by Most Lee Harmless » Fri Nov 25, 2022 10:07 pm
A bit of history :
Back in the day, the Fame mechanic worked differently : once your fame fell below a known level, you could not be hit : your lit fleets dropped off the lists until reset. This gave a clever captain an idea : he would run his many hundred fleets non-stop without regard to danger accumulation, HN's or Fugis. So, every night they all lit up and many pirates would smack away at them until his fame dropped to the point he was protected until reset. The calculation was simple : he would earn far more sailing his many fleets unmolested for 20 or more hours than would be plundered in the few hours of feeding frenzy.
Which cunning plan caused a great wailing and gnashing of teeth! Why? A pirate could plunder a most decent purse nightly without casting a single curse. Easy money! Yet still he was accused of gaming the system and using the low fame mechanic to 'avoid' being plundered for more than the several million he lost daily until the protection kicked in.
Thus the mechanic was eventually changed to the one we know today, an even more flawed mess but one which now allowed total de-fleeting regardless of fame level.
Naturally, that daily bounty ceased to flow and said captain found other ways to protect his incomes.
To mix the metaphors : folk were not careful about what they wished for and cooked their own goose.
Every attack has a counter : every defence has an attack. Every rule has a loophole and closing a loophole often creates a new 'rule' with new loopholes.
It's organic as new ideas create new methods and they create new counters and counter-counters and so on.
I have seen many traders complaints countered with the arguments that they should protect themselves better : low-value tails, powerful guardships, staggered fleets, scattered routes, protective voodoo, all good examples.
Which means that pirates have to up their game too : more powerful hit fleets, using more voodoo to clear protections, more hit-fleets to target the more scattered ports holding lit fleets.
That is the nature of conflict : tactics and strategies develop. No use whining about the inevitable : today's smart play will be inevitsbly become tomorrows dumb move.
To survive and thrive all sides have to get creative and stay creative, have to test and develop new smart moves and toss aside yesterdays dumb ones. Don't get mad, get smart.
-1 : Move to archive.
oh nos I don't see how that contributes to the topic ... but thanks for filling in the blanks... now for the one between your ears 
