by The Lamb » Fri Aug 06, 2021 2:19 am
So in my opinion I dont think its the markets making it hard for pirates its the excessive raids themselves.
When I started I was told that if I was going to be a trader, expect to get attacked daily and x amount of attacks was acceptable loss but over x was an act of war so you could be raided or raiding another was acceptable. I excepted this and ran 4 LMM's and a howker on all my fleets. At this time raids were done as an act of war or as retaliation for something heinous done in the game.
Not too long ago, People started getting bored, which can be understandable playing a pirate/shipping game but only using 5-50 ships so they them selves cant be raided, so the random raids started. At first it enough to keep def voodoo running 24/7. That didnt hurt pirates, because they could still skirmish the LMM's and howker fleets with a relatively cheap fleets and make a profit.
As the "who should we hit tonight" raids kept going traders started running SOTL escorts and pirates could no longer defeat these with cheap fleets. They now needed to run bigger fleets and maybe toss some voodoo. The raids continue, we added bigger multi escorts fleets and so on. With these mini war trading fleets used to combat the excessive raids, the simple pirate was gone.
Now to the $$ made from raids for pirates issue: 90% of the time, the person(s) attacking doesnt cast the voodoo, its no secret to anyone here. This means that every attack they do is profit, we all play this game, its no secret so that removes the argument that voodoo cost and credit costs killed piracy!
As a trader, for me, over fishing (over raiding) did. Traders can no longer leave 4 lmm 1 hk fleets running anymore for pirates to eat off, out of fear of being lit again for no reason other than they went offline. I for one am glad that voodoo costs have gone way up. I never like the idea that 3 credits worth of voodoo could take out months/years worth of work, to me, thats just as greedy as those who would try to manipulate the game in any other way.
Back to the credit issue:
1. I never use the credit market myself, but i could see the argument for an active sales cap
1. Isn't someone who buys low and sells high "manipulating" the markets just as much as someone who uses the 5 - 50 ships technique "manipulating" the new player protections? I think both depend on how you look at it. Seems to me both use these systems to gain wealth while mitigating loss.
3. I would love to see more ways to get credits as was mentioned earlier via repeatable quests and the like.
4. In my humble opinion, a person who invests in 5 fleets should never be able to make as much as a person who has invested billions in fleets, research, infrastructure etc.. Thats just ridiculous. If i were a pirate, i would never say it was unfair that i was only making a mil a day with my fleets of 3 ships when compared to a player like SHM.
Want to make more money in the game to buy more voodoo and credits. Then invest more in your game to give yourself more. I for one would love to go back to 4 lmm's and 1 hk.
Remember...
You can sheer a sheep many times, but only skin it once!