Guys, important question to you all.
Do you think Pirate profession is problematic? If so, why? What do you think you would need to become a (more) successful pirate?
The idea is that you hang out in red sectors and kill passing Truckers, that are full or sweet loot, why is nobody doing it?
We have seen some large-scale battles and planet take-overs already, which are arguably much harder to do, than a simple PK attack. That tells us something is wrong, but since nobody is even doing it, it's really hard to tell what.
I think this probably has some very different answers for different people but ill take a swing and put out what I think would be the core issues of such an approach at least and see what people think.
The first that comes to mind is simple profitability really. all other consequences aside, sitting out in space and hoping to have someone pass by with a trucker full of actually good loot is far more time consuming than simply crafting even basic level stuff and would seem to me to get you far less income unless your target happened to be carrying a very good cargo.
If you take the other side of it and move around looking for targets then you have to travel more which means less energy for weapons use once you find a target so unless your using a well decked out privateer with powerful weapons that's not really an option. If you are using such a ship its possible you could do it this way but then you run into issue.....
Number 2: If you miss your first volley or enough of it so that your target is not completely destroyed then quite simply all they have to do is dock or land and there's not a damned thing you can do about it other than to hope to sit in space longer than they are willing to wait. If their cargo is anything of real value then chances are they are going to just wait it out till you go away. Needless to say, that's not fun for either party at all and wouldn't be a very appealing or again profitable way to spend your time.
Number 3: Let's say I'm going to try to "make a living" so to speak as a pirate. I take another players goods by blowing up his trucker and make out with a great cargo with a decent value (which to me is questionable odds to begin with). What happens next?. That player then goes to his or her squad who all decide to take revenge and steal some of my stuff of course.
If they happen to do it in similar fashion then I lose a trucker full of goods and end up likely no further ahead than I was. If they take it further to show me they mean business then likely they take a planet instead or something along those lines. Now, for smaller groups or ships this might prove difficult in the case of very well defended planets but as far as I have seen a pretty decently defended planet can be taken down by a well loaded privateer and a determined player if they are willing to take the time to do it.
That's not accounting for the fact either that most players have friends willing to lend a hand outside of their squads as well. I might well attack somebody I consider to be well within my ability to handle and then have them call in a favor from a player who drops down 3 or 4 privateers all loaded with top end weapons down on me and within a day I have no planets left at all.
There is some defense against this in having your own squad to fight back with but it also requires them to make the same time and effort commitments all because I wanted a trucker full of random loot......
All in all your as likely to end up with a full scale war on your hands as you are a manageable response and all over something that was of random questionable profit value in the first place. Quite likely if your entire squad isn't in it for the fighting and only the fighting you just wont have a squad for long because they will get quite sick of being retaliated against for your sake. Since you can only tell squad ownership of planets its as likely to be their planets that get stolen as yours.
Issue 4: Once people know you as a pirate their two very likely things that will happen imo. One is that they will simply do their very best to stay away from you or remain docked if your around since all semi recent travel data appears as soon as you come into a an area and the system itself makes hitting someone before they can dock somewhat iffy at best and trying to hit them when they undock before they can jump a very boring affair of staring at your screen endlessly waiting for that 2 second window which may or may not show on your end in time for you to approach and shoot. Or two, its already been seen in an instance or two that if you are going to just continuously attack other players and take their stuff then at some point likely to be sooner than later they will simply put aside their other business in large groups and annihilate you and all your stuff that they can.
When you get right into it unless your strong enough or your group numerous enough to bully the majority of the galaxy without worry then likely your just asking to get your ass kicked. Is piracy fun at times, absolutely
but in the end It would be a very very difficult way to actually advance yourself in the current game.
You could drop all sense of being decent about it in true pirate scoundrel fashion and pick on weaker players only but then your profits would be even lower still and I have a feeling you would find that somebody bigger would still step in and you'd be right back to dealing with a war rather than a fight.
All that said, I think their are a good number of people playing this game currently that would love a way to be able to use their weapons far more often than they currently get the chance too, I don't think its a lack of interest issue at all but simply the fact that its far too time consuming and likely destructive to your own stuff to be seen as worth the trouble except in limited circumstances.
this was written right after reading your question toecutter so I'm sure I haven't even come close to hitting all the points that could be brought up but these alone I think would be enough to have it seen by most players as a troublesome approach in which profit is a dice roll at best. Ill see what I can think of to throw out as ideas that might help but that will take a bit if thinking time because as yet I'm not sure what could offset all of that. The biggest issue by far imo though is simply that unless you want a constant state of war involving all of your squad mates then you simply cant go around stealing from people unless your willing to risk everything on that dice roll.
Sorry its so long but if you get into detail I didn't see a simple way to answer fully
Edit to add: I think digger nailed a very good point below, most people travel to a station to craft, then sell, and then move to the next station. Further lowering the odds you would actually get anything worth your efforts
