#Pirate ships threat

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

nova inlet
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Is it just me or the pirates are overall very weak ? I feel like most of the times they will just slowly crawl next to you while starring at you menacingly.
In my experience they open fire when they are around 500 meters to you, so you can just begin to shoot them before they can approach and make them flee.
The only time where they are dangerous is when you actually have 0 defence equipment and there is no vilcy ship around, which does not happen often. Moreover the music or visual clues warns you a good chunk of time before the actual confrontation.

I feel like the encounters would be much more interesting if pirates were actually a threat with decent chances of severely damaging you ship, for example you would be forced to prefire them just using the info of your lidar or it would make wingmen interesting to hire.
It would be cool to add difficulty/aggressivity to the AI.

grave acorn
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Especially in a roid field, combat can be difficult

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Microwave? Say goodbye to autopilot!

Coilguns/railguns? Rapid fire doomsday devices that will severely damage your modules when they hit

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You do the exact same damage to them though, which makes sense

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It’s really a matter of “who shoots and deals the most damage first”

There are no shields and the only cover you have is the impact absorber and the roids.

nova inlet
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I don't totally understand what you mean. Do you mean that you think interaction with pirates is balanced ?

honest granite
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They are pirates. They fly old half broken ships with misaligned weapons and malfunctioning equipment. They are not suppose to be a real danger if you know how to deal with them and have the right tools.

primal flax
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I started always bringing a gungnir with me for self-defense, and a few well placed shots will end most fights.

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The best part is you can charge it as soon as you see the enemy on LIDAR, so once they're within visual range you already have on shot fully charged.

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Usually the first shot makes them back off or try to run, and a few lower charge shots to their reactor will make them loose all their propellant. After that it's up to you if you wanna let them drift, grab the ship, or blow it up and collect the life pod.

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However Arzach, I think you do have one good point in that it seems like they don't try to shoot at you until they're very close, and that's super easy to abuse to take them out with minimal damage. Most of the time I take damage from running into iceroids while aiming my gungnir, and not from the actual pirates.

runic niche
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I personally use the 600p laser set to maximum power output and highest frequency

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It does like zero hull damage but it overheats their reactor and then

honest granite
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i have it set up in opposite way to just make a hole and then extract the ship. I do agree that they should engage you from longer range

rotund star
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Half the time they don't even try and shoot me, actually they generally run in terror as soon as they see my Transponder

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Even if they shoot me, it is generally wild burst fire that mostly misses.

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Then again, I have killed/hunted many of them

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Still the only variant of them that really poses much of threat is the ||Converted S&R Vehicle with 4 Mass Drivers||

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Which is generally able to put a lot of holes in my ship

grave acorn
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yup, I’ve met that thing

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big OOF moment

rotund star
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The only thing that scares me in this game, I would rather fight the ||REDACTED D20 Ship|| than that

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Is how fast that thing can demolish my ship

honest granite
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i just watch them spin while i microwave em... kinda like watching your food being reheated

rotund star
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Oh yea, it is not scary unless you don't have a Microwave on your ship XD

honest granite
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what scares me are rogue roids... i have veeeery bad memories with those

lapis mountain
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When you want to exort someone for some money, it's counter-productive to blow them up fist. There is an in-universe reason why pirate ships act this way. There are also encounters with different skill and agression levels, depeneding on your actions.

There is also an in-universe way to get them to actually want to kill you, which will make these encounters much more deadly.

nova inlet
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Alright ! I guess I need to play a little more in order to see all they are capable of

primal flax
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||Granted they don't try to talk to me anymore and just try to kill me on sight, but they are still free food for my spc. Maybe if you get them pissed off enough, they could send a small fleet of 3-5 ships, kinda like those death squads from Fallout NV when you REALLY pissed off one of the factions?||

rotund star
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||They have a Home Base. Fairly sure you can blow it up or give the Co-Ordinates to someone who can||

south prawn
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I feel like encounters are properly balanced. If something, I'd like bounty hunters, including ||Big bad wolf|| to be upgunned slightly. Because it makes sense for them to be slightly above average. Although just like pirates, they live off the paid fees, not guns fired.

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Plus if they get you with a burst and you got no maintenance drones - it's pretty much a oneshot anyways, just delayed in time

lapis mountain
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Interestingly, there is currently a discussion over the Steam forums claiming that some encounters are too difficult: https://steamcommunity.com/app/846030/discussions/2/4032475487618571115/

Vilcy ships shoot at the player from extreme ranges :: ΔV: Rings of...

I'm escalating this to a bug report since this shouldn't be how the game works. Some ships, particularly those from the bounty hunters, can shoot at the player from way beyond visual range. For example here is a good dive ruined by a ship spawning in at around 4km or more and imminently opening accurate fire on the player: https://steamcommunity...

runic niche
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What the

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I wonder if it's possible they're seeing shots fired at pirate ships by vilcy ships that miss and just keep going

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Like I've seen shots fired by vilcy ships that are far away but it's always while they're near a pirate ship

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So I assume it's just from their fight

primal flax
# rotund star ||They have a Home Base. Fairly sure you can blow it up or give the Co-Ordinates...

||I've tried to just for lulz, firing different types of weapons at it's reactors for several minutes but nothing happened. The station would get that purple static effect and the reactors would leak propellant, making that statIion spin, but they never showed any signs of actually melting down. Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but it seems like the weaponry available to the player isn't enough. If you ever encounter a destroyed habitat, one of your crew will even say "Mining equipment didn't do this, somebody came at this place with some serious hardware"||

rotund star
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||Yea, but if you pay attention to the lore, if the location was leaked, to the right people, it would get destroyed via bombardment by Warship||

rotund star
# runic niche So I assume it's just from their fight

No they blew up the ||BBW|| because it was lagging their game, then complained that the enemy was opening fire and hitting them at extreme ranges. Koder checked, no bug. Just you know, actions having consquences. But I do agree with the OP, that they should not have accuracy that good, at that range. I don't think the encounter is too hard (In terms of them shooting on sight) but I do think that they should probably not have perfect accuracy, unless they are close enough that they can actually draw a bead on the player

runic niche
grave acorn
rotund star
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They Killed it, the Ships that were Sniping them were normal Vilcy ships

grave acorn
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sounds like the vilcy ships got good aim then

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the NDCI AP is probably equipped on them

lapis mountain
rotund star
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Ah, Perception Bias because of ROF

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Still, they are seeing the player before the player can see them, making it difficult to react in ANY reasonable way

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On the other hand: Blowing something that important up should have major consequences, part of me feels there is an aspect of "My Actions had Serious Consquences? No it has to be bugged, no way they can hit me that accurately Did not see how many rounds they fired to score that hit PLZ NERF"

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Anyway it all comes down to "They are weak, outside of one Encounter, there is a way to make them more dangerous, but most people have not found it"

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I do like the Idea of a "Defenders of the Anarchy" Special encounter type, if you are posing a Threat, they may band together to eliminate you, before you pose a larger threat (Given most miners likely treat Bribing the Anarchy as a Cost of doing Business/Rely on the Vilcy. I feel like the number of Miners that would actually fight back are low........ Just a feeling, they don't expect much resistance from people not flying Vilcy Transponders)

lapis mountain
worthy terrace
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I also want a higher difficulty. Challenging is not challenging enough kek_og

Like, I can counter 2-3 ships with my titan and a single laser. This feels too easy.

Tbh, they once (1) tried to flank me. I liked that.

rotund star
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Honestly they don't really seem to shoot at me, most of the time they seem more interested in fleeing than fighting.

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Like, the Vilcy seem to be much more aggressive and have better aim

primal flax
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I think the individual pirate ships are fine as they are, difficulty wise. It makes sense in-lore for the pirates to have ships in poor condition, with poorly trained crews. However, I think that it would be interesting to occasionally run into veteran pirates with more powerful ships and better trained crews. That or maybe you could sometimes encounter more than one pirate, as it would make sense for them to hunt in packs. (this is separate form the "death squad" idea that I mentioned a while ago)

rotund star
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Honestly, would love to see some "Legendary Pirates" who have modified their Ships with Jury Rigged modifications, like extra Armour, Hardpoints or improvised weapons built into the Hull. If you manage to drag one back, in order to use them, you have to invest a LOT into getting them Retrofitted to meet safety Standards (At least some of this is implied to be bribes to inspectors). But that would probably have to be Major Update Content. Since it would require a lot of model work

cerulean thicket
cerulean thicket
lapis mountain
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It gives you a direction towards a possible target, so you can point your ship there and shoot bullets, even if you don't see your target on your drone feed.

primal flax
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I exclusively use the high-resolution LIDAR in combination with the MA-337 autopilot. While this combo does have a few downsides, the high resolution combined with the LIDAR overlay allow me to reliably spot and track contacts even on the very edge of LIDAR range (~3km), which is very useful both for intercepting targets, and avoiding ringroids when traveling at high speed.

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I can detect an enemy on LIDAR long before they get into (effective) firing range, and have a fully charged SPC shot ready for them once they are within visual range.