Actual working pirates

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rhohltjr
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Actual working pirates

Post by rhohltjr » Wed, 6. Dec 17, 05:48

Assuming there will be pirates in X4, How about having the NPC pirates
actually attempt to board and take over transports and lightly armed things. That way they make an :roll: honest pirate living :roll:
instead of having stuff given to them by the game magic.

In all of the X games so far I have yet to see a single pirate take any cargo, after they blow up a freighter. They just shoot. What an embarrassment to pirate lore.

How about some more of those Dukes freighters in previous X games. At least that showed the pirates trying to have an economy :roll:

Skeeter
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Post by Skeeter » Wed, 6. Dec 17, 06:18

Yes. I'd love more gameplay for player pirates to do and NPC pirates. It seems silly that a pirate in a X game is just a ship that shoots at you, there needs to be more than that for a pirate to do. A proper criminal underworld with mob bosses, factions, dedicated pirate missions from pirate bases, loyalty rewards, rackets, etc.

All you really do as a player pirate is cap ships, that's a bit boring if it's the only option of being a pirate and doing it for a life in the game.

At least in elite frontiers u had the risk of been caught when docking at a station by a cop and try to bribe em, not in X games. If you had illegal wares no cop or station security to surprise you and can't talk or bribe ur way out. This soo needs to be in X games.
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ZaphodBeeblebrox
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Post by ZaphodBeeblebrox » Wed, 6. Dec 17, 09:11

In Rebirth the pirates did collect loot.
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Seanchaidh
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Post by Seanchaidh » Wed, 6. Dec 17, 11:36

It'd be interesting for players to be able to pay off a protection racket (or more likely operate one). Intelligent AI decisions about how much they should charge for "protection" money and how much they'd be willing to pay for "protection" money could be interesting. Stations in well established and well protected areas might not be willing to pay anything, more vulnerable outposts might be willing to pay quite a bit if presented with a credible threat. And if the player is too greedy in station placement, pirates might want quite a high cut of the profits indeed.

Realistic piracy would have realistic demands and realistic reactions to demands as well as the straightforward theft and so on.

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Post by Lucius89 » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 02:11

Seanchaidh wrote:It'd be interesting for players to be able to pay off a protection racket (or more likely operate one). Intelligent AI decisions about how much they should charge for "protection" money and how much they'd be willing to pay for "protection" money could be interesting. Stations in well established and well protected areas might not be willing to pay anything, more vulnerable outposts might be willing to pay quite a bit if presented with a credible threat. And if the player is too greedy in station placement, pirates might want quite a high cut of the profits indeed.

Realistic piracy would have realistic demands and realistic reactions to demands as well as the straightforward theft and so on.
I too would like to see some "smarter" crime. As a player who is in love with the romantic notion of being a space pirate, it always disappointed me that there were so few nuances to the whole situation. What if I want to extort a station instead of blowing it up? Then they pay me money every week and I expand my "territory" (in the unofficial sense).



To the OP: yes, if pirates are more active ti would make the universe feel more alive and would also give bounty hunters and mercenaries some real work (including players).

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ezra-r
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Post by ezra-r » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 11:30

ZaphodBeeblebrox wrote:In Rebirth the pirates did collect loot.
yes, I saw some pirates carrying useless stuff to do nothing with it.

There must be something else in the "chain" to have certain purpose. Like aim for certain merchants better, and take that loot to certain neutral all-around commerce depots to sell it through an intermediary or something meaninful of the likes.

So yes, Rebirth had some kind of half-implemented feature.

schedarx
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Post by schedarx » Thu, 7. Dec 17, 16:05

X3 mods allowed this to happen. I'm sure devs will take that idea to workshop.

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Post by Thrake » Fri, 8. Dec 17, 20:34

What I would really love:
- pirate clans: basically not just one pirate factions but many. You can't be friendly to all and they attack one another. This is to replace the system where pirates are hostile to you, so you defend yourself, shoot them and every one gets mad at you. So instead you will still be attacked but you can still stay friendly with some pirates. And pirate/pirate action.

- more complex diplomacy: Say I'm a Boron, split come in, I shoot them, my boron mates are highly glad. Fair enough. Now I move to Argon space, I don't want to shoot split to tank my reputation, but they are hostile, so I shoot them to defend myself and argon get mad at me. So now I go back to safe boron systems, but argon at mad at me, so I must defend and shoot them too (not to mention turret fire that can get every one red in a glance).

Long story short, if I'm hostile to just 1 faction, I'm hostile to all factions without going through painful gameplay. Even pirates because of the occasional hostile carrack (that just won't die/move) makes it hard to actually actively go the pirate road and attack just for loot/capping. So the only "safe" way is to be friendly with everyone, and we even have the flower power ending (no more war) to boot. That's ok in itself, but I would really like the spice of hostile ships in random sectors to either mess with my plans or be an opportunity for more profitsss without ending up with the whole galaxy after me. Why is it fine for everyone if AI boron ships blow up split, but not I do the same? Maybe a way could be to claim citizenship, and end up with the same alignement than this faction/race, so if I'm a boron citizen, then it is my duty to blow up any wandering split that comes up and every one will applause for my self-commitment no matter in which system I am.

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Post by Silla » Mon, 11. Dec 17, 13:15

Well if Egosoft will be kind enough we might actually see a fully blown pirate economy however this might look like. This would be what I hope for.

The basic resource for pirates could be mineable resources but also ships, because pirate mining operations might not be so efficient. So you would have something like

Pirate refinery disassembler - Station that uses either mineral ore or mineral shunks from shipwrecks to produce basic materials. Schipwrecks are normally more efficient ass all the minerals are already refined. So pirates would be able to salvage ship graveyards or when they have blown up a ship ...

Than you would have other stations similar to what you’d find by other races. However important would be for the pirate economy that their production cycles needs them to actually start plundering to a certain degree. Shipyards could for example need components that pirates can not produce themselves or they take captured ships to salvage components.

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ezra-r
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Post by ezra-r » Mon, 11. Dec 17, 13:28

At a bare minimum, X3:R or TC,AP had pirate bases from which you could get specific goodies only available from them. That would be a good starting point.

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Post by Beermachine » Thu, 14. Dec 17, 23:58

ezra-r wrote:At a bare minimum, X3:R or TC,AP had pirate bases from which you could get specific goodies only available from them. That would be a good starting point.
Yep, I'd consider this to be the bare minimum implementation of Pirates in X4.

Better would be a basic pirate AI and economy implemented, that mods could use to expand much further upon.

Ideal would be something like Pirate 3: Dynamic AI and guild system for X3:TC/AP by Serial Kicked.

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Post by immortalfrieza » Fri, 15. Dec 17, 01:52

Yes, I agree with all of the suggestions here. Being a pirate has been pretty pointless in the X games because you just end up shooting your own foot in so many ways that it's shot into hamburger. It locks you out of basically every source of anything and doesn't even make up for it by being a easier and/or quicker source of money. I find myself in the previous games wondering why anybody would be a pirate in the X universe given how much of a pain it ends up being when simple trading would be a hundred times easier.

I would love to see space piracy becoming much more viable as an option.

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Post by Earth Ultimatum IV. » Fri, 15. Dec 17, 10:36

Yes please! It always felt like playing a "bad guy" in the X series is very underdeveloped.

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Post by Falcrack » Fri, 15. Dec 17, 14:36

Pirates , in addition to making their actual living from looting or stealing ships and taking the crew captives as slaves or ransom, should also be a bit more cowardly than in previous X games. Instead of heroically battling against superior local security forces, they should be given the good sense to flee when faced with superior or even equal forces. Pirates generally don't consider their loot worth their lives. They are not fighting for liberty, honor, or country, merely monetary gain, so they should avoid high security areas at all costs.

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Post by patient zero » Fri, 15. Dec 17, 22:48

Seanchaidh wrote:It'd be interesting for players to be able to pay off a protection racket (or more likely operate one). Intelligent AI decisions about how much they should charge for "protection" money and how much they'd be willing to pay for "protection" money could be interesting. Stations in well established and well protected areas might not be willing to pay anything, more vulnerable outposts might be willing to pay quite a bit if presented with a credible threat. And if the player is too greedy in station placement, pirates might want quite a high cut of the profits indeed.

Realistic piracy would have realistic demands and realistic reactions to demands as well as the straightforward theft and so on.
x3:Reunion pirate bases had a BBS protection racket. If you didn't pay, they put a bomb in your cargo bay. The bomb would go off some time after undocking with a random amount of damage. Very infuriating but that's what you get when you deal with cutthroats.

That situation vanished with the BBS system and I didn't see it modded back in. I suppose ES has enough to do without creating a new criminal society subsystem, but it would be entertaining. Perhaps some mods will be written to spice things up a bit.
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