So, after testing the economy for 2 months I can say that the prices, especially for high-value-commodities are nowhere near exponential, but merely linear when factoring in distance/time to get to sellpoint. Even the linear distribution of everyday commodities (like alcoholic beverages) didn't get much love (I know that this is busywork, changing all stations) but sellpoints and buypoints are too few and linear price distribution is therefore nearly nonexistent.

PS: And no, piracy as forced player interaction is not an argument for too few buy-/ sellpoints, I have been pirated ONCE in 8 weeks and the RP was ok, but no real enrichment and I certainly won't fall for the same pirate character again.

Wish piracy was easier, more permissive ID wise and a lot more profitable.

In my noob experience of playing.. couple weeks. (Grain of salt warning)

Piracy is a thing you do for fun of it, when your trader account is loaded in money. Chances of intercepting anyone are low just due to vastness of space. Only thing that helps is the chat which shows players systems and even then just couple stars allow interception reliably. (New York-Texas trade lane my beloved).
But it goes both ways and as a trader you can see where other players are, which allowed me to avoid pirates and on other side caused a situation in rhineland of me sitting on a tradelane for hour and trader sitting in other star system waiting for me to leave.
((Is there a command to hide your presence on the server?))

Escaping piracy is easy thanks to high hull points, unless a 4300 is pirated by a cruiser. Chances are you'll make the station before a gunboat cuts you open.
((Make mooring points deny you if you are under attack // make afterburners easier to shoot off?))

Trade lanes are frustrating, enabling in an instant and shooting player off before pirate could react.
((Slower chargeup after destabilization? Slower acceleration but higher top speed?))

Piracy just doesn't pay. You'll take longer trying to hunt someone down and take small cut that rules allow, than logging into a trade ship and making the same route.
((no suggestions how to make this better. Save for making galactic law making semi-lawful factions actually unlawful so base builders would have to pirate their copper instead of logging a zoner. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ No way that would ever happen))

The IDs are restrictive.
I want to bring out a coalition ship (for it is my main faction and where ships get best toys, and easiest roleplay potential), but get told by others not to pirate. ..For which I mostly try to disrupt public order by demanding nothing but acceptance of coalition ideals, but it still feels like treading the line on rules. I get told off every other time I try by NWI. But it should be fair game to do a little terror upon capitalists. As a pirate I wont get any money anyway so may well take to terrorism to get better roleplay out of it. But ID doesnt specify it as an okay thing to do, which is.. troubling for a terrorist. ((also can coalition get even a single IFF bonus on starbases, or a mining zone or a (cheap!) smuggling good.. pweaaase?? We are only exporting water over here xD))
Hessian or dragon.. get zone of influence. So either I drool over a cargo ship in liberty, or make another pirate character. Given that I'll need a frigate to crack a liner, it gets ..pricy to outfit all characters.
And independent pirate.. well I'm not that good at roleplaying that u.u

So, no wonder you don't get pirated. Piracy is highly troubled affair due to many reasons.

And my personal biggest reason not to pirate:
PoB mechanics.. Before I started to construct Fujian Orbital in Omega-52, I would bring out a coalition frigate to liberty just for terrorism quite frequently. My trade runs would give me enough money and then I'd just go play for fun of it, don't need coin, want to cause chaos.
Now I find myself, quite trapped by it. Of course I could pause the construction whenever, but I want the modules. Thats my goal which I set out to accomplish. And only after, seeing this forum post I get to ponder what it does to my gameplay.
I ceased going to liberty for terrorist activities because the speed at which starbases consume goods IS INSANE!
Of course there is the reasoning that it has to be so to cull unused starbases via natural decay.
But in consequence, as a starbase operator I cant find time for piracy.
Constructing docking modules, I'll fly across O52 to fetch 4300 industrial goods (which will be some 140k distance in full trip).. And upon returning.. It already consumed it ALL!
Operating an orbital farm and MOX consumes hours of time. It just eats through resources SO FAST. Orbital farm and MOX mean consumption of some 60.000 units of input goods every day. For lone player it is wild, for faction not so bad I guess, a convoy would fill it up quick. But with cargo space restriction you need it every day.. ((and I mostly play with NWI, which is most active coalition faction and.. and... all communication goes through google translate into Chinese.. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA))
((AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA))
What are 'job' factories good for? Not for piracy, those just trap a player in one system.
It is impossible to pirate me for...
I am trapped in O52 trying to supply fujian.
No ship can crack my liner for I am never more than 30k away from starbase. And I will see you coming which means I'll be safe before you fire a shot.
And even if you.. come in under cloak to pirate mighty CPS-Buckwheat
I'm carrying water, what will you ask for.. 5000cr? Buy everyone on your cruiser a beer?
And if, theoretically, I'm blockaded.. well then i got to switch to IMG and ..nobody will shoot at me. I'll just have to pause stations production and ferry other goods in other systems for I still need the coin to feed the alloy hungry base.

((I wish everything about starbases was.. 50 times slower or so... Instead more permissive attacks being the driver for culling starbases..))
((.. I wish.. All starbases were removed, only POBs can exist. That would be sooo fun, factions declaring wars, blowing up starbases and building their own to conquer space. A constant gang war with battles being over turf instead of being bored enough to make a fight in space with no consequence other than bragging rights in discord by posting screenshot of that one cruiser your faction destroyed while loosing nine of your own. ... sigh .. I'm dreaming of a different game by now))
((I wish zoners, IMG, GMG had different diplomacy. Every time.. Log a dragon.. disrupt a lane. Heart beat picks up.. a ship.. its coming.. its coming. See you in honshu <3 yess take it through tokyo, come to my trap. Yess they are in tokyo. Lane disrupted, any moment now.. any moment.. OH, HI ZONER! Must be nice being friendly to absolutely everyone to the point even corsairs wont shoot. Good luck on your trip making money to transfer to your corsair account.))

I feel like assumptions of trade have to be reconsidered further, with pirates perspective more in mind.

If the assumption is that longer route being more dangerous and hence more profitable with exponential curve, i feel that won't hold up to logic. On other side, I am a pirate, looking at chat (feeling like it is bit dirty cheating to hunt like that), I cannot possibly know what trade route they are on, predicting is near impossible for player movements are arcane. Only real danger to trade I ever encountered is Omicron theta for corsairs are active and move around the area frequently, making interception just out of bad luck.

The prices in the moment feel linear, as a coalition transport I find moving water and food between JiangXi (Omega-52) and Freeport 5 (Omega 41) nearly as good of a route as ferrying copper and iridium between Omicron delta and inverness that I got shown on my first days as a little noobie.

A question is then not, is it good or bad to run that short route? Should prices be linear or exponential? Should resale of ex- copper, be permitted?
But how to make piracy fun?
Cant be exponential for there is just no risk, nobody will intercept you unless it happens by chance. A pirate can guess you are carrying iridium if they see you in delta and theta, but every time I will see cargo ship take a turn. Maybe to PoB, maybe they see a little terrorist in the way and take a detour.
Cant be linear for then there is doubly no risk, moving between two starbases is as good as moving across half of sector. And if you get intercepted you can only be demanded pocketchange.
Doubly no risk for these factors combined make piracy just.. weak. Meaning fewer pirates to begin with, piracy is a luxury you do if you have no need for money and crafted items.
My guess, probably best route should be passengers in house space. Set as a high value commodity with low profit relative to the commodity, yet high profit relative to other routes. Force players to defend their cargo and allow pirates to extort more than one routes profit at threat of destruction of cargo.
Most importantly, it allows pirates to see and know where players are going. If route passes through trade lanes, and is 3-6 stars long, a pirate can see what you are doing and lay a trap on trade lane.
In edge space meanwhile.. I saw you from 16k away and just changed course. You cant do a thing unless I'm literally reading a book and not paying attention.. which.. Is my favorite thing about freelancer.
Just set a course and read a book in the meanwhile, work on a hobby xD


Thank you for TL;DR my TED talk, the answer to question on how prices and copper buybacks should be set is 'make piracy viable'
I got to go make 20 daily trade trips across Omega 52 to make sure my station stays operational.
Kill me
I wanted to be a pirate but iron rusts in a day and tomato grows in a.. five minutes

Hold tight, the next patch will do something to piracy at least with the transports being slower than other ships, thus increasing chances to intercept.

As for the player list, I've always held the view that cloaked ships should get ???? shown in the player list, similarly how the ones docked at player ships now show. That way you could potentially recognize a pirate waiting for you, but if you don't notice where he logged on it would be guesswork.

Regarding trading, yep it's boring. That's why you should aim to team up with other people and make mining convoys, expeditions to the Uncharted systems and all that jazz. That's where the big credits are. Or just wait for the events to print $$$.

And the POBs, congratulations, you've just discovered the curse of the BOP - Base Owned Player. Higher level POBs are really meant to be a team effort, not something a solo player should maintain. It's doable however if you purchase and can stomach piloting a Barge.

(04-25-2024, 01:37 PM)Graineater Wrote: TL;DR
But how to make piracy fun?

It's not that hard. It’s enough just to remember that you are in a role-playing game, and you are free to do anything that is not prohibited by the rules.

Illegal or "gray" activities have not been properly disclosed to my memory by anyone. All I remember is role-playing on the level: we are pirates, rob and kill everyone! Or the groups turn into some kind of ultra mega far anarcho-separatist communists who are trying to defeat left-wing radical capitalism (insert more political terms that are understandable to 1.5 human being). It is clear that with this game format, not a single sane player who controls a merchant ship would even want to meet a pirate. And it’s not even that Trader doesn’t want to pay tribute to the pirate or anything else. Come on, everyone has so much money that you just don’t know what to do with it. The problem is that a meeting with a pirate most often does not bring any interesting activity to the other player, because most players play PvP + money grind.


Hijack a merchant ship.
Fill it with cardamine and counterfeit, and force the merchant to sell it to the lawful's base.
This does not necessarily involve destroying trader initial cargo or forcing to pay money for yours "black" cargo.

Hijack a tagged trading ship
And demand money from Corporation for release of a ship and crew, like real pirates do.

Black Market & Smuggling
Black Market Augments, Munitions, Pharmaceuticals, Counterfeit Computerware
Cardamine & Nox, Artifacts & Xeno Relics, Criminals & Prisoners,
Diamonds\Gold\Silver else.

Hogosha's casino
Jammi made a system for throwing dice,
which could be the basis of "slot machines" or whatever you want.

"Protection"
We have a huge number of different bases,
but I don’t see ANY criminal group that would come and demand a share from the owner of the base.

Corporate Warfare
Corporations do not make secret agreements with criminal groups in order to harm their competitors
- I want to note that a hell of a lot of players are just afraid to do this (dunno why).

Playing as criminals requires the use of brains and imagination. In order for a merchant to risk flying through the criminals, he\she must understand that something interesting may await him\her, other than stupid extortion of money. It's not for pew-pew at each other and not for pew-pew on the pebbles. And especially not for playing the “W” button simulator. This is why piracy is “boring”, not because the prices on some bases are not "correct".

---

How about putting some small loot into NPC transports to make piracy fun again?

You can pirate actual players. What you refer to is called NPC farming, sometimes also called grinding.