Pirate camouflage rework?

[S!rAssassin]

So, police officers are blind or completely dumb and can't see what that Phoenix isn't Argon as it transponder says? No. Definitely.

But! That Behemoth may be Argon or Antigon. Both of them produce that model. It's logical? Yes. Pirates may buy or steal that ships? May. And may reprogram its transponders to fake signatures. And may sold that fake signatures to Player in Pirate Bases! And Player may use it with similar ships to travel through enemy sectors, trade with enemy stations etc.

Only faction produced ship can mimic faction transponder! Any foreign ship always cause suspicion...

[zakaluka]

Any foreign ship always cause suspicion...

I guess I am going to get harassed quite a lot everywhere, flying around in my yaki moreya

Edit: i agree with you though, just a humorous thought

[Raptor34]

Frankly destroyers should be properly registered too. I've always thought it was dumb they were flying around in warships. Should be armed variants of normal L civilian ships instead.

[S!rAssassin]

Yes, instead using destroyers, pirates should use large raiders with dozen fighters aboard, fast enough to reach target (and escape police too) with significal cargo space to grab goods. Destroyers must be eliminated by sector police. In pirate or neutral sectors using destroyers are ok.

[LameFox]

I think it's a product of the way the game handles civilians. Teladi do sell Phoenixes, so it does make sense you'd see private owners, and a pirate ship may be able to disguise as one. But X4 factions are really more like a side in an RTS. It pretends there are civilians, but they're only implied, it's really all just one big faction. You won't see, for example, some independent Argon mining station having bought its own Teladi destroyer to defend it. So to the player changing your faction is pretty conspicuous.

[taztaz502]

They need to make it so pirates have to either leave the system or get far out of any radar range to engage cloaking, rather than doing it while the police are on a direct intercept course toward them.

[Casishur]

A cooldown when a pirate is cloaked or under fire until they can reactivate their cloaking device. The cooldown is reset when the pirate ship is hit.

Currently, there is no cooldown of this kind; they also switch or reactivate their cloaking “Out Of Sector (OOS)” when under direct fire, which leads to an unpleasant loss of reputation.

[blackphoenixx]

A cooldown when a pirate is cloaked or under fire until they can reactivate their cloaking device. The cooldown is reset when the pirate ship is hit.

Currently, there is no cooldown of this kind; they also switch or reactivate their cloaking “Out Of Sector (OOS)” when under direct fire, which leads to an unpleasant loss of reputation.

Are you sure? Because in my experience killing a cloaked pirate with an NPC-piloted ship OOS doesn't cause permanent rep loss. It never did.
The only rep loss is the temporary -30 for the ship itself and that doesn't matter since you're killing it anyway.

To the best of my knowledge permanent rep loss with the sector owner only happens when you, personally, shoot at a cloaked pirate without scanning to uncloak it first.

The recloaking is only annoying because it makes your ships and faction police stop attacking and lets the pirate get away unless you manually give a new attack order but i've never seen it impact my reputation.

[S!rAssassin]

IMO, with diplomaty update and Envoy Pack, cloak mechanic should be rework to make it logical and possibly to player use.

[Raptor34]

IMO, with diplomaty update and Envoy Pack, cloak mechanic should be rework to make it logical and possibly to player use.

I doubt they would be able to tbh. They still haven't done the simple low hanging fruit of giving pirates emp missiles so we don't have to abstract away how they intercept you.

[S!rAssassin]

so we don't have to abstract away how they intercept you.

Yep... Still no ambushes: don't use asteroids to hide themselves, don't use mines and missiles to interrupt victim's travel drive... Just fly and harras traders from 100 km distance...

[Raptor34]

so we don't have to abstract away how they intercept you.

Yep... Still no ambushes: don't use asteroids to hide themselves, don't use mines and missiles to interrupt victim's travel drive... Just fly and harras traders from 100 km distance...

That's what I mean by abstract btw. We're pretending they do these things, the game just isn't capable of handling it. Somehow even though EMP missiles should be piss easy.

[S!rAssassin]

the game just isn't capable of handling it.

Pirate ships are spawn without building - spawn dozen fighters with mines from asteroids at front of L trader ship isn't something bigger... But more immersive, than jus "give to me your cargo!"

[Raptor34]

the game just isn't capable of handling it.

Pirate ships are spawn without building - spawn dozen fighters with mines from asteroids at front of L trader ship isn't something bigger... But more immersive, than jus "give to me your cargo!"

What asteroids? They don't even exist OOS.

[Nerwesta]

I think the person meant from asteroids fields, again that's also a way of abstraction.

[flywlyx]

Pirate ships are spawn without building - spawn dozen fighters with mines from asteroids at front of L trader ship isn't something bigger... But more immersive, than jus "give to me your cargo!"

Spawning them is one thing, getting them to actually intercept other ships is another. Right now, they simply don’t know how to do that.
If you have a decent travel drive, you can just ignore them—there’s really nothing they can do to stop you.

[S!rAssassin]

Spawning them is one thing, getting them to actually intercept other ships is another. Right now, they simply don’t know how to do that.

Indeed! Spawn pirate ship just to randomly fly and comm to trade ships and demanding cargo is not something interesting. But spawning ships according to interception scenario, like ambush in asteroids, is more immersive, isn't it?

[Raptor34]

Spawning them is one thing, getting them to actually intercept other ships is another. Right now, they simply don’t know how to do that.

Indeed! Spawn pirate ship just to randomly fly and comm to trade ships and demanding cargo is not something interesting. But spawning ships according to interception scenario, like ambush in asteroids, is more immersive, isn't it?

The question is can they do it.

Frankly what I'll like to see is that, let's take the Minotaur Raider as an example. What a pirate would do is buy a normal Minotaur like a faction does, then they take it to a pirate EQ dock to turn it into a Raider variant.
Or like they buy a Sonra Vanguard, then go do a black market reefit into a Sonra Raider which trades out cargo space for more guns, shields and speed. Maybe integrated missile launchers or something? Visually it should look the same at first glance. Maybe make use of that thing where the turret comes out from the interior? Then they go pirating.

The advantage of this is that now pirates would become part of the simulated economy and if you're willing to cripple a faction, you can also cripple the pirates, because gameplay wise, pirates would buy ships like they are the faction, Argon in this case, so you cannot just blacklist pirates. Though I guess you can also just kill all black markets? Then they can't refit and start pirating. But perhaps there'll be more EQ docks all over the place, just small ones, and like pirates you cannot tell which are legit and which do side business with pirates? Teladi can also do that business too, and maybe the FRF.

In this case I would also expand pirate hunting into it's own activity too, since no longer can you just search Plunderer and instantly find all pirates. That Sonra Raider would still be officially registered as a Sonra Vanguard. You'll now need to use the police behavior to scan for pirates, or do it manually. Or catch them in the act.
In return for this added difficulty, I'll increase the rewards for hunting pirates too.

Of course if you don't care for pirates, you can as mentioned above, just kill or disrupt everywhere they can turn that freighter into a warship and no more pirates.

[S!rAssassin]

...they take it to a pirate EQ dock to turn it into a Raider variant...

Wolf in sheep's clothing? Best variant Yaki and SCA pirates are OK, but if not cloaked. It's border sectors danger, not for core sectors. In core sectors we should have pirates hiding in shadows. And definitely they shouldn't named Plunderers...