Make frigates feel fear!

[amimai]

Dear Alien star fleet command

 

Now I consider myself a reasonable person, but I do like my simple pleasures in life. Thus onboard my finest battleship, within my grand fleet I keep my personal harem of 10000 lovely slave girls. Unfortunately it seems that certain members of several alien races take offence at this, and in what i assume is an attempt at humour, you send tiny little frigates at me to try and "rescue" my harem from the lap of luxury.

 

Now I am not one to shoot the messenger, but let us be clear here, ONE DOES NOT MESS WITH ANOTHER ONES HAREM hence I am in a bit of a conundrum... I do like your nation, I really do, but that will not stop me from razing it to the ground if you keep this up!

 

Kind Regards

 

Amimai

Grand empress of the Terran Empire

[MrVorgra]

If I am reading this right, this is a lesbian slave harem?

[Tsunamik]

Hot

[amimai]

It's a pet peeve of mine, I understand that there needs to be some enforcement of the law, but the sheer suicidal bravery displayed by the peacekeepers in most games makes me sigh...

 

It's simply not realistic that a cop in a dinky 100tone frigate will pull up to a warships in the middle of a fleet of similarly sized warships and try to "enforce the law". I like to think a preference to self preservation would prevent this.

 

Because if said frigate expects me to surrender my lesbian slave harem, they will soon find out exactly how large the bore diameter of my main gun is...

[Thundercraft]

It's simply not realistic that a cop in a dinky 100tone frigate will pull up to a warships in the middle of a fleet of similarly sized warships and try to "enforce the law". I like to think a preference to self preservation would prevent this...

 

Heh. At the very least, one would expect them to phrase it in the form of a polite reminder and request and preceding said request with the word "Please..." ;D

 

In all seriousness, though, I recall reading something about player-created factions as an upcoming feature. I would hope that NPC factions would not try to enforce their laws on player factions, because to do otherwise is just asking for all-out war. It would be undiplomatic and unrealistic.

 

If merely joining a player-made faction which doesn't mind it's members hauling "questionable" cargo makes players immune to such, then I'd say that's more-or-less good enough. Though, I guess it would be nice to see a size rule on trying to enforce cargo laws.

[Tsunamik]

Well for such cases, i would introduce "reinforcements system", if policeman wants to enforce the law and you don´t comply, he could summon few squads of battleships for assistance :)

[amimai]

I already have a few squads of battleships in the system... and they are bigger then yours!(obligatory penis joke is obligatory)

[Thundercraft]

Well for such cases, i would introduce "reinforcements system", if policeman wants to enforce the law and you don´t comply, he could summon few squads of battleships for assistance :)

 

Meh. Because ships can only travel so fast in this game, any reinforcements won't show up for a long while. By the time they do arrive and approach said location, any "smuggler" could be long gone, along with the illegal goods they carry. A so-called "show of force" means nothing if the only actual force worth showing is located several systems over.

 

Then there's the intimidation factor. Crews on comparatively small ships should be quaking in their boots at the thought of threatening a whole fleet or a huge ship. Sure, a trade enforcement task force can be brave. But if they don't have the power to back up their threats, that's being blatantly stupid. Even if they belong to a powerful faction, if they have wait for backup, then they're either as good as dead or are an embarrassment to their faction by being ignored.

 

(Idea: It would be particularly evil of a faction to engage hyperspace jammers AND shut down all gates in a system after illegal goods are detected to prevent their escape. Can you imagine? Though, even if they only do it to enforce trade laws, shutting down a system's gates would likely have huge repercussions for trade and be a huge hit in terms of trust in regard to merchants and other factions.)

 

It'd be much more effective and realistic if they called for backup first, wait for them to arrive, approach a smuggler, engage hyperspace jammers, then contact a smuggler about their illicit cargo. Granted, the smuggler will probably be gone by then. But, at least they won't embarrass their faction or waste their lives and ships needlessly. Besides: If a route is worth smuggling illicit goods once, then smugglers will probably use it again.

 

Currently, though, the illegal cargo system is pretty broken. All factions scan player ships regularly. And they enforce their cargo laws religiously, no matter a player's relations to their faction. No matter how profitable, no illicit cargo pays enough to compensate for the huge hits to rep for destroying their ships. Players can be hostile to some factions, but they can't afford to be at war with all of them. Anyway, shipping legit cargo is plenty profitable and pays almost as good.

 

The only way it pays is if you ignore them and are in a ship that's able to outrun them. But even that strategy is fraught with peril because of how easy it is to accidentally hand over our illicit cargo and pay their fines. (See the Please stop spacebar from auto-paying space police topic for details.)

 

Oh, and then there's how there's currently no way to obtain a permit to haul cargo like guns or warheads legally. There should definitely be a way for a player with excellent relations with a faction to either purchase or earn permits to haul cargo like that. We see other merchants haul such cargo all the time.

[cy414]

cant say my harem is quite so impressive, but i had similar, less polite feelings towards pirates whos ships take all of 3 seconds to destroy.

ambushes dont work when your foe is significantly stronger than you AND you spread your forces out so much they cant even focus fire as a group.

[thedamnatus]

This is a problem I've encountered in pretty much every RPG-ish game I've played. There's simply no intimidation factor. You're playing game X, wearing level 999 post-endgame items Y, wielding a weapon Z of 9999999 damage but there's still that one group of level 6 bandits-pirates-mobs-whatever who charges at you screaming "LOOK WHO SHOWED UP! GET READY TO DIE LITTLE ONE!", disintegrating when you simply look at them wrongly.

[cy414]

Oh, and then there's how there's currently no way to obtain a permit to haul cargo like guns or warheads legally. There should definitely be a way for a player with excellent relations with a faction to either purchase or earn permits to haul cargo like that. We see other merchants haul such cargo all the time.

that and the number of available resource scarcity missions that ask you to haul this cargo for that faction.

admittedly, i havnt taken any of those on yet.

[Mr. Nova]

So what is the suggestion in this post again?

 

All I see are attempts are role-playing.