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[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

I pitched the general outline of this idea to Verone a while back and he seemed to like it. What do you think?

Pirate "militia" get better access to pirate faction kit through LP offers. Pilots and/or corps joining must have good standing but not a very high positive standing to start as the pirate factions are desperate to recruit capsuleer wings.

Pirate militias are automatically at war with their opposed empire faction (Guristas - Caldari, Angels - All Empire factions, Serpentis - Gallente, Blood Raiders - Amarrians, Sanshas - All Empire factions) The Angels are widespread & the Sanshas terrify people, hence those groups having more enemies (alternatively pirates count as WT's to all high sec faction militias). They also fight each other on the usual lines (Guristas/Blooders/Sanshas vs Serpentis/Angels).

Regular CONCORD, Navy, Customs & sentries ignore these pilots unless they aggress a non WT in high sec (they are considered too dangerous for regular forces). Therefore this also gives high sec (and market hub) access to pilots with severely negative sec status. It doesn't stop people with under -5 security status being free targets to all PC's though. Alternatively the high sec access bit doesn't kick in until you reach a minimum level of standing with your pirate faction.

And to counter this influx of rats in high sec you have CONCORD licenced bounty hunters.

Bounty hunters must have at least +5 security status when they join. If it drops below 5 they get a week to correct the problem. All pirate militia groups are free to be aggressed by bounty hunters. CONCORD licensed hunters have access to all of Empire space regardless of faction standings and should register as blues to Empire militia. Hunters should get a bounty and sec status increase based on the rank of a pirate militia pilot when they kill one (this is to make up for not getting missions from CONCORD). The best hunters (by number and quality of PC pirate kills) should get some sort of publicity and maybe an ISK bonus of some sort.

Optionally bounty hunters get notified by the system when a pirate militia pilot enters the area they are in. This would make the free high sec access to outlaws a little less free.

[Myrhial Arkenath]

Pirate FW is something I am still patiently waiting for since CCP did hint at it, but then again I'd rather see them fix the current implementation of FW first.

I don't like your suggestion of who gets to be at war with which faction though, while making sense from an RP pov when it comes to game balance it rather sucks. Just put everyone at war with the whole empire.

Don't like the market hub access suggestion, outlaws shouldn't be in highsec other than blitzing through it in fast enough ships.

Your bounty hunter idea has merit however. I wrote an article for EON a while ago with my idea of the system. To balance it for both sides I'd make it so pirate FW members taking out bounty hunters would get rewarded too.

[orange]

So,

+5 Sec Status is max achievable and does not have much in the way of benefits at the moment.

Negative Sec Status has consequences for characters (less and less access to hi-sec), but that does not prevent trading alts from doing the purchasing.

I think any development of Pirate warfare needs to take lessons from Empire factional warfare.  For example, in FW there are no in-game consequences for losing a system.

I think an important first step prior to setting up Pirate warfare is to make standings mean more, both security and NPC Faction/Corp.  If a -5 to -10 can't dock in any low-sec stations (  ) until a system's "corruption" level reaches a certain point this makes things more interesting.  We need to consider the why more than just gate camp and avoid the pitfalls present in FW.

As for the conflict, I would like to see the pirate factions have areas they are interested in being "targets."  As part of this, fully corrupting one area would open up another low sec area.  Each of the pirate factions would also be able to attempt take overs of other pirate factions turf.

Any system needs useful benefits and consequences, failing to do so will only create a product no one really enjoys.

[Ghost Hunter]

I pitched the general outline of this idea to Verone a while back and he seemed to like it. What do you think?

Pirate "militia" get better access to pirate faction kit through LP offers. Pilots and/or corps joining must have good standing but not a very high positive standing to start as the pirate factions are desperate to recruit capsuleer wings.

Pirate militias are automatically at war with their opposed empire faction (Guristas - Caldari, Angels - All Empire factions, Serpentis - Gallente, Blood Raiders - Amarrians, Sanshas - All Empire factions) The Angels are widespread & the Sanshas terrify people, hence those groups having more enemies (alternatively pirates count as WT's to all high sec faction militias). They also fight each other on the usual lines (Guristas/Blooders/Sanshas vs Serpentis/Angels).

Regular CONCORD, Navy, Customs & sentries ignore these pilots unless they aggress a non WT in high sec (they are considered too dangerous for regular forces). Therefore this also gives high sec (and market hub) access to pilots with severely negative sec status. It doesn't stop people with under -5 security status being free targets to all PC's though. Alternatively the high sec access bit doesn't kick in until you reach a minimum level of standing with your pirate faction.

And to counter this influx of rats in high sec you have CONCORD licenced bounty hunters.

Bounty hunters must have at least +5 security status when they join. If it drops below 5 they get a week to correct the problem. All pirate militia groups are free to be aggressed by bounty hunters. CONCORD licensed hunters have access to all of Empire space regardless of faction standings and should register as blues to Empire militia. Hunters should get a bounty and sec status increase based on the rank of a pirate militia pilot when they kill one (this is to make up for not getting missions from CONCORD). The best hunters (by number and quality of PC pirate kills) should get some sort of publicity and maybe an ISK bonus of some sort.

Optionally bounty hunters get notified by the system when a pirate militia pilot enters the area they are in. This would make the free high sec access to outlaws a little less free.

You cannot give out pirate faction tech in pirate LP stores. There is a good reason for this.

Nullsec missioning has a huge bonus to LP output, and most level 4 missions give about 14,000 LP. The few pirate items that exist in the stores (their implants and ships) do not require Empire tags, because that is your bounty system. You are ultimately suffering a big loss in the profit sector if you were forced to turn in the tags, significantly contributing to the cost of selling pirate LP items. This is important to note because of A) the difficulty of missioning in nullsec, and B) the disproportionate ratio of competing with high sec missioning.

Assuming the entire pirate sector of the game is not revamped, there is going to be a huge imbalance in the powers between all the pirate factions. Assuming the LP bonus from being in a militia is combined with the bonuses of Nullsec missioning, I would not imagine it unreasonable to expect 20-30k LP per level 4 mission. At that rate of missioning, assuming the values do not exceed 30k LP, you could have a complete high-grade pirate implant set every day. You would easily have 2-3 complete low-grade sets.

This would be a massive interest to the major Nullsec powers because of how easy it would be to supply their capital pilots with pirate implants. Notably, the Sansha militia would be absolutely flooded because of how powerful high-grade slave implants are for the vast majority of capital combat. I would wager to say almost immediately Sansha's militia would be the top pirate militia followed by most likely Guristas and maybe Angels. Blood Raiders are a joke and Serpentis are really only valuable to small gang warfare.

This is just the pirate implants I'm talking about, items already available in their LP stores. Making it easier and faster to get those, especially the slave sets and how damn powerful they are, is going to make the entire thing lopsided from the get go.

Now throw in the pirate faction tech, previously unavailable, to the LP store that has an increased rate of LP ontop of nullsec. Assuming it is just faction and not deadspace (True Sansha versus Centus), ontop of the complete lack of necessity for tags to acquire LP items, it's going to be a mess.

Understandably I'm jumping the gun here, but under the assumption the previous behavior used in the pirate LP store is kept in the militia (plus its bonuses), I can't even begin to describe how incredibly valuable Stain and Venal just became.


The rest of your idea has merit, but the pirate LP stores are a completely different monster to the pathetic Empire ones. Unless this is addressed, pirate faction warfare would be an even bigger joke than Empire one is. Sansha wins, hands down, because their tech is the best and most usable one for the capital swarms of nullsec.

The logical choice is to either nerf the pirate LP acquisition rates into the ground, nerf the ease of acquiring goods from the pirate LP stores (and thus stripping perhaps the biggest plus to nullsec missioning to begin with), or completely rebalance the pirate faction tech to be competitive and even on every front.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

Ghost
I appreciate the balance problems with pirate LP stores and the differing attractions of the various implant sets. If you aren't going to use pirate tech as a sweetener though, then what else? I am trying to devise somthing that will be attractive to the 0.0 population. Regardless of the side they pick (pirate or hunter) there should be something in it for them. Perhaps rat tech needs to be rebalanced so that all the pirate groups have something to offer (and their own disadvantages)?

Myrhail
I hear, and understand, the dislike of outlaws being able to fly into high sec. Again I was trying to figure out some sort of incentive for joining up.

What about the empire wide access for bounty hunters? I was thinking that hunters could develop a useful sideline as cross border traders.

Having the pirate groups being red to all the empires seems reasonable (and easier to implement) but are you also against the pirate groups being "allied" into their traditional blocks?

I take the point about pirate militia being rewarded for killing bounty hunters. I was thinking along those lines but forgot to include this in the summary of the concept.

Orange
I like your territorial control notions but really would like to avoid another round of capture the flag games. How would you suggest dominance in a system be established?

From what you are saying +5 sec status would be too high a mark for potential bounty hunters to reach.  What sort of qualifications would you suggest then?

[Ghost Hunter]

Ghost
I appreciate the balance problems with pirate LP stores and the differing attractions of the various implant sets. If you aren't going to use pirate tech as a sweetener though, then what else? I am trying to devise somthing that will be attractive to the 0.0 population. Regardless of the side they pick (pirate or hunter) there should be something in it for them. Perhaps rat tech needs to be rebalanced so that all the pirate groups have something to offer (and their own disadvantages)?

The question of incentive is a tricky one and I think without the benefits LP acquisition has in Empire facwar it would be a lot more depleted in numbers. Someone more well versed in that can correct me if need be.

There are two choices: Offer items that are powerful/have great conversion to ISK, or give unique benefits that don't exist outside of the pirate facwar.

I've covered why I am against the items portion, so lets look at the benefits section.

One possible benefit is the ability for pirate facwar ships to go into highsec without empire intervention. CONCORD still kills them for shooting neutrals, but the pirate facwar can chase their enemies into their "safe zones".

Another benefit is to give those fighting in their own territory advantages against non-participating nullsec people. Pirate facwar could be the only ones able to dock in their NPC 0.0, pirate sentry guns may assist pirate facwar in 0.0 next to stations, non-bounty high-damage pirate NPC spawns may show up to assist pirate facwar pilots, pirate facwar pilots can use special military complexes as staging zones, etc...

Pirate facwar people could get bounties from their factions for killing non-mission Empire NPCs (promoting combat in Empire FW plexes), allowing them to make a fair bit of change from the bounty+tags.


Incentives are nice, however there is something in specific I want to draw your point.

You do not want to design pirate faction warfare to draw in the 0.0 people.

Take the current environment of empire faction warfare, now up its scale two or three times. It would not be unreasonable to presume there would be regular supercap hotdrops on the contested areas of nullsec facwar. Then there is the nullsec blobbing and mega gate camping that comes into effect at these contested zones. Regardless of the pirate facwar objectives, nullsec alliances will camp their systems because the pirate facwar have to come there or they're screwed otherwise.

Of course, this is presuming superpowers like AAA or IT are not completely dominating both their respective home front pirate facwar, and the enemy pirate facwar too. AAA with Stain and Curse, IT with Delve and Fountain, respectively. (Nullsec peeps feel free to correct me if I'm wrong there)

If you really want to build pirate facwar, it's going to have to be something not involved in nullsec or you will have to design the entire system to accommodate the massive machinations the superpowers do out there. It's a bloody mess, one I have trouble seeing any feasible game design working in.

[orange]

Orange
I like your territorial control notions but really would like to avoid another round of capture the flag games. How would you suggest dominance in a system be established?

From what you are saying +5 sec status would be too high a mark for potential bounty hunters to reach.  What sort of qualifications would you suggest then?

Lets do the easy one first; sec status.  Right now earning sec status is all about killing NPCs.

I would suggest opening up bounty-hunter to those with positive security status in general.  My thought is that depending on the hunter's sec status, the freedom to hunt pirates increases.  I am not sure how to capture this.  BHs should take the first strike advantage away from pirates.  Potentially this beings by having -10 pirates be shoot-able always (maybe they are free fire already, can't remember*) and scale it so a +5 BH can shoot a -5 pirate without a sec hit.

In addition, killing player pirates should increase the BHs security status above +5 and there needs to be advantages to having a 5+ sec status beyond just the anti-pie aspect.

*If -5 or worse is already free fire, make it to where BHs can shoot at -0.1 to -5 depending on their sec status, 5.01 to 10.

I suggest any pirate system focus on the player activities happening in the system and not some NPC complex spawns (although probably should still have some NPC defenders).  Also any system needs to impact those not taking part in the war (corruption).

I am thinking something along the lines of FW missions actually, especially if it focuses a pirate faction on a few constellations in different regions.  The "trick" is that there will be a PW in space agent that hands out L1 through L4 missions depending on the corruption status of the system.  The corruption status changes as more and more missions are completed.  So, lower level PW missions mean fewer BHs attacking as well.  I am not 100% behind the idea, it is more brainstorming.

[Lillith Blackheart]

Potentially this beings by having -10 pirates be shoot-able always (maybe they are free fire already, can't remember*) and scale it so a +5 BH can shoot a -5 pirate without a sec hit.

< -5 is always free fire without penalty. They're GCC'd permanently.

So your secondary suggestion would apply.

[Myrhial Arkenath]

Myrhail
I hear, and understand, the dislike of outlaws being able to fly into high sec. Again I was trying to figure out some sort of incentive for joining up.

What about the empire wide access for bounty hunters? I was thinking that hunters could develop a useful sideline as cross border traders.

Having the pirate groups being red to all the empires seems reasonable (and easier to implement) but are you also against the pirate groups being "allied" into their traditional blocks?

I take the point about pirate militia being rewarded for killing bounty hunters. I was thinking along those lines but forgot to include this in the summary of the concept.

Empire wide access for bounty hunters is fine.

As for pirate group blocks, I think that is a good idea. Just like the empire groups have two blocks, so would the pirate groups, and then as a layer on top of that you have all empire vs all pirate.

[Arnulf Ogunkoya]

The question of incentive is a tricky one and I think without the benefits LP acquisition has in Empire facwar it would be a lot more depleted in numbers. Someone more well versed in that can correct me if need be.

<snip>

Incentives are nice, however there is something in specific I want to draw your point.

You do not want to design pirate faction warfare to draw in the 0.0 people.

<snip>

I'd say your assumptions about the attractions of the militia LP stores is quite valid. However I think your second point is working on the assumption that conflict between pirate militias would revolve around the same mechansim of plex captures that Empire FW uses.

Firstly. I think FW plexing as it exists these days is daft. To take a plex you should have to wipe out the defending NPC's first. Any other option is very weak tea indeed and completely fails to get across the idea of a hugely destructive war.

But who says pirate conflicts have to revolve around that?

We know the system tracks kills at the moment because that data is can be seen by us via the map and killboards. Why not pick an area to be contested and then simply monitor the number of kills made by the competing groups and the number and level of missions for those groups completed there? If one group starts showing a clear advantage over, say, a week the area changes hands and the NPC rat spawns change accordingly. Plus any other secondary effects that are deemed appropriate.

Not sure about NPC's coming to your aid though. I think it's reasonable that "your" NPC's shouldn't shoot at you but having them aid you might be a tad difficult to code. Besided there is a good IC justifiction given that all the rat factions hate, loathe & despise eggers. The militias would likely be seen as a necessary evil by the pirate groups.

The only problem here is that I can't see any incentives for a 0.0 group to go bounty hunter rather than pirate and I'd like there to be some reasons for that. Or do people think the access all empire areas thing would be attracion enough? It would certainly make running 0.0 goods back to the empire markets easier.

[Milo Caman]

Why even run it on an FW Style System? Why not base it on say- player kills, or number of -10 players around in system? Heck, why not make Pirate FW similar to the 0.0 Sov system? Corruption levels with 'upgrades'

I'm being rather vague, but I'd love to see pirate 'FW' Integrated with stuff suggested here to give Lowsecks a buff/revamp, instead of adding to 0.0.

[orange]

I think there needs to be a trade off between Pirate benefits, Empire benefits, etc.  High rewards require high risk and such.  If an empire faction (ie low corruption) something needs to make it worthwhile to be an anti-pie as well as a pirate.

They need to look at a FW 2.0 anyway and I think making it a 4-way conflict (Pirates 1, Empire 1, Pirates 2, Empire 2) in many places would be interesting.

[Saede Riordan]

I'm not going to comment one way or another on this, but I think Pirate 0.0 in general needs a bit of an overhaul, and if something like this happened, it would be way cool.

[Isobel Mitar]

What do you think?

I love the idea of bounty hunting becoming an actual profession. (Pirating already is )

In my opinion any system like this needs to be not only balanced, but also designed so it cannot be too easily gamed. Not encouraging grief play is also a bonus.

The proposal as is could result in mission runners joining pirate militias (for pirate LP and all-empire access) and pirates joining bounty hunters (to get free stuff to shoot and all-empire access - with an alt in pirate militia for sec status maintenance if necessary). Is this how you envision things?

[Alain Colcer]

This should really be CONCORD vs Pirates

So Pirate FW is really CONCORD giving out targets to law-abidding capsuleers, and pirates being given the task to terrorize in a specific zone.

The mechanics should be very simple:
Pirates sign up with their pirate faction, their goal is harrasing in a constellation/sytem.
Empire loyalists sign up with CONCORD for a "prosecution war" against the above.

Pirates cash in any KM of engagements that went against CONCORD regulations. (hauler ganks, gate camping, station camping).
Empire Loyalists cash in any KM of the prosecuted pirates.

It's all player vs player stuff

Perhaps instead of the KM being the element to cash in, players who sign in this form of FW always drop a specific id-tag if killed, paid in ISK by the proper opposite faction.

Would be much simplier to create a BH profession that way.