El Draque wrote: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.
oh so if you run 100 pirate fleets the price of credits and voodoo magically go down?
i like the smugness of your interpretation of why you dont get raided but it certainly isnt your fleet set up
a noob may have problems with them but a veteran wouldnt
if you would like to test that theory run without your mb and ccs and let me know it and we can test the theory
just dont clear the voodoo
like i said earlier i dont care either way but i dont like being fed horsecrap and have the feeders call it oats
the people most affected are noobs who cant afford voodoo or credits on their lil 50-200k daily profits
the next set of people affected are those who see a system being abused and dont like it
the 5-50 fleet protection has its limits to go with the rewards of a lower level loss percentage
it means you only cover 1-10 ports which means unless you want to utilize fast travel or voodoo you are limited
unless you find a trader utilizing the same or less number of ports
but hey 1000 ships running two ports should be safe because billions were spent lol
anyway the point in saying any of that is to say the credit market has no checks and balances like the 5 to 50 system because
it wasnt designed to be a primary source of income nor was it intended to be manipulated by a few
you can see that all intended gameplay has rules and voodoo to aid it and rules and voodoo to limit it
since it is clearly being used in a manner not intended then its a natural progression
to seek the same rewards/limits structure everything else has
the statement was made that pirates are hurt because of x-y-z. Oh my fleets are being upgraded again, because of the random raids and I will keep doing so till my trade fleets look like xpro's battle fleets lol. 
