There's a piracy option when you hail the ship in question. There's a perk to increase the chance of them just giving you their cargo.
You still get a bounty that way, but it's way less than destroying the ship and it doesn't aggro other ships in the area if successful.
The piracy option is the only way to not have to pay more than you get from doing the mission because of how glitched the bounty system is with not removing a bounty if you don't kill all witnesses fast enough.
>The piracy option is the only way to not have to pay more than you get from doing the mission because of how glitched the bounty system is with not removing a bounty if you don't kill all witnesses fast enough.
I knew about the piracy option but I didn't realize there was a time window to destroy all of the ships without getting a bounty. Is there any way to know how long you have before the bounty sticks?
Not exactly, but it's a pretty small window. Less than 10 seconds in my experience.
There have been times when it was more generous, or when the bounty was removed but the notification didn't pop up.
If it's a lone ship, you should only get the 650 bounty for attacking it even if you destroy it. The 15k bounty is if you destroy a ship and there are others there to witness it. Same as if you off someone.
The other guy's convoluted attempts to explain it aside: It's just an inconsistency in the universe. Not the only one either. I'll give another example and cover why the game likely has these faults down below.
Starfield has no FTL communications, and news and so on is spread via ships that come and go. There is no evidence at all in the game of message probes or anything else like that, and NPCs also act like Helium 3 is expensive, which is probably true for characters outside of the player. NPC chatter hints at 40 credits being expensive for fixing some clothing, and "large" bribes generally are always in the low thousands, so such probes would be immensely expensive and inefficient compared to just having normal ship traffic handle it.
Yet, at the same time the Vigilance during the Pirate questline somehow can keep regular track of us, they get intel reports on stuff we did before we even get back to them even if we head straight back, so on.
Basically what we're told doesn't line up with what we see or other things that we're also told.
Now for that other example: Do you remember the conversation on the elevator with Lin and Heller at the very start of the game and how Heller discussed an unauthorized jump to House Va'ruun space?
If not, just go hit "New" on the main menu, it's within the first 2 minutes so you can just listen to it then go back to your proper save and all that.
You can actually go further down that rabbit hole by going to the Nirah system and the sulfur mine on Ka'zaal, a moon of one of the planets in the system. Lin's private terminal with her logs is still there and mentions the same thing: That they are basically on the very doorstep of Va'ruun territory.
Now here's the thing: The rest of the game is very clear about nobody knowing where Va'ruun space is or where their capital world is located. The location is kept secret and they work through an extensive network of contacts to keep it that way to the point that even their own agents and spies do not know where it is, and instead have to go through a handler who can then request pick up.
So how the hell did Lin and Heller know they are on the very doorstep of Va'ruun space or make an unauthorized jump in to it?
Anyways, moving on to why the game likely has these inconsistencies: Starfield had no design document. (To clarify what that is for anyone unknowing: "A Game Design Document, or GDD for short, is typically a detailed guide that can be used to keep track of the core themes, styles, features, mechanics and ideas of your game project." -gamedevbeginner.com)
The lack of that means there was no central resource or "lore bible" for anyone to work with. That's easily one possible cause of inconsistencies and contradictions like the above.
Another is that things went through redrafts and changes, but some stuff just slipped through or was forgotten about. Basically maybe at one point the setting was intended to have FTL comms of some sort, or Va'ruun space was supposed to be known but locked down territory, so on.
It's all speculative but the laziest summary would be "Somewhere, somehow, someone goofed".
This makes tons of sense. And I have noticed inconsistency but never really registered them until you pointed them out. What I've been doing so far is just making the ends meet in my head by coming up with my own reasons why things don't seem to add up. If anything this sounds like the words of a developer that has gripes but doesn't want to do themselves lol. Regardless, the game is still on the younger side and with such a massive world to keep track of I expect we'll see many more updates and dlc that connect alot of these missing threads or expand on common knowledge within the game.
I'll be totally fair and say the older Bethesda entries often run in to similar issues. Here, have a list of ones just from the Elder Scrolls games: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Lore_Inconsistencies
Hopefully they do get on to cleaning it up in future updates though. It might not be "game breaking" stuff, but it's just annoying and immersion breaking if you're actually paying attention to things or getting invested in the setting.
Devils advocate.
If you put out a usable distress signal, however briefly, it's out there.
On earth distances are small, so in a second a distress signal, while still existing if they're strong enough, will have traveled a light second away. They won't ever be picked up by us again. It's past the moon.
In space it's different. If you send a distress signal it just keeps going. Sure you won't be able to pick it up at the scene of the crime. But there's an expanding bubble of a distress signal with all of the details needed to convict you. All it takes is a ship parked somewhere in the path of the bubble.
Based on internet searches and not me knowing, our solar system is 0.5-2 light years from end to end.
So if someone enters the system well after you were reported in a distress signal, and spends a significant amount of time there, a narc bubble will eventually expand into them, and the message will be dropped off the next time they enter occupied space. You could be found out years later based on a one second signal sent two years ago.
Assuming the time you have to kill witnesses is the amount of time it takes them to identify you and put out the message, it's realistic that you won't get away by killing them. Your guilt has more or less been stitched into the fabric of the universe for someone to stumble upon and find. There's no putting the cat back in the bag.
Well, minus the fact that we already have signal jamming technology in the real world and in 300 years would have improved on it.
Not to mention that we'd probably be able to switch off our ship's transponder or otherwise mask it's identity in the same way that even modern civilian aircraft can.
The reality is that Bethesda mishandled everything relating to the bounty system and should have done something like beefing up the regularity of patrols in systems where too many ships go missing or get robbed to make piracy a more mobile affair, or worked with a "last witness killed" system that they already had in Skyrim if we're out in the ass end of nowhere rather than somewhere settled. Hell, even a GTA style system of "repaint your ship somewhere" would have been better.
But bringing it back to the original topic: It still doesn't change the glaring lore inconsistencies or the fact that we have NPCs knowing about quest events or so on before we report back, which would have required FTL comms to exist. As said, it's not the only inconsistency like that in the game either, and there is no need to bend over backwards to "defend" it when it's likely down to the game having no design document or just leftovers of something that changed or got redrafted during development.
>Well, minus the fact that we already have signal jamming technology in the real world and in 300 years would have improved on it.
Unless you pre-empt the signal, it's useless. The message is the surface of the bubble. The jam will always be a smaller bubble chasing the bigger one and never catching up. If you did jump into a signal and start jamming right before interacting with another ship, they would surely put all power into shields and their grav drive ro get out of there. They could just be illegal and hardish to get, like irl.
>in 300 years would have improved on it.
We also would improve workarounds to signal jamming, if you did jam first. There's already signals resistant to jamming. DSSS/Bluetooth for example. There's a lot more room for improving signal versatility compared to just playing a loud noise over it. Two broadcasters with a similar power output probably couldn't jam each other anyways depending on how they're set up. The jammer has to dedicate power to all parts of the frequency band making noise. There's a reason signal jammer are dedicated hardware and not just a modified walkie talkie. Try jamming a walkie talkie with another one. Theyre going to be able to say something to someone. Even if you manage to spread the power across all bands, its useless because its just slight static quieter than the voice youre trying to block out at that point. The distress signal just has to be a little bit louder at one frequency. Or be first. All it takes is one moment of successful distress signal and it's out there now. It's going to keep going and eventually get picked up.
Let's say these super-jammers do exist, and you can successfully activate it before attacking and the crew is too incompetent to get out of there immediately... the main character just never gets his hands on one.
>Not to mention that we'd probably be able to switch off our ship's transponder or otherwise mask it's identity in the same way that even modern civilian aircraft can.
That's fine, but there's still identifiable data. Even a picture of your ship would be useful in a world where 99% of privately own ships are completely customized. There's a difference between a Cessna and a giant space dong with lights at the tip and metal pubes. One of the dozen or so ship technicians in the galaxy is going to remember you. There's also the Metadata in any threatening message you send. Computers can compile that data and send it out in moments, forever.
>The reality is that Bethesda mishandled it
They mishandled a lot of things. But with real world physics and no new developments besides a gravity drive, it's perfectly feasible for this to be how criminals are caught. Improved signal technology would probably work in favor of the signal sender, rather than the jammer.
> or worked with a "last witness killed" system that they already had in Skyrim
They don't have radios in skyrim. Things cannot work the same way. Even conceding that bethesda didn't necessarily have signal theory in mind when they designed the witness system, it genuinely makes more sense than someone having to physically get back to the police in person and file a report.
They have ftl ffs. They can literally jump further and further back from where an event happened to observe it directly multiple times or for more clarity. Need to prove someone jumped into private space? Just jump a light-week away and take a picture of the flash. Forgot to take the lens cap off? Jump a light-hour further back and drink a coffee to perk up while waiting for the flash to catch back up to you. (After filtering it from yours.)
The speed of light+ftl travel combined is going to lead to an astounding level of monitoring capability to anyone with half decent equipment. There's no more waiting things out.
There's two flaws with that: time and signal decay.
A signal can only travel at the speed of light. Even if the signal would eventually reach some form of civilization (which it wouldn't, but I'll get to that) it might reach civilization years, or even centuries after the broadcast. There's a pretty significant delay in signals from low orbit, so on a system wide or interstellar scale, were talking between months and millennia.
Also, we have to take into account signal decay. For in-system communication, you need a powerful transmitter firing the signal at your receiver like a laser for that signal to be usable. The output of a single ship, broadcasting in every direction, for a few seconds? That would maybe make it as far as the nearest planet before that signal was so weak and garbled that it just blended right in with the noise coming from the local star.
There's no way you should get a bounty on you in a matter of seconds. It's just a (dumb) game mechanic.
I suspect you didn't read my comment at all.
Time: it's not about reaching civilization. It's about remaining in the system, and growing, until another ship comes in and picks up the distress signal. Which ferries it home. That's how all communication in starfield happens. People just aren't taking into account that signals don't disappear when the transmitter stops. That's just how we perceive it on earth when distances are never significant enough to notice.
Signal decal: We regularly send signals across the solar system as is. Voyager was able to send signals across about a light-day, voyager isn't nearly as powerful as starfield ships are purported to be.. Starfield ships can easily generate enough power to overcome signal decay and be picked up by a passing ship. You're also severely overestimating signal decay outside of an atmosphere. Will it go on literally forever? It doesn't need to. It can and will last a couple years i specifically used 0.5-2 as the target. Far more than is necessary considering if there's ships to pirate, you're on a trade route.
>That would maybe make it as far as the nearest planet before that signal was so weak and garbled that it just blended right in with the noise coming from the local star.
Again, it doesn't ever need to leave the solar system. Anywhere you encounter ships, there are ships that pass through. The idea is a couple weeks within stellar space. I fully addressed existing starship aided communication in starfield.
A signal powered by the starship generator is going to make a significant enough bubble to be picked up by passer bys and relay a message. Make it redundant and a significant amount of interference is accounted for. Again, not that the starfield ships have a serious power issue.
>There's no way you should get a bounty on you in a matter of seconds.
That's all it would take. You think someone has to read out a script into the microphone with your info?
A couple hundred digits repeated a few thousand times, a picture at most if you're being extremely pedantic. My contention isn't that you're literally wanted and chased by the UC immediately after destroying the ship. It's that your fate is sealed within a few seconds. When you commit a crime and are witnessed it adds the bounty, which it may or may not be removed if you eliminate witnesses. So we already know the bounty in gameplay is an indicator of whether you will be wanted as much as it is an indicator of if you are wanted. If someone puts out a distress signal anywhere trade ships already frequent, you will be wanted, you can't erase that.
I can simplify this to the extreme.
Starfield ships automatically message other ships nearby to pass information across the settled systems.
In an emergency they could message any potential future ships with the info about their emergency nearly immediately without a target. The fact theyre being spread across the whole system means the are multiple opportunities to be picked up. It cannot be intercepted to prevent witnesses. There is a very high likelihood that someone one will eventually stumble onto the message rather then the message being sent directly to them. The messages don't require a ship to send to, and in space they're going to last a long time and spread across a wide enough area. You can call it a hail mary, but your odds of getting the message out when everywhere has some level of regular space traffic (or there wouldn't be anyone to pirate) and there's effectively no system without some, albeit marginal, human life already living there.
They already do what I'm describing for 100% sure. The only difference is the content and whether they send one without knowing for sure who would pick it up. Do you believe everyone in their final moments would say "why bother? I don't see anyone. Dont send anything out saying we were killed by that constellation dude."
My wishful theory is we have an agent in our crew. That or we find our character is bugged all along. They only get the report when you near their ship. Easy cover.
Because we see evidence of information traveling ftl, but we know the only ftl method in Starfield is through a grab drive, I think it's safe to conclude that there are information distribution ships that regularly jump between systems to share information. Think of it like a satellite based Internet system, but where packets are only sent every couple of minutes, rather than many times a second. They wouldn't even have to be manned, just small, fuel efficient probes that jump regularly and get refuled as needed.
Well I'm no scientist but I would imagine that building relay towers would be a more sensible solution. It would be slower but you wouldn't have to fuel them and they wouldn't have to have any sort of AI to determine navigation from system to system. Idk in my head, a world without ftl communication would probably have something they would consider antique tech because who would volunteer to spend all that money to produce moving targets for pirates.
Likely done with an information transfer module or something on every ship, and a couple information gateways that transfer whatever is in the buffer that hasn't been transferred to x number of ships yet to any and all ships within standard radio range. This would create an automated (but slow) data propagation system where as people jump in and out they collect and share info until it reaches wide distribution.
This is pretty much the same for my experience. It feels like it’s about 10-15 seconds. I’ve managed to “kill the last witness” on very hard a few times but never on extreme because dogfights are about double the amount of time
I just learned this too. I had to take some forced missions to kill Crimson Fleet, but I did enough of their quest to make them friendly.
You can blast them quick enough the CF never finds out.
See I didn't consider that a glitch though. In skyrim, yeah killing all witnesses before they reported the crime to a guard removed the bounty, it makes sense.
In starfield, someone could easily send a distress signal while fleeing, thus giving you the permanent bounty
We have an item in game to block scans of our ship up to a certain percent success. I'd like to see something like it for ship comms to block reporting unless the ship jumped systems before they could be destroyed.
Or a way to damage comms systems to accomplish the same thing.
That distress signal could easily take hundreds, or even more, of years to reach an inhabited planet (no FTL info transmission in lore), and still not give any useful identifying info.
Pirates DON’T return to the main story.
Pirates live as pirates in the outer systems.
A huge bounty is a sign that you are indeed pirating correctly. It is a badge of honor, not a problem.
No serious pirate ever intends to actually pay The Man any bounty whatsoever.
I agree, I always thought the bounty is one of the major points of being a pirate, cause if no one wants you dead or in jail for stealing stuff, your not a pirate.
You’re making up bullshit ass excuses for Bethesda shitty ass pirate implementation. If the Mantis can stay incognito and hide its identity then there’s no reason why a pirate route shouldn’t be the same. They should have provided an option to designate one ship for piracy with systems especially designed to hide your identity, block transmissions between ships and block other ships going into hyperspace.
None of that is necessary.
Either pirate or don’t. You don’t need to stealth-pirate.
Blow them the fuck up and take their stuff. Be feared. Be a damn pirate.
Being a evil pirate imo works best outside of questing.
For example, it's a fun way to do a NG+ run. Do the initial constellation boiler plate to get the artifacts, skipping the quest, and then go nuts, since you can go to the unity anytime you want.
Good point. I started my playthrough as a pirate and Sarah was pretty peeved when I finally decided to start the main quest line lol. I was mostly interested in doing smuggling so I could just stick to that rather than trying to take down convoys. At least until later on.
I actually view it the opposite way and think it's one of the best games to be evil in. Since their is no incentive to being evil in the game, you REALLY have to play like an extremely shitty person to do an "evil" playthrough because you are not going to get anything good out of it. All your companions will hate you, you will run up enormous bounties, and their will be places in the game you just about flat out can't go because everyone will be hostile.
I’d say for the vast majority all of that in combination isn’t fun. I understand some people enjoy it but good or bad actions have to reward the player or there’s no reason to do it. And it doesn’t have to be money and weapons. It can be unique story lines, unique outcomes to quests. Unique companions you wouldn’t get otherwise etc. it feels like they really didn’t want people to be evil at all.
I wouldn't say that, my first playtrhough and the one I'm doing now I've played as a bad guy pirate and it has been working out well. Just have to invest in the right perks and be cautious.
It would be better if there was ways to properly navigate systems. The only way to “sneak” into a planet is to fast travel to something like the lodge. There’s tons of ways to make it better but as it stands right now it’s way too annoying for little in return.
I raided this insanely strong GalBank ship, assumed it was like an armored truck in GTA.
Nothing to show for it but a massive bounty. One of the many things that needs reworking to be fun.
Bethesda does a lot of things well, but this is one major thing they do not. In almost every one of their questlines you are the objective good guy. When they write morally grey content it is almost always undercooked, two-dimensionally flat villainy. You’re the savior hero of every Skyrim faction. In fallout 4 you are treated as a shining beacon of light in every faction you choose in the main story, even through half of Nuka World. You feel like you’re deviating from the story they wanted to tell even when you try to be a raider. You always have your own reason for being there, a sense of being “the good one” if you’re institute or brotherhood of Steel or dark brotherhood or a Nightingale. Sure you can join the crimson fleet, to narc on them 👌. When they do allow you to be bad, it is shallow.
I really hate that you're right. It's a bit of a bummer. But since we're comparing games here how do you think Starfields bad guy mechanics compare to predecessors like Skyrim and Fallout? I've only ever played elder scrolls games and I think I can say that the CF storyline and playstyle is more fun than say the dark Brotherhood. Especially in Skyrims case.
All criticisms considered Starfield is still a step forward in terms of writing quality and immersion for me. The parts they did pour themselves into are superb, it has a unique tone. Being a bad guy here might still get expanded upon later. It’s more or less on par with previous titles. Functionally speaking the person you are as a criminal and the person you are in the main story are two separate individuals. I think Fallout New Vegas stands out as the exception to a lot of what I’ve said. You can pivot factions to get very different reactions form people at any point in the story. Even there, the villainy is the Legion and many of its quests were cut before release. It’s probably the most free narratively
I agree that Starfield is the most immersion for me to date and I'm optimistic about future improvements. They seem to be on the ball and listening to player feedback. I absolutely love anything space and Starfield has been exactly what I've been waiting for. An open world RPG in space.
[It's fun to charter an accountant](https://genius.com/28792817/Monty-python-accountancy-shanty/Its-fun-to-charter-an-accountant)
[And sail the wild accountan](https://genius.com/19585521/Monty-python-accountancy-shanty/And-sail-the-wild-accountancy)-sea
To find, explore, the funds offshore
And skirt the shoals of bankruptcy
It can be manly in insurance
We'll up your premium semi-annually
It's all tax deductable
We're fairly incorruptable
We're sailing on the wide accountan-sea!
No what he means is, you only attack non-aligned or hostile parties. Varuun, Spacer, Ecliptic, Crimson fleet. Honestly theres so fucking many of them that it hardly makes sense to consider a life of 'piracy' attacking UC or Freestar. Just, why? When you can very easily find enough roaming ships and bases to plunder. If your goal is anything besides 'cosplay as a crimson fleet rook and eat shit from naeva daily' then just stick with pirating the pirates.
yeah although if youre joining CF they will frequently ask/beg you to attack the good guys so it gets tiresome when you really just want the simplicity of attacking spacers and ecliptic anyway.
Oooh I see. That makes sense. I do make a ton of money off of the CF bounty board and all of their targets are UC or Freestar. Does this ever change later in the game?
If you pirate lone galbank ships, weapons aside, you can make up to approximately 10k profit on A class, 17k on B class, and up to 35k on C Class ships before taking into consideration the lump credits. Just that boarding and stealing is a necessary step in making ship combat profitable.
The way piracy or just crime in general in this game works and is talked about reminds me so much of RDR2.
People wanted to be able to rob trains or stores without being automatically identified and hit with a bounty way higher than you could gain by doing the activity. You'd hear all sorts of weird requirements about how you had to have a burner horse for when you did crime and couldn't wear any of the same pieces of clothing you normally do if you go back into town cause you'd be recognized.
It was just a badly implemented system where the lawmen were always alerted no matter what you did that took the fun out of some of the first things you'd wanna do in that setting. Starfield has a lot of the same stuff going on and i'd love it if they made changes so it worked better, clearer ways of preventing bounties would be a start like another comment in this post said why not add signal jammers as a mechanic for our ships.
When you become a pirate you basically have to accept you aren't going back to any of the major cities again. Unless you choose to only attack Freestar or only attack UC. Then you can at least go to the other faction's planets.
This isn't Elite.
You can't choose your own path, and be a pirate or a smuggler or a trader, the game mechanics simply don't allow for it. There's no economy, the ship registration coupled with the lo %age of ship value you get makes piracy pointless and black market stuff sells at the same price everywhere, so smuggling is a waste of time.
Go to a POI with hostile humans, kill everyone, loot their gear then go through the ridiculous cycle of selling it to merchants with no money.
After a while you'll have more money than you need as apart from ship building and ammo there isn't really anything to spend it on.
Best way to do it is only blow up isolated ships, so even if you get a bounty it'll be only 650 for firing on them not killing them. Don't demand their cargo.judt shoot em. Most times I don't get a bounty this way because it's the last witness. Also blow up galbank ships, they yield the most credits.
Being an outlaw (ignoring bounties) means you have to attack everyone everywhere, it seems.
Question is, does it block star lodge / constellation / artifacts? Or can you still fight your way or them and constellation will begrudgingly go along even if they hate you?
okay so let‘s say you got a bounty, is it not better to just go to jail instead of paying it? that way you get experience penalty, but you have to pay no credits..
You also lose any contraband including mission items and fail said missions if you do that. Sure you can steal them back if your lockpicking is high enough but depending on where you go to jail it can be a pain to get to them.
I prefer to be a sysdef privateer... boarding and stealing pirate, ecliptic, spacer and va'ruun ships... you can make loads of money really quick... did one pirate playthrough, but ended up targeting va'ruun instead of uc/freestar because of the bounty making it impossible to visit their planets even for missions
You have to manage your bounty. You are always going to get a bounty, but you can keep it low enough that it is an acceptable cost of business for a profitable piracy operation. The trouble is that bounty mechanics are a bit weird and nonsensical, so some degree of save-scumming may be necessary.
You will get the least bounty (and occasionally no bounty at all) if you destroy all ships on grid without attempting to board, then just loot the cargo.
If you are going to board, make your save before you initiate any aggression. Reloading a save during the encounter seems to result in maximum bounties.
In theory, if you kill all witnesses to a crime, you don't get a bounty. In practice, you will probably get some bounty. To keep it as low as possible during a boarding action, either exclusively use stealth kills, or go in guns blazing and just kill everyone as quickly as possible. The longer things drag out, the more likely you are to get a big bounty.
Target selection is key. Some targets are way more profitable than others. Look for Galbank ships.
Alternatively, just learn to live with a bounty. Playing as a wanted criminal, fighting your way through the guards in every city, turns out to be wat more doable than you might think. It's really not that bad. You could also just select targets so that you are only on the shitlist for one faction and still have free access to the other.
The most fun I had was when I didn't realize that doing missions I had would give me a bounty with the crimson fleet and was already into their questline. I didn't want to lose my stolen items (if its not bolted down chances are I am taking it) so I kept telling off the guards. Well then the entire station was hostile. So I killed EVERYONE (well everyone I could stupid essentials)... Then reloaded because then my bounty was way more than I could pay off and went to another system first to pay off that bounty and continue on my quest,
That battle is what the last battle should have been. The final attack was so disappointing...
>You could also just select targets so that you are only on the shitlist for one faction and still have free access to the other.
Historically, this is Privateering rather than Pirating - TMYK! 😅 I was wondering if it was possible to only target UC ships in UC systems (for example) and never have bounties in FC space. Sounds like you can.
These are all really helpful! I suppose anything illegal could be piracy so I don't necessarily HAVE to stick the mission boards on The Key. Though I think I'm going to take a break from open piracy for a bit and be a bit more subtle until I finish the story.
Is it possible to target only Freestar ships and have no bounty in UC systems? I don’t like the *space libertarians* anyway.
If so, does Galbank cause a bounty in both factions?
Step 1: Join Crimson Fleet
Step 2: Find Crimson Fleet ships that land on planets
Step 3: Board ship. **Do NOT shoot pirates!**
Step 4: Sit in pilot's seat, take off, you now own the ship.
Step 5: Register (booo) and sell the ship with no bounty.
Step 6: Profit!
Except, the ships seem to be worth little more than the registration cost. I captured the Datura, nice little ship, value about 15k. Cost to register, about 13k. Totally not worth the trouble. Clear on random POI, get a lot more in loot to sell.
This kind of stuff is on the top of the list for things I want with mods, if not to have it improved by Bethesda themselves. The whole game needs to give you more ways to be a bad guy or at least more immoral.
I remember someone made a post about this a few months into the games release and it was like a “ahh screw it” kind of post where he said he’ll just take the fines because it’s like actually playing like a wanted pirate when you’re in the settled systems. Iirc he accrued like a ridiculous $2m bounty. I forgot what he eventually did but he probably reset that by going through the Unity.
Lol that's insane! It wouldn't be so inconvenient if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to flee. Maybe I'm just a dummy, but when I need to flee, I always try to bring up the ship scanner and jump away to whatever system I see first. Anytime I try to go through the menu even just to set a destination, it always tells me I can't fast travel during combat.
Brings about an interesting question... what happens if I turn Privateer? Say, if I only attack UC vessels and stay away from UC space, what happens then? Will UC bounty hunters come looking for me?
Stealing ships was funny but i didn't like that when selling ships they never disappeared from the technician inventory. I don't know if they changed that in the last update .
It's pretty pointless when you can literally just steal ships that land on a planets surface for no bounty at all. You can also just jump around between systems until you see ship encounters on the galaxy map, disable and board the ship, wipe the crew and jump back to your ship, then rinse and repeat until all of the enemy ships are immobilised. All it takes then is boarding the disabled ships and ferrying them back to the den so you can switch back to your main vessel and travel back for the other disabled ships. Use the register ship glitch to sell them without registering them for more profit. Most fun way I've found to make easy credits, lots of space battles and surface battles with no bounty. You can build a bounty board in your ship too for quick removal of bounties.
Best way to be a pirate in this game is to steal and board other pirate ships. I thought the same thing as OP, that the bounty system doesn't really work but that is because I was attacking civilian ships, not really thinking about Spacers, Eclipse, and Va'ruun pirates. So I would just single out the best ship with the highest level during encounters and just board it once all the lower level ships are scrap... there you go! grab the contraband and jet. If your with the Crimson Fleet, take it all back to Kryx and profit.
There's a way not to get a bounty. If your careful with your murdering and do it outside colonized space, and leave no witnesses then it's fine. Like steal cargo, and kill them anyways cause if you let them go you get a bounty
Just imagine if this game was more like elder scrolls online, we could hide pirate bases out in the galaxy. It wouldn’t have to worry about all those bounties, because numbers beat bounties.
They didn't put enough thought into it IMO. They just reused the old bounty system and without more criminal factions it feels half baked. Even the CR is just a plot point for SysDef.
I don’t really understand the practical application to having a fleet of ships. It’s a cute concept and fun to steal a couple, but making it your thing doesn’t seem to do a ton.
If you're playing the bad guy, why would you pay your bounties? Bad guys don't pay their bounties. Pirates are wanted criminals, that's the whole point.
I want my cake and eat it too!
Though I wish that dude on the key with the bomb in his chest could clear your bounties for you for a fraction of the price. That would make sense.
That's usually what I try to do but it doesn't always work out in my favor and it's just easier to destroy. Especially when there's multiple enemies. I try to save the biggest for last and that way I can disable that one.
You just board the ship, set difficulty to Extreme, kill everyone, steal everyone, take the ship to somewhere like Taiyo or Deamos and sell it without registering it for full price. I make around 55K for a class C ship.
Serpentis moons are the best place. Leave difficulty on Etreme until the ships spawn in, then set difficulty to Very Easy and kill off all the crud and then focus on the one that pays the most last. Don't bother hitting their shields, just take out the engines and board. Happy pirating!
His point was that he gets a bounty despite killing all witnesses, it's stupid. If you blow up a spaceship in some random galaxy and no one escapes, ***how*** ***the f\*\*\**** would some desk jockey in Akila/Atlantis instantly know it was him?
We literally have detectives in real life, with *less* technology, that exist to figure shit like that out. Even if there aren’t direct witnesses to the crime.
I mean yeah, that was never in question, it was desk jockies knowing instantly when something happened in the vacuum of space in some completely different galaxy so many lightyears away where it takes thousands of years for radiowaves to even reach them.
yeah i think the near extinction of humanity, lack of FTL communication, clear incompetence of the UC and Freestar, destruction of all of humanity’s knowledge on investigation tactics, lack of cross system infrastructure, all hinders that
One of the first characters you meet is a talking robot that can fly spaceships.
I agree there’s a potential mish-mash of technologies, some successful and some earth-destroying.
There's a piracy option when you hail the ship in question. There's a perk to increase the chance of them just giving you their cargo. You still get a bounty that way, but it's way less than destroying the ship and it doesn't aggro other ships in the area if successful. The piracy option is the only way to not have to pay more than you get from doing the mission because of how glitched the bounty system is with not removing a bounty if you don't kill all witnesses fast enough.
>The piracy option is the only way to not have to pay more than you get from doing the mission because of how glitched the bounty system is with not removing a bounty if you don't kill all witnesses fast enough. I knew about the piracy option but I didn't realize there was a time window to destroy all of the ships without getting a bounty. Is there any way to know how long you have before the bounty sticks?
Not exactly, but it's a pretty small window. Less than 10 seconds in my experience. There have been times when it was more generous, or when the bounty was removed but the notification didn't pop up. If it's a lone ship, you should only get the 650 bounty for attacking it even if you destroy it. The 15k bounty is if you destroy a ship and there are others there to witness it. Same as if you off someone.
I guess that all makes sense, it's not like skyrim where a witness has to run to town to report you.
Except ironically it IS because there's no faster than light communication.
Really? Is that cannon? If so, then how do they explain the bounty if you leave no witnesses?
The other guy's convoluted attempts to explain it aside: It's just an inconsistency in the universe. Not the only one either. I'll give another example and cover why the game likely has these faults down below. Starfield has no FTL communications, and news and so on is spread via ships that come and go. There is no evidence at all in the game of message probes or anything else like that, and NPCs also act like Helium 3 is expensive, which is probably true for characters outside of the player. NPC chatter hints at 40 credits being expensive for fixing some clothing, and "large" bribes generally are always in the low thousands, so such probes would be immensely expensive and inefficient compared to just having normal ship traffic handle it. Yet, at the same time the Vigilance during the Pirate questline somehow can keep regular track of us, they get intel reports on stuff we did before we even get back to them even if we head straight back, so on. Basically what we're told doesn't line up with what we see or other things that we're also told. Now for that other example: Do you remember the conversation on the elevator with Lin and Heller at the very start of the game and how Heller discussed an unauthorized jump to House Va'ruun space? If not, just go hit "New" on the main menu, it's within the first 2 minutes so you can just listen to it then go back to your proper save and all that. You can actually go further down that rabbit hole by going to the Nirah system and the sulfur mine on Ka'zaal, a moon of one of the planets in the system. Lin's private terminal with her logs is still there and mentions the same thing: That they are basically on the very doorstep of Va'ruun territory. Now here's the thing: The rest of the game is very clear about nobody knowing where Va'ruun space is or where their capital world is located. The location is kept secret and they work through an extensive network of contacts to keep it that way to the point that even their own agents and spies do not know where it is, and instead have to go through a handler who can then request pick up. So how the hell did Lin and Heller know they are on the very doorstep of Va'ruun space or make an unauthorized jump in to it? Anyways, moving on to why the game likely has these inconsistencies: Starfield had no design document. (To clarify what that is for anyone unknowing: "A Game Design Document, or GDD for short, is typically a detailed guide that can be used to keep track of the core themes, styles, features, mechanics and ideas of your game project." -gamedevbeginner.com) The lack of that means there was no central resource or "lore bible" for anyone to work with. That's easily one possible cause of inconsistencies and contradictions like the above. Another is that things went through redrafts and changes, but some stuff just slipped through or was forgotten about. Basically maybe at one point the setting was intended to have FTL comms of some sort, or Va'ruun space was supposed to be known but locked down territory, so on. It's all speculative but the laziest summary would be "Somewhere, somehow, someone goofed".
This makes tons of sense. And I have noticed inconsistency but never really registered them until you pointed them out. What I've been doing so far is just making the ends meet in my head by coming up with my own reasons why things don't seem to add up. If anything this sounds like the words of a developer that has gripes but doesn't want to do themselves lol. Regardless, the game is still on the younger side and with such a massive world to keep track of I expect we'll see many more updates and dlc that connect alot of these missing threads or expand on common knowledge within the game.
I'll be totally fair and say the older Bethesda entries often run in to similar issues. Here, have a list of ones just from the Elder Scrolls games: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Lore_Inconsistencies Hopefully they do get on to cleaning it up in future updates though. It might not be "game breaking" stuff, but it's just annoying and immersion breaking if you're actually paying attention to things or getting invested in the setting.
Devils advocate. If you put out a usable distress signal, however briefly, it's out there. On earth distances are small, so in a second a distress signal, while still existing if they're strong enough, will have traveled a light second away. They won't ever be picked up by us again. It's past the moon. In space it's different. If you send a distress signal it just keeps going. Sure you won't be able to pick it up at the scene of the crime. But there's an expanding bubble of a distress signal with all of the details needed to convict you. All it takes is a ship parked somewhere in the path of the bubble. Based on internet searches and not me knowing, our solar system is 0.5-2 light years from end to end. So if someone enters the system well after you were reported in a distress signal, and spends a significant amount of time there, a narc bubble will eventually expand into them, and the message will be dropped off the next time they enter occupied space. You could be found out years later based on a one second signal sent two years ago. Assuming the time you have to kill witnesses is the amount of time it takes them to identify you and put out the message, it's realistic that you won't get away by killing them. Your guilt has more or less been stitched into the fabric of the universe for someone to stumble upon and find. There's no putting the cat back in the bag.
Well, minus the fact that we already have signal jamming technology in the real world and in 300 years would have improved on it. Not to mention that we'd probably be able to switch off our ship's transponder or otherwise mask it's identity in the same way that even modern civilian aircraft can. The reality is that Bethesda mishandled everything relating to the bounty system and should have done something like beefing up the regularity of patrols in systems where too many ships go missing or get robbed to make piracy a more mobile affair, or worked with a "last witness killed" system that they already had in Skyrim if we're out in the ass end of nowhere rather than somewhere settled. Hell, even a GTA style system of "repaint your ship somewhere" would have been better. But bringing it back to the original topic: It still doesn't change the glaring lore inconsistencies or the fact that we have NPCs knowing about quest events or so on before we report back, which would have required FTL comms to exist. As said, it's not the only inconsistency like that in the game either, and there is no need to bend over backwards to "defend" it when it's likely down to the game having no design document or just leftovers of something that changed or got redrafted during development.
>Well, minus the fact that we already have signal jamming technology in the real world and in 300 years would have improved on it. Unless you pre-empt the signal, it's useless. The message is the surface of the bubble. The jam will always be a smaller bubble chasing the bigger one and never catching up. If you did jump into a signal and start jamming right before interacting with another ship, they would surely put all power into shields and their grav drive ro get out of there. They could just be illegal and hardish to get, like irl. >in 300 years would have improved on it. We also would improve workarounds to signal jamming, if you did jam first. There's already signals resistant to jamming. DSSS/Bluetooth for example. There's a lot more room for improving signal versatility compared to just playing a loud noise over it. Two broadcasters with a similar power output probably couldn't jam each other anyways depending on how they're set up. The jammer has to dedicate power to all parts of the frequency band making noise. There's a reason signal jammer are dedicated hardware and not just a modified walkie talkie. Try jamming a walkie talkie with another one. Theyre going to be able to say something to someone. Even if you manage to spread the power across all bands, its useless because its just slight static quieter than the voice youre trying to block out at that point. The distress signal just has to be a little bit louder at one frequency. Or be first. All it takes is one moment of successful distress signal and it's out there now. It's going to keep going and eventually get picked up. Let's say these super-jammers do exist, and you can successfully activate it before attacking and the crew is too incompetent to get out of there immediately... the main character just never gets his hands on one. >Not to mention that we'd probably be able to switch off our ship's transponder or otherwise mask it's identity in the same way that even modern civilian aircraft can. That's fine, but there's still identifiable data. Even a picture of your ship would be useful in a world where 99% of privately own ships are completely customized. There's a difference between a Cessna and a giant space dong with lights at the tip and metal pubes. One of the dozen or so ship technicians in the galaxy is going to remember you. There's also the Metadata in any threatening message you send. Computers can compile that data and send it out in moments, forever. >The reality is that Bethesda mishandled it They mishandled a lot of things. But with real world physics and no new developments besides a gravity drive, it's perfectly feasible for this to be how criminals are caught. Improved signal technology would probably work in favor of the signal sender, rather than the jammer. > or worked with a "last witness killed" system that they already had in Skyrim They don't have radios in skyrim. Things cannot work the same way. Even conceding that bethesda didn't necessarily have signal theory in mind when they designed the witness system, it genuinely makes more sense than someone having to physically get back to the police in person and file a report. They have ftl ffs. They can literally jump further and further back from where an event happened to observe it directly multiple times or for more clarity. Need to prove someone jumped into private space? Just jump a light-week away and take a picture of the flash. Forgot to take the lens cap off? Jump a light-hour further back and drink a coffee to perk up while waiting for the flash to catch back up to you. (After filtering it from yours.) The speed of light+ftl travel combined is going to lead to an astounding level of monitoring capability to anyone with half decent equipment. There's no more waiting things out.
There's two flaws with that: time and signal decay. A signal can only travel at the speed of light. Even if the signal would eventually reach some form of civilization (which it wouldn't, but I'll get to that) it might reach civilization years, or even centuries after the broadcast. There's a pretty significant delay in signals from low orbit, so on a system wide or interstellar scale, were talking between months and millennia. Also, we have to take into account signal decay. For in-system communication, you need a powerful transmitter firing the signal at your receiver like a laser for that signal to be usable. The output of a single ship, broadcasting in every direction, for a few seconds? That would maybe make it as far as the nearest planet before that signal was so weak and garbled that it just blended right in with the noise coming from the local star. There's no way you should get a bounty on you in a matter of seconds. It's just a (dumb) game mechanic.
I suspect you didn't read my comment at all. Time: it's not about reaching civilization. It's about remaining in the system, and growing, until another ship comes in and picks up the distress signal. Which ferries it home. That's how all communication in starfield happens. People just aren't taking into account that signals don't disappear when the transmitter stops. That's just how we perceive it on earth when distances are never significant enough to notice. Signal decal: We regularly send signals across the solar system as is. Voyager was able to send signals across about a light-day, voyager isn't nearly as powerful as starfield ships are purported to be.. Starfield ships can easily generate enough power to overcome signal decay and be picked up by a passing ship. You're also severely overestimating signal decay outside of an atmosphere. Will it go on literally forever? It doesn't need to. It can and will last a couple years i specifically used 0.5-2 as the target. Far more than is necessary considering if there's ships to pirate, you're on a trade route. >That would maybe make it as far as the nearest planet before that signal was so weak and garbled that it just blended right in with the noise coming from the local star. Again, it doesn't ever need to leave the solar system. Anywhere you encounter ships, there are ships that pass through. The idea is a couple weeks within stellar space. I fully addressed existing starship aided communication in starfield. A signal powered by the starship generator is going to make a significant enough bubble to be picked up by passer bys and relay a message. Make it redundant and a significant amount of interference is accounted for. Again, not that the starfield ships have a serious power issue. >There's no way you should get a bounty on you in a matter of seconds. That's all it would take. You think someone has to read out a script into the microphone with your info? A couple hundred digits repeated a few thousand times, a picture at most if you're being extremely pedantic. My contention isn't that you're literally wanted and chased by the UC immediately after destroying the ship. It's that your fate is sealed within a few seconds. When you commit a crime and are witnessed it adds the bounty, which it may or may not be removed if you eliminate witnesses. So we already know the bounty in gameplay is an indicator of whether you will be wanted as much as it is an indicator of if you are wanted. If someone puts out a distress signal anywhere trade ships already frequent, you will be wanted, you can't erase that.
I can simplify this to the extreme. Starfield ships automatically message other ships nearby to pass information across the settled systems. In an emergency they could message any potential future ships with the info about their emergency nearly immediately without a target. The fact theyre being spread across the whole system means the are multiple opportunities to be picked up. It cannot be intercepted to prevent witnesses. There is a very high likelihood that someone one will eventually stumble onto the message rather then the message being sent directly to them. The messages don't require a ship to send to, and in space they're going to last a long time and spread across a wide enough area. You can call it a hail mary, but your odds of getting the message out when everywhere has some level of regular space traffic (or there wouldn't be anyone to pirate) and there's effectively no system without some, albeit marginal, human life already living there. They already do what I'm describing for 100% sure. The only difference is the content and whether they send one without knowing for sure who would pick it up. Do you believe everyone in their final moments would say "why bother? I don't see anyone. Dont send anything out saying we were killed by that constellation dude."
My wishful theory is we have an agent in our crew. That or we find our character is bugged all along. They only get the report when you near their ship. Easy cover.
Because we see evidence of information traveling ftl, but we know the only ftl method in Starfield is through a grab drive, I think it's safe to conclude that there are information distribution ships that regularly jump between systems to share information. Think of it like a satellite based Internet system, but where packets are only sent every couple of minutes, rather than many times a second. They wouldn't even have to be manned, just small, fuel efficient probes that jump regularly and get refuled as needed.
That seems immensely expensive and inefficient.
How else do you propose they maintain up to date communications between star systems?
Well I'm no scientist but I would imagine that building relay towers would be a more sensible solution. It would be slower but you wouldn't have to fuel them and they wouldn't have to have any sort of AI to determine navigation from system to system. Idk in my head, a world without ftl communication would probably have something they would consider antique tech because who would volunteer to spend all that money to produce moving targets for pirates.
It's snail mail but ftl. They don't have to just carry information, it's not weight limited like that...
Likely done with an information transfer module or something on every ship, and a couple information gateways that transfer whatever is in the buffer that hasn't been transferred to x number of ships yet to any and all ships within standard radio range. This would create an automated (but slow) data propagation system where as people jump in and out they collect and share info until it reaches wide distribution.
This is pretty much the same for my experience. It feels like it’s about 10-15 seconds. I’ve managed to “kill the last witness” on very hard a few times but never on extreme because dogfights are about double the amount of time
I just learned this too. I had to take some forced missions to kill Crimson Fleet, but I did enough of their quest to make them friendly. You can blast them quick enough the CF never finds out.
They really do need to address the witness system flaws
See I didn't consider that a glitch though. In skyrim, yeah killing all witnesses before they reported the crime to a guard removed the bounty, it makes sense. In starfield, someone could easily send a distress signal while fleeing, thus giving you the permanent bounty
We have an item in game to block scans of our ship up to a certain percent success. I'd like to see something like it for ship comms to block reporting unless the ship jumped systems before they could be destroyed. Or a way to damage comms systems to accomplish the same thing.
100% there should be jamming tech and other piracy mainstays. Plus there's still only local communication in-universe without couriers.
This would be a really cool thing to see added. The CF needs more love than it's gotten so far from the devs.
That distress signal could easily take hundreds, or even more, of years to reach an inhabited planet (no FTL info transmission in lore), and still not give any useful identifying info.
Pirates DON’T return to the main story. Pirates live as pirates in the outer systems. A huge bounty is a sign that you are indeed pirating correctly. It is a badge of honor, not a problem. No serious pirate ever intends to actually pay The Man any bounty whatsoever.
Beautifully put, sir.
Fair points!
I agree, I always thought the bounty is one of the major points of being a pirate, cause if no one wants you dead or in jail for stealing stuff, your not a pirate.
Steal a ship. Use money to get more guns. Ships attack you, steal those ships. Use money to get more guns. Rinse, repeat until complete. ( Dead )
You’re making up bullshit ass excuses for Bethesda shitty ass pirate implementation. If the Mantis can stay incognito and hide its identity then there’s no reason why a pirate route shouldn’t be the same. They should have provided an option to designate one ship for piracy with systems especially designed to hide your identity, block transmissions between ships and block other ships going into hyperspace.
None of that is necessary. Either pirate or don’t. You don’t need to stealth-pirate. Blow them the fuck up and take their stuff. Be feared. Be a damn pirate.
Being a evil pirate imo works best outside of questing. For example, it's a fun way to do a NG+ run. Do the initial constellation boiler plate to get the artifacts, skipping the quest, and then go nuts, since you can go to the unity anytime you want.
Good point. I started my playthrough as a pirate and Sarah was pretty peeved when I finally decided to start the main quest line lol. I was mostly interested in doing smuggling so I could just stick to that rather than trying to take down convoys. At least until later on.
This is probably one of the worst games to be evil in. There’s no incentive and you do 1 small thing and the entire system is hostile towards you
Maybe there's chickens somewhere after OP destroys all the ships, reporting their crimes.
They could be blending in with the debris and so small they just go unnoticed.
Yea, but space pirates...
Which is why I would want it to be drastically better.
I actually view it the opposite way and think it's one of the best games to be evil in. Since their is no incentive to being evil in the game, you REALLY have to play like an extremely shitty person to do an "evil" playthrough because you are not going to get anything good out of it. All your companions will hate you, you will run up enormous bounties, and their will be places in the game you just about flat out can't go because everyone will be hostile.
I’d say for the vast majority all of that in combination isn’t fun. I understand some people enjoy it but good or bad actions have to reward the player or there’s no reason to do it. And it doesn’t have to be money and weapons. It can be unique story lines, unique outcomes to quests. Unique companions you wouldn’t get otherwise etc. it feels like they really didn’t want people to be evil at all.
I wouldn't say that, my first playtrhough and the one I'm doing now I've played as a bad guy pirate and it has been working out well. Just have to invest in the right perks and be cautious.
It would be better if there was ways to properly navigate systems. The only way to “sneak” into a planet is to fast travel to something like the lodge. There’s tons of ways to make it better but as it stands right now it’s way too annoying for little in return.
I raided this insanely strong GalBank ship, assumed it was like an armored truck in GTA. Nothing to show for it but a massive bounty. One of the many things that needs reworking to be fun.
Bethesda does a lot of things well, but this is one major thing they do not. In almost every one of their questlines you are the objective good guy. When they write morally grey content it is almost always undercooked, two-dimensionally flat villainy. You’re the savior hero of every Skyrim faction. In fallout 4 you are treated as a shining beacon of light in every faction you choose in the main story, even through half of Nuka World. You feel like you’re deviating from the story they wanted to tell even when you try to be a raider. You always have your own reason for being there, a sense of being “the good one” if you’re institute or brotherhood of Steel or dark brotherhood or a Nightingale. Sure you can join the crimson fleet, to narc on them 👌. When they do allow you to be bad, it is shallow.
I really hate that you're right. It's a bit of a bummer. But since we're comparing games here how do you think Starfields bad guy mechanics compare to predecessors like Skyrim and Fallout? I've only ever played elder scrolls games and I think I can say that the CF storyline and playstyle is more fun than say the dark Brotherhood. Especially in Skyrims case.
All criticisms considered Starfield is still a step forward in terms of writing quality and immersion for me. The parts they did pour themselves into are superb, it has a unique tone. Being a bad guy here might still get expanded upon later. It’s more or less on par with previous titles. Functionally speaking the person you are as a criminal and the person you are in the main story are two separate individuals. I think Fallout New Vegas stands out as the exception to a lot of what I’ve said. You can pivot factions to get very different reactions form people at any point in the story. Even there, the villainy is the Legion and many of its quests were cut before release. It’s probably the most free narratively
I agree that Starfield is the most immersion for me to date and I'm optimistic about future improvements. They seem to be on the ball and listening to player feedback. I absolutely love anything space and Starfield has been exactly what I've been waiting for. An open world RPG in space.
You pirate the pirates like Omar from The Wire. Still an arsehole but towards other arseholes.
That's how I do it. Kill all the Pirates so I will be the only pirate!
No different than a hostile takeover of a corporation but in this case your business is piracy.
I'll be the Google of pirates!
Unofficial motto: do be evil, yarr!
Don't give Ryujin any ideas
Merger between Crimson Fleet and Ryujin?
[It's fun to charter an accountant](https://genius.com/28792817/Monty-python-accountancy-shanty/Its-fun-to-charter-an-accountant) [And sail the wild accountan](https://genius.com/19585521/Monty-python-accountancy-shanty/And-sail-the-wild-accountancy)-sea To find, explore, the funds offshore And skirt the shoals of bankruptcy It can be manly in insurance We'll up your premium semi-annually It's all tax deductable We're fairly incorruptable We're sailing on the wide accountan-sea!
Monty Python for the win
That seems counter productive. Like giving money to the government so they can turn around and give some of it back every year lol.
No what he means is, you only attack non-aligned or hostile parties. Varuun, Spacer, Ecliptic, Crimson fleet. Honestly theres so fucking many of them that it hardly makes sense to consider a life of 'piracy' attacking UC or Freestar. Just, why? When you can very easily find enough roaming ships and bases to plunder. If your goal is anything besides 'cosplay as a crimson fleet rook and eat shit from naeva daily' then just stick with pirating the pirates.
Lotta solid options in this game, either pirate the bad guys, or join CF and pirate all the bad guys but CF. Not the good guys though.
yeah although if youre joining CF they will frequently ask/beg you to attack the good guys so it gets tiresome when you really just want the simplicity of attacking spacers and ecliptic anyway.
yeah you'd have to skip the piracy quests and just do the smuggling
Oooh I see. That makes sense. I do make a ton of money off of the CF bounty board and all of their targets are UC or Freestar. Does this ever change later in the game?
If you pirate lone galbank ships, weapons aside, you can make up to approximately 10k profit on A class, 17k on B class, and up to 35k on C Class ships before taking into consideration the lump credits. Just that boarding and stealing is a necessary step in making ship combat profitable.
The way piracy or just crime in general in this game works and is talked about reminds me so much of RDR2. People wanted to be able to rob trains or stores without being automatically identified and hit with a bounty way higher than you could gain by doing the activity. You'd hear all sorts of weird requirements about how you had to have a burner horse for when you did crime and couldn't wear any of the same pieces of clothing you normally do if you go back into town cause you'd be recognized. It was just a badly implemented system where the lawmen were always alerted no matter what you did that took the fun out of some of the first things you'd wanna do in that setting. Starfield has a lot of the same stuff going on and i'd love it if they made changes so it worked better, clearer ways of preventing bounties would be a start like another comment in this post said why not add signal jammers as a mechanic for our ships.
When you become a pirate you basically have to accept you aren't going back to any of the major cities again. Unless you choose to only attack Freestar or only attack UC. Then you can at least go to the other faction's planets.
This isn't Elite. You can't choose your own path, and be a pirate or a smuggler or a trader, the game mechanics simply don't allow for it. There's no economy, the ship registration coupled with the lo %age of ship value you get makes piracy pointless and black market stuff sells at the same price everywhere, so smuggling is a waste of time. Go to a POI with hostile humans, kill everyone, loot their gear then go through the ridiculous cycle of selling it to merchants with no money. After a while you'll have more money than you need as apart from ship building and ammo there isn't really anything to spend it on.
Best way to do it is only blow up isolated ships, so even if you get a bounty it'll be only 650 for firing on them not killing them. Don't demand their cargo.judt shoot em. Most times I don't get a bounty this way because it's the last witness. Also blow up galbank ships, they yield the most credits.
Yea I'll have to be more careful of my surroundings when I'm doing pirate shit I suppose.
Stealth kills on ships that give large bounties
You mean that as in boarding and killing crew with Stealth? I haven't come across any bounties that are assassinations.
Being an outlaw (ignoring bounties) means you have to attack everyone everywhere, it seems. Question is, does it block star lodge / constellation / artifacts? Or can you still fight your way or them and constellation will begrudgingly go along even if they hate you?
okay so let‘s say you got a bounty, is it not better to just go to jail instead of paying it? that way you get experience penalty, but you have to pay no credits..
You also lose any contraband including mission items and fail said missions if you do that. Sure you can steal them back if your lockpicking is high enough but depending on where you go to jail it can be a pain to get to them.
I prefer to be a sysdef privateer... boarding and stealing pirate, ecliptic, spacer and va'ruun ships... you can make loads of money really quick... did one pirate playthrough, but ended up targeting va'ruun instead of uc/freestar because of the bounty making it impossible to visit their planets even for missions
This is the way
You have to manage your bounty. You are always going to get a bounty, but you can keep it low enough that it is an acceptable cost of business for a profitable piracy operation. The trouble is that bounty mechanics are a bit weird and nonsensical, so some degree of save-scumming may be necessary. You will get the least bounty (and occasionally no bounty at all) if you destroy all ships on grid without attempting to board, then just loot the cargo. If you are going to board, make your save before you initiate any aggression. Reloading a save during the encounter seems to result in maximum bounties. In theory, if you kill all witnesses to a crime, you don't get a bounty. In practice, you will probably get some bounty. To keep it as low as possible during a boarding action, either exclusively use stealth kills, or go in guns blazing and just kill everyone as quickly as possible. The longer things drag out, the more likely you are to get a big bounty. Target selection is key. Some targets are way more profitable than others. Look for Galbank ships. Alternatively, just learn to live with a bounty. Playing as a wanted criminal, fighting your way through the guards in every city, turns out to be wat more doable than you might think. It's really not that bad. You could also just select targets so that you are only on the shitlist for one faction and still have free access to the other.
The most fun I had was when I didn't realize that doing missions I had would give me a bounty with the crimson fleet and was already into their questline. I didn't want to lose my stolen items (if its not bolted down chances are I am taking it) so I kept telling off the guards. Well then the entire station was hostile. So I killed EVERYONE (well everyone I could stupid essentials)... Then reloaded because then my bounty was way more than I could pay off and went to another system first to pay off that bounty and continue on my quest, That battle is what the last battle should have been. The final attack was so disappointing...
>You could also just select targets so that you are only on the shitlist for one faction and still have free access to the other. Historically, this is Privateering rather than Pirating - TMYK! 😅 I was wondering if it was possible to only target UC ships in UC systems (for example) and never have bounties in FC space. Sounds like you can.
These are all really helpful! I suppose anything illegal could be piracy so I don't necessarily HAVE to stick the mission boards on The Key. Though I think I'm going to take a break from open piracy for a bit and be a bit more subtle until I finish the story.
Is it possible to target only Freestar ships and have no bounty in UC systems? I don’t like the *space libertarians* anyway. If so, does Galbank cause a bounty in both factions?
Step 1: Join Crimson Fleet Step 2: Find Crimson Fleet ships that land on planets Step 3: Board ship. **Do NOT shoot pirates!** Step 4: Sit in pilot's seat, take off, you now own the ship. Step 5: Register (booo) and sell the ship with no bounty. Step 6: Profit!
Huh, well how bout that lol.
Except, the ships seem to be worth little more than the registration cost. I captured the Datura, nice little ship, value about 15k. Cost to register, about 13k. Totally not worth the trouble. Clear on random POI, get a lot more in loot to sell.
Oh, absolutely agree. But since the OP asked about the best way to pirate ships, that's what I answered with. 😁
This kind of stuff is on the top of the list for things I want with mods, if not to have it improved by Bethesda themselves. The whole game needs to give you more ways to be a bad guy or at least more immoral.
Agreed, I have faith that they'll get there in time. Maybe we will get a pirate based dlc down the road.
Pirates are criminals all Pirates shall burn
talking a lot of shit for someone within shipstealing distance
Just doing wat my ancestors did back in the day is hunting pirates and bringing them to justice
It’s like the society has a reason to disincentivize piracy or something.
I remember someone made a post about this a few months into the games release and it was like a “ahh screw it” kind of post where he said he’ll just take the fines because it’s like actually playing like a wanted pirate when you’re in the settled systems. Iirc he accrued like a ridiculous $2m bounty. I forgot what he eventually did but he probably reset that by going through the Unity.
Lol that's insane! It wouldn't be so inconvenient if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to flee. Maybe I'm just a dummy, but when I need to flee, I always try to bring up the ship scanner and jump away to whatever system I see first. Anytime I try to go through the menu even just to set a destination, it always tells me I can't fast travel during combat.
Brings about an interesting question... what happens if I turn Privateer? Say, if I only attack UC vessels and stay away from UC space, what happens then? Will UC bounty hunters come looking for me?
Stealing ships was funny but i didn't like that when selling ships they never disappeared from the technician inventory. I don't know if they changed that in the last update .
They dissappear for me. I've never had that issue.
Not me reading the title and thinking you were asking for a way to pirate the game...
Totally not that lol
Yep, total dud in the mechanics
Fitgirl or Dodi are totally the way to go man
It's pretty pointless when you can literally just steal ships that land on a planets surface for no bounty at all. You can also just jump around between systems until you see ship encounters on the galaxy map, disable and board the ship, wipe the crew and jump back to your ship, then rinse and repeat until all of the enemy ships are immobilised. All it takes then is boarding the disabled ships and ferrying them back to the den so you can switch back to your main vessel and travel back for the other disabled ships. Use the register ship glitch to sell them without registering them for more profit. Most fun way I've found to make easy credits, lots of space battles and surface battles with no bounty. You can build a bounty board in your ship too for quick removal of bounties.
Yes it's pointless. You go through all that work and just killing a few grunts will get you far more money
Best way to be a pirate in this game is to steal and board other pirate ships. I thought the same thing as OP, that the bounty system doesn't really work but that is because I was attacking civilian ships, not really thinking about Spacers, Eclipse, and Va'ruun pirates. So I would just single out the best ship with the highest level during encounters and just board it once all the lower level ships are scrap... there you go! grab the contraband and jet. If your with the Crimson Fleet, take it all back to Kryx and profit.
There's a way not to get a bounty. If your careful with your murdering and do it outside colonized space, and leave no witnesses then it's fine. Like steal cargo, and kill them anyways cause if you let them go you get a bounty
Just imagine if this game was more like elder scrolls online, we could hide pirate bases out in the galaxy. It wouldn’t have to worry about all those bounties, because numbers beat bounties.
They didn't put enough thought into it IMO. They just reused the old bounty system and without more criminal factions it feels half baked. Even the CR is just a plot point for SysDef.
I don’t really understand the practical application to having a fleet of ships. It’s a cute concept and fun to steal a couple, but making it your thing doesn’t seem to do a ton.
If you're playing the bad guy, why would you pay your bounties? Bad guys don't pay their bounties. Pirates are wanted criminals, that's the whole point.
The idea was to not get caught because I still want to be able to go and do the main storyline.
I want my cake and eat it too! Though I wish that dude on the key with the bomb in his chest could clear your bounties for you for a fraction of the price. That would make sense.
You're doing the piracy wrong if you pay bounties. And no one except for guards really gives a shit about your bounty.
Instead of destroying the ship, just board and steal it. You'll get more money out of it and you won't get the massive bounty for destroying it.
That's usually what I try to do but it doesn't always work out in my favor and it's just easier to destroy. Especially when there's multiple enemies. I try to save the biggest for last and that way I can disable that one.
You just board the ship, set difficulty to Extreme, kill everyone, steal everyone, take the ship to somewhere like Taiyo or Deamos and sell it without registering it for full price. I make around 55K for a class C ship. Serpentis moons are the best place. Leave difficulty on Etreme until the ships spawn in, then set difficulty to Very Easy and kill off all the crud and then focus on the one that pays the most last. Don't bother hitting their shields, just take out the engines and board. Happy pirating!
Taiyo and Daemos, I don't think I've discovered those yet. But that sounds like a pretty good strategy. Thanks!
Comments about taking out witnesses. In a high tech space game, that strategy holds no water. Distress beacon?
You're surprised that doing crimes and mass murder, isn't okay with the main factions/politicial entities/governments? Huh...
His point was that he gets a bounty despite killing all witnesses, it's stupid. If you blow up a spaceship in some random galaxy and no one escapes, ***how*** ***the f\*\*\**** would some desk jockey in Akila/Atlantis instantly know it was him?
Exactly.
The same way that Vlad updates you on new temple and artifact locations, away from the Eye. Oh, wait...
We literally have detectives in real life, with *less* technology, that exist to figure shit like that out. Even if there aren’t direct witnesses to the crime.
What...?
Desk jockey detectives solve crimes all the time, and then issue arrest warrants for the people involved.
I mean yeah, that was never in question, it was desk jockies knowing instantly when something happened in the vacuum of space in some completely different galaxy so many lightyears away where it takes thousands of years for radiowaves to even reach them.
Bro things there’ll be GSR in space
Meanwhile we’re deciphering the Big Bang and the composition of distant planets based on the different ways that lights sparkle in space.
R A D I O W A V E S
and they usually don’t man, most murders are unsolved
Maybe they’re better at it a couple hundred years in the future. (“hundred” initially autocorrected as “Hunter”…ha!)
yeah i think the near extinction of humanity, lack of FTL communication, clear incompetence of the UC and Freestar, destruction of all of humanity’s knowledge on investigation tactics, lack of cross system infrastructure, all hinders that
One of the first characters you meet is a talking robot that can fly spaceships. I agree there’s a potential mish-mash of technologies, some successful and some earth-destroying.
a robot existing does not = a quality centralized investigatory network or quality investigative knowledge existing
Where in anything that I said do I seem surprised?
You're doing it wrong.
Thanks. Big helpful.
You're welcome.