Does Piracy Pay?

[Darth_Lopez]

Does the piracy pay? I've never really tried it before but I find myself becoming increasingly curious after installing a secure trade warehouse on my fleet carrier?

[Dolphin Bottlenose]

It pays, but not a much as a pirate would want it to be. It explains why pirates' children often go to bed being hungry.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

Just be on the lookout for the one with the BIG haul.

[St0rmFury]

Originally posted by Hobo Misanthropus:

Just be on the lookout for the one with the BIG haul.

Looks like the rumors were right...

[Sivi]

Piracy appears to be lacking financial incentive, you can quickly earn more by doing standard money making activities. I'd say it lends itself more to a role playing exercise. I have a Hauler just for transporting shady people about or for ferrying stolen goods. You could quite easily buy a dedicated pirate vessel and kit it out for intercepting ships with juicy cargo to scratch that itch, but I wouldn't rely on it as your main source of income.

[Hobo Misanthropus]

I have a very self-indulgent wish for Piracy. I don't think it would require a lot of fundamental changes, but it would require quite a few serious changes, so typically I don't like to go on flights of fancy like this. Having said that, if I were to have a magic wand to fix something in the game, I would wave it to redesign piracy using the Megaships as the core pillar of Piracy gameplay.

Some megaships are on a scheduled rotation around the galaxy, and every Server tick, they change position. So the first step in my never-gonna-happen piracy redesign is, just like Pirates of ye olden tymes, intelligence and navigation. You need to learn about your mark. Megaship "Heists" should provide ridiculous amounts of rewards. not just credits, but also materials for engineering. A mining ship might have tons of Raw elementals in addition to valuable cargo. A Dredger may have salvage like Manufactured material, potentially filing your entire hold with one good heist. Science vessels have banks of data, etc. You need to learn what you want and when you have a mark where it will be, and when it will be most vulnerable ( Anarchy or Low security systems) because it is those low security systems you will have the most time and least resistance.

So phase 1 is learning your mark. Phase 2 is action. Now, I actually think this is one mechanic where Odyssey's features can be made to shine. A high-risk boarding action, instead of using limpets, to disable security, neutralize the defenses, and release the spoils. The megaships themselves are functionally identical in this sense to Ground Settlements, with the exception that you must (Instead of simply can) request docking. The megaships themselves are, in essence, shells hiding a typical odyssey settlement. Your lines of sight are much more compromized creating some interesting stealth gameplay opportunity, but, as far as I know, functionally there's nothing that stops any of this from functioning. In fact, it might even be easier for pathfinding, making combat more challenging. So on board, it functions much the same, fight or stealth your way to key areas to disable alarms, defenses, release the resources/disable firewall for data. I think you see the point.

Phase 3 is exit, and that is either triggered when you have a catastrophic failure (Alarms sounded) in which case, the ATR is summoned immediately, your Notoriety is set to maximum if it wasn't there already, and Omnipol marines begin showing up on the Megaship. Your vessel is locked in the bay, and you must override it in the hardest to access, and most well-guarded room: Flight control. If you succeed in not alerting the authorities, you can begin collection, much the same way you do in the normal megaship content. Canisters will have been released, or datapoints would have become vulnerable to hacking via the ship.

overall in my opinion, a good "Megaship Heist" should take around an hour, but the rewards should not just be commensurate with the time investment, but the risk. I mean like, you should come out with maximum grade 5 materials in several relevant categories, fifty or more million credits in plunder, and a legal profile that means you probably can't approach any other megaship without immediately being shot at, for the next 24 hours of in-game time.

[Sighman]

In Update 12 or 13 they made all anarchy settlements buy stolen goods at the black markets. So, at least you have somewhere to sell the stuff.

[Alrik]

Originally posted by Darth_Lopez:

Does the piracy pay? I've never really tried it before but I find myself becoming increasingly curious after installing a secure trade warehouse on my fleet carrier?

No, it doesn't pay.
If you only play Elite Dangerous to make as much credits as possible stay away from it and do trade loops or mining instead.

Being a pirate is also very hard.
You have to find your target, put them out of supercruise, take down shields & thrusters, use hatchbreaker & collector limpets, find a place to sell the stolen goods.
Why should anyone find that kind of gameplay intersting?
Flying cargo from station A to station B is much more easier.

[Planewalker]

Certain types of cargo can only be obtained via piracy.

Small payouts are in part due to the tie-in with the BGS.

Some ships haul larger amounts of LTDs..

[WolfenZorg]

Originally posted by Alrik:

Originally posted by Darth_Lopez:

Does the piracy pay? I've never really tried it before but I find myself becoming increasingly curious after installing a secure trade warehouse on my fleet carrier?

No, it doesn't pay.
If you only play Elite Dangerous to make as much credits as possible stay away from it and do trade loops or mining instead.

Being a pirate is also very hard.
You have to find your target, put them out of supercruise, take down shields & thrusters, use hatchbreaker & collector limpets, find a place to sell the stolen goods.
Why should anyone find that kind of gameplay intersting?
Flying cargo from station A to station B is much more easier.

Also once you destroyed your target's thrusters you'll have to stop the target from moving, so your limpets don't autodestroy. This is by far the most annoying part of piracy.

This activity should be done in group, you can look for rare cargos & comoditties, but you'll never make descent amount of money.

[ZombieHunter]

No it does not pay. It use to but several changes made it next to unprofitable. PVP pirating never paid but it was always a good way to get some interesting in-game role play reactions and meet new players.