Elliot Maltby · Lead Mission Designer

There'll be areas where you're safe and there'll be areas where you're not. Places that have armistice zones or green zones, you'll be very safe in. But ones where you don't, you won't be. It's the intention, right? It's going to be an experience you have in Pyro when you're trying to do these sorts of missions. You're unprotected. If I go to an outpost that has a freight elevator that doesn't have a green zone, I need to be aware of it and I need to be ready to defend myself. Whether it's I leave people in the turrets of my ship while I load, whether I hire myself an escort by talking in chat and trying to get some people that I don't know or do know to help me out, there's meant to be some risk. And that risk is calculated when we do the reward. We know the locations we're sending you to, we know all this sort of stuff. So that risk is inherently calculated. No, I'm not here to hold everyone's hand through the unloading and loading process and make it all safe. There will obviously be things to aid you. I believe currently if you try to steal a box, say I call up a freight elevator with my cargo on and Nick, who I don't know, tries to take it off, they should get a crime. There'll be a way in the legal system for us to defend and to allow you to sort of enact justice yourself legally without consequence.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And as you mentioned, obviously where you operate is important. There's the green zone stuff, but even in a place like Pyro that doesn't have any green zones per se, you can align yourself with one of the factions there, and if you're aligned with the Citizens for Prosperity and you're doing your loading there, you'll have a certain amount of protection from the folks there. But if you're aligned with Citizens for Prosperity and you try to go to one of the Headhunters' trading posts and try to load up there, you're going to have a worse time. So these decisions are part and parcel of the process. And even without green zones, there will still be places for everyone, based on the decisions you make for your character, to say, okay, this is less risky and this is more risky. The choice is yours.

Elliot Maltby · Lead Mission Designer

It goes into, like in real life when they do shipping lanes. If they know that they're going to go through pirate-infested waters, there are mercenaries on board to defend against it. And that should be the same thing. The players, if they want to do these missions, at some point they'll have to adapt and understand that, oh, this location I know of, because it doesn't have a green zone, that means this portion of the mission I'm safe, but as soon as I'm getting close to this location, I need to be prepared for anything, right? And it will be something that comes with the player's knowledge and then building their game knowledge: they'll understand that this location isn't safe for me, I need to make sure I've got protection.

Jared Huckaby · Host, Community

And while we have some version of it now with these new missions that are designed to link to go from this place to that place to that place, natural trade lanes are going to start to form. As server meshing comes online and we begin to increase the number of players, these natural trade lanes will start to harden and they'll start to solidify and you'll start to see more and more ships. That will create a lot of interesting opportunities for players on both sides of the moral compass, for protection and for piracy.

Nick Wardle · Economy team

Absolutely, and in the long term, the very long term, when there is a broader system of law across the various solar systems that is being managed, so the original Quantum demonstration that Tony gave us shows how different action areas can be spawned in response to different types of activity in an area. If there are a lot of pirates, then there's a security response. And that could be player-driven or it could be system-driven.