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.