4Game

FOREWORD: Could you all kindly criticize my mechanic change proposal, prior to my posting it on the official suggestion forum? My apologies for the formatting; I originally wrote this in Notepad++. Thanks.

This proposal intends to address the issue with Piracy, that being that it's essentially infeasible in any ship larger than a
Cobra Mk III. This is due to the player's inability to steal and collect cargo in a way that is relatively reliable and reasonably
expedient. The changes that would make this 'profession' balanced, feasible, and fun should be relatively minor, without any new
assets needing to be created.

The specific issues with Piracy are:

• Cargo tends to be thrown across large distances, and decays quickly.
• Hatch Breaker Limpets leech cargo from target ships relatively slowly.

The below are changes addressed at each of these points.

(1) Emergency Inertia Dampeners

The name of the above is a lore excuse to implement a mechanic change – when a ship's drive module(s) is/are destroyed, the ship should respond as it would were the Thruster's manually disabled by the pilot – bringing the ship to a full stop over a short period of time. This is as opposed to the current mechanic, where destroying a ship's thrusters causes it to react as if the pilot had disabled flight assist and left the pilot's seat.

The reason for this is that a moving ship is an unsuitable candidate for regular piracy. Unless the player intends to use a smash and grab mentality when stealingcargo, a moving target moves erratically, and when it's cargo hatch is attacked or a hatch breaker is attached, it throws cargo across a very wide volume of space, causing the player to either lose track of the cargo's location and have it despawn due to distance, or have the cargo decay and be destroyed automatically before the player has a chance to pick it up. This also creates a lot of tedious playtime, having to chase cargo canisters across open space.

Should this change be implemented, pirates would now have the ability to stop a target ship – allowing the cargo dropped to remain in vaguely the same area, so collector limpets can effectively collect the cargo (as they do during mining operations). This also facilitates another necessary gameplay mechanic – the targeted destruction of specific ship subsystems that entirely prevent piracy from occurring – this is, say, using a small beam laser as a scalpel to disable a point defense turret, without accidentally destroying the ship, as you might with an explosive weapon.

Lastly, unlike players, NPC's do not 'fear' for their lives, or in a more real sense, their ships, and are likely to do things that a player would know never to do – such as to reboot/repair the thrusters and attempt an escape after having been subdued, having sustained likely high damage already, and being within a very close distance to a pirate ship with it's weapons deployed. To counteract this in a way that remains balanced for PvP engagements, I have a few ideas:

• Hatch Breakers could interrupt Reboot/Repair & AFMU processes once the limpet completes it's task;
• Presence of players within sensor range, without the presence of system security, could force the NPC to remain still.

(2) Hatch Breaker Change – Leech Speed, By Rating, Class

Currently, the hatch breaker limpet controller does not scale well. There is no reason to install one above class 1A, as higher classes only serve to increase the amount of limpets you can fire at a time, which is not useful. I suggest that larger hatch breaker limpet controllers (by class) increase the base amount of cargo that is dropped per use of the limpet, while the grade can affect the limpet's flight characteristics.

Using the Class 1A Hatch Breaker Limpet Controller as a base module, here's my suggestion for the improved version:

Cargo Canisters dropped per use:

• Class 5: 20-40
• Class 7: 40-80
• Class 3: 10-20
• Class 1: 5-10

Characteristics:

• Grade A: 500 m/s: Can Pass Through Shields
• Grade B: 450 m/s: Can Pass Through Shields
• Grade C: 400 m/s; No Shield Pass-Through Ability
• Grade D: 350 m/s; No Shield Pass-Through Ability
• Grade E: 300 m/s; No Shield Pass-Through Ability

I think this is all that's really needed to bring piracy back as a feasible and fun experience in Elite: Dangerous. For those that read this, please give me your criticism. Thank you for reading.