And if so, should it still be in it's original form?

There are two sides to this. The Pirates, and the Traders.

The Pirates want to make profit. Their main source in profit is killing players for their cargo which is dropped upon death. If this feature were to be dropped, the players who take the professions of greifers and pirates would be b****ing and moaning about their losses and how it was unfair to them.

The Traders would prefer that the cargo be incinerated along with the ship. I however, have an intermediate compromise.

Instead of dropping exactly what is in the holds, drop cargo that bots drop, in player-appropriate amounts (only if player killed was carrying cargo, otherwise we’d have a rather large mess on our hands):

Bus: 1 Scrap Metal
Centurian: 1 Damaged Weapons (thing), 1 Damaged Engine Component
Warthog: Same as Centurian
Wraith: 2 Damaged Weapons Parts, 3 Damaged Engine Components
Vulture: 2 Damaged Weapons Parts
Hornet: 3 Damaged Weapons Parts, 1 Damaged Engine Components
Atlas: 2 Damaged Weapons Parts, 2 Damaged Engine Components, 2 Scrap Metals
Ragnorok: 4 Damaged Weapons Parts, 2 Damaged Engine Components, 1 Scrap Metal
Centaur: 3 Damaged Weapons Parts, 2 Damaged Engine Components, 2 Scrap Metals
Valkyrie: Same as Hornet
Marauder: 3 Damaged Weapons Parts, 6 Damaged Engine Components
Prometheus: 6 Damaged Weapons Parts

Please add comments or suggestions. I will not accept flames from pirating players who do not like this idea.

n000000! baaaad! that means no more nanites fro meeee!
/me looks angrily at Verd

Against. I do think however, that explosions should be bigger depending on how many depending on how many Rockets/Missiles/Torps/Mines. Why is it that Rocket explosions don't blow up other rockets? Or that stations never take any visable damage, like chard metal?

Interesting solution. I am not a pirate but I have to say I am definitely against this. What happens if I want to try and run back and pick up the cargo I dropped? I find that all my nanite replication units have been vaporized and the only thing to survive are some damaged engine components? This is bad for *both* the trader and the pirate. Also, I can imagine this being a potential problem when mission-sensitive cargo is introduced.

A couple other possibilities (not necessarily any better, but alternatives nonetheless):
Players could buy "cargo insurance" before leaving the station for 5-10% the total value of their cargo. If their cargo is destroyed, the insurance company refunds the player the total cost of buying the cargo in the first place.

Each cargo unit (except mission sensitive cargo) has a 20% chance of being destroyed when the trader explodes.

Cargo units could be destructable after they are released by a player. If a trader was spam killed by sunflares, the first volley would kill the trader, the second volley would take out the cargo ;). This would force pirates to be a little less trigger happy.

Why not have "damaged X" ,that is coppies of the ships cargo but at - half normal value. Thus killing someone the second they leave a station means you must carry the cargo elsewhere for a profit. Could prevent killing people the second they leave.

Or each widget could have a 20-40% chance of incinerating, or even a variable chance depending on the weapon used (higher damage weapons would cause greater incineration rates), and each ship whether carrying cargo or not could drop a variable number of damaged components and scrap metal depending on its maximum hull points and number of mounted weapons.

Might be a little more realistic but might not be worth the trouble.

Phaserlight, Celebrim, and Daon Rendiv have the right idea. Some synthesis of their variations for a solution would be cool, more "simulating" of reality, and lastly preserving drama. I also am quite anti-pirate, and sometimes I get pretty steamed at pirates. However, pirating adds drama to the game. It causes little schisms and a sense of danger. I suggest that these are some of the things that set an MMO game apart from other games: the human/human-society reflection.

me was more thinking about ebing able to buy the explosive version of cargo. For instance nannites : 2100, explosive nanites 3200, if pirates ask you to drop, you can jettison, and when they try to take it up, they loose their ship.

And only the person who dropped the cargo can pick up the cargo that he has jettisoned, with as downside it being damaged by its flight in space. (altering between 20 - 40%)

This means that when you sell it, you will only get 100% - (20 a 40)% from the actual price.

It could still be a noteworthy option, but the profit of trading in a piratefree sector in contradiction with this safetymechanism will make a nice addition.

You will encounter 1 problem, to be able to do this, you have to assign every cargo that has been dropped a tag that holds the name of the player, if that p^layer logs off, the cargo will naturally dissapear.

Now if a pirate takes the cargo "the non explosive ones", the tag will be altered.
If a pirate in a very heavilly armed ship "that can withstand an explosion of 12 -16 proximity mines ?" picks it up, The cargo will receive a second tag, when another player kills the pirate, this second tag will dissapear and only the person whos cargo it was can pick it back up without receiving another sets of proximity mines damage.

Me wonders what people find ?

cheers

PS: I know, pirates arent going to like it, but it could encourage the pirates to be resourcefull and ask for a set moneyamount of the cargo or ...

cheers

Me imagines droping his cargo and 8 lasermines, me says bye bye pirate :D

/\ What he said... :P

explode cargo command. Right when you're about to die, you run the command, pirate kills you, tada, nothing.
now if you SURVIVE, you made the trip for nothing.

It looks like PKing here is the most profitable way to make money in this game.

Heh, I bet Icarus wishes that were true ;). Flag capping is the most lucrative in my opinion.

I once posted an idea to encourage "pirating finese" by allowing total over-kills to destroy cargo. Basically, use some sort of damage calculations during a ship explosion, so that if you damage someone to -1450% (i.e., you hit someone dead-on with a volley of nukes), you're going to lose the all of the cargo. If you blast them down to only -4%, there's a good chance that all of the ammo will survive. If you blast them down to 1% and then demand that they jettison their cargo... well, then you get it all ;-)

It just seems silly to me that pirates are currently best off destroying everryone and looking for cargo after they're dead. "Real" pirates (from history) would not sink first and loot after... because you can't loot a sunken ship. They would disabble/board the ship.


I'm very tired... my apologies if I'm not making sense...

This is my HO:

"BOOOM! Haha! I got your cargo" - lamer
"Drop your cargo or be destroyed" - Pirate

Pirates are OK, lamers are not.

If half the cargo was destroyed by the attack of a lamer then it would be alot more profitable to have a trader drop the cargo.

I, as a trader, think it's OK to drop my cargo and avoid adding to the spacedust, but I think it's stupid to wait by jump points and fire sunflares at anything that enters.