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[Optymistyk]

Are you tired of flying all over the sector just to make ends meet?
Wouldn't it be great if you could earn 400k monthly in the early game by just sitting in one system? 0 risk involved? Completely legal?
All you need my friend, is 80 marines.

Take those marines and fly over to Donn in the Hybrasil Star System. Donn is a size 3 pirate world with 0 defences. I want you to go there and raid their Starport with your army of 80 marines. You should have no problems with that, especially since there probably won't be any pirate fleets around. If there happens to be one orbitting the planet just wait for it to go away.

Okay, now that you've done that you've effectively prevented the entire planet from importing goods for like 200+ days. That means no food, no organics, no luxuries, no organs and no drugs. Soon they'll be getting desperate. They'll be spitting out requests for commodities left and right non-stop. 100k for 40 organs, 160k for 100 drugs, 100k for 200 supplies etc. The great thing about it is that there's 2 large Tri-Tachyon colonies in the same system where you can buy all that stuff cheap and completely legal. Don't even bother with the Black Market, too much hassle. Get yourself 700+ cargo space and buy everything over the counter. And the best part is that the pirates will love you for it, even though you are the one who caused their shortages to begin with

[pedro1_1]

And I think I will use this to become friendly with pirates next time, also, you can use the storage at Yma to get the stuff for the cheap prices of the black market, just get the stuff before the disruption.

[Havoc]

I have meanwhile +1 relations with pirates
if I would raid them in go dark mode, will they know that it was my fleet?

[Mondaymonkey]

I have meanwhile +1 relations with pirates
if I would raid them in go dark mode, will they know that it was my fleet?

No, if not catch you right after that or seen you right before.

But it still will be some rep loss.

[Havoc]

I did it
lost 4 reputation but now I can help them much more

[dead_hand]

Yep, this is how I usually start my games. Most of the pirate planets are pretty easy to raid. Independents also have some nice planets to raid, just be sure to go incognito, as you do need them in the future as trade partner when you have colonies.

[Locklave]

So going dark means they don't know you raided them? That feels broken, it's not a fleet it's a station/planet.

[Megas]

So going dark means they don't know you raided them? That feels broken, it's not a fleet it's a station/planet.

Transponder off.  Instead of smuggling, you mug them with a smash-and-grab for blueprints or other valuables.

It is only overpowered when there are no patrols and there are weak but lucrative targets, like New Maxios in Magec.

New Maxios is the easiest place to rob blueprints from.  A low defense Indie planet in a system where no one cares about transponders.  (Indies and Pirates don't care about transponders, and the TT planet is a Free Port.)  Get all of your phase ships and Conquest blueprints from there.

Asher is nearby and nearly as easy to rob from.  While Church has patrols, they care more about defending their 50% Terran metro planet than their low defense ship factory next to the gas giant.  A decent place to rob the Legion from.

[Locklave]

So going dark means they don't know you raided them? That feels broken, it's not a fleet it's a station/planet.

Transponder off.  Instead of smuggling, you mug them with a smash-and-grab for blueprints or other valuables.

It is only overpowered when there are no patrols and there are weak but lucrative targets, like New Maxios in Magec.

New Maxios is the easiest place to rob blueprints from.  A low defense Indie planet in a system where no one cares about transponders.  (Indies and Pirates don't care about transponders, and the TT planet is a Free Port.)  Get all of your phase ships and Conquest blueprints from there.

Asher is nearby and nearly as easy to rob from.  While Church has patrols, they care more about defending their 50% Terran metro planet than their low defense ship factory next to the gas giant.  A decent place to rob the Legion from.

How did I not know this after hundreds of hours...

Tyvm.

[intrinsic_parity]

I tried this and it is totally broken. Not only do you make absurd amounts of money (400k monthly is an understatement in my brief experience) but you also get friendly with the pirates because they will put out many many contracts and you get +1 or +2 rep for each contract. I just installed a comm sniffer in the system and grabbed all the contracts while also flying around looking for ships to spend my money on.

I think either the raiding mechanics need a rework, or all the core colonies need much much stronger defenses.

[Megas]

Spaceport raids are too effective against the AI.  Meanwhile, if the AI somehow does that against the player, the player can greatly mitigate the effects if he stockpiled resources and enabled his colony to draw from them.

What core worlds need is to stockpile of resources to draw from when their spaceport gets knocked out to guard against crippling penalties that can lead to decivilization, just like the player can.

[Locklave]

Spaceport raids are too effective against the AI.  Meanwhile, if the AI somehow does that against the player, the player can greatly mitigate the effects if he stockpiled resources and enabled his colony to draw from them.

What core worlds need is to stockpile of resources to draw from when their spaceport gets knocked out to guard against crippling penalties that can lead to decivilization, just like the player can.

Post that on the suggestions forum man, that's golden.

[shoi]

I tried this and it is totally broken. Not only do you make absurd amounts of money (400k monthly is an understatement in my brief experience) but you also get friendly with the pirates because they will put out many many contracts and you get +1 or +2 rep for each contract. I just installed a comm sniffer in the system and grabbed all the contracts while also flying around looking for ships to spend my money on.

I think either the raiding mechanics need a rework, or all the core colonies need much much stronger defenses.

Colonies just need better defenses by default, since this entire tactic banks entirely on that, or perhaps a mechanic where planets "remember" in some way so that if the same one keeps showing up in orbit and you promptly are  raided, and then they reappear later to sell you supplies, people get suspicious

[Optymistyk]

I tried this and it is totally broken. Not only do you make absurd amounts of money (400k monthly is an understatement in my brief experience) but you also get friendly with the pirates because they will put out many many contracts and you get +1 or +2 rep for each contract. I just installed a comm sniffer in the system and grabbed all the contracts while also flying around looking for ships to spend my money on.

I think either the raiding mechanics need a rework, or all the core colonies need much much stronger defenses.

Yup it's absolutely stupid. I don't think the raiding mechanics need a rework, I think colonies do. A size 3 pirate colony shouldn't have infinite ammounts of money for procurement missions. They should be limited to what they can actually afford. If they don't have the money to spare they will just drop in stability and get decivilized

[intrinsic_parity]

The planet was at 0 stability for the better part of 2 years in my game and has not decivallized so that currently does not work. I also don't think its unreasonable that thousands of people (presumably including some pirate warlords) with no food or supplies would fork over enough money to make one dude arbitrarily rich. Presumably all of this demand was previously met by normal trade (so they had the money for it before too) and now the player is the only one meeting it. I agree that at some point people would give up and leave the planet (decivilization), but the amount of money would have to be set unrealistically low for this to not be a super easy way to make money.

The real problem is that its unreasonably easy for the player to get into that situation, and the player actually gains reputation while it's happening. Raiding is just too easy, there are no consequences or downsides beyond a tiny rep penalty that gets immediately recovered from the trade, and it puts planets into a completely helpless state for way too long. A player with a small-medium fleet should be completely incapable of doing this, otherwise, why are all the other medium pirate/privateer fleets not constantly raiding every size 3 settlement?

Raiding should not be able to disrupt industries unless you have a ground support package, that hull mod should only be available on very expensive/difficult to acquire ships (or maybe from some quest), and the extent of disruption should be related to the number of ground support packages you have available, so you need a large fleet to achieve something like this.