. This seems like a natural development - it's one thing for a pirate who tries to mug a fleet and kills those fighting back, it's another when you take out retreating civilians when they've offered you their goods anyway.

Kind of cool-- but seems like its getting a bit complicated. Thats why I like just making both fleets decide at the beginning of the encounter what will happen- payoff, run, or death.

Quote
But I want to stress that I can't see this really work too well as a primary source of income - if it's sustainable for a player to just go around with a fast fleet quickly tapping and getting a bribe from every roaming pirate/trader. If nothing else, you should at least experience a huge temporary loss of speed after taking a bribe, to prevent you from pursuing that fleet as well as other fleets, leaving you vulnerable to retaliation and the like.

This is a legit concern. But SS really don't need another contrived "just because" rule for the holy grail of balance. So how can we balance it and limit it from being an insane cash cow:

-Just make it so that the payoff isn't too high.
-I guess a little CR drop would be ok, to simulate the cargo loading
-No XP gain
-As soon as you click the "Mug them" option, it means nearby allied fleets can join them through the existing battle mechanic, and perhaps either dissuade you or beat you. So you need to be careful.
-Transponder. You'll quickly get hostile/vengeful from mugging certain factions, so to hunt them you'll have to keep your transponder off, and the other faction patrols won't like you doing that.
-Between hassles from patrols and the negative rep hits from mugging people, you'll quickly get hostile and be attacked by patrols, and then vengeful with most factions. So most markets will be closed to you. This makes the game quite a bit trickier.
-some more uptight factions' dedicated military fleets might refuse to pay bribes out of honour. (not all factions, but some)
-AI fleets with aggressive admiral/officers might refuse to pay.

Quote
To emphasize, I don't mind getting mugged BY pirates. It's just that letting the player do it would require a lot of extra balancing for not much reward - against most enemies, there would just be an objectively correct answer between 'take their bribe' and 'send some fast frigates to pursue them' in terms of which has better pay-out, seeing as usually neither has any risk.

No, it isn't so objective actually, it depends on the player. Do they want more XP and salvaged weapons, or just cargo/money?  Do they not mind the full rep hit from attacking, or do they prefer the lesser rep hit from stealing?
« Last Edit: December 10, 2015, 07:25:17 PM by nomadic_leader »
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Snrasha

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #6 on: December 11, 2015, 01:08:18 AM »

If only i found where upgrade % salvage when you destroy fleet... we are pirate, so why we have not a bonus?

My mod is a pirate faction, i understand this. I have put many ships for mining(nexerelin), same with a hullmod who give 1 supplie per day, but this is not very pirate.

After, with Nexerelin, ennemi have only big fleets, also, so  for be Piracy , hard. (And more, you win not bounty, so, fight is not rentable.)

custom factor in pirate faction:
Spoiler
"engageWhenEvenStrength":true,
"exemptFromFoodShortages":true,
"willTradeWhenHostile":true,
"noPatrols":true,
"ignoreTradeWithEnemiesForReputation":true,
"postsNoBounties":true,
"offerMissionsWhenHostile":true,
"allowsTransponderOffTrade":true,
[close]
My faction:
Spoiler
"investigatesPlayerForGoodRepWithOtherFactions":false,
"worthInvestigatingPlayerForGoodRepWith":false,
"ignoreTradeWithEnemiesForReputation":true,
"postsNoBounties":true,
"exemptFromFoodShortages":true,
"engageWhenEvenStrength":true,
"offerMissionsWhenHostile":true,
"allowsTransponderOffTrade":true,
"willTradeWhenHostile":true,
[close]

Only advantage for ennemi, ah ah. I want be a veritable pirate '.' (Maybe, i need do not play in Nexerelin, but i like this random system and mining fleets is easy to kill)
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Dabor

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #7 on: December 11, 2015, 04:40:28 AM »

I think you've addressed most of my concerns, or at least presented alternatives, which kind of homes me in on an issue at the heart of this, which might need to be sorted out before any such system can be in place.

Do they not mind the full rep hit from attacking, or do they prefer the lesser rep hit from stealing?

At the moment, there isn't really any time you're trying to hover rep at a mid point. The trade off without that is just "Get XP and salvage weapons" vs "Get quick money and less CR cost." If it was viable and practical to try to have a "bad but not too bad" reputation, this would have more of a place. As long as we're using the current system, extorting money would just be a beneficial speed bump on the road to vengeful - and since you'd need a sufficiently strong fleet to be extorting anyway, you'd probably want to fight off some patrols as well to make your living. There isn't really a middle ground like "we'll engage him if we see him, but don't pursue too far or send dedicated hunter-killer squads after him."

To throw an obvious Mount and Blade parallel, raiding a Caravan angers both its faction and its home and target market. Mugging it for money was basically a "free" action if you're already hostile - it's fair game that you'd do so, but the amount wasn't too significant so it was more like slight compensation for, well, having a faction be hostile with you and close off its towns to you.

To that degree, it worked, and thinking more about your clarifications, there's no reason it couldn't hold a similar place here - but to be a proper aspect to piracy rather than just a little monetary bonus, I think it does require intertwining with a more detailed reputation system. "He's an enemy, but he's low priority." Simple factors like how hard they would try to search for you, or if they would target you over normal enemy faction fleets at an equal distance/speed/size.

If there was a mechanic so simple as "if a faction doesn't consider you THAT much of a threat, then if you have a fleet of equal speed to theirs and they aren't within spitting distance, they just immediately give up rather than play the negative-sum game of burn drives with you. Keeping you in check isn't worth their time." It'd make not *** patrols off too much beneficial to a player who nevertheless intends to act hostile towards that faction.

I know I'm going a bit off the topic of the "mugging" system, but I wanted to try to extrapolate your idea of making it be less of a rep hit. There's a huge difference between how law enforcement react to an organized crime syndicate demanding protection money versus straight up violent criminals.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2015, 04:42:37 AM by Dabor »
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nomadic_leader

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #8 on: December 11, 2015, 10:33:55 AM »

Assuming you could still mug with full vengeful (which is what I advocate), I guess the only current motivation to hover rep at bad but not too bad is so that you can still access the enemy markets with your transponder off, right?

This page http://starsector.wikia.com/wiki/Factions has a breakdown of reputation but i'm not sure how current it is.

So rep already effects a lot of market stuff and attack/don't attack, but as you say, it would be pretty interesting if it also changed the faction fleets other more subtle behaviors toward you. Here are a few ideas.

Suspicious - Patrols come up and scan your cargo rarely

Inhospitable- Patrols will scan your cargo more frequently, and 1 will often follow you around the system keeping an eye on you afterwards. You can bribe some to go away though.

Hostile- Patrols chase/attack you on site, but if you get away from them they won't spend too much time looking for you. But they will prioritize enemy faction targets over your fleet. You can bribe some patrols to not attack you.

Vengeful- Patrols prioritize your fleet over enemy factions. They will send out an SOS ping that makes area fleets rush to join the fight against you. They will spend a lot of time looking for you if you get away. Basically the entire system will be thrown into turmoil. Faction bounty hunter fleets will spawn and wander from system to system looking for you, avoiding other enemies if possible. Few or no patrols will accept bribes from you.

So the above would provide some pretty good motivations not to get down to vengeful, because you want to mug the merchants, not deal with heavily armed patrols all day. Now the way to manage the rep so it didn't get too low would be judicious use of transponder during engagements and trying to mug people instead of killing them. Also there could be various opportunities to bribe market officials for a few additional positive rep points at high cost. This cost would also offset/balance the winnings you get from mugging, and it simulates the corrupt universe of SS.

You could probably think up a bunch of ways to involve your personal rep with the individual fleet admirals too and how that would impact all this. Like even if you were vengeful if you found an admiral with the right personality type you could bribe him so he wouldn't join in battles against you. Maybe the "Cautious" personality takes bribes, maybe another personality type only takes bribes if you aren't vengeful, etc.

Any other ideas?

All this also prevents mugging from making actual fighting obsolete:
Basically, if you mug a lot and don't bribe a lot, you quickly get down to vengeful which means tonnes of patrols/bounty hunters chase you and you have to fight a lot. And then you have no XP to help in the battles since mugging doesn't give XP to you or your officers.

If you mug a lot and do bribe a lot, then the bribery balances out the mugging and makes it so it isn't more renumerative than fighting.
« Last Edit: December 11, 2015, 10:54:04 AM by nomadic_leader »
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Dabor

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #9 on: December 11, 2015, 11:26:47 AM »

You could probably think up a bunch of ways to involve your personal rep with the individual fleet admirals too and how that would impact all this. Like even if you were vengeful if you found an admiral with the right personality type you could bribe him so he wouldn't join in battles against you. Maybe the "Cautious" personality takes bribes, maybe another personality type only takes bribes if you aren't vengeful, etc.

Any other ideas?

There's a variety of specific cases - a fleet trying to alleviate a food shortage, for instance, might well choose to fight to the death, or alternatively, give up everything they have but the food and enough fuel/supplies to deliver it, making a foot shortage a tempting target for both offense and defense.

On the flip side, I'd love to see enemy fleets occasionally try to backstab you - for example, you catch an enemy fleet out after an engagement with low CR, and  they're not willing to fight you, so they offer you a bunch of credits and the loot they got from that fight - but they send out an SOS, then go dark and try to stalk you and hit you once their CR hits acceptable levels to get their stuff back. While mugging/bribing should allow you to make distance the same way the "harry retreat" option does, it's worth keeping emphasized that you're still leaving fleets that could threaten you - or be exploited by you - later.

If you mug in a specific area way too much, they might actually set it up so a transponder-on fleet is followed by a friendly high-burn fleet staying dark that'll immediately rush you down - in general, we're not seeing faction patrols use turning transponders off to their advantage as much as we might further down the line.

One extreme further option is that faction fleets in general would tag their cargo with tracking/ID devices - perhaps you could use some skill to try to scan it, and depending on your level in that skill, you give up some portion of the loot to ensure there are no tracking devices - you don't care if you plan to sell them to that faction's enemies, but it'll prevent you from ambushing a convoy and selling its cargo at its destination - or at the very least make it require more effort. While they would rather try to kill someone who murdered a necessary food convoy, if they can't be quite sure it's you, they'd probably rather just, you know, not starve.

With individual admirals, that really depends on which route it goes down. If each faction has a relatively limited pool of fleet leaders who keep coming back (so for example, if the Hedgemony owns Jangala, the patrols you'd see flying in Corvus would generally be run by the same group of guys.) then there's more space to work off of those relationships. If killing a fleet ends that admiral, and the player is the only one (or at least one of a select few) with the ability to "keep coming back" then it seems difficult to build up a relationship with fleet captains as opposed to officers on starbases.

There are a lot of directions this could go.
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nomadic_leader

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #10 on: December 12, 2015, 08:28:41 AM »

One extreme further option is that faction fleets in general would tag their cargo with tracking/ID devices - perhaps you could use some skill to try to scan it, and depending on your level in that skill, you give up some portion of the loot to ensure there are no tracking devices - you don't care if you plan to sell them to that faction's enemies, but it'll prevent you from ambushing a convoy and selling its cargo at its destination - or at the very least make it require more effort. While they would rather try to kill someone who murdered a necessary food convoy, if they can't be quite sure it's you, they'd probably rather just, you know, not starve.

This is neat-- but you could simulate this without any new mechanics: Whatever the destination planet of the fleet you just mugged was, make your suspicion level at the market (open and black) be 'high' for a few weeks. But maybe that would be getting too detailed.
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Cik

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #11 on: December 12, 2015, 09:10:05 AM »

it's actually in the lore. it's mentioned, i believe in the descriptiontext of port tse franchise in magec.
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Megas

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #12 on: December 12, 2015, 09:50:45 AM »

You can use markets you can sneak into even at Vengeful as of 0.7+.

Quote
This is neat-- but you could simulate this without any new mechanics: Whatever the destination planet of the fleet you just mugged was, make your suspicion level at the market (open and black) be 'high' for a few weeks. But maybe that would be getting too detailed.
Suspicion is meaningless at an enemy's market.  Investigations are only a problem if you want to keep relations high enough with non-hostiles.  Enemies already want you dead.  I think Alex made it so that enemies do not investigate because there is no point.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2015, 09:54:40 AM by Megas »
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Snrasha

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #13 on: December 18, 2015, 06:37:44 AM »

I go a small up this subject:

With Nexerelin, we can play a pirate faction( church,pirates, others pirates factions of mod...), but without trade, without bounty and a mining a bit pointless if we have not trade... We cannot win money...
(But, if we play without Nexerelin, we can succeed be friend with pirate, so same thing '.')


My suggestion almost impossible: (i think, we do not need bonus in salvage if we have more chance have boarding)
- Give more chance have boarding if you are friendly with pirate faction. (It is not just add a variable, a if and put a getRelation with player?)
- Give possibility racketeer(or right of way that require a payment)(not restricted with pirate faction, same patrol can racketeer, no?). Ok, very too long for create script. Who give low quantity of money( Because you do not lose ship or CR, so, worth it)
- Bonus in salvage.(If you are friend with pirate faction or you have ship for salvage? Ah ah)


This discrimination against piracy and banditry is very handicapping.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2015, 07:28:28 AM by Snrasha »
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ChaseBears

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Re: Piracy and banditry practiced by and upon the player
« Reply #14 on: December 18, 2015, 08:17:43 AM »

Quote
Suspicion is meaningless at an enemy's market. 
There are effects other than directly with the faction you are trading with. For example, Tri-Tachyon gets irritated if you trade at that one Hegemony platform.  Other factions might also get irritated if you trade with pirates even if you are hostile to them.
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