Beefed up pirates

Pirates are little more than turbolaser fodder for orbiting capitals as the system currently is. I think more regular invasions of pirate groups could liven up dead spots when there aren’t any PvP wars going on.

[b:103a5any]Orbital Pirates[/b:103a5any] – Pirates get fed up with losing their comrades and bring in some reinforcement firepower and nuke that son of a bitch Capital orbiting a planet, then proceed to blockade and threaten passersby
[b:103a5any]Landing Parties[/b:103a5any] – Pirates either act in conjuction with the previous Orbital Pirate scheme, or bypass it entirely, and simply bring bigger ships that can withstand the Capital ships’ attacks long enough to land and deliver some beefed up ground forces

I was skimming old threads and saw some mentions of permanent pirate space bases from which to launch these assaults on the nearby star systems. Give people a reason to buy that Marauder or Assassin Corvette beyond picking off pirates one by one. Give combatants some challenging ground forces to change up the usual routine of killing lyleks or ghouls or whatever your prey of choice may be. Bonuses in the form of credits (however useless credits really are) or account points, or even item drops of some type? for helping fend off these pirate invasions so people do it for more than just a break of monotony, make it actually worthwhile to put some effort into it. The idea is to involve lots of different groups of people here, not just the Commander of a fleet of warships, and not just a single BHer mowing through NPCs. Make teamwork and cooperation of some sort a necessity. Thoughts?

I got a kick ass pirate clan app ready to be sent in for this type of thing, where the longer the pirates are raiding the planet the more credits the clan makes and such, but there’s more and im not blabbing all the ideas out there, but it involves to much code for what’s going on right now, IMM’s are just to busy.

Err, what’s going on right now? Last I checked there were no wars, no battles, nothing. This is exactly the kind of dead spot that needs livening up. If the IMMs are too busy, hire more IMMs so they can delegate things a little rather than having mile-long TODO lists that never get done.

Your understanding of how the mud works is kinda short sighted, first to say there is "nothing going on right now" – do you even pay attention to the mud? Things are happening every day. There is a difference between "Imms being busy" and "Coders being busy." Coders are needed to make the code changes Gann wants for his clan idea. Right now both IMMs and Coders are preoccupied preparing the mud for next timeline. Hiring more imms isn’t the solution.

I uhh. Hate to be "That guy" but it seems a large part, RIGHT NOW, of why the mud is kinda slow is more related to the players…Last era, well there were a few things done that seemed to be…well for lack of a better term, cock blocking…But right now I think the "God this sucks…" lies with the players. Specially those who complain…

If its boring…

DO SOMETHING.

The moment a new timeline is opened, all the imms immediately seem to start working on the next one, now, as much as a new timeline kicks ass, perhaps more imms should be allocated to make large events happen in the current timeline for a while before focusing attention on the timeline they are next developing?

I havent a clue how many imms work on the next timeline, im guessing a shitload of players help also, but it’s just an idea.

I hope I don’t come off as trolling this thread, i’m just trying to provide insight on how things work. Skitter since you’ve only played here for a few months, let me just say that isn’t true. Timelines last, literally, for years.

At the start of era 4, the majority of the imm staff was focused on the next timeline. Actually, since era 3, we’ve been working on it. What we are working on is a pretty monumental task. Besides the obvious things like rebuilding planets and re-organizing gameplay factors, there is a lot of behind the scenes work that players probably won’t recognize as happening but it makes our job a lot easier. The reason we are in era 4 in the first place is because all these things need to be done before we can start the next timeline. if we allocate more imms to working on events this timeline, the NEXT one is going to come that much slower, and we all know the groupthink mentality thinks about that.

What has been fantastic about era 4 is that large events HAVE been happening without immortals having to direct them. Most of the Yevethan events like the invasion of Corellia. The collapse of the UCIS. Roleplay around the Hutt Council. The Republic and the Senate. Major kudos to all the players out there who are making all those things happen without immortals having to spend so much time walking them through it. It’s letting us get some real work done.