first off, we pirates need a ship that can actually catch traders _and_ hold cargo. today, we can choose between _maybe_ catching a ship and if we do, forget about the cargo. that makes pirating a bit pointless. so, what kind of ship would I like to see?

Corvus Maud MkII, all stats are like the MkI, except two things:

1) the MkII does infiboost at 225.
2) it gets 10 extra normal thrust, and a bit extra turbo thrust.

I'd then also like to see the MkI get 32 cus, while the MkII has the 28 the MkI has today.

now, this should require POS (or maybe call it something else for Corvus), something that will require missions that kill off something like 1K standing from UiT, Serco and Itani all in one. think "assasination"-type mission.

I concur in so many ways that I think I need to go finish this bottle of 768 proof corvus whiskey before I consider anymore methods of concurring.

And then I'm gonna go climb into my ship and come fight people.

I'd like to put in a vote that this Pirate Marauder have not too great armor. I agree that a good pirate ship is a niche that could definetly use filling, but I'm afraid it could be too uber of a ship.

too uber? I really doubt that. with three weapons slots in use, you weigh in at 6000Kgs+ with a light layout, with similar thrust as a Rev C, in _addition_ to being a lot bigger of a target. or rather, look at stats, and keep in mind how often you see a Valk compared to the Rev C, the size matters a great deal in itself, then look at the _size_ of the maud:

Rev C:
Mass: 3200
Spin torque: 7.0Nm
Thrust: 220N
Max speed: 240
Drain: 60
Armor: 7200
Mass / Thrust: 14.5

Valk Vigilant
Mass: 3000
Spin torque: 7.0Nm
Thrust: 220N
Max speed: 240
Drain: 55
Armor: 11000
Mass / Thrust: 14

Corvus Maud MkII
Mass: 4000kg
Spin torque: 7.0Nm
Thrust: 220N
Max speed: 225
Drain: 50
Armor: 13000
Mass / Thrust: 18

Prom MkII:
Mass: 10199
Spin torque: 12Nm
Thrust: 525N
Max speed: 200
Drain: 50
Armor: 18000
Mass / Thrust: 19.42

and these are unloaded numbers. a heavy ship like the Prom MkII does a lot better with a heavy load than the lighter ones.

the Valk is a dogfighter, the Corvus Maud MkII is a multipurpose ship that can do almost any job. but, we can start the ship at 210 or 215N thrust and rather have a little extra turbo boost, it'd fit the role of the ship too.

that being said, this _is_ the pinnacle of the Corvus chain, and something that would cost you the chance to get SkyCommands and Valks. the offer has to be good for anyone to take it, otherwise only die-hard roleplayers will use the ship, most pirates will just fly a Rec C or a Prom instead to pretend to grab cargo.

Erm, that's your choice to mass 6000kg. There's plenty of weapons in the game that you could equip three of & mass less than that. You could easily keep it around 4500kg, less if you really wanted. IMO, a pirate ship should be able to hit fast & hard, but not take much of a beating. Think about it, if you're going after cargo, you'll be attacking Wraiths, Atlases, Centaurs, and Behemoths, with a good bit of cargo mass slowing them down. If you catch one by itself, you should have no problem taking it down. But, if it's got escorts, you should have to have a group too.

Also, unless there's been a patch in the last couple days I missed, the IDF Valk Vigilant's thrust is 215, not 220 (and remember that's multiplied by 1000). IMO it should be 220, but it's not right now.

first off, the Vigilants I own are listed with 220N thrust. I checked that before posting. I check all the ships from my inventory before posting.

anyway, have you _tried_ catching a moth or a centaur recently? even a loaded moth has very few problems making it away today. there is no ship today that can take down a moth on the run, even if the moth is loaded -- unless you get very lucky.

as for massing 4500, yeah, you can use XGXs and mass 4450. sure. but you're going to do what to 45000 armor and 1500N of turbo thrust? beg nicely? also keep in mind that you have 250 energy to use before your battery runs out and you loose turbo, your target does _not_ use energy when running. again, look at the stats, if you keep the Maud at 4500 that's the same as keeping the Valk at 3500, how many do you see do that and win any fights? sure, you might catch a moth (and I say "might", it's actually quite hard even in a Rune, storms are a blessing), but you also have to fire and hit, and do 45000 damage. for the record, the XGX and the Sparrow have the best DPE for small ports, they need around three and a half FC batteries to take down a moth. add aligning and the space that seperates you after a WH...

I see no reason why this ship shouldn't have proper armor either, it's a huge target, one escort should be on toes with this ship anyway. without that armor, you're also going to die from a few proxy mines or swarms. or rather, the Maud is at least designed for combat, the Moth isn't. using the same rationale, we should cut a huge chunk out of that 45K armor too.

BLAK has tested a lot of things to catch moths with, we _test_ a lot of stuff to see what works, I've flown everything from a flare Hornet to a Valk Rune with XGXs to catch moths, everything we have now _sorta_ works, but if it has any chance to catch the moth, it's impossible to touch the cargo.

yes, teamwork is nice. teamwork is great, but a moth meeting a single pirate shouldn't feel completly safe. a single Centaur shouldn't either. I'm KOS with at least two major guilds, I've been attacked at least a dozen times in moths while trading, I've never dropped under 80% from anything but bots unless I've actively sought to fight. heck, I've even been known to turn around and play drop-the-mine with rev cs in a loaded moth.

Hmm, double checked, mine are listed as 220N too. Guess I missed when that was changed. Sorry.

Shape, yodaofborg, and tramshed all say they can take down a running Moth fairly well with a single ship. I'm inclined to believe them.

For mass, there's a lot of loadout options that I think would work, tri-XGX is one of them, but not IMO the best. For piracy, TPG Sparrows would be better, due to their higher damage & DPE; their lower velocity is a drawback, but not a big one when you're going up against trade ships. There's also the option of using heavier hitting weapons, and leaving one port empty, dual positrons would put it at 5000kg. Or you could mix it up, dual posis & a Sparrow, or dual Sparrows and a Gauss. Yes, that's more than the 4500kg, but it's not 6000kg either. And IMO a pirate ship shouldn't win fair fights; it's a pirate ship, it's looking for (near) defenceless traders to attack, not fair fights.

Anyway, I'm not saying it shouldn't be a good ship, I'm just saying IMO it shouldn't be able to catch, kill, carry, and take a serious beating. Catch, kill, and carry yes, fine, that's the whole point, but if it can take a beating too, then why would anyone use anything else? The high Corvus standing requirement would of course keep some players out of it, but then they can't compete with it. They should be able to. I think the best way to do that, while still keeping its functionality for taking down traders, is to cut its armor. Currently the Corvus Marauder has more armor than any of the Valks, if we also give the Marauder more thrust, it'll be able to catch traders more easily, yes, fine; but it'll also match the Valks weapons, maneuverability, and outclass the Valks armor. And as you stated yourself, the Valk is a pure fighter, while the Maud is a multi-purpose vessel, so do you see what's wrong here? And I'm not saying the Maud should be paper-hulled like the Cent, but it should not outclass a Valk.

It would be fun if pirates had a ship matching the best Proms and Valks if the standing system is fixed (ie impossible to be admired here and there at the same time).

But perhaps UIT deserves consideration first? Their special ships are so special that nobody uses them :(

The Marauder class as a whole needs a bit of improvement. If you increase a little bit their thrust, they will be fun to fly again. And please reduce the Corvus Mercenary drain at least to 55m/s; at 60m/s it's just useless compared to a TPG X or an Orion cent, depending on the use.

P.S. "there is no ship today that can take down a moth on the run, even if the moth is loaded -- unless you get very lucky"

I don't think so. With a Vengeance or IDF valk, you are unlucky if you don't get the moth's skin :) Of course, you pirates would do this for 2 or 4 cu...

I think the point he is trying to make is that any ship that can take a moth can not get it's cargo, thus there is no way we can just pirate peoples cargo, meaning we're better off killing people then asking for cargo.

What we need is a Pirate moth. Faster turbo speed only 60 tons cargo space (so it can have a better engin) and every thing the same.

But I do agree that any "pirate ship" should force to to tank all good faction with Itani UIT and Serco before you can get it.

Sun, the idf valk is moth killer, and if your looking for cash, killing the moth isnt the answer, sometimes a pirate has to live off the cargo's too - Its not easy being a pirate either, im admired in one place atm, Orion, because although I did jump on the faction leveling when the trade guild missions came out, usually when I do get a centaur/moth low enough so that the pilot thinks *im dead* they run to a station, blooming traders seem to be admired everywhere these days, hehe. Its expensive living in grey space too, but 2cu isnt enough to carry even 1 Plasma Core, and whats 2cu of Lux goods? nothing.

I do kind of agree with beolach, sure make a ship that can both kill a trade ship, and carry its insides, or give me my damn hog back =) 22cu is loads =) but it does not need hella armor, or we create another prom =(

Pirating is not something that can be profitable, and here we are yet again debating why a ship should be able to do everything while for the past few weeks everyone has been bitching for more group oriented tactics and ship nerfs. Pirates should have to work in teams to get any real money from there actions. They should have fighters that kill the target and a moth or some other "cargo" type ship to hold the booty. Making a pirate ship that can do everything just reinforces the solo game play. I thought that OverKill had a great idea for a pirate ship that he called the "Remora©" that basically when teamed up with it's cruiser ship, and other pirate buddies, could use all there trusters together to overcome a speed differential and exceed any normal max turbo speed. Then when you have reached your target you could attach to it and disable your targets jump and turbo capabilities. Then you could just pick it to death, or force jettison there cargo and leave them be or kill them if that's your pleasure. This to me is a pirate, the details to the ships are in this post --> http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9758

I'm more inclined to ask for the upgrade to the corvus maud on the basis of the fact that its just not all THAT great compared to most of the other combat ships.

Corvus is a cool faction, but what you get from them, their 2 ships, are not super useful.

You may see Corvus vults flyin around Sedina B8, but you don't see Corvus mauds all that often.

If we're following a maud in a ship that can only take 28 cu, we're still going to need teamwork to make the full score. But, this way the crew of MY ship, doesn't have to watch some other greasy pirate put their paws on my share of the loot.

The Corvus Vult used to be my favorite ship, but now its more of a single sector combat ship than a real interceptor.

So you don't trust anyone in [BLAK] to hold loot that you got from killing someone. Sounds like an awesome guild. >_>

But seriosly, minor tweaks to improve a ship is one thing, making a moth that has a thrust to weight ration as a scprom is another. That would be too strong. I still think the Remora© config is perfect for group pirating as well as for the vipers as an anti-pirate capable ship. But I'm sure the devs don't want to develope a new ship so whatever's clever for you is fine.

it's great to talk about team play, but look at the population of the server. earlier today, there were 11 players online, two of which where bots. that's nine players left. to require teamwork to make a living of a roleplaying scenario that's heavily described even in the map itself is just silly under those conditions.

and with regards to people being able to kill moths alone, yeah, but you can only kill it with luck. and the two ships that are used are infiboost cents (8 cus) and a Valk that requires combat 9 and admired standing at someone you're supposed to shoot at, _and_ carries 2 cus... these aren't pirate ships, they're ships for very different tasks that are the best things we have right now.

and still, most attacks fail, and even with success you can't get the cargo so you earn pretty much nothing. the only hope is that someone pays, which they really don't do. give pirates a ship that poses a clear threat and somebody might think of paying.

as for this being an uber ship and a "good at everything"-ship? look at the stats, this isn't a prom, this isn't a rev c, this is a jack-of-all trades, it can do mostly everything, but it's not best at anything. it's a worse dogfighter than the light fighers, it's slower than the really fast ships, it has less armor than the heavy tanks (that are just as agile).

the remora idea is cute, but it requires two things, it requires more people and completly new dev-work with ships. I don't see either happening in the near future.

oh, and if the faction relationships are hard to produce, could one make it so every faction and every station that saw a Corvus Pirate Maud (the MkII) viewed you as KOS when flying one? you couldn't dock at anything but corvus stations, and going into monitored space would bring out strike fleets no matter what your original standings where? it's mostly a suggestion for the devs to deal with the standings in an easier fashion.

We aren't concerned about other BLAK members grabbing the cargo. We're concerned about everyone else.

My technique is to use an IDF valk for chasing. It's awesomely fast and you can put a flare on it along with two energy weapons of your choice. If I catch and destroy a moth or centaur, then I remember where the cargo is, fly off and grab a cargo ship and fly back to retrieve.

yeah, the remora is a neat idea, but seeing as it was suggested a few weeks ago, I doubt implentation would take place within less than 3-4 months.

I've pirated moths in rev c's mostly. But you have to get very lucky (I.e. the other person has to be stupid and decide never to dock after they've been dropped to 20%)

The main problem is that the Moth accelerates so damn fast, its hard to catch up consistently.

A full moth actually outaccelerates a rag with rockets.

well, we tested more today. Seta ran lux goods to you-know-where and we were two or three people chasing. the bottom line is, yes, you can theoretically catch a moth, but not in a running game. the way to catch is to either have a posse waiting for it at the WH (which means a forward scout or warning is needed) and you have that single jump to do the damage needed -- or to have a stupid pilot who'll track a 6-7-8-9K WH sector without bothering to dodge or run. the latter one is what Yoda has done on his own. other than that, you have the nudge tactic, which is close to an exploit.

Martin and I got Seta to 85% from Sedina B8 to his parking in Odia. almost all that damage was done in B8. we still had another 38250 armor to kill. sigh.

something needs to be done about the moth. :-/

You guys deserve a better pirate ship. I see the difficulty in pirating, and the way it is going now, pure pirating is not realy proffitable. It would allso be more fun for us Vipers when traders actually need escorts to make it through grey space. Gives us something else to do then trading or missionless pvp'ing. We actually did a few organised escorted runs with our guild, and it was a hell of a lot of fun to do. It actually gave you a mission and a sence of accomplishment every time the transport docks.

*edit: The marauder would be an excelent choice to make a pirate varient of. It looks mean and is made to haul a lot of cargo after a fight. A litle eye candy suggestion for the maud would be to have no cargo crates dragging behind it, but when you pick up cargo, you suddenly see the crates the way you see them now behind it, and it would be totally great if you could make it so that you get an extra crate dragging behind it for lets say every 6cu's of cargo. And then last but not least, I don't see why the maud needs a limit on the cargo it can haul, being a modular ship. Or ok, maybe it needs a limit (because of the strain of the mass its dragging), but it could be a lot higher in my eyes. If you take too much, you just slow your ship down untill its basicly not usable.

I don't see why the maud needs a limit on the cargo it can haul, being a modular ship. Or ok, maybe it needs a limit (because of the strain of the mass its dragging), but it could be a lot higher in my eyes. If you take too much, you just slow your ship down untill its basicly not usable.

I like this part the best. =)

I can foresee the fun comments coming here...

But why not a Corvus wraith?

Seriously... it's got 20+ cargo slots. Give it a top speed of 210 or 215 with infiniboost, you can catch a moth. You've got enough weapon slots to get shots in, and if you do it right, you should be able to bounce the moth off course.

It's not much of a dogfighter, but the important thing here is you're going after moths. It's not an uber dogfighter. It's a moth killer. If you want to PvP in B8, bring your vulture or centurion. Don't bring this proposed Corvus Wraith. It's a commerce killer, pure and simple.

So here are my proposed "Corvus Wraith" stats..

Armor: 9000
Cargo Capacity: 28cu
Weapons: 2 small, 1 large
Top Speed: 65
Turbo Max Speed: 215
Turbo Energy: 50
Spin Torque: 6
Mass: 10400
Thrust: 210

So you lose some armor and maneuverability for the extra cargo capacity and speed/thrust. It's not going to dog fight at all, but it should be plenty fast enough to catch a moth and take it on.