Pirates

[Catty]

With the latest build of Pioneer, I've finally been able to enjoy a game. As in, trading works, combat works, the missions have reasonable deadlines, and so on. Awesome work everyone!

That said, I still have not encountered a single pirate. I've fought assassins, which is good fun, but not a single pirate. So what I'm wondering is, are pirates implemented? Are they extremely rare? Are they only in certain (Independent?) systems?

Thanks for all the good work guys/gals!

[impaktor]

Pirates are in the game, but maybe sub optimal.

Systems have a lawlessness attribute, defining probability of spawning pirates, but they mostly come after you when you enter the system, and if you carry valuable cargo. This is certainly something that needs some more tweaking. It's in lua, data/modules/Pirate.lua, so you can play around with it.

Also, with Newtownian universe, I suspect it's quite difficult for pirates to intercept the player, but I might be wrong there.

[Catty]

Thanks for the info! I had a look at the Pirates.lua, although while my skills with Lua are poor at best. It looks to me like the pirates check your cargo capacity, and that is the only decision factor for getting interest. One thing that also seems odd is that it looks like they won't get ships bigger than 150 tons. Maybe I'm just reading the Lua wrong, though.

Also, of the assassins I've fought, not one has had a shield. Is this a coincidence, a feature, or a bug?

[impaktor]

One thing that also seems odd is that it looks like they won't get ships bigger than 150 tons.

That's right. Pirates have small ships.

t looks to me like the pirates check your cargo capacity, and that is the only decision factor for getting interest.

Correct. This should probably be changed, to be the value of the cargo, or both. It looks a bit like the script was written with the intention of making it better in the future.

Maybe the future is upon us now?

I don't like the spawning of pirates just between 8-12 AU. There could be pirates in orbit around some planets maybe. If very high lawlessness they could even be around inhabited planets. They probably shouldn't spawn next to the player (they don't) when entering, since the jump points are not predictable.

Also, of the assassins I've fought, not one has had a shield. Is this a coincidence, a feature, or a bug?

They should have between 1-4 shield generators in assassination mission. For DeliverPackage, and Taxi there are no shields, and the cake is a lie.

[impaktor]

It was silly that probability to get attacked was proportional to cargo capacity of the ship model. So a ship with a cargo hold capacity of 100 were always attacked, and the starter ships were attacked maybe 1 out of 10 times if any pirates spawned to begin with.

I've changed it to be proportional to how fully loaded the cargo hold is, with a slight discount for the first tonnes of cargo, which would benefit small ships, so the Varada will cruise past most pirates unnoticed. Other ships will more likely be attacked the more cargo they carry.

One could extend it further and use the value of cargo instead, so the pirates are very clever. Or the pirates could be stupid, and not be able to tell a fully loaded cargo vessel from a fully equipped war ship (both being maxed out in mass for their ship model).

When testing I can't see any pirates in orbital view unless they're triggered to attack me. Also, they are not very good at intercepting me, so the ship just went past me at some insane speed relative mine.

[Xeno]

It was silly that probability to get attacked was proportional to cargo capacity of the ship model. So a ship with a cargo hold capacity of 100 were always attacked, and the starter ships were attacked maybe 1 out of 10 times if any pirates spawned to begin with.

It is, and I've seen code comments to that effect in places. It begs a ship classification question which is deep design and I leave that to others.

Also is apparent we need a unified method of spawning pirates for all purposes. The delivery mission module spawns pirates, the scout module (not yet out of debug) spawns pirates, the general lawlessness check on system enter spawns pirates... There seems to be a lot of places pirates are separately devised and created, with the potential for many more unless we start a method of handling it.

I think we can do that better. Working toward that.

[DraQ]

Also, they are not very good at intercepting me, so the ship just went past me at some insane speed relative mine.

I think it's the game's way of telling us that simple deep space intercepts are boring. :P

I think most hostile encounters (not just pirates) should take place near planetary surfaces, in orbit and other locations that have reasonable chance of being cluttered (ring systems, derelicts, near orbital and surface facilities, etc.).
Deep space combat should really only be a factor when the attackers tail the player from another system, meaning they all need better jump range (and room for fuel) and at least one of them needs hyperspace cloud analyzer.

There is also the factor of detection. In Frontier it was based on range, but that's not very good, because it precludes interesting locations from being backdrop of interesting shootouts and because in space everyone can see anything.
I'd propose detection to to work based on line of sight and atmosphere. If you're out of the atmosphere you'll always be detected trying to do something unlawful unless you're hidden behind something (a planet, moon or star). If you are in an atmosphere you have a good chance of being undetected or unidentified unless you have line of sight to a station in orbit or surface spaceport (or ship nearby).
This detectability could modify illicit activity in inhabited systems.

There could also be a forged/stolen transponders available on black market. Once activated they would start working from the end of your next jump and keep working until discarded, effectively replacing your identity. Discarding them in inhabited system or within line of sight of any non-criminal vessel, or doing anything involving non-criminal missions, shipyard or police should automatically connect your fake identity criminal record to your real one and add forgery/id theft to it. They could also run on timer - the time it takes the authorities to verify that your id is fake.

NPC attackers could also be using them (allowing them to attack in secure areas) but only if the gains outweigh the costs and risks (so you're carrying something immensely valuable, helping someone run from the mafia, etc.).