Make being a pirate bearable.

[Hyugat]

Pirate players have it really hard early game. It is next to impossible to start with it, and being a pirate only gives you a couple systems you can jump to. I propose we at least flesh out that part of the game a little bit by possibly adding some missions to get into piracy, some way to get law enforcement off your back temporarily, possibly making interference plating make it so it's harder to detect you as a pirate, and also locking out things like escort missions and such. There are many other things we could probably do too, and I think something definitely should be done to flesh out this aspect of the game. I would be willing to discuss these ideas further if people think that piracy needs to be expanded upon at this current time.

[Amazinite]

The pirate experience is definitely something I'm interested in expanding upon.
In #1935 when I was first trying to add pirate jobs, I also added a set of missions where the player could reset their reputation with all the law-abiding governments. The number of times you could do this was limited though.

[Amazinite]

485bb36 I went ahead and removed the Hunted by State missions. (The hired gun fleet and variants are still in the game though because plugins may be using them.) That should help a bit to make the pirate life more bearable.

[Hyugat]

What if you could bribe someone to temporarily change your rep with any of the main governments? I think think that could be good and it could increase in price depending on CR or ship types maybe

[starscollide5]

I played as a pirate in one of my recent games.

The main problem is being attacked by escorts whom player is supposed to protect, this is simply ridiculous and greatly increases difficulty.

Another problem is that if you attack another pirate for whatever reason, your reputation with them - regardless of how high it was prior to this act - is immediately ruined, so you end up hunted by all sides immediately - until you kill some merchants that is, or enough pirates to restore your reputation with other human factions.

Hired guns hidden mission was actually fun and pleasant experience - it gives player a chance to get a Bactrian in easy and straightforward manner, instead of the messy missions (messy because of timers between them making playthrough a pain - actual storyline is great).

I'd like to add that defeating Hired Guns is doable even in single human medium warship without alien gear. It is way easier than fighting bounty hunters with engine variations of Marauder Falcon or Marauder Leviathan.

[Hyugat]

hired guns was not the problem, it was more so difficulty of accessing certain tech and regions of space.

[Amazinite]

Hired guns were a problem of many.
As for obtaining new tech, #4578 should help out with that a little, having more ships now be sold from pirate worlds.

[Galaucus]

I gotchu fam, we've got a smuggling overhaul in the works, a way to become pirate already PR'd.

Not really sure what could be done about getting the space cops off your back once you've already ticked them off, though - at least not without some serious changes to reputation systems.

Should the relevant PRs be linked to this issue?

[Amazinite]

Not really sure what could be done about getting the space cops off your back once you've already ticked them off, though - at least not without some serious changes to reputation systems.

While it might make sense to have some sort of limited use or otherwise difficult to use reputation reset, I think that making it more bearable (as the issue name states) to be hostile with law enforcement in the first place should be more the aim, as opposed to making it easy to get the law off your back. I believe that I've described elsewhere that I think that a combination of #4039, adding more (neutral) landing locations (i.e. more save points, e.g. uninhabited planets, hidden outposts), increasing system sizes, and rebalancing speeds ship (such as in #5779) would be a big step toward making being a pirate more reasonable.

You'd be less likely to run into law enforcement given the reduced fleet frequencies, when you do run into law enforcement they'll initially be further away from you given the increased system size, you'll be more likely to run away from them and survive even if they do get close because the larger law enforcement ships that you're more likely to die to would be slower than the likely smaller ship that you're using, and if all else fails and you die in combat then you're more likely to respawn close to where you died (i.e. lost less progress) because of the increased number of landing locations. (All these changes also go both ways, making merchant players less likely to get blasted by pirates.)

(Improvements to illegal goods/fines/smuggling on top of all that is also important for making pirate gameplay more fun, but not particularly my top priority when it comes to making pirate gameplay more bearable.)

[Zitchas]

Yeah, I agree with what Amazinite said here.

I don't think we should have many reputation resets at all. The more we have, the less reputation actually means anything.

The focus should be on providing more in-flight decision time:

• More places to take cover (uninhabited "planets", asteroids (if we get actual asteroid belts, having an uninhabited "asteroid" in them that people can land on would be very fitting)
• Expanded ship arrival radius (means players have more time to see what they are arriving into, and more time to see what is arriving. Which means more time to decide if they are running away, running to ground, fighting, or (where possible) bribing.
• Pretty much the whole dirt belt should be pretty tolerant to allowing even people with bad reputations to land. If only because they lack sufficient security measures to prevent someone from landing.
• What about allowing non-mission "land in the backwoods" option, which could be selectively enabled for most worlds. (backwoods landing on, say, Earth, or other worlds with significant fleet presence doesn't make sense outside of missions. For dirt belt, anarchist, or other worlds with tiny and/or poor populations and minimal global security, landing out in the uninhabited areas should be super easy, and something the player can do whenever they want.
• I'd like to see more options for "gray area" gameplay. Smuggling illegal (or, for instance, transporting legal-but-not-in-the-way-they-are-going-about-it stuff. For instance, smuggling antiques to avoid rules on valuable archeological relics. Or transporting diamonds or other valuables in order to avoid paying taxes on them. Stuff that isn't going to give you much (if any) negative rep with the main governments, but nontheless will get you in trouble with the police.
• As far as that goes, having some stuff that will get the police angry at you but not get the Navy involved would be interesting. Might be hard to setup, though. For example, in real life the military generally isn't going to get involved in helping the police give someone a ticket for not declaring their diamonds when they cross the border. Won't even help them chase down the person if they decide to run. But if the person kills a bunch of police and shoots down the police helicopter... The military is going to start paying attention and offering support. (USA military has rules against them being involved in civilian law enforcement internally. I'd imagine the Republic Navy does too, albeit a bit weaker since they are currently the law enforcers of space. I think a good balance would be having them not doing any scanning or law enforcement, but they can be made hostile by the police depending on the situation. (police find atrocity, navy becomes hostile. police find minor illegal thing, navy does NOT become hostile. Any time a police ship is blown up, navy becomes hostile. This means, for instance, that if the police become hostile for some minor illegal thing, the player could theoretically disable the police (or incapacitate them with heat or ion weapons) in order to make their escape without incurring the ire of the navy. The instant they board, capture, or destroy the police, though... Navy becomes hostile.

[LepRyot]

Hey, let player become one of those "disguised merchants" that can appear as bounty targets. Their only enemy is the player, who's specifically looking for them as a bounty hunter, not the Navy, Syndicate or Free Worlds.
With the pirate campaign in the works, it can allow the player to choose between the "smuggling" pirate or a "plundering" type (as opposed to reconciliation and checkmate). In picking the former, the player is guided deeper and deeper in the black market, erasing their presence and removing their trace from the public eye until becoming almost anonymous. At the end, the reward is a license or some other outfit that hides their reputation from other (maybe only human) factions until they engage in combat with someone they're not neutral to. Of course there will be the occasional hunter who tracks you down, but for someone as universally antagonized as a pirate it makes the galaxy much more forgiving