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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Should a city be able to ban/allow pirate ships from docking?
Jettatura
Member, Alpha Two
Naval piracy is a dangerous and infamous job, but its promise for riches, only come a success against the odds, could be astronomical, even for the common crewman. As all things on Verra, piracy would be a form of """business,""" though admittedly a corrupt and selfish one. There would be costs to build or procure a ship as well as costs for repairs, necessary supplies, and crew. No band of pirates can survive if their costs outweigh their profits, and so they plunder, but in such a way that minimizes losses.
On the other side of this delicate balance, a city would have ships that travel across the open seas, ferrying goods, people, and armaments to project force upon an enemy to other nodes. There will come a time when a ship or flotilla isn't prepared for a proportionally threatening pirate assault. The result in this case: either they're boarded and their loot is taken away, or the crew is left sucking seawater until they reach the locker at the bottom of the deep blue. In this moment, the pirates win. But this begs an important question: now what?
The obvious answer would be "land at port, sell your loot, fix the ship, and start aweigh we go," but where would they go to dock in the first place? They're pirates! Their activity isn't exactly "legal," and while lucrative, they're pirates. Allying with them can lead to negative influence with other cities. It wouldn't be fair to let them dock just anywhere, and even if that is the case, a city's navy could be launched specifically to keep that from happening. In the game of politics, playing the part is important, and in the case of pirates, being their friend can make your city someone else's enemy.
SO. Would it make sense for a mayor to to have the power to publicly allow or disallow pirate activity in their port city? Essentially, setting this up as a policy would set how ships of a certain port would interact with pirate ships, and ideally vice versa. Non-pirate ships from pirate ports would perhaps have a different colored circle around them to indicate if they're allied (or at least complacent) with a pirate's line of business. It would also mean that pirates would gain the ability to build and repair their ships at these ports, as well as trade any goods they plunder.
Perhaps, instead of simply allowing pirates to exist in a port, this proposed policy would instead make the city become a pirate city, one hub in a network that allows the staging of pirate ships as well as the trading of their loot. Regardless, it would implicitly turn these cities into enemies of the cities whose ships they sink, so there has to be some sort of balance in knowing which ports are their enemy.
Anyways, what do you guys think about this? How should pirate ships interact with the ports of other cities?
On the other side of this delicate balance, a city would have ships that travel across the open seas, ferrying goods, people, and armaments to project force upon an enemy to other nodes. There will come a time when a ship or flotilla isn't prepared for a proportionally threatening pirate assault. The result in this case: either they're boarded and their loot is taken away, or the crew is left sucking seawater until they reach the locker at the bottom of the deep blue. In this moment, the pirates win. But this begs an important question: now what?
The obvious answer would be "land at port, sell your loot, fix the ship, and start aweigh we go," but where would they go to dock in the first place? They're pirates! Their activity isn't exactly "legal," and while lucrative, they're pirates. Allying with them can lead to negative influence with other cities. It wouldn't be fair to let them dock just anywhere, and even if that is the case, a city's navy could be launched specifically to keep that from happening. In the game of politics, playing the part is important, and in the case of pirates, being their friend can make your city someone else's enemy.
SO. Would it make sense for a mayor to to have the power to publicly allow or disallow pirate activity in their port city? Essentially, setting this up as a policy would set how ships of a certain port would interact with pirate ships, and ideally vice versa. Non-pirate ships from pirate ports would perhaps have a different colored circle around them to indicate if they're allied (or at least complacent) with a pirate's line of business. It would also mean that pirates would gain the ability to build and repair their ships at these ports, as well as trade any goods they plunder.
Perhaps, instead of simply allowing pirates to exist in a port, this proposed policy would instead make the city become a pirate city, one hub in a network that allows the staging of pirate ships as well as the trading of their loot. Regardless, it would implicitly turn these cities into enemies of the cities whose ships they sink, so there has to be some sort of balance in knowing which ports are their enemy.
Anyways, what do you guys think about this? How should pirate ships interact with the ports of other cities?
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Comments
Yeah, I kind of don't see how the game could implement pirates without building a system specifically for them.
And even then, they would need to include a reason for players to use it.
When I say it's a corrupt business, I mean the act of taking from others is """unethical.""" Whether or not it builds "CORRUPTION" isn't actually my focus. My focus is on the ship and the goods.
As captain of [ship], it would be real f'd up if I watch a ship launch from the same port as me, sinks my ship, and then finishes my trade route.
As mayor of [city name,] it would be real f'd up if I had no say in whether or not goods stolen from my allies get sold in my city.
Open pvp? That's fine. Let any ship attack and steal from any other ship! But then, if the plundering ship acquires loot from their latest victim, why let them dock at the city whose ship they just sunk?
The dilemma is specifically about how ships that steal are handled when they attempt to dock at a port. How should a city be able to handle that? Just let blood money paint any city red? Does this mean pirates have no allegiance to any city? That might as well mean no city could ever suffer repercussion from their neighbors if, say 40% of all pirate ships decide that THIS city's port is prime real estate for trading and repairs. At that point, your port BECOMES a pirate port by virtue of business, and no one has any say in it but the pirates! Is that the direction naval content will take? Or should piracy be something a city opts into and out of?
Or maybe the trade packs they just took becomes marked as plundered. Maybe its icon is marked with the insignia of a city they're not from, or maybe the icon changes to one stained with blood. Now, they can't just sell it to ANYONE. Now they'd have to go to a port that works as a fence, selling their stolen goods there so as to drop suspicion.
Even if all they do is mark trade packs by city, military ports could be used to inspect ships' cargo to reduce piracy.
Crime shouldn't always pay is all I'm saying. I get that the ocean is lawless, but there ARE laws once you reach the port, right??
Ah so you're purely in it for the RP. Well, as for as cities taking questionable materials, "ask no questions hear no lies"
You would start by marking the goods. As long as the goods were marked, a pirate wouldn't be able to sell them anywhere, disrupting a city's economy in the process.
No more than if the original owners turned them or sold them at the same place.
If players can't utilize their loot, why would they partake in that activity?
That should include "pirates". I dunno the details of how that might extend to ships.
Loot from caravans (trade ships) drops as certificates. Those certificates have to be cashed in at point of origin. So the people that looted it have to go to where that caravan came from. This also stops people from starting a caravan, blowing it up right outside the gates, taking the loss on sunk materials, picking up the certs and taking them across the map with no weight and less risk.
Enemy of the State costs to put someone on the list increase each one added. So trying to create blanket ban lists would probably take massive amounts of resources that your citizens would probably want spent on other things.
Any Mayor can declare players enemies of the State. That doesn't make them corrupted, but it probably means they'll be tagged somehow to that node's citizens and/or inside that node's ZoI, so it might not be a good idea to go to that Node, especially if city guards attack you by default.
So if a node/mayor does not welcome "bad people" in it, then they can use that mechanic and it should be enough.
Where did you get that information? I'm not sure I like this idea, but regardless of my taste, I don't know if it's true. Nor the wiki nor its references confirm or deny that:
I hope that you're not making the assumption that rewarding killers of enemies of the state is costly, because I imagine you can just set the reward as 1 copper.
How so? Sure they can sell it, marked or not
Pretty sure the certs carry the same weight as the materials. Otherwise you wouldn't need a caravan in the first place. Mind linking where it says the weight and the fact that the certs must be turned in where they came from?
I'm not even sure why or how blanket bans on ships would be a thing.
40 players might still be too high a cost though.
Im sure there will be consequences or pirates and people know for their skill or actions. If you want to police them which I think is cool and all that should be up to the players to create a counter group against them and hunt them down. That is where the fun starts for this kind of content with player interaction, not player prevention.
Nah its true.
And wiki page caravans
If someone is building a notorious reputation in an area being able to put a BOLO for him and ban him from your market.
Fits risk vs reward nicely too
I mean why would certifcates be as heavy as the actual resources??
That would be bizarre. Where and why would that be a thing?
Why would you need a caravan to carry 100 times your carrying capacity then?
There is however one, simple, inescapable fact. It dropped certificates. Not materials.
If they wanted weight, they'd give you materials. You drop certificates on death, so it's not to protect from that. It can have only one purpose: To make it so that looting a caravan isn't entirely useless because a person can't carry more than a tiny fraction of the loot away after. Caravans exist to carry far more than a player can.
Certs are the way that players can loot a caravan at all.
Having to take them back to the node of origin only reinforces this interpretation. The only purpose such a rule can have is to prevent players from exploiting and bypassing the system by carrying materials to their destination in larger quantities than a normal inventory could. Otherwise it would just be normal gameplay.
Competent developers don't add pointless systems. The only valid assumption is that you can carry more "Iron Ore Certificates" than you can carry Iron Ore.
They transport the normal goods, you merely drop certificates if you loot it @Dolyem
Ah I see, I was under the impression that the caravan converted the goods into certificates to be turned in and were just lootable. But that makes sense.
You loot certs, because otherwise the bandits couldn't really loot it thanks to inventory space